On May 18, 1868 (May 6, old style), 150 years ago, Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov, the last emperor of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II, was born. The results of the reign of the last monarch were sad, and his fate and the fate of his closest relatives were tragic. In many ways, this ending was a consequence of the peculiarities of the character of the last Russian emperor, his inability to be at the head of a huge power in such a difficult time.
Many contemporaries remember Nicholas II as a gentle, well-bred and intelligent person who, meanwhile, lacked political will, decisiveness, and possibly a banal interest in the country's political problems. A rather unpleasant characterization for a man was given to the last Russian tsar by the famous statesman Sergei Witte. He wrote that “Tsar Nicholas II has a female character. Someone remarked that only by the play of nature, shortly before birth, he was provided with the attributes that distinguish a man from a woman."
Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov was born into the family of 23-year-old Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov (future Emperor Alexander III) and his wife, 21-year-old Maria Feodorovna - nee Maria Sophia Frederica Dagmar, daughter of Prince Christian of Glucksburg, future king of Denmark. As befits the Tsarevich, Nikolai received a home education, combining the programs of the state and economic departments of the law faculty of the university and the Academy of the General Staff. Lectures to Nicholas II were read by the most famous Russian professors at that time, but they had no right to ask the Tsarevich and check his knowledge, so a real assessment of the real knowledge of Nikolai Romanov was not possible. On May 6 (18), 1884, sixteen-year-old Nikolai took the oath in the Great Church of the Winter Palace. By this time, his father Alexander had been at the head of the Russian Empire for three years.
Back in 1889, Nikolai met 17-year-old Alice - Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine Ludwig IV and Duchess Alice, daughter of the British Queen Victoria. The princess immediately attracted the attention of the heir to the Russian imperial throne.
As befits the heir to the throne, Nicholas received military service in his youth. He served in the Preobrazhensky regiment, as a squadron commander in the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, and in 1892, at the age of 24, received the rank of colonel. To get an idea of the world of his day, Nikolai Alexandrovich made an impressive journey through various countries, visiting Austria-Hungary, Greece, Egypt, India, Japan and China, and then, arriving in Vladivostok, driving through all of Russia back to the capital. During the trip, the first dramatic incident occurred - on April 29 (May 11), 1891, an attempt was made on the Tsarevich's life in the city of Otsu. Nikolai was attacked by one of the policemen standing in the cordon - Tsuda Sanzo, who managed to inflict two blows on the head with Nikolai with a saber. The blows fell in passing, and Nikolai rushed to run. The attacker was detained, and a few months later he died in prison.
On October 20 (November 1), 1894, in his palace in Livadia, Emperor Alexander III died as a result of a serious illness at the age of 50. It is possible that if it were not for the untimely death of Alexander III, Russian history at the beginning of the twentieth century would have developed differently. Alexander III was a strong politician, had clear right-wing conservative convictions and was able to control the situation in the country. His eldest son Nikolai did not inherit his paternal qualities. Contemporaries recalled that Nikolai Romanov did not want to rule the state at all. He was much more interested in his own life, his own family, issues of recreation and entertainment than government. It is known that the Empress Maria Feodorovna saw her youngest son Mikhail Alexandrovich as the sovereign of Russia, who, it seemed, was more adapted to state activities. But Nikolai was the eldest son and heir of Alexander III. He did not abdicate in favor of his younger brother.
An hour and a half after the death of Alexander III, Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov swore allegiance to the throne in the Livadia Church of the Exaltation of the Cross. The next day, his Lutheran bride Alisa, who became Alexandra Fedorovna, converted to Orthodoxy. On November 14 (26), 1894, Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov and Alexandra Feodorovna were married in the Great Church of the Winter Palace. The marriage of Nicholas and Alexandra took place less than a month after the death of Alexander III, which could not but leave an imprint on the general atmosphere both in the royal family and in society. On the other hand, this circumstance leaves purely "human" questions - could not the new sovereign have tolerated marriage and made it at least a few months after the death of his father? But Nikolai and Alexandra chose what they chose. Contemporaries recalled that their honeymoon took place in an atmosphere of memorial services and funeral visits.
The coronation of the last Russian emperor was also overshadowed by tragedy. It took place on May 14 (26), 1896 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. In honor of the coronation on May 18 (30), 1896, festivities were held on the Khodynskoye field in Moscow. Temporary stalls were set up on the field for free distribution of 30,000 buckets of beer, 10,000 buckets of honey and 400,000 gift bags with royal gifts. By 5 o'clock in the morning on May 18, up to half a million people gathered at Khodynskoye Pole, attracted by the news of the distribution of gifts. Rumors began to spread among the gathered crowd that the barmen were handing out gifts from the stalls only to their acquaintances, after which people rushed to the stalls. Fearing that the crowd would simply demolish the stalls, the barmen began throwing bags of gifts directly into the crowd, further increasing the crush.
