Nicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, ruling from 1 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. His reign saw the fall of the Russian Empire from being one of the foremost great powers of the world to economic and military collapse.
Background
Nicholas was born in the Alexander Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia (formerly 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). Nicholas often referred to his father nostalgically in letters after Alexander's death in 1894. He was also very close to his mother, as revealed in their published letters to each other.
His paternal grandparents were Emperor Alexander II and Empress Maria Alexandrovna of Russia (born Princess Marie of Hesse and by Rhine). His maternal grandparents were King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Nicholas was of primarily German and Danish descent, his last ethnically Russian ancestor being Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna (1708-1728), daughter of Peter the Great.
Nicholas was related to several monarchs in Europe. His mother's siblings included Kings Frederik VIII of Denmark and George I of Greece, as well as the United Kingdom's Queen Alexandra (consort of King Edward VII). Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany were all first cousins of King George V of the United Kingdom. Nicholas was also a first cousin of both King Haakon VII and Queen Maud of Norway, as well as King Constantine I of Greece. Nicholas and Wilhelm II were in turn second cousins-once-removed, as each descended from King Frederick William III of Prussia, as well as third cousins, as they were both great-great-grandsons of Tsar Paul I of Russia. In addition to being second cousins through descent from Louis II, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his wife Wilhelmine of Baden, Nicholas and Alexandra were also third cousins-once-removed, as they were both descendants of King Frederick William II of Prussia.
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. It was there in 1883, that he had a flirtation with one of his English first cousins, Princess Victoria. In 1873, Nicholas also accompanied his parents and younger brother, two-year-old George, on a two-month, semi-official visit to England. In London, Nicholas and his family stayed at Marlborough House, as guests of his "Uncle Bertie" and "Aunt Alix," the Prince and Princess of Wales, where he was spoiled by his uncle.
Education
On 1 March 1881, following the assassination of his grandfather, Tsar Alexander II, Nicholas became heir apparent upon his father's ascension as Alexander III. Nicholas and his other family members bore witness to Alexander II's death, having been present at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, where he was brought after the attack. For security reasons, the new tsar and his family relocated their primary residence to the Gatchina Palace outside the city, only entering the capital for various ceremonial functions. On such occasions, Alexander III and his family occupied the nearby Anichkov Palace.
In 1884, Nicholas's coming-of-age ceremony was held at the Winter Palace, where he pledged his loyalty to his father. Later that year, Nicholas's uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, married Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine and his late wife Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (who had died in 1878), and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. At the wedding in St. Petersburg, the sixteen-year-old Tsarevich met with and admired the bride's youngest surviving sister, twelve-year-old Princess Alix. Those feelings of admiration blossomed into love following her visit to St. Petersburg five years later in 1889. Alix had feelings for him in turn. As a devout Lutheran, she was initially reluctant to convert to Russian Orthodoxy in order to marry Nicholas, but later relented.
Eventually, in 1890 Nicholas, along with his younger brother George and their cousin Prince George of Greece set out on a world tour, although Grand Duke George fell ill and was sent home partway through the trip. Nicholas visited Egypt, India, Singapore, and Bangkok, receiving honors as a distinguished guest in each country. In April 1891, while traveling through the city of Otsu, Japan, Nicholas was the victim of an assassination attempt. The incident cut his trip short. Returning overland to St. Petersburg, he was present at the ceremonies in Vladivostok commemorating the beginning of work on the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1893, Nicholas traveled to London on behalf of his parents to be present at the wedding of his cousin, George, Duke of York to Mary of Teck. Queen Victoria was struck by the physical resemblance between the two cousins, and their appearances confused some at the wedding. During this time, Nicholas had an affair with St. Petersburg ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska.
Nicholas received the standard education for one marked 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.
Nicholas served in a regiment of the Imperial Guards, also not an experience designed to prepare him to cope with the twentieth century. He toured the Far East in 1891, narrowly escaping assassination at the hands of a Japanese student, and he returned to marry Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, the future Empress Alexandra. On November 1, 1894, Alexander III suddenly died at the age of fifty. Nicholas, surprised at this rapid turn of events, ascended to the throne, the ruler of a vast, diverse, and volatile empire.
