Nicholas II of Russia
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- This article is about the last Russian tsar. For information on the Pope, see Pope Nicholas II.
Tsar of Russia
Nicholas II of Russia ( 18 May 1868 – 17 July 1918)1 was the last crowned Emperor of Russia. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917.It is said that Nicholas proved unequal to the combined tasks of managing a country in political turmoil and commanding its army in the largest international war to date. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution, during which he and his family were executed by Bolsheviks, in 1918.
Nicholas's full name was Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (in Russian Николай Александрович Романов). His official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias.2
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Family background and early life
Nicholas was the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and his Empress Maria Fyodorovna (born Princess Dagmar of Denmark). His paternal grandparents were Alexander II of Russia and his first consort Maximilienne Wilhelmine Marie of Hesse and the Rhine. His maternal grandparents were Christian IX of Denmark and Louise of Hesse.
Nicholas was seen as too soft by his hard, demanding father who, not anticipating his own premature death, did nothing to prepare his son for the crown. Nicholas fell in love with Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine, a daughter of Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and Princess Alice of the United Kingdom. Alice was herself a daughter of Queen regnant Victoria of the United Kingdom and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Alexander III did not approve the match, hoping instead for a marriage with a princess of the House of Orleans, to consummate Russia's newfound alliance with the French Third Republic. Only when Alexander was on his death bed, fearing for the succession of the Romanov dynasty, did he consent to the marriage of Nicholas to the German princess.
As Tsarevich, Nicholas did a fair amount of travelling, including a notable trip to the Empire of Japan which left him with a scar in his forehead. A crazed Japanese anarchist had nearly killed him, but Nicholas was saved by the quick action of his cousin, Prince George of Greece. Nicholas returned to Saint Petersburg with a bitter hatred of the Empire of Japan.
Nicholas as quasi-constitutional monarch
Nicholas' relations with the Duma were not good. The First Duma, with a majority of Kadets, almost immediately came into conflict with him. Although Nicholas initially had a good relationship with his relatively liberal prime minister, Sergei Witte, Alexandra distrusted him, and as the political situation deteriorated, Nicholas dissolved the Duma. Witte, unable to grasp the seemingly insurmountable problems of reforming Russia and the monarchy wrote to Nicholas on 14 April 1906 resigning his office (however, other accounts have said that Witte was forced to resign by the Tsar). Nicholas was not ungracious to Witte and an Imperial Rescript was published on 22 April creating Witte a Knight of the Order of Saint Alexander Nevski, with diamonds. (The last two words were written in the Tsar's own hand, followed by "I remain unalterably well-disposed to you and sincerely grateful, Nicholas").
After the second Duma resulted in similar problems, the new prime minister Pyotr Stolypin (or Peter Stolypin, whom Witte described as 'reactionary') unilaterally dissolved it, and changed the electoral laws to allow for future Dumas to have a more conservative content, and to be dominated by the liberal-conservative Octobrist Party of Alexander Guchkov. Stolypin, a skillful politician, had ambitious plans for reform. These included making loans available to the lower classes to enable them to buy land, with the intent of forming a farming class loyal to the crown. His plans were undercut by conservatives at court who had more influence with the Emperor. By the time of Stolypin's assassination by Dmitry Bogrov, a Jewish student (and police informant) in a theatre in Kiev on 18 September 1911, he and the Emperor were barely on speaking terms, and his fall was widely foreseen.
Tsarevich Alexei's illness
Further complicating domestic matters was the matter of the succession. Alexandra bore him four daughters before their son Alexei was born on August 12, 1904. The young heir proved to be afflicted with hemophilia, which at that time was virtually untreatable and usually led to an untimely death. Because of the fragility of the autocracy at this time, Nicholas and Alexandra chose not to divulge Alexei's condition to anyone outside the royal household.
In desperation, Alexandra sought help from a mystic, Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin seemed to help when Alexei was suffering from internal bleeding, and Alexandra became increasingly dependent on him and his advice, which she accepted as coming directly from God.
