Alexander II freed over twenty million Russian serfs in 1861 — the largest single act of emancipation in human history. He reformed the courts, expanded education, and modernized the Russian military. The people he liberated repaid him with assassination: revolutionary terrorists bombed his carriage on the streets of St. Petersburg in 1881, and the tsar who had done more to free Russia than any ruler before him bled to death on the floor of the Winter Palace.

This episode traces Alexander from his education under the liberal tutor Zhukovsky through the emancipation, the Great Reforms, the revolutionary movement his reforms inadvertently unleashed, and the assassination that ended the most progressive reign in Russian imperial history.

• Alexander's liberal education and his decision to abolish serfdom after the Crimean War defeat ...