Why was Czar Paul of Russia assassinated ...?

Question

in 1801? Despite his emotional instability, his efforts toward social, govenmental, and economic reform were admirable. Is this a case of "no good deed goes unpunished"?

Answer 1

I guess he was not too popular in some quarters.

Answer 2

Paul's premonitions of assassination were well-founded. His attempts to force the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry alienated many of his trusted advisors. The Emperor also discovered outrageous machinations and corruption in the Russian treasury. Although he repealed Catherine's law which allowed the corporal punishment of the free classes and directed reforms which resulted in greater rights for the peasantry, and better treatment for serfs on agricultural estates, most of his policies were viewed as a great annoyance to the noble class and induced his enemies to work out a plan of action.

A conspiracy was organized—some months before it was executed—by Counts Petr Alekseevich Pahlen, Nikita Petrovich Panin, and the half-Spanish, half-Neapolitan adventurer Admiral Ribas. The death of Ribas delayed the execution. On the night of the March 11, 1801, Paul was murdered in his bedroom in the newly built St Michael's Castle by a band of dismissed officers headed by General Bennigsen, a Hanoverian in the Russian service. They charged into his bedroom, flushed with drink after supping together, and found Paul hiding behind some drapes in the corner. The conspirators pulled him out, forced him to the table, and tried to compel him to sign his abdication. Paul offered some resistance, and one of the assassins struck him with a sword, after which he was strangled and trampled to death. He was succeeded by his son, the Emperor Alexander I, who was actually in the palace, and to whom General Nicholas Zubov, one of the assassins, announced his accession.

Answer 3

The popular view of Paul I has long been that he was mad, had a mistress, and accepted the office of Grand Master of the Order of St John, which furthered his delusions. These eccentricities and his unpredictability in other areas naturally led, this view goes, to his assassination.

Here is a very interesting piece of article from wikipedia, which states, "Comparatively recent research has reconsidered and rehabilitated the character of Paul I. The reappraisal of Paul I has demonstrated his character as someone of high morals, who followed his conscience. Dismissed as unlikely is Paul's infidelity in having a mistress, and the involvement with the Order of St. John is understood against a background of his idealizing their history as a lesson in high chivalric ideals, which he wished the Russian nobility would adopt. Paul saw in the Russian nobles an element of degeneracy, and introducing the high ideals of the Knights of Malta was his method of reform. Paul suffered a lonely and strict upbringing, and whilst he was eccentric and neurotic, he was not mentally unbalanced. Though an analysis of his biography reveals an obsessive-compulsive personality, he had "characteristics fairly common in the population at large". Where Paul differed was that, by 1796, he had to manage the whole of the Russian Empire."