Nicholas wanted to be loved by his people. Left to his own devices he might have accepted a system of constitutional monarchy and become a reforming Emperor. The influence of political reactionaries, principally his wife and his relatives, with Rasputin behind the scenes, made this impossible.
The Great War
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the Serb nationalist association known as the Black Hand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Nicholas vacillated as to Russia's course. The rising ideas of the Pan-Slav movement had led Russia to issue treaties of protection to Serbia. Nicholas wanted neither to abandon Serbia to the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary, nor to provoke a general war. In a series of letters exchanged with the German Kaiser (the so-called "Willy and Nicky correspondence") the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and each attempted to get the other to back down. Nicholas took concrete measures in this regard, demanding that Russia's mobilisation be only against the Austrian border, in the hopes of preventing war with the German Empire. It proved too late for personal communications to determine the course of events. The Russians had no contingency plans for a partial mobilisation, and on July 31, 1914, Nicholas, under political pressure from abroad, and military pressure at home, took the fateful step of confirming the order for a general mobilisation. As Germany and Austria-Hungary had mutual defence treaties in place, this led almost immediately to a German mobilisation and declaration of war , and the outbreak of World War I.
The outbreak of war on August 1, 1914, found Russia grossly unprepared, yet an immediate attack was ordered against the German province of East Prussia. The Germans mobilised there with great efficiency and completely defeated the two Russian armies which had invaded. The Russian armies, however, later had considerable success against both the Austro-Hungarian armies and against the forces of the Ottoman Empire.
Gradually a war of attrition set in on the vast Eastern Front, where the Russians were facing the combined forces of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and they suffered staggering losses. Nicholas, feeling that it was his duty, and that his personal presence would inspire his troops, decided to lead his army directly, assuming the role of commander-in-chief after dismissing his uncle from that position, the highly respected and experienced Nikolai Nikolaevich (September 1915) following the loss of the Russian Kingdom of Poland.
His efforts to oversee the war left domestic issues essentially in the hands of Alexandra. As a German she was unpopular, and the Duma was constantly calling for political reforms. Political unrest continued throughout the war. Cut off from public opinion, Nicholas did not understand how suspicious the common people were of his wife, who was also the victim of destructive rumours about her dependence on Grigori Rasputin. Nicholas had refused to censor the press and wild rumours and accusations about Alexandra and Rasputin appeared almost daily. Anger at the damage that Rasputin's influence was doing to Russia's war effort and to the monarchy led to his murder by a group of nobles, led by Prince Felix Yusupov, on December 16, 1916.
Revolution and abdication
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The government's inability to maintain constant supplies and an active economy over a prolonged period of warfare led to mounting national hardship. The army's initial failure to maintain the temporary military successes up to June 1916 led to renewed strikes and riots in the following winter. With Nicholas away at the Front, authority appeared to collapse, and Saint Petersburg was left in the hands of strikers and mutineering conscript soldiers. At the end of the "February Revolution" of 1917 (February in the old Russian calendar), on 2 March (Julian Calendar)/ 15 March (Gregorian Calendar), 1917, Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. However he did so in his own name, and that of his son, in favor of his brother, saying, "We bequeath Our inheritance to Our brother the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich and give him Our Blessing on his accession to the throne." [1] Grand Duke Mikhail declined to accept the throne, which then theoretically fell vacant, pending a decision on the next rightful heir. Contrary to some popular belief, Michael never abdicated, as he was never formally crowned. The abdication of Nicholas II and the subsequent revolution brought three centuries of Romanov rule to an end.
Execution
The provisional Russian government at first kept Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children confined in the Alexander Palace 15 miles from St.Petersburg at Tsarskoe Selo (Tsar's Village). Attempting to remove them from the vicinity of the capital and so from possible harm, the Kerensky government moved them east to Tobolsk, in Siberia in August 1917. They remained there through the Bolshevik October Revolution in November 1917, but were then moved to Red Army and Bolshevik-controlled Yekaterinburg. The Tsar and his family, including the gravely ill Alexei and several family servants, were murdered by firing squad and finished off by bayonets in the basement of the Ipatiev House where they had been imprisoned, on the night of July 17, 1918, by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by a Jewish watchmaker from Perm, Yakov Yurovsky.
