Alexander III took over after his father was assassinated. He married the Danish Princess Dagmar (Maria Feodorovna) and his reign from 1881 to 1894 was very uninteresting in as far as ethnic relations are concerned.
Nicholas II came to power in 1894 after his father’s sudden death and was the last Tsar of Russia. He fell hopelessly in love with, and married, the daughter of Grand Duke Ludwig of Hessen, Alice Victoria Eleanor Louisa Beatrice, who became Alexandra Fyodorovna. His family was opposed to the “love” from the beginning, but Nicholas went ahead with the marriage nevertheless. In foreign policy, Nicholas II took steps to stabilize the international situation, initiating two peace congresses at The Hague. Russia was involved in two wars during his reign, both which Russia lost miserably, resulting together in over 2 500 000 men dead, great, suffering, and huge material losses. Massive internal unrest, which culminated with spontaneous revolution in Russia and his abdication in 1917, plagued Nicholas’s reign. As a result, under the circumstances, there was no time for Nicholas to focus on ethnic growth. Nonetheless, the foundation for influx of foreigners into St. Petersburg had already been set well by his predecessors. Though the rate of their coming did not increase during Nicholas’s reign, they still did come. Of important note in this period is that growth in the number of non-Slavic foreigners was natural. There was no active recruitment of foreigners and the growth of the international community was one of free motion. The Jewish community, for example, swelled in numbers to about 50 000.
Art had seen so much diversity that this field, which was characteristically conservative before, was defining itself with liberalism. In 1863, thirteen of St. Petersburg’s best artists withdrew from the academy of Arts in protest for their right to choose their own subjects without having to conform to the outdated and artificial categories proposed by the Academy. This is something that would not have occurred a century earlier. This liberalism showed that St. Petersburg was finally reaping the harvests of diversity in the arts.
The creation of the Department of Religious affairs of Foreign Faiths did wonders for ethnic growth. It made St. Petersburg a better place to settle because foreigners could still belong to, and participate in, their religious faiths there. The result was a strengthening of the Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant, Uniate, Armeno-Gregorian, Muslim, and Buddhist communities of St. Petersburg.
By the time Nicholas II left the throne, the city of St. Petersburg had members of many ethnic groups in it. They knew the city as their home and more importantly, were considered Russian by those of Eastern Slavic origins. Many had lived there all their lives, as their families had moved there as many as 150 years before that and everything about them- their education, clothing and speech followed the Russian style. As the authorities had previously encouraged the well learned, artists and merchants of foreign descent to make a home in the capital, a lot of them were among the most educated, cultured and often the wealthiest and most influential people in the city. St. Petersburg was truly diverse by now.