Background

Ethnicity: Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor was Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia.

Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire (now Saint Petersburg City, Russian Federation), the eldest child of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (née Princess Dagmar of Denmark). He had five younger siblings: Alexander (1869-1870), George (1871-1899), Xenia (1875-1960), Michael (1878-1918), and Olga (1882-1960).

Tsar Nicholas II was the first cousin-once-removed of Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the imperial family as "Nikolasha" and "Nicholas the Tall", while the Tsar was "Nicholas the Short."

In his childhood, Nicholas, his parents, and siblings made annual visits to the Danish royal palaces of Fredensborg and Bernstorff to visit his grandparents, the king and queen. The visits also served as family reunions, as his mother's siblings would also come from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Greece with their respective families.

Education

Nicholas received the standard education to become the ruler of Russia. Private tutors, notably Konstantin Pobedonostsev of the law faculty at Moscow University, instructed him in his duties as supreme ruler supported by the weight of the church and free of the constitutional restraints that polluted Western European governments.

Career

Soon after his accession, Nicholas proclaimed his uncompromising views in an address to liberal deputies from the zemstvos, the self-governing local assemblies. 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.

Nicholas 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 (1904-1905). 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.

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.

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.

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.

Nicholas 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 the 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.

When riots broke out in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) on March 8, 1917, Nicholas instructed the city commandant to take firm measures and sent troops to restore order. It was too late. The government resigned, and the Duma, supported by the army, called on the emperor to abdicate. At Pskov on March 15, with fatalistic composure, Nicholas renounced the throne - not, as he had originally intended, in favor of his son, Alexis, but in favor of his brother Michael, who refused the crown.

Nicholas was detained at Tsarskoye Selo by Prince Lvov’s provisional government. It was planned that he and his family would be sent to England, but instead, mainly because of the opposition of the Petrograd Soviet, the revolutionary Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council, they were removed to Tobolsk in Western Siberia. This step sealed their doom. In April 1918 they were taken to Yekaterinburg in the Urals.

When anti-Bolshevik "White" Russian forces approached the area, the local authorities were ordered to prevent a rescue. In the early hours of July 17, 1918, the prisoners were all slaughtered in the cellar of the house where they had been confined. (Although there is some uncertainty over whether the family was killed on July 16 or 17, most sources indicate that the executions took place on July 17.) The bodies were burned, cast into an abandoned mine shaft, and then hastily buried elsewhere.

By 1994 genetic analyses had positively identified the remains as those of Nicholas, Alexandra, three of their daughters (Anastasia, Tatiana, and Olga), and four servants. The remains were given a state funeral on July 17, 1998, and reburied in St. Petersburg in the crypt of the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. The remains of Alexis and of another daughter (Maria) were not found until 2007, and the following year DNA testing confirmed their identity.

On October 1, 2008, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled that the executions were acts of "unfounded repression" and granted the family full rehabilitation.

Achievements

• Under Nicholas ll’s reign, there were a number of reforms such as protective tariffs on foreign goods, foreign investment and also managed to put the Russian currency on the gold standard. Also, he made agricultural reforms. These reforms had a positive impact and agriculture output started increasing in Russia. A reform that can be directly associated with Nicholas ll was the establishment of the Duma.
  
  Nicholas II was granted honorary senior rank in a number of foreign armies, reciprocating by extending similar distinctions to a number of his fellow monarchs. These included the Imperial German, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and British armies.
  
  Nicholas II was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
  
  Emperor Nicholas II Land was discovered in 1913 by the Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition led by Boris Vilkitsky on behalf of the Russian Hydrographic Service. Still incompletely surveyed, the new territory was officially named in the Emperor's honor by order of the Secretary of the Imperial Navy in 1914. The archipelago was renamed "Severnaya Zemlya" in 1926 by the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union.
  
  On August 20, 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the emperor and his family, designating them "passion bearers" (the lowest rank of sainthood) because of the piety they had shown during their final days.

Religion

Nicholas II of Russia was raised in a devoted Russian Orthodox family.

