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In 2022, Russia’s head of state is President Vladimir Putin, with Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin leading the Kremlin. But just over a hundred years ago, Russia was ruled by an imperial dynasty that went back hundreds of years. So who was the last emperor (known as a ‘Tsar’) and what happened to the Russian royal family? Here is everything you need to know about the fall of the Romanovs. Who was the last Tsar of Russia?The last Tsar of Russia was Nicholas II, the eldest son of Tsar Alexander III. He was born Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov on May 18, 1868, near St Petersburg. He was a member of the Romanov family, which was the reigning imperial house of Russia for three centuries, ruling from 1613 until 1917. Nicholas II succeeded his father in 1894, and shortly after, he married Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, who was from Germany. Together, they had four daughters and a son. Why did Nicholas II abdicate?When Nicholas II became the Tsar of Russia, he had very little government experience. His poor ruling ability and bad decision making led to his downfall during the Russian revolution. Nicholas sparked a war with Japan in 1904, when he encouraged the Russian expansion into Manchuria, a historical region in Russia and China. Russia was defeated, which prompted strikes and riots, with the Russian army shooting at a crowd of peaceful protesters on ‘Bloody Sunday’ in January 1905. In response to the growing opposition against him, Nicholas II established a parliament, called the Duma. In 1914, amid the outbreak of World War I, Russia was an ally to the UK and France – however, come 1915, Nicholas II took direct command of the Russian armies, leading to great losses in the war. Back in Russia, people were suffering from poverty, food shortages, and high inflation. Nicholas II abdicated in 1917, after losing the support of his army and the Russian people. What happened to the Russian royal family?The Russian royal family was killed during the Russian revolution, which took place between 1917 and 1923. Vladimir Lenin, leading the radical socialist Bolsheviks, seized power from the provisional government in 1917, and the Romanov family was ordered to live under house arrest in the city of Yekaterinburg. A civil war between the Bolsheviks and the anti-Bolsheviks army broke out in 1918. As the opposition approached Yekaterinburg, the Romanov family was killed by the Bolsheviks. Nicholas II and his wife and five children were executed on July 17, 1918. They were killed by firing squad and buried in a mass grave. The burial site of Nicholas II, his wife, and three of his daughters was discovered in 1991. The location of the bodies of his other two children remained a mystery until their remains were found in a separate grave in 2007. MORE : What is a Russian oligarch and do any live in London? MORE : Rasputin myths busted: Murder, height, and where is his penis? Follow Metro across our social channels, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Share your views in the comments below The Last CzarsWhen social upheaval sweeps Russia in the early 20th century, Czar Nicholas II resists change, sparking a revolution and ending a dynasty. Starring:Robert Jack,Susanna Herbert,Ben Cartwright
The Russian Revolution toppled the Romanov dynasty, and Nicholas II abdicated on March 15, 1917. The royal family was arrested by the Bolsheviks and held in seclusion. On July 17, 1918, the Bolsheviks murdered Nicholas, his family, and their closest retainers. Nicholas II was an uncompromising autocrat, and this stance helped provoke the Russian Revolution of 1905. After Russia entered World War I, Nicholas left the capital to assume command of the army. The power vacuum was filled by Alexandra, who elevated unqualified favourites like Rasputin and disregarded signs of impending revolution. Nicholas II, Russian in full Nikolay Aleksandrovich, (born May 6 [May 18, New Style], 1868, Tsarskoye Selo [now Pushkin], near St. Petersburg, Russia—died July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg), the last Russian emperor (1894–1917), who, with his wife, Alexandra, and their children, was killed by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. Nicholas IIGeorge Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. C-DIG-ggbain-03873) Nikolay Aleksandrovich was the eldest son and heir apparent (tsesarevich) of the tsarevitch Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (emperor as Alexander III from 1881) and his consort Maria Fyodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark). Succeeding his father on November 1, 1894, he was crowned tsar in Moscow on May 26, 1896. Grigori RasputinThe Fall of the Romanoffs: How the ex-Empress and Rasputine Caused the Russian Revolution by Anonymous, 1918 Neither by upbringing nor by temperament was Nicholas fitted for the complex tasks that awaited him as autocratic ruler of a vast empire. He had received a military education from his tutor, and his tastes and interests were those of the average young Russian officers of his day. He had few intellectual pretensions but delighted in physical exercise and the trappings of army life: uniforms, insignia, parades. Yet on formal occasions he felt ill at ease. Though he possessed great personal charm, he was by nature timid; he shunned close contact with his subjects, preferring the privacy of his family circle. His domestic life was serene. To his wife, Alexandra, whom he had married on November 26, 1894, Nicholas was passionately devoted. She had the strength of character that he lacked, and he fell completely under her sway. Under her influence he sought the advice of spiritualists and faith healers, most notably Grigori Rasputin, who eventually acquired great power over the imperial couple. Nicholas also had other irresponsible favourites, often men of dubious probity who provided him with a distorted picture of Russian life, but one that he found more comforting than that contained in official reports. He distrusted his ministers, mainly because he felt them to be intellectually superior to himself and feared they sought to usurp his sovereign prerogatives. His view of his role as autocrat was childishly simple: he derived his authority from God, to whom alone he was responsible, and it was his sacred duty to preserve his absolute power intact. He lacked, however, the strength of will necessary in one who had such an exalted conception of his task. In pursuing the path of duty, Nicholas had to wage a continual struggle against himself, suppressing his natural indecisiveness and assuming a mask of self-confident resolution. His dedication to the dogma of autocracy was an inadequate substitute for a constructive policy, which alone could have prolonged the imperial regime.
