Alexander III

• Alexander III was a repressive ruler due to his father’s assassination in 1881 and this made it a lot harder for opposition groups to organise themselves and produce materials to publicise their causes.
• However, the scale of the repression would push more people towards opposition.

  
  

  Many extreme groups believed in provoking repression as this would lead to revolution.
• The secret police who were now known as the Okhrana after 1881 was large and made lots of use of their powers of arrest and imprisonment without trial.

  
  

  However, a number of opposition groups still existed in Russia and in exile.