The Soviets always argued that the execution took place as units of the Czech Legion, making their retreat out of Russia, approached Yekaterinburg. Fearing that the Legion would take the town and free him, the Tsar's Bolshevik jailers pursued the immediate liquidation of the Imperial Family. This is, however, disputed by telegraphic evidence and the Sokolov Report, which show mounting pressure to execute the Imperial Family by hard-line Bolsheviks. The telegram giving the order on behalf of the Supreme Soviet in Moscow was signed by Jacob Sverdlov, after whom the town was subsequently renamed, in honor of this gruesome event.
The bodies of Nicholas and his family were long believed to have been disposed of down a mineshaft at a site called the Four Brothers. Initially, this was true — they had indeed been disposed of there on the night of July 16. The following morning — when rumors spread in Yekaterinburg regarding the disposal site — Yurovsky removed the bodies and concealed them elsewhere. When the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way to the next chosen site, Yurovsky made new arrangements, and buried most of the bodies in a sealed and concealed pit on Koptyaki Road, a cart track (now abandoned) 12 miles north of Yekaterinburg. Their remains were later found in 1990 and reburied by the Russian government. He had a great life.
Sainthood
In 1981 Nicholas and his immediate family were canonised as saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as martyrs. On August 14, 2000 they were canonised by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. They were not named martyrs, since their death did not result immediately from their Christian faith; instead they were canonised as passion bearers. According to a statement by the Moscow synod, they were glorified as saints for the following reasons:
- In the last Orthodox Russian monarch and members of his family we see people who sincerely strove to incarnate in their lives the commands of the Gospel. In the suffering borne by the Royal Family in prison with humility, patience, and meekness, and in their martyrs deaths in Ekaterinburg in the night of 4/17 July 1918 was revealed the light of the faith of Christ that conquers evil.
Further reading
- Robert K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (1967)
- John Curtis Perry and Constantine Pleshakov, The Flight of the Romanovs (1999)
- Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion, Nicholas and Alexandra, Their Own Story (1996)
- Editor: A.Yarmolinsky, "The Memoirs of Count Witte" New York & Toronto (1921)
- Victor Alexandrov, "The End of The Romanovs"(contains the Sokolov Report), London (1966)
- Bernard Pares, "The Fall of the Russian Monarchy" London (1939), reprint London (1988)
External links
- Nicholas II Chronology World History Database
- Alexander Palace — A collection of many articles, along with now out-of-print books.
- An extensive list of sites dealing with this Tsar
- Yakov Yurovsky's account of the Execution of the Imperial Family
- Ipatiev House - Romanov Memorial An immensely detailed site on the historical context, circumstances and drama surrounding the Romanov's execution.
Footnotes
Note 1: (6 May 1868 to 4 July 1918 in the Julian Calendar.)
Note 2: Nicholas's full title was We, Nicholas the Second, by the grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland3, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Khersones, Tsar of Georgia, Lord of Pskov, and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and Finland, Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalia, Samogitia, Białystok, Karelia, Tver, Yugra, Perm, Vyatka, Bulgaria, and other territories; Lord and Grand Duke of Nizhni Novgorod, Chernigov; Ruler of Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Beloozero, Udoria, Obdoria, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav, and all northern territories ; Ruler of Iveria, Kartalinia, and the Kabardinian lands and Armenian territories - hereditary Ruler and Lord of the Cherkess and Mountain Princes and others; Lord of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Dithmarschen, Oldenburg, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth."
Note 3: In 1831 the Russian tsars were deposed from the Polish throne, but they soon annexed the country to be a part of Russia and abolished the separate monarchy, however continued to use the title. See: November Uprising for more details.
| Preceded by: Alexander III |
Emperor of Russia Nicholas II 1 November 1894–15 March 1917 |
Succeeded by: Michael II |
Heir apparent: March 14, 1881–November 1, 1894
