Nicholas II was the last tsar of russia and the last of the romanov dynasty, which had reigned over Russia for more than 300 years.
Early Life
He was born on the 18th of may 1868 in St Petersburg, Russia, and he died on the 17th of July 1918 in Yekaterinburg, Russia. He was born the oldest son of Tsar Alexander III and his wife Maria Feodorovna (formally Dagmar of Denmark). His paternal grandparents were Tsar Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna, and his maternal grandparents were the King and Queen of Denmark and he had close family ties with monarchs all over Europe. Throughout his childhood, him and his family would make yearly visits to Denmark, along with his mother’s siblings, which often served as a family reunion.
Life as the Tsaresavich
When his grandfather was assassinated on the 1st of March 1881, and his father shortly ascended to the throne, Nicholas became the Tsarevich. He came of age in 1884, and a ceremony was held at the Winter Palace, in which he pledged fealty to his father. Despite being the heir apparent, his father did not truly prepare him to take on the mantle of Tsar and gave him little experience except attending meetings of the state council – Alexander III believed Nicholas to be ‘not mature enough’ for serious responsibilities. This would not have been too big an issue if Alexander III had not made the erroneous assumption that he would live a long life, which he did not, thus leaving Nicholas woefully underprepared. At the age of 19 Nicholas did three years with the armed forces and became passionate about the military, rising to the rank of colonel.
Marriage, family life, and ascension to the throne
Nicholas proposed to Alix in Coburg, and she initially rejected his proposal due to her reluctance to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church. However, she later relented and convert at the encouragement of her parents.
- 22nd of October 1894 – Alexandra and Nicholas arrived at the deathbed of Alexander III, who then instructs his son to ‘heed the advice’ of his most capable minister, Witte. Nicholas died ten days later, leaving Nicholas II the new Tsar of Russia.
- 26th November 1894 – Alexandra and Nicholas marry.
- Alexandra Feodorovna – born Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine on the 6th of June 1872
Over the course of their marriage, Nicholas and Alexandra had five children, four girls and a fifth and final boy. Although all seemed well initially, the son Alexei soon got very sick and was revealed to have inherited haemophilia from Queen Victoria through his maternal line. This was devastating for the family because, not only was he their son, but he was the heir to his fathers throne. The couple tried all sorts of medicines and doctors but haemophilia is genetic and cannot be cured. Eventually, in early 1907, the Queen summoned a healer known as Rasputin who the King had been introduced to two years prior in 1905. She had hoped he could pray for her son and ended up convinced that Rasputin could heal Alexei’s condition. This gave Rasputin a significant amount of power both at court, and within the royal family itself – this would later become a problem for the royals.
What were Nicholas’ challenges the public opinion of him?
All in all , Nicholas II was not a good leader.
Unlike his predecessors, during Nicholas’ reign, Russia was becoming an increasingly more modern and urban country. Throughout the 1890s, people were moving into cities like Moscow and St Petersburg in their masses, and becoming increasingly disgruntled by the harsh working and living conditions their had to endure, which meant that these cities were becoming more volatile places filled with social tension. We can see the effects of this forming resentment in 1896 and 1897 when factory workers in St Petersburg went on strikes with numbers up to 30,000. The strikes continued to increase until they peaked in 1899, with over 100,000 workers participating, and the only way the state could deal with them was by further repressing and arresting members of the strikes, which naturally just caused even more resentment. There were also massive protests in 1891, after students were whipped and beaten for protesting the restrictions around universities, which then lead to more of the middle class joining the general dissention against the government and the Tsar – many of these students then went on to join the Socialist Revolutionaries.
This signified a great change for Russia, especially when considering that this was the same century in which they had finally ended serfdom. In such a short time people went from indentured servitude, to the proletariat actually being able to organise themselves and make demands for change, all of which presented a massive challenge for Nicholas – how to hold on to a system that was becoming rapidly outdated? To make things worse, there had been several famines in the 1890s, with the most disastrous being in 1891-92 and in 1898-99, leading to starvation and even more upset towards the government and the Tsar. In addition to this, there was also an international recession just after 1900, which brought even further economic strife and hardship to the people of Russia – the country was almost at a boiling point.
How did Nicholas fail?