Career
The young tsar found a turbulent domestic scene awaiting him. Peasant revolutionary parties were reviving after the repressive era of the 1880s. Revolutionary groups of another persuasion were taking shape, nourished by the arrival of Marxism and its faith in an inevitable revolution spearheaded by the new class of factory workers. The creaky inefficiency of the imperial government was painfully evident in the wake of the terrible famines that had struck the nation in the early 1890s. Most disturbing of all to any devotee of order and stability was the government's commitment to promote industrial growth. This effort had largely been undertaken at the urging of Finance Minister Sergei Witte, who kept Nicholas convinced of the need to keep Russian economic (and hence military) strength abreast of the other powers of Europe. But the price for this growth was an inevitable interlude no one knew how long it might last of social stress. Nicholas might tolerate this necessary change, reminding himself that Russia had often been reformed "from above"; but he had no patience with calls for change from below, even the mild pleas of local government bodies dominated by conservative noblemen for some voice in setting national policy.
In foreign affairs the tsar was the ultimate decision maker, although enough latitude went to a succession of foreign ministers to make Russian intentions seem not only confused but also fundamentally expansionist. A series of clumsy efforts (partly involving the court cronies of the tsar and their business interests) to expand Russian power into Northern China, Manchuria, and Korea had led to the Russo-Japanese War, 1904/1905. In the midst of the calamity, Nicholas was enticed into personal diplomacy by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the result being the stillborn Bjorko agreement of July 1905. Foreign Minister Lamsdorff convinced the monarch that this pact was incompatible with Russia's alliance with France. The catastrophe in the Far East brought a thunderous echo in domestic affairs. The revolution of 1905 compelled the tsar, against all his instincts, to grant his subjects guarantees of civil liberty and a limited legislative body, the Duma.
Given the enormous authority the tsar held, his personal life could throw a long shadow over Russian affairs. Here too problems abounded. Acquaintances found Nicholas a modest and affable individual, but also a vacillating personality hiding behind a public posture of inflexibility. The empress exerted a substantial influence over her spouse; she seemed to stiffen the tsar's view of his powers, which, she reminded him, were subject to no limit. Alexandra herself introduced a measure of chaos into the imperial household. After bearing four daughters, in 1904 she gave birth to a son, Alexis. This child suffered from hemophilia, and in her search for a means to treat him, Alexandra was drawn into the orbit of the self-proclaimed holy man Rasputin.
In the July crisis of 1914, a bewildered Nicholas stood at the center of the storm, pushed against his better judgment to make decisions that terrified him. By July 30, bombarded by Foreign Minister Sazonov as well as the nation's senior military leaders, the tsar reluctantly signed the order for general mobilization.
The tsar's characteristic indecision made itself felt in the first days of hostilities. He wavered before the responsibility of taking direct command of the armed forces, welcomed his ministers' advice to stay home, then chose his uncle, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, to fill the post. The tsar would hardly have been an improvement over his uncle in the subsequent year of combat, but the nation's command system had been drawn up under the assumption that the tsar would indeed be commander in chief. Without the tsar to bridge the gap, the military system and civil government began to go their separate ways. The direction of military operations devolved into the hands of the army's deputy chief of staff, General Yury Danilov. In the larger responsibility of guiding the nation through the trauma of the war, Nicholas proved to be utterly inadequate. Brighter lights like Sazonov and War Minister Polivanov were sooner or later removed. Nicholas viewed the hopes of Duma and industrial leaders of aiding the war effort with deep suspicion. Although he was willing to oust Premier Ivan Goremykin in early 1916 to please the Duma, he replaced the aged reactionary with a slightly younger model of the same breed.
In all, he continued to view social and political change, even under the stress of an unprecedented war effort, as something to be resisted at all costs. Given the monarch's central role in government, such an attitude guaranteed that change would come in the extreme form of revolution unless the war was short and successful.
From August 1914 to August 1915, the tsar remained in his suburban palace near St. Petersburg (now renamed Petrograd), except for occasional visits to the front. The early months of 1915 saw him bend slightly under pressure from Duma leaders like Chairman Rodzianko; he permitted the formation of war industries committees, with Duma and industrial leaders organizing to aid the military effort. In the wake of the Russian retreat from Poland after the Gorlice breakthrough (May 1915), the tsar reshuffled his cabinet and ousted some of the more visible reactionaries. But, as even a sympathetic biographer like Oldenburg puts it, Nicholas insisted that basic change must not take place; new ministers must share his view of the monarchy's predominant role in the government.
