... the Russian Empire'. From the accession of Catherine the Great almost 100 years earlier, successive autocrats had one after another insisted that serfdom must go. It was really difficult for Alexander II to turn his back on the philosophy of his ancestors, for he was a complex and confusing man. He wanted to extent the length of autocratic rule and at the same time, afraid of having uprisings and discontent from his people. He believed that it was better to have reforms before uprisings as 'reforms from above, in stead of revolution from below'. The anarchist Pyotr Kropotkin, who served at court before embracing radical politics, gave a comment on Alexander II's personality, ' Two different men lived in him, both strongly developed, struggling with each other. He was possessed of a calm, reasoned courage in the face of a real danger, but he lived in constant fear of dangers that existed ...

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