2-377-179 - © Fine Art Images/Heritage Images

The Tsar Alexander II Monument in Samara, Russia, 1890s. Known as 'The Liberator' for his emancipation of the serfs in 1861, Alexander (1818-1881) was assassinated in St Petersburg by a bomb thrown by a member of a revolutionary group known as Narodnaya Volya (People's Will). The city of Samara was known as Kuybyshev during the Soviet period. Found in the collection of the Institute for the History of Material Culture, St Petersburg.