Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar

by Edvard Radzinsky

Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar by Edvard Radzinsky chronicles the life of Alexander II, the emancipator of Russia’s serfs who, after multiple attempts on his life, was assassinated in 1881. The book is a great evocation of the turbulent times, though as the New York Times review when it came out in 2005 pointed out, a better subtitle might have been ‘The Times and Reign of the Last Great Tsar’: “Lively and brilliant, both epic and epigrammatic…Radzinsky’s Alexander is an abstraction. The floorboards never creak beneath his weight.”

The book, according to the author

“Alexander II was the greatest reformer tsar since Peter the Great. The Russian Lincoln, he put an end to a thousand years of Russian slavery by emancipating the serfs. He did more than free 23 million Russian slaves; he reformed Russian life by changing the justice system, the army, and the very form of government.”

Alexander II by Edvard Radzinsky, chapter 1