In 1981, Nicholas, his wife, and their children were canonized as martyrs by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, located in New York City. On 15 August 2000 Nicholas and his family were canonized as passion bearers, a title commemorating believers who face death in a Christ-like manner, by the Russian Orthodox Church within Russia.

Politics

Nicholas carried on his father's nationalism, his curtailment of the rights of minority nationalities, and his restrictions on nonorthodox religious groups. He limited Finnish autonomy, which had been honored by Russian monarchs since 1809. The Czar's manifesto of February 1899 abolished the Finnish constitution and placed the function of making laws for Finland under the Russian imperial council.

Nicholas pursued a strongly anti-Semitic policy. Jews could enroll in higher schools only under quota limits and were excluded from law practice, zemstvos (local district and provincial assemblies), and city councils. Christian dissenters also were persecuted.

On October 5, 1905, Nicholas promulgated the October Manifesto. It was drafted by Witte, who became Russia's first prime minister. The manifesto promised:

1. To grant to the population the inviolable right of free citizenship, based on the principles of freedom of person, conscience, speech, assembly, and union.

2. Without postponing the intended elections for the State Duma and insofar as possible … to include in the participation of the work of the Duma those classes of the population that has been until now entirely deprived of the right to vote, and to extend in the future, by the newly created legislative way, the principles of the general right of election.

3. To establish as an unbreakable rule that without its confirmation by the State Duma, no law shall go into force and that the persons elected by the people shall have the opportunity for actual participation in supervising the legality of the acts of authorities appointed by it.

Nicholas ended with an appeal to "all the true sons of Russia" to help re-establish law and order.

Views

Nicholas pursued a strongly anti-Semitic policy. Jews could enroll in higher schools only under quota limits and were excluded from law practice, zemstvos (local district and provincial assemblies), and city councils. Christian dissenters also were persecuted.

Quotations: "There is no justice among men."

"All around me is cowardice and deceit."

"This is not a question of confidence or lack of it. It is my will. Remember that we live in Russia, not abroad... and therefore I shall not consider the possibility of any resignation."

"I am just a plain, common man."

Personality

Nicholas 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.

He was given the nickname Nicholas the Bloody or Vile Nicholas by his political adversaries due to the Khodynka Tragedy, anti-Semitic pogroms, Bloody Sunday, the violent suppression of the 1905 Russian Revolution, the execution of political opponents, and his perceived responsibility for the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Soviet historians portrayed Nicholas as a weak and incompetent leader whose decisions led to military defeats and the deaths of millions of his subjects.

Throughout his life, Nicholas kept with remarkable regularity a diary that throws much light on his character and interests. Hardly a day passed without a record of what Nicholas regarded as its most noteworthy events. These entries, comprising merely a few lines each, noted official visits; dwelt with affection on the doings of his wife and children; and listed his recreational activities. In his relations with courtiers and officials, Nicholas was considerate and kind, but his ministers could never be certain that the policies seemingly agreed upon would actually receive his assent or that a gracious audience would not be followed by a curt dismissal from office.

Quotes from others about the person

• Sergei Witte: "The Czar can change his mind from one minute to the next; he’s a sad man; he lacks guts."
  
  Orlando Figes: "Nicholas had not been blessed with either his father’s strength of character or his intelligence."
  
  Historian Barbara Tuchman gives a damning evaluation of his reign: "The Russian Empire was ruled from the top by a sovereign who had but one idea of government to preserve intact the absolute monarchy bequeathed to him by his father and who, lacking the intellect, energy or training for his job, fell back on personal favorites, whim, simple mulishness, and other devices of the empty-headed autocrat. His father, Alexander III, who deliberately intended to keep his son uneducated in statecraft until the age of thirty, unfortunately miscalculated his own life expectancy, and died when Nicholas was twenty-six. The new Tsar had learned nothing in the interval, and the impression of imperturbability he conveyed was in reality apathy the indifference of a mind so shallow as to be all surface. When a telegram was brought to him announcing the annihilation of the Russian fleet at Tsushima, he read it, stuffed it in his pocket, and went on playing tennis."
  