In August 1915, Nicholas took the momentous decision of firing his uncle and assuming direct charge of the field armies. In practice, this meant transferring direction of military operations to General Mikhail Alekseev, the new chief of staff. But the change had serious consequences. Almost to a man, the monarch's council of ministers opposed the change; the tsar responded by purging the cabinet's most vocal moderates. Tension with the Duma grew; most of that body's parties coalesced in to a "Progressive Bloc." Few Duma members raised a demand for a British-style parliamentary monarchy, but the drift in that direction was evident. Most important of all, much of the power of the monarchy fell into the hands of Empress Alexandra, then irretrievably under the influence of Rasputin. The tsar returned to Petrograd each month, and major decisions remained his to make. But the Duma and much of the educated public perceived the government to be the plaything of the tsar's pro-German wife and her unsavory entourage.
There was a marked deterioration of domestic order in 1916. The government began to disintegrate. Fuel shortages, the collapse of the nation's railroad system, and inflation combined to create a national crisis. Such a situation called for the energy and imagination of Peter the Great. Nicholas offered only business as usual. He presented the Duma with the cosmetic change of Boris Sturmer as premier in place of Goremykin. The tsar made a dramatic appearance at the opening session of the Duma in February 1916, but he curtly rejected Rodzianko's plea for a responsible government. News of military victories arrived. General Yudenich captured a series of Turkish strongholds, and General Brusilov launched a promising spring offensive in Galicia. But the domestic crisis worsened. In the summer Nicholas considered appointing a so-called civil dictator to run the home front. In the end Sturmer received the title, but took no real authority to make it meaningful.
The tsar returned to Petrograd in late December to console his wife over Rasputin's assassination. While still at the front, the tsar had met with Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, who urged immediate government reforms to head off a political explosion. At Petrograd in early 1917, Rodzianko had offered the same advice. To both of them Nicholas delivered a flat refusal.
Shortly after the tsar returned to supreme military headquarters at Mogilev in late February 1917, news arrived of bread riots in Petrograd. These seemed merely the latest in a series of grim signs of popular discontent; similar incidents in October 1916 had been successfully repressed. The tsar relied on local authorities in Petrograd to put the new unrest down with military force. When Rodzianko telegraphed to plead once again for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, Nicholas dismissed the request as "nonsense." General Nikolai Ivanov, whom the tsar had relieved from an important field command in 1916 for incompetence, was dispatched with 800 decorated combat veterans to restore order in the imperial capital. The tsar himself left for Petrograd (March 13) only to be stranded at Pskov, the headquarters of the northern front. There he received the crushing news that the army's front commanders would not support his effort to remain as monarch. Fearing that his sickly son could not stand the strain of ruling, even under a regency, the tsar abdicated in favor of his brother, the Grand Duke Michael. When Michael refused to accept the crown, the monarchy itself came to an end.
Nicholas was then arrested along with the rest of his immediate family. Half-hearted efforts by the new provisional government to find sanctuary for the imperial family in Britain failed. Just before the Bolshevik Revolution in November, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their tiny entourage were sent to the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg for safekeeping. Civil War doomed them. In the hands of the Czech legion or other anti-Bolshevik elements, the tsar and his family were certain to stand as a rallying point for all varieties of Russian conservatives. Nicholas and his then pathetic family were executed in Ekaterinburg on the night of July 16/17, 1918.
Religion
In 1981, Nicholas and his immediate family were recognised as martyred saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. On 14 August 2000, they were recognised by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. This time they were not named as martyrs, since their deaths 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 Yekaterinburg in the night of 17 July 1918 was revealed the light of the faith of Christ that conquers evil.
However, Nicholas's canonisation was controversial. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was split on the issue back in 1981, some members suggesting that the emperor was a weak ruler and had failed to thwart the rise of the Bolsheviks. It was pointed out by one priest that martyrdom in the Russian Orthodox Church has nothing to do with the martyr's personal actions but is instead related to why he or she was killed.
The Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia rejected the family's classification as martyrs because they were not killed on account of their religious faith. Religious leaders in both churches also had objections to canonising the Tsar's family because they perceived him as a weak emperor whose incompetence led to the revolution and the suffering of his people and made him partially responsible for his own murder and those of his wife, children and servants. For these opponents, the fact that the Tsar was, in private life, a kind man and a good husband and father or a leader who showed genuine concern for the peasantry did not override his poor governance of Russia.
Despite the original opposition, the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia ultimately recognised the family as "passion bearers," or people who met their deaths with Christian humility. The Church does not, however, recognise the remains interred at Peter and Paul Cathedral as being those of the Imperial Family.
Politics
The last tsar was the ultimate victim of nineteenth-century Russian history. He inherited a centralized political system that could work only with a ruler of supreme energy and decisiveness. Even a political genius, which Nicholas could not be, might not have been able to meet the supreme crisis of World War I. At the same time, Nicholas had been imbued with a perilously static view of his authority: to share im¬perial power meant to destroy all imperial power. But even a more flexible attitude toward the Duma, including the establishment of parliamentary government, offered no certain solution. By 1914 the fissures in Russian society had become so deep and the available paths for moderate change had become so constricted that Nicholas seemed destined to preside over an internal cataclysm. World War I was catalyst, not cause. The tsar was as much the victim as the villain of the Russian tragedy, 1914-1917.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Nicholas is generally considered to have been incompetent at the colossal task of ruling the enormous Russian Empire. 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.
In Russia, Nicholas II faced widespread criticism after the victory of the Revolution. 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". Soviet-era historians noted that Nicholas II was not fit to be a statesman. It has been argued that he had a weak will and was manipulated by adventurist forces. His regime was condemned for extensive use of the army, police, and courts to destroy the revolutionary movement. He was criticised for fanning nationalism and chauvinism. With the punitive expeditions and courts-martial during the 1905 Revolution, the monarch became known as "Nicholas the Bloody". Nicholas's reign was seen as a time of suffering for Russians.
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.
Connections
Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine (6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918, married on 26 November 1894).
Titles and styles:
18 May 1868 – 13 March 1881: His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia
13 March 1881 – 1 November 1894: His Imperial Highness The Tsesarevich of Russia
1 November 1894 – 15 March 1917: His Imperial Majesty The Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias
15 March 1917 – 17 July 1918: Nicholas Alexandrovich Romanov
since 2000: Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer
Nicholas II's full title as Emperor, as set forth in Article 59 of the 1906 Constitution, was: "By the Grace of God, We Nicholas, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, of Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonesus, Lord of Pskov, and Grand Prince of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volhynia, Podolia, and Finland; Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalia, Samogitia, Bielostok, Karelia, Tver, Yugor, Perm, Vyatka, Bogar and others; Sovereign and Grand Prince of Nizhni Novgorod, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Jaroslavl, Beloozero, Udoria, Obdoria, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav, and Ruler of all the Severian country; Sovereign and Lord of Iveria, Kartalinia, the Kabardian lands and Armenian province: hereditary Sovereign and Possessor of the Circassian and Mountain Princes and of others; Sovereign of Turkestan, Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Dithmarschen, and Oldenburg, and so forth, and so forth, and so forth."
Awards
Order of St. Andrew,
Russia
Order of St. Alexander Nevsky,
Russia
Order of the White Eagle,
Russia
Order of St. Anne,
Russia
Order of St. Stanislaus, 1st class,
Russia
Order of St. Vladimir, 4th class,
Russia
Order of Saint George, 4th class,
Russia
Mecklenburg-Strelitz: Grand Cross of the House Order of the Wendish Crown (9 January 1879)
Netherlands: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion (15 March 1881)
Oldenburg: Grand Cross of the House and Merit Order of Peter Frederick Louis (15 April 1881)
Japan: Order of the Rising Sun, Grand Cordon with Paulownia Flowers (4 September 1882)
Baden: Grand Cross of the House Order of Loyalty (15 May 1883)
Spain: Order of the Golden Fleece (15 May 1883)
Portugal: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Christ (15 May 1883)
Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: Knight of the House Order of the White Falcon (15 May 1883)
Sweden: Knight of the Royal Order of the Seraphim (19 May 1883)
Bulgaria: Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius
Kingdom of Serbia: Grand Cross of the Order of St. Sava