The main problem with Nicholas II is that he did not adapt as Russia adapted. The only significant change he made in the 1890s, amidst all the social turmoil and mass industrialisation, was introducing a piece of legislation that legally made the work day eleven and a half hours. In general, he just tried to crack down and preserve what there was before; after the worker strikes of 1896 and 1897, instead of listening to their demands and finding a way to placated them while maintaining his power, he instead introduced a police force specifically to police the factories. Then there were the events of Bloody Sunday. In 1905, when the people very reasonably tried to ask him for a minimum wage and an eight hour day, he did not even attempt to listen to them and instead just had them shot.
After the events of Bloody Sunday, the Russian people had lost all faith in the Tsar, who was supposed to be the patriarchal, caretaking figure, and this immense frustration and then resulted in somewhat of a revolution, which Nicholas only just survived, and the reason he survived and held onto his position was due to something he created called the October Manifesto.
The October Manifesto
When the revolution happened, Nicholas was faced with two courses of action. The first was that he could continue to use violence to try to regain control of the people, and the second was that he could introduce reforms – he went with the second one. (It is important to note that he was very, very reluctant about accepting the October Manifesto, he still maintained a desire for a military autocracy). The October Manifesto, signed on the 17th of October 1905, conceded two things: a) that people would be granted more civil liberties, including things like the right to assemble, and a decrease in censorship enabling freedom of speech, and b) the formation of an elected parliament called the Duma.
After the October Manifesto, people genuinely thought that this was heralding in change and taking steps towards Russia becoming a more democratic country. However, they were wrong. Very soon afterwards, in April 1096, the Tsar released a new edict, called the Fundamental Laws, which, to summarise. gave all supreme power back to the Tsar and rebutted the progress made towards democracy with the October Manifesto.
why was 1905 a significant year? – it showed that, in the face of revolution and upset, the tsarist regime could still survived if they made small changes, and they maintained control of the armed forces.
Nicholas and the military
Nicholas II always seemed to have a particular fascination with the military – he often wore a military uniform decorated with all sorts of medals. While it is not entirely unusual for a monarch to be interconnected to the armed forces, Nicholas was probably too involved, to the point where it negatively impacted his reign.
One problem Nicholas had was the fact that, while he fancied himself a war hero, he really was not that good a soldier or a leader. He wore all those medals, but many of them he didn’t earn, which then earnt him judgment and resentment form many of the soldiers who actually had earnt their medals.
Then there was the issue of the First World War. In 1915, Nicholas decided that, as the God-appointed Tsar, he should be the one to lead his troops into battle. Although this could have been a good idea and his soldiers were initially pleased to see him on the front line, there was the aforementioned fact that he was undeniably terrible. Many of the battles he led his troops into ended up with them being slaughtered. His soldiers were ill-equipped, often sharing weapons that were entirely outdated compared to the weapons of their enemies. Allegedly, it got to the point where his soldiers were spitting on the ground as he passed.
This lack of authority or respect with the military would be a problem for any leader, but Nicholas’ failure in WW1 would then have dire consequences. Considering that Russia was starving before entering a war, the situation for the people was appalling in 1915 to 1917 – worse than the last attempt at revolution in 1905, which Nicholas only survived due to loyalty from the military. Losing the military was, essentially, the last nail in the coffin of tsarism because, when the next revolution occurred in 1917, there was no one left on the Tsar’s side.
The Revolution and the abdication
In February 1917, the people had finally had enough. When it was announced that the already lacking bread supply was to be rationed, the people went on a strike, which then turned into a march, which then turned into a full scale revolution. It lasted for three days with people demanding, along with other things, for the Tsar to abdicate. The people could not be placated and on the 2nd of March 1917, the tsar renounced his throne and is to be replaced by a Provisional Government.
The assassination
After the October Revolution of 1917 when Lenin seized power, Russia broke out into a Civil War. It lasted from November 1917 till October 1922. There were many different parties vying for power – Lenin and the Bolsheviks who had taken control from the Provisional Government, The more moderate socialists who wanted a collective of themselves to share power, and the Tsarists who wanted to reinstall the monarchy. These different groups where given their own colours where Lenin and the Communists were ‘The Reds’, the Socialists were ‘The greens’, and the Tsarists were ‘The Whites’. The Whites were gaining international support and so the Lenin and the Bolsheviks decided that the only way to crush The Whites was to execute all of the Romanovs. In July 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their children were taken down to the cellar of the home they were staying in and they were shot. That was the end of the Romanov dynasty.