Loris-Melikov's constitutional reform

For this, Loris-Melikov suggested that they allow a few representatives of the commons to be presented in the legislative institutions with the granted advisory rights.

[2] Though the reforms were conservative in practice, their significance lay in the value Alexander II attributed to them: "I have given my approval, but I do not hide from myself the fact that it is the first step towards a constitution.

The new emperor, Alexander III, by the advice of Konstantin Pobedonostsev, immediately dismissed Loris-Melikov and his project and started the implementation of conservative counter-reforms.

[4] In May 1882, the new minister of the internal affairs, Nikolay Pavlovich Ignatyev, raised the agenda about a representative assembly again, this time in the form of a reanimated Zemsky Sobor.

Two years later, Pobedonostsev wrote to the emperor:[5] "Blood runs cold in a Russian human only by a sole thought what could have happened if Loris-Melikov's project — or the one suggested by his friends — had been implemented.

The political cartoon from Puck shows the hope at the time that the proposed Constitution of 1881 would burst light over the Russian Nocturne which contained invaded homes, a chained down press, people sent to Siberia to work in the mines, and the suffering of war.