The 1,800 police officers who ensured the order could not cope with the half-million crowd. A terrible crush began, which ended in tragedy. 1,379 people died, more than 1,300 people were injured of varying severity. Nicholas II punished directly responsible persons. The Chief of Police of Moscow, Colonel Alexander Vlasovsky and his deputy were removed from their posts, and the Minister of the Court, Count Illarion Vorontsov-Dashkov, who was responsible for organizing the celebrations, was sent by the governor to the Caucasus. Nevertheless, society linked the crush on the Khodynskoye field and the death of more than a thousand people with the personality of Emperor Nicholas II. Superstitious people said that such tragic events during the coronation of the new emperor did not bode well for Russia. And, as we can see, they were not mistaken. The era of Nicholas II opened with a tragedy on the Khodynskoye field, and ended with a much larger tragedy on an all-Russian scale.
The reign of Nicholas II saw the years of maximum activation, flourishing and triumph of the Russian revolutionary movement. Economic problems, the unsuccessful war with Japan, and, most importantly, the stubborn reluctance of the Russian elite to accept the modern rules of the game contributed to the destabilization of the political situation in the country. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the form of governing the country was hopelessly outdated, but the emperor did not want to abolish the class division, abolish the privileges of the nobility. As a result, ever wider sections of Russian society, including not only and even not so much workers and peasants, as the intelligentsia, the officer corps, the merchants, and a significant part of the bureaucracy, turned against the monarchy, and especially against Tsar Nicholas II himself.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 became a dark page in the history of Nicholas Russia, the defeat in which became one of the direct causes of the revolution of 1905-1907. and a major factor in the country's disillusionment with its monarch. The war with Japan exposed all the ulcers of the state administration system of the Russian Empire, including colossal corruption and embezzlement, the inability of officials - both military and civilian - to effectively manage the directions entrusted to them. While the soldiers and officers of the Russian army and navy were dying in battles with the Japanese, the country's elite led an idle existence. The state did not take any real steps to reduce the exploitation of the working class, to improve the position of the peasantry, and to raise the level of education and medical care for the population. A huge part of the Russian people remained illiterate, one could only dream of medical care in villages and workers' settlements. For example, for the entire 30-thousandth Temernik (working suburb of Rostov-on-Don) at the beginning of the twentieth century, there was only one doctor.
On January 9, 1905, another tragedy occurred. Troops opened fire on a peaceful demonstration moving under the leadership of priest George Gapon towards the Winter Palace. Many participants in the demonstration came to it with their wives and children. No one could have imagined that their own Russian troops would open fire on peaceful people. Nicholas II did not personally give the order to shoot the demonstrators, but agreed with the measures proposed by the government. As a result, 130 people were killed and another 229 were injured. January 9, 1905 was popularly nicknamed "Bloody Sunday", and Nicholas II himself was nicknamed Nicholas the Bloody.
The Emperor wrote in his diary: “It's a hard day! In St. Petersburg, there were serious riots as a result of the desire of the workers to reach the Winter Palace. The troops had to shoot in different parts of the city, there were many killed and wounded. Lord, how painful and hard it is! These words were the main reaction of the monarch to the tragedy that happened. The sovereign did not consider it necessary to calm the people down, to understand the situation, to undertake any changes in the management system. He was prompted to adopt the Manifesto only by the large-scale revolutionary actions that had begun throughout the country, in which the military personnel of the army and navy were increasingly involved.
However, the final point in the fate of both Nicholas II and the Russian Empire was put by the First World War. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on the Russian Empire. On August 23, 1915, due to the fact that the situation at the fronts was rapidly deteriorating, and the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, could not cope with his duties, Nicholas II himself assumed the duties of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. It should be noted that by this time his authority in the troops was significantly undermined. Anti-government sentiments were growing at the front.
The situation was aggravated by the fact that the war seriously changed the composition of the officer corps. Distinguished soldiers, representatives of the civil intelligentsia, among whom revolutionary sentiments were already strong, were rapidly promoted to officers. The officer corps was no longer the unequivocal support and hope of the Russian monarchy. According to some researchers, oppositional moods by 1915 struck the most diverse strata of Russian society, penetrated its very top, including the immediate circle of the emperor himself. Not all of the representatives of the Russian elite at that time opposed the monarchy as such. Most of them counted only on the abdication of Nicholas II, unpopular among the people. It was planned that his son Alexei would become the new emperor, and Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich would become the regent. On February 23, 1917, a strike began in Petrograd, which in three days took on an all-Russian character.
On March 2, 1917, Emperor Nicholas II decided to abdicate in favor of his son Alexei during the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. But Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich refused the role of regent, which surprised his brother a lot. “Misha has denied. His manifesto ends with a four-tail for elections after 6 months of the Constituent Assembly. God knows who advised him to sign such disgusting! - Nikolai Romanov wrote in his diary. He gave General Alekseev a telegram to Petrograd, in which he gave his consent to the accession to the throne of his son Alexei. But General Alekseev did not send the telegram. The monarchy in Russia ceased to exist.
The personal qualities of Nicholas II did not even allow him to choose a worthy environment for himself. The emperor had no reliable companions, as evidenced by the speed of his overthrow. Even the upper strata of the Russian aristocracy, the generals, and large businessmen did not come out in defense of Nicholas. The February Revolution of 1917 was supported by most of Russian society, and Nicholas II himself abdicated the throne, making no attempt to preserve the absolute power that he possessed for more than twenty years. A year after the abdication, Nikolai Romanov, his wife Alexandra, all the children and several closest servants were shot in Yekaterinburg. Thus ended the life of the last Russian emperor, whose personality is still the subject of fierce discussions at the national level.