  Robert K. Massie provides a more sympathetic view of the Tsar: "... there still are those who for political or other reasons continue to insist that Nicholas was "Bloody Nicholas". Most commonly, he is described as shallow, weak, stupid a one-dimensional figure presiding feebly over the last days of a corrupt and crumbling system. This, certainly, is the prevailing public image of the last Tsar. Historians admit that Nicholas was a "good man" the historical evidence of personal charm, gentleness, love of family, deep religious faith and strong Russian patriotism is too overwhelming to be denied but they argue that personal factors are irrelevant; what matters is that Nicholas was a bad Tsar .... Essentially, the tragedy of Nicholas II was that he appeared in the wrong place in history."
  
  Pavel Bykov, who in Russia wrote the first full account about the downfall of the Tsar, denounced Nicholas as a "tyrant, who paid with his life for the age-old repression and arbitrary rule of his ancestors over the Russian people, over the impoverished and blood-soaked country."

Interests

• cars, ballet

• Artists

  Mathilde Kschessinska

• Sport & Clubs

  tennis

Connections

In April 1894, Nicholas joined his Uncle Sergei and Aunt Elizabeth on a journey to Coburg, Germany, for the wedding of Elizabeth's and Alix's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, to their mutual first cousin Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Once in Coburg Nicholas proposed to Alix, but she rejected his proposal, being reluctant to convert to Orthodoxy. But the Kaiser later told her she had a duty to marry Nicholas and to convert, as her sister Elizabeth had voluntarily done in 1892. Thus Nicholas and Alix became officially engaged on 20 April 1894.

By that autumn, Alexander III lay dying. Upon learning that he would live only a fortnight, the Tsar had Nicholas summon Alix to the imperial palace at Livadia. Alix arrived on 22 October. Ten days later, Alexander III died at the age of forty-nine, leaving twenty-six-year-old Nicholas as Emperor of Russia. That evening, Nicholas was consecrated by his father's priest as Tsar Nicholas II and, the following day, Alix was received into the Russian Orthodox Church, taking the name Alexandra Feodorovna with the title of Grand Duchess and the style of Imperial Highness.

Nicholas and Alix's wedding was originally scheduled for the spring of 1895, but it was moved forward at Nicholas's insistence. Instead, Nicholas's wedding to Alix took place on 26 November 1894, which was the birthday of the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, and court mourning could be slightly relaxed.

The couple had their first child, a daughter named Olga, in 1895. In 1897 the couple gave birth to a second daughter, Tatiana. She was followed by a third, named Maria, in 1899 and a fourth, named Anastasia, in 1901. In 1904 Alexandra gave birth to the longed-for male heir, Alexei. The parents’ joy soon turned to concern as Alexei was diagnosed with hemophilia.

Father:

Alexander III

Mother:

Maria Romanova

Spouse:

Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)

Alexandra Feodorovna (6 June 1872 - 17 July 1918) was Empress of Russia as the spouse of Nicholas II. Originally Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, she was given the name and patronymic Alexandra Feodorovna upon being received into the Russian Orthodox Church and - having been killed along with her immediate family while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918 - was canonized in 2000 as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.

Daughter:

(Olga Nikolaevna Romanova

Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (Olga Nikolaevna Romanova) 15 November (3 November) 1895 - 17 July 1918) was the eldest daughter of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Emperor Nicholas II, and of Empress Alexandra of Russia.

Daughter:

Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova

Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia (Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova) (10 June 1897 - 17 July 1918) was the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and of Tsarina Alexandra. She was born at the Peterhof, Saint Petersburg.

Daughter:

Maria Nikolaevna Romanova

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia (Maria Nikolaevna Romanova) 26 June (O.S. 14 June) 1899 - 17 July 1918) was the third daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her murder following the Russian Revolution of 1917 resulted in her canonization as a passion bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Daughter:

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (June 18 (O.S. June 5) 1901 - July 17, 1918) was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

Son:

Alexei Nikolaevich

Alexei Nikolaevich (12 August 1904 (O.S. 30 July) - 17 July 1918) of the House of Romanov, was the Tsesarevich and heir apparent to the throne of the Russian Empire. He was the youngest child and only son of Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.

