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| 1869 |
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| Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's (1840–93) first opera, The Voyevodye, was performed. Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table of elements, and the Pan-Slavist Nicholas Danilevsky published Russia and Europe. | 1 |
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| 1870 |
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| Reform of municipal government, the last of the great reform measures. The old patrician system was abolished, and the towns were given self-government under councils elected by the propertied classes. | 2 |
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| 1871, March 13 |
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| Abrogation of the Black Sea clauses of the Treaty of Paris. The Russian government had taken advantage of the Franco-Prussian War (See July 19–1871, May 10) to denounce its obligations. British protests led to the convocation of a conference at London, which accepted the fact, but reaffirmed the principle that international obligations could not be abrogated without consent of all signatory powers. | 3 |
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| 1873 |
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| The government ordered Russian students in Switzerland to abandon studies and return to Russia. The anger this generated among many intellectuals (the intelligentsia) convinced them to turn to the people as teachers, doctors, and so on, spawning the “Going to the People” movement. | 4 |
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| 1874 |
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| Army reform introduced the principle of universal military liability in place of the former system of taking recruits only from among the lower classes. The army began to play a growing role in educating recruits. | 5 |
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| 1875 |
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| Cession of the Kurile Islands to Japan, in exchange for the southern part of the island of Sakhalin. | 6 |
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| 1875–78 |
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| The NEAR EASTERN CRISIS, the Russian-Ottoman War, and the Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin (See April–1878, March). As a result of the war, the Russians received Bessarabia (which had been lost in 1856), Kars, and Batum. | 7 |
| Growth of opposition to the tsarist regime was due to the incompleteness of the government reforms. The liberal elements demanded a constitution, whereas the radicals and socialists aimed at the complete overturn of the social order and a resettlement of the land question. The radicals soon became avowedly revolutionary. Some, like Bakunin, helped define the doctrines of anarchism. Under the leadership of Herzen, Bakunin, Peter Lavrov, and Nicholas Chernyshevsky they organized a secret society (1876) formed under the name Land and Liberty. This became the spearhead of the so-called populist movement (“Going to the People”). The movement met with a qualified reception from the suspicious peasants and was soon persecuted by the police. | 8 |
| Meanwhile, the unsatisfactory outcome of the war with the Ottoman Empire broadened the base of popular discontent. The liberals were further estranged by the granting of a constitution to the Bulgarians, while the adherents of the new Pan-Slav movement (which developed from the foundation of the Slavonic Welfare Society at Moscow in 1857 and the Pan-Slav congress at Moscow in 1867) became extremely critical of the government for its failure to complete the work of liberating the Balkan Slavs. After 1878, therefore, the revolutionary movement secured more popular support. | 9 |
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| 1877–78 |
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| Overt displays of discontent, such as the shooting of St. Petersburg's police chief, resulted in a secret circular published in Sept. that authorized arrest and exile of persons suspected of seditious intent, and mass trials of radicals and revolutionaries. | 10 |
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| 1878–79 |
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| Russia witnessed its first significant industrial strikes, in St. Petersburg. | 11 |
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| 1879 |
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| Organization of the society Will of the People, composed of the most radical wing of the older populist group. The new society was overtly terrorist and made carefully planned attempts on the lives of prominent officials, finally of the tsar himself. | 12 |
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| 1880 |
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| Terrorists succeeded in planting a bomb in the Winter Palace. A new department of state police was created. | 13 |
| Appointment of Gen. Mikhail Loris-Melikov as minister of interior. After two abortive assassination attempts, Tsar Alexander decided on a policy of concessions, accompanied, however, with ever more stringent police measures against the terrorists. | 14 |
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| 1881 |
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| Loris-Melikov propounded a scheme for summoning representatives of the zemstvos to cooperate with the council of state in the discussion of new laws. This compromise plan was approved by Alexander on March 13, but on the very same day he fell victim to the bombs of the terrorists. | 15 |
| ALEXANDER III began his reign determined to suppress the revolutionary movement, and throughout his reign he followed the advice of his former teacher and close friend, Constantine Pobiedonostsev, who was made procurator of the Holy Synod. After some debate, Loris-Melikov's plan was dropped and the autocratic system was reaffirmed with the following measures: “temporary laws” gave officials in designated areas broad authority, the reforms of the preceding reign were curtailed, the preeminence of the nobility was restored, all liberal opposition and revolutionary activity were attacked, the persecution of religious dissenters—Roman Catholics, Protestants, and especially Jews (beginning with the pogroms in the Ukraine)—was established, and discrimination against national minorities and attempts at Russification in the border provinces were heightened. | 16 |
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