all sorts of Polish differences.
By the mid-seventies of the nineteenth century, Europe’s public consciousness was already fully prepared for the severe condemnation of Turkey’s policy in the Balkans. A number of national uprisings (Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina) are suppressed by Oshmans-Bashi-Bazouks with unprecedented cruelty, causing the overwhelming majority of Europeans sympathy and anger. Porta no longer looks like a defenseless victim, and Russia – an instrument in the hands of the monarch, with the help of which he wants to acquire additional glory for himself. The new emperor behaves prudently, will coordinate important actions with the governments of other world powers.
In March 1871, taking advantage of changes in the international situation, with the support of the German Chancellor Bismarck. Russia restores the right to keep the Navy on the Black Sea.
In June 1876, Serbia, and then Montenegro, declare war on Turkey, suffer a series of devastating defeats, and appeal to European governments for mediation in the settlement of the conflict. The London protocol, signed by representatives of the six European powers, brilliantly rejects Porta, and thereby dismantles the provisions of the Paris Treaty, which protected it from the struggle with Russia one on one.
April 24, 1877 Russia declares war on Turkey.
In May, Russian troops enter the territory of Romania and, gathering allied forces, go to Constantinople. June 27, with the support of torpedo boats, they set up a pontoon crossing across the Danube, with a minimum (1,100 people) losses speeding up the river. The next goal is the fortified town of Pleven (Pleven) located at the crossroads of strategically important roads. The Turkish divisions (20,000 men, 57 guns) manage to occupy it somewhat earlier than the Russians. The first assault, despite initial successes, is unsuccessful. The second attack takes place ten days later, with the support of fire, 140 guns. The Turks lose 1,000 dead, the Russians 3500. The Romanian troops join the siege, receive reinforcements and Osman. The ratio of forces is now 83 thousand people, 424 guns against 34 thousand captured, with 72 cannons. The third assault, which took place on September 11, suffers a complete failure, the losses of Russian-Romanian troops after three attempts to capture the city reach 35,000 people killed and wounded.
Russian command passes to the tactics of the complete blockade of Plevna, with large losses captures a number of small fortresses, cuts communications. As a result, the 50,000-strong Turkish garrison is one on one with the 125 thousand Russian-Romanian army that surrounded it in the city walls. In the evening of December 10 exhausted by hunger and fever, Turkish troops are making an attempt to break through. The forward units pass 3 lines of trenches, capture 6 cannons, almost completely destroy the Siberian Regiment (1,700 people), but stop under the unbearable fire of hundreds of guns. Not retaining the attack of the reinforcements that have arrived, the Ottoman army is fleeing and capitulating. 43 thousand people fall into captivity.
Then 300 thousand Russian-Romanian army, almost without resistance, passes the Balkans, captures 30 thousand troops, disperses the remaining 150 thousand, captures the Turkish Adrianople. Seven days later, the fighting in this theater of operations is over.
In the Caucasus, the Turkish presence itself, as well as the active emissaries of the Porte, create unrest; rebel Dagestanis, Chechens and Abkhazians. Russian troops capture the cities of Kars, Arzurum, displacing the Turks from the Black Sea coast; after this, the excitement of the local tribes ceases.
The Tsar’s troops stop 100 kilometers from Constantinople. Demonstrating the undesirability of seizing the capital Ports of Russia, Britain and France send a combined fleet to the Straits. January 19, 1878, the San Stefan peace is signed, now celebrated in Bulgaria as Independence Day, but it proves to be only a preliminary agreement. Recently allied Romania, becomes in a position hostile to Russia, and in order to prevent possible excesses, Russian troops occupy Bucharest.
Further, Alexander II turns to the old secret treaties, gets mixed up in them, is nervous and, to a large extent, neutralizes the victories of Russian weapons. Perhaps the special gifts of Austria are due to the fact that the emperor himself is a representative of the Holstein-Gottorp dynasty, an ethnic German, like his wife. Union Bulgaria declines, in comparison with the territory indicated by the protocols of the San Stefan world three times. Its part – Macedonia, returns to Turkey without changes in status. Another province, Rumelia, becomes autonomous in the Porta. Not completely independent Bulgaria, continues to pay tribute to Turkey, although Ottoman troops and have no right to be on its territory (the next year the Bulgarians arbitrarily stop these payments).
After Turkey, Thrace and Albania remain.
Montenegro, Serbia and Romania receive independence.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is occupied by Austria.
As a result of the exchange of territories, Russia takes South Bessarabia from Romania.
Loss of 30 thousand people on each side killed in battle, not counting those who died from wounds and diseases.
In 1866, with the submission of the governor-general of Eastern Siberia, Count N. Muraviev-Amursky, whose portrait adorns the present five-thousandth note (the Motherland must know its «heroes»), the question of selling Alaska to the United States is being studied. In the end, on March 30, 1867, a territory of 1.5 million square kilometers, inhabited by 2,500 Russian and 60,000 Eskimos, is sold for $ 7,2 million (which is equal to the cost of a three-storey capital building). The money goes to the development of the network of railways (according to other sources, it comes to the personal property of the monarchical family).
In 1875, the St. Petersburg Treaty on the Territory Exchange was concluded with Japan (the Russian diplomat AM Gorchakov). The Land of the Rising Sun refuses territorial claims to Sakhalin, in exchange receives the entire chain of the Kuril Islands stretched out. Russia in fact is deprived of access to the Pacific Ocean. Japan has the opportunity at any time to begin the blockade of Sakhalin and the entire Far East (which it will use in 1905).
The government of Alexander II refuses to colonize Papua New Guinea, overseas territory goes to Austria and Australia.
The sparsely populated overseas colonies are an opportunity to create New Russia, in physical isolation from previous forms, to test effective methods of leadership and management, risky but necessary social projects. The Russian nobility rejected this possibility, and as a result left the stage.
The protest mood is growing in the country. Particularly active participants of underground organizations «Earth and Freedom», «Narodnaya Volya» («The will of the people») and (the left wing of the latter) «Black redistribution».
March 13, 1881 on the Ekaterininskaya Embankment of St. Petersburg, two explosions rumble – Alexander II, the bomber of the «Narodnaya Volya» Ignatiy Grinevitsky (an ethnic Pole), the Cossack of his Majesty’s Convoy and a 14-year-old boy from a nearby shopping mall.
The next day, the Russian throne is occupied by Alexander the Third, the second son of Alexander II from his first marriage. His elder brother, Nikolai, died suddenly of a spinal cord tuberculosis during his travels in Italy (21 years), and, in order to prepare for the succession of the throne, Alexander, in particular, studies an additional course of sciences, including. a series of lectures on Russian history S. Solovyov.
Alexander the Third is married to Maria Sophia Friederike Dagmar, the daughter of a prince, and then the King of Denmark Christian Ninth, in Orthodoxy she received the name of Maria Feodorovna (all foreign empresses are Fedorovna, in honor of the family icon). They have six children; the eldest is Nikolai, who later becomes the last (or, last but one) all-Russian emperor.
The first step of Alexander III as a monarch is the cancellation of the discussion of the «Constitution of Loris-Melikov». This Constitution (Minister of Internal Affairs, Count, ethnic Armenian) is the shadow of the Zemsky Sobor of the seventeenth century, a meeting of all estates to solve an epochal question. It could become the basis for the development of the ideas of the Constitutional