Alexander II of Russia

On March 13, 1881, members of the revolutionary group Narodnaya Volya, led by bomb thrower Ignacy Hryniewiecki, killed Tsar Alexander II along Saint Petersburg's Catherine Canal. The attack occurred on the very morning the tsar had approved the Loris-Melikov constitutional proposal, a major opening toward representative governance. The assassination abruptly terminated political liberalization. His son, Alexander III, immediately tore up the reform decree, expanded the secret police, cracked down on civil liberties, and encouraged anti-Jewish pogroms. This reactionary turn foreclosed peaceful reform, deepening the systemic radicalism that culminated in the 1917 Russian Revolution.