Istoriia Rossii XIX stoletiia. Tom II [History of Russia in the 19th Century Volume II]

The second volume covers perhaps the most glorious decade in Russian history—1815–1825. This is a decade of complete peace. For Russia, all wars are over. Europe recognizes the authority of the country that liberated it from Napoleon's rule. Emperor Alexander is called the ‘Agamemnon of Europe,’ compared to the leader of the Achaean kings in the legend of the Trojan War. Alexander establishes a constitutional monarchy and the Bourbon dynasty in France, and gathers constitutional Poland under his scepter. He drafts both a pan-Russian constitution and the emancipation of the serfs. Holy Scripture is translated into more than four dozen languages of the Empire, including modern Russian, and distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies. Russian society, it would seem, is on an unprecedented upswing. But this brilliant reign ends strangely and absurdly. Why?