RUSSIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13998, 3 September 1907, Page 5

RUSSIA

CZAR ATTENDS A DEDICATORY SERVICE. '4

Press Association—By Tclegr&pli—JCopyright,

ST. PETERSBURG, September 2. (Received Sept. 2, at 9.24 p.m.) TII9 Czar and his secretary attended a dedicatory service at the expiatory church crected on the site of the assassination of the Emperor Alexander the Second. Extraordinary precautions 'were taken on this occasion.

The Emperor Alexander II ascended the throne in 1855, on the death of his father, bains then 37 years of age. • The latter part of his reign was'a period of great internal commotion, on account of the spread of Nihilism ami tho attempts upon the Emperor's life, which, unfortunately, were at last successful. In the'cities in whioh his despotic father had walked about, tearless without a single attendant the mild and amiabe Alexander was in daily peril of his life. Oil. April 6, 1E66, Karakozolf f.hot at the Emperor at St. Petersburg. In the following year another, attempt was made by a Pole named Berezow6ki while Alexander was at Paris on a visit to Napoleon 111. On April M, 1879. • Solovioff shot at him. The same year saw the attempt, to blow up the Whiter Palace and to wreck the train by which tho Czar was travelling from Moscojy'to St. Petersburg. A similar conspiracy fyn 1881 (March 13) was successful. Five of tho conspirators, including, a woman (Sophia Perovskaia! were publicly executed. Thus terminated the reign of Alexander 11, which had lasted nearly 26 years.