41 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular World History Quizzes This quiz collects 41 of the toughest questions from Britannica’s most popular quizzes on world history. If you want to ace it, you’ll need to know the history of the United States, some of the most famous people in history, what happened during World War II, and much more. Soon after his accession Nicholas proclaimed his uncompromising views in an address to liberal deputies from the zemstvos, the self-governing local assemblies, in which he dismissed as “senseless dreams” their aspirations to share in the work of government. He met the rising groundswell of popular unrest with intensified police repression. In foreign policy, his naïveté and lighthearted attitude toward international obligations sometimes embarrassed his professional diplomats; for example, he concluded an alliance with the German emperor William II during their meeting at Björkö in July 1905, although Russia was already allied with France, Germany’s traditional enemy. Learn how Bloody Sunday of 1905 and the outbreak of World War I led to the collapse of the reign of Tsar Nicholas Romanov Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, MainzSee all videos for this articleNicholas was the first Russian sovereign to show personal interest in Asia, visiting in 1891, while still tsesarevich, India, China, and Japan; later he nominally supervised the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. His attempt to maintain and strengthen Russian influence in Korea, where Japan also had a foothold, was partly responsible for the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). Russia’s defeat not only frustrated Nicholas’s grandiose dreams of making Russia a great Eurasian power, with China, Tibet, and Persia under its control, but also presented him with serious problems at home, where discontent grew into the revolutionary movement of 1905. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now Nicholas considered all who opposed him, regardless of their views, as malicious conspirators. Disregarding the advice of his future prime minister Sergey Yulyevich Witte, he refused to make concessions to the constitutionalists until events forced him to yield more than might have been necessary had he been more flexible. On March 3, 1905, he reluctantly agreed to create a national representative assembly, or Duma, with consultative powers, and by the manifesto of October 30 he promised a constitutional regime under which no law was to take effect without the Duma’s consent, as well as a democratic franchise and civil liberties. Nicholas, however, cared little for keeping promises extracted from him under duress. He strove to regain his former powers and ensured that in the new Fundamental Laws (May 1906) he was still designated an autocrat. He furthermore patronized an extremist right-wing organization, the Union of the Russian People, which sanctioned terrorist methods and disseminated anti-Semitic propaganda. Witte, whom he blamed for the October Manifesto, was soon dismissed, and the first two Dumas were prematurely dissolved as “insubordinate.” Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, who replaced Witte and carried out the coup of June 16, 1907, dissolving the second Duma, was loyal to the dynasty and a capable statesman. But the emperor distrusted him and allowed his position to be undermined by intrigue. Stolypin was one of those who dared to speak out about Rasputin’s influence and thereby incurred the displeasure of the empress. In such cases Nicholas generally hesitated but ultimately yielded to Alexandra’s pressure. To prevent exposure of the scandalous hold Rasputin had on the imperial family, Nicholas interfered arbitrarily in matters properly within the competence of the Holy Synod, backing reactionary elements against those concerned about the Orthodox church’s prestige. Nicholas IIEncyclopædia Britannica, Inc. After its ambitions in the Far East were checked by Japan, Russia turned its attention to the Balkans. Nicholas sympathized with the national aspirations of the Slavs and was anxious to win control of the Turkish straits but tempered his expansionist inclinations with a sincere desire to preserve peace among the Great Powers. After the assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, he tried hard to avert the impending war by diplomatic action and resisted, until July 30, 1914, the pressure of the military for general, rather than partial, mobilization. Nicholas II; AlexisGeorge Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-ggbain-20441) The outbreak of World War I temporarily strengthened the monarchy, but Nicholas did little to maintain his people’s confidence. The Duma was slighted, and voluntary patriotic organizations were hampered in their efforts; the gulf between the ruling group and public opinion grew steadily wider. Alexandra turned Nicholas’s mind against the popular commander in chief, his father’s cousin the grand duke Nicholas, and on September 5, 1915, the emperor dismissed him, assuming supreme command himself. Since the emperor had no experience of war, almost all his ministers protested against this step as likely to impair the army’s morale. They were overruled, however, and soon dismissed.
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During World War II, sales of sliced bread were banned to conserve steel used in industrial slicing machines. The ban proved so unpopular that it was lifted after two months. See All Good FactsNicholas II did not, in fact, interfere unduly in operational decisions, but his departure for headquarters had serious political consequences. In his absence, supreme power in effect passed, with his approval and encouragement, to the empress. A grotesque situation resulted: in the midst of a desperate struggle for national survival, competent ministers and officials were dismissed and replaced by worthless nominees of Rasputin. The court was widely suspected of treachery, and antidynastic feeling grew apace. Conservatives plotted Nicholas’s deposition in the hope of saving the monarchy. Even the murder of Rasputin failed to dispel Nicholas’s illusions: he blindly disregarded this ominous warning, as he did those by other highly placed personages, including members of his own family. His isolation was virtually complete. |