He was born with hemophilia; his mother's reliance on the faith healer Grigori Rasputin to treat the disease helped bring about the end of the Romanov dynasty.

Friend:

Grigori Rasputin

In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a healer for the Tsar and his wife Alexandra's only son Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.

Historians often suggest that Rasputin's terrible reputation helped discredit the tsarist government, and thus helped precipitate the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty, which happened a few weeks after he was assassinated. Very little about Rasputin's life and influence is certain, however, as accounts have often been based on hearsay, rumor, and legend.

References

• Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty The story of the love that ended an empire. In this book author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia.
  2000
• The Court of the Last Tsar: Pomp, Power and Pageantry in the Reign of Nicholas II Greg King has given us a fresh, clear-eyed, and often startling new look at the life of the last Romanovs. He has shown us how the whole enterprise worked, from Tsar Nicholas to his lowest cook and chambermaid.
• The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russia Revolution A riveting account of the last eighteen months of Tsar Nicholas II's life and reign from one of the finest Russian historians writing today.
• Tsar Nicholas II: A Life From Beginning to End Reigning from 1894 to 1917, Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia. His rule served as the bookends between what were essentially two Russian empires; the one that his forefathers carved out through imperial ambition and the one dictated by the zealous communists of the Soviet Union bent on socialist expansion. Nicholas was by most accounts a conflicted ruler; a man viewed as kind and generous in his mannerisms yet alleged to be greatly disconnected and apathetic toward the subjects he was supposed to rule over.
• The Romanovs: The Final Chapter In July 1991, nine skeletons were exhumed from a shallow mass grave near Ekaterinburg, Siberia, a few miles from the infamous cellar room where the last tsar and his family had been murdered seventy-three years before. But were these the bones of the Romanovs? And if these were their remains, where were the bones of the two younger Romanovs supposedly murdered with the rest of the family? Was Anna Anderson, celebrated for more than sixty years in newspapers, books, and film, really Grand Duchess Anastasia? The Romanovs provides the answers, describing in suspenseful detail the dramatic efforts to discover the truth.
• The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II How did Nicholas II, Russia’s last Tsar, meet his death? Shot point blank in a bungled execution by radical Bolsheviks in the Urals, Nicholas and his family disappeared from history in the Soviet era. But in the 1970s, a local geologist and a crime fiction writer discovered the location of their clandestine mass grave, and secretly removed three skulls, before reburying them, afraid of the consequences of their find. Yet the history of Nicholas’ execution and the discovery of his remains are not the only stories connected with the death of the last Tsar. This book recounts the horrific details of his death and the thrilling discovery of the bones, and also investigates the alternative narratives that have grown up around these events.
• Nicholas II: Twilight of the Empire A biography of Russia's last monarch provides new insights into his infamous execution in 1918 and goes on to probe his role as a political leader and emperor, the Old Regime's collapse, and the origins of the Bolshevik Revolution.
  1994
• The Empress and the Cow "The most unimpressive favorite in history." "Fat, clumsy, gushing and stupid." These were but a few of the things said about Anna Vyroubova, favorite of the Russian Imperial Family from 1905 until 1917.
• The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
  1993
• Six Years at the Russian Court: Life with the family of Tsar Nicholas II Six Years at the Russian Court is the enlightening memoir of Margaret Eager - an Irishwoman from Limerick who served as a nanny to the Russian royal family from 1898 to 1904. Originally published in 1906, the book captures Eager’s years as governess to the four daughters of the Emperor and Empress Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna: the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia. All of whom would be executed during the Russian civil war just over a decade later. This first-person account provides a fascinating insight into what was everyday life for the Romanov family. From religious celebrations and family illness to assassination attempts and life during the war.