The eighth volume of the project “History of the Russian State” could have been called “Zigzags,” because the politics of the described period (1855–1894) makes sharp turns. The collapse of the empire and civil war are still far away, but in the Russian sky you can already see the first glimmers of the coming storm—and the first blood is already spilling. The era of Alexander II and Alexander III answers the question: why everything turned out the way it did.