In 1890, the edicts against the Jews, which had become almost a dead letter, were more vigorously enforced, their revival depriving about two million persons of the means of subsistence, and inhuman persecution of the sect was openly permitted. A protest against starvation, made by some of the suffering exiles in Siberia, aroused the anger of the Governor at Ostashine. Cossack soldiers broke into the house of the exile Notkine and fired upon the inmates, killing six and wounding nine, The persons responsible for the butchery and atrocities went unpunished. The indignities inflicted upon the female prisoners at Kara, was resented by Madame Soluzeff-Kovalsky, who died under the punishment meted out to her—one hundred strokes of the lash. Three of her companions poisoned themselves, and thirty of the male prisoners attempted to take their own lives.
The activity of Nihilism now knew no bounds. The refugees expelled from Switzerland made Paris their headquarters, Gen. Seliverstoff, chief of the Third Section, was murdered in like manner as Gen. Mezentzoff, his predecessor. Olga Ivanovsky, the niece of a Privy Councilor, was arrested in her uncle's house: dynamite bombs and nihilistic correspondence were found in her apartments. Mme. Tshebrikova, a lady widely known for her work in the cause of education, counseled the Czar to remember that Terrorism was not the fruit of the reforms of Alexander II., but "the result of their cancellation, their tardiness, or insufficiency." Offenses that would have been punished in Austria with two weeks imprisonment, entailed in contiguous Russia twelve years of banishment. Siberia with its deadly climate continued to absorb its victims.
On May 24th, 1891, the first rail of the government Trans-Siberian railroad was laid by the Czar. The total length of the road was estimated at five thousand six hundred and thirteen miles and its cost at about one hundred and eighty million dollars. The undeveloped resources of Siberia are inconceivable. It teems with raw material. It has been aptly termed Russia's inland Australia. Its natural wheat lands rival those within the fertile belt of Northern America. Its mountains of auriferous quartz are only awaiting the advent of modern machinery to yield the secret of their exhaustless possibilities. Two mighty rivers, the Ob and the Yenissei, drain its fruitful and measureless plateaus. Up the latter of these, Captain Wiggins, an English explorer, having passed through the Iron Gates of Nova Zembla, hitherto believed to have been unnavigable, took his yacht, Diana, in 1874, and subsequently, in 1886, his steamship Phoenix, two thousand miles to Vennisseisk, where he established a profitable trade.
Baron Hirsch, the philanthropic capitalist of Vienna, touched with the scandalous persecution of the Jews in Moscow, and indeed in all portions of Russia, offered to give fifteen million dollars to aid the exiles in seeking new homes. In pursuance of this laudable undertaking, he purchased seven million acres of the best farming lands in Argentina, whereon he intended to settle five thousand families of expatriated Russian Hebrews. The unrelenting harassment of these unfortunate people was in keeping with the established policy of the Old Russian party, whose purpose was to crush out all foreigners, or dissenters from the orthodox faith. Poles, Germans, Jews, Lutherans, Stundists, Baptists, had to be reduced to serfdom with forfeiture of property or suffer banishment. With the ready acquiescence of the Czar, this was not a very difficult matter for accomplishment.
In the summer of 1891, the wheat and rye crops having harvested but seventy percent of the average yield, a famine seized upon a scattered area tributary to the Volga, covering a territory of thirty thousand square miles, with a population of twenty-five million souls, and whole villages perished before food could be shipped and distributed. While private individuals and foreign governments came nobly to the relief of the sufferers with cash and kind, the liberality of the contributions from the United States evoked special acknowledgment. Besides gifts of money, four ships were dispatched laden with flour, bread stuffs and clothing, valued at over one million roubles, equivalent to the support of seven hundred thousand persons for a month. About this time, an encounter between a Russian expeditionary force and one thousand Afghan soldiers, over a disputed fight of way in the passes of the Pamirs, created a diversion from domestic woes, and aroused a good deal of excitement in India as well as in England. When it became known, however, that Russia was merely expelling intruders from her own territory, European political equanimity was restored.
Few incidents of an alarming character now disturbed the surface peace of Alexander's days. The drastic measures resorted to in the treatment of the Terrorists seemed, for a time at least, to have hypnotized them into a state of acquiescence, and the only conflict that Russia had upon its hands was a tariff war with Germany, and a misunderstanding with Great Britain on account of the poaching by Canadian sealers within the thirty mile marine limit in Behring's Sea. A commercial treaty, however, concluded in Berlin, in which Germany made the necessary concession, and an arrangement with the British Government, by which sealing was to be provisionally regulated, offered a peaceful solution of both these difficulties. This, together with a modus vivendi agreed on between the United States and England, with the co-operation of China and Japan, would, it was believed, promote pelagic interests in the north Pacific.
The Cossack outrages on the Catholics were carried to such an extreme in 1894 that papal protests ensued. In an autograph letter to the Pope, the Czar promised that peace should be preserved. The pledge, however, was either not respected, or its fulfillment was found to be impossible. The attacks were repeated.
The progressive commercial treaty concluded with Germany instituted a new era in tariff reform, while it brought Dr. Witte, the Finance Minister, in direct but brief conflict with the Czar, who had set his heart upon the expansion of trade relations with Germany, it also aroused the opposition of a large wing of German politicians who resented Emperor Wilhelm's announcement that "rejectment of the treaty by the Reichstadt meant, not only a tariff war with Russia, but later a war of actual hostilities."
At this time, a veritable war cloud darkened Europe's horizon, and the attitude of nation towards nation, was not only watched with dread suspense, but with deep diplomatic interest. The Emperor Wilhelm's visit to England was viewed by the Czar with ill-concealed jealousy, while he threatened to break Russia's commercial treaty with France, on account of a dispute over the corn duties. The theater of anarchist plot having been temporarily transferred to Paris—culminating in the assassination of President Carnot—extended to Alexander a slight surcease from personal anxiety, and opportunity for needed physical rest.
In April the betrothal of the Grand Duke Nicholas—heir apparent to the throne—to the Princess Alix of Hesse, was announced and in August the Grand Duchess Xenia, only daughter of the Czar, was married to the Grand Duke Alexander Michailovitch at Peterhoff. The condition of the Czar's health now caused the gravest apprehension, and the darkest forebodings filled the minds of the people. As the forbidding character of the Russian landscape has exerted a marked influence on the ethnological characteristics of the people, so it has also contributed to the national pessimistic character of the race. "The music of Russia," writes Noble, "has a plaintively pessimistic ring. Even the cries of the street peddler are more like wails of anguish. Repression and somberness are the distinguishing features."