In the early 1870s Russia was decisively successful in conquering Central Asia. It incorporated the new government-general of Turkestan and vassaled the emirate of Bukhara and the khanate of Khiva. A considerable number of Bukharan Jews lived in the newly annexed territories.
In 1877 Russia entered a war against Turkey for the liberation of southern Slavs. Most popular among distinguished Russian army leaders was Mikhail Skobelev. The war ended in the defeat of the Turkish army and the victory of Russia at the walls of Constantinople. However, the treaty concluded in San-Stefano was revised under pressure from the European powers. The Berlin memorandum, developed with the participation of European diplomats, was seen as humiliating to Russia.
In the early 1880s Russia secured and defined its border with Afghanistan, thus ending the long rivalry between Russia and England in that region.
The period from 1870 to the early 1880s saw a gradual abandonment of liberal policies. The inconsistency of reforms had an adverse effect on the poorest layers of society and provoked a new wave of revolutionary movement among students, intellectuals and workers. Russian revolutionaries turned the idea of peasant communal organization into a cult, viewing it as the foundation of the future socialist society which, in their opinion, could be built only through a people's (peasants') revolution. Members of this revolutionary movement were called "narodniki". Although they numbered only several thousand, they had tens of thousands of sympathizers among the more than one hundred million people living in Russia.
In 1874-1876 propagandists undertook the so-called "going to the people" campaign, but revolutionary propaganda among the peasants proved unsuccessful. In 1876, isolated revolutionary groups united into the "Zemlya i Volya" ("Land and Will") party, which in 1880 split into the propaganda party "Cherny Peredel" ("The Black Re-partition") and the political terrorist party "Narodnaya Volya" ("The People's Will"). The Jews who participated in the revolutionary movement were indifferent to specifically Jewish problems, dreaming instead of a universal brotherhood of liberated mankind. At the same time, anti-semitic attitudes and even attempts to use Jewish pogroms for revolutionary propaganda were encountered among the populists.
The "People's Will" party directed all of its efforts towards the assassination of the Emperor. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, they achieved their goal on March 1, 1881. In the course of this attack on the Emperor most of the party members were killed, arrested, put on trial, exiled or condemned to penal servitude. Six persons involved in the March 1, 1881 assassination were sentenced to death, among them a Jewish woman named Gesya Gelfman. By 1883, the government had completely destroyed the "People's Will".
In an unsuccessful attempt to put an end to the revolutionary movement, in 1880 Alexander II gave broad powers to Mikhail Loris-Melikov who abolished the 3rd department, dismissed a number of reactionary ministers and tried to win over liberal circles. He also succeeded in persuading the Emperor of the necessity for constitutional reforms. On March 1, 1881 Alexander II signed an edict initiating such reforms but was assassinated the same day. His successor revoked the edict and proclaimed autocracy as a firm principle of government. Russia therefore lost another chance at peaceful development. Convinced reactionaries such as his chief advisor Konstantin Pobyedonostsev, the High Prosecutor of the Holy Synod, Alexander III defeated the revolutionary movement and started revising the reforms of the 1860s-1870s.
The policies of Alexander III did not fully nullify the reforms of the preceding reign, but considerably limited them and, in particular, strenghtened the role of the nobility. In domestic and foreign affairs the Emperor pursued a so-called "national" policy which proved to be extremist. At this time, official anti-semitism was also on the rise.
The government's protective policies towards domestic industry and trade facilitated economic growth. Rapid construction of railroads, including the Transsiberian main railroad, advanced the development of heavy industry. At the same time, Russian agriculture was falling further and further behind that of developed countries, due to the government policy of subsidies to landowners and preservation of the peasants' communities.
In the post-reform period Russian culture developed within the context of realism (naturalism), social consciousness and national identity. "Pure art", i.e. one not concerned with social problems, was derided and rejected. Except for such great writers as Lev Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Leskov, Russian literature was mainly imbued with populist ideas. The Wanderers (peredvizhniks) a group of artists and the sculptor Mark Antokol'sky who shared their ideas enjoyed great popularity.
The "Mighty Few" group of composers held leading positions in the field of music. These composers sought to make folk music an element of elite musical culture. In 1880s - early 1890s, Tchaikovsky gained recognition as a composer of the highest rank. The Petersburg and Moscow Conservatories headed respectively by Anton Rubinstein and his brother Nikolay Rubinstein, were founded in 1862 and 1866.
The principles of national identity in fine arts, architecture and music were actively propagated by the critic Vladimir Stasov, the chief theoretician of new tendencies in the art of post-reform Russia.