The reign of Nicholas 2. Nicholas II: the life of the last tsar

Nicholas II is the last Russian emperor who went down in history as the most weak-willed tsar. According to historians, the government of the country for the monarch was a "heavy burden", but this did not prevent him from making a feasible contribution to the industrial and economic development of Russia, despite the fact that the revolutionary movement was actively growing in the country during the reign of Nicholas II, and the foreign policy situation became more complicated . IN modern history the Russian emperor is referred to by the epithets "Nicholas the Bloody" and "Nicholas the Martyr", since assessments of the activity and character of the tsar are ambiguous and contradictory.

Nicholas II was born on May 18, 1868 in Tsarskoye Selo of the Russian Empire in the imperial family. For his parents, and, he became the eldest son and the only heir to the throne, who from the earliest years was taught the future work of his whole life. From birth, the future tsar was educated by the Englishman Karl Heath, who taught the young Nikolai Alexandrovich to speak fluent English language.

The childhood of the heir to the royal throne passed within the walls of the Gatchina Palace under the strict guidance of his father Alexander III, who raised his children in the traditional religious spirit - he allowed them to play and fool around in moderation, but at the same time did not allow laziness in school, suppressing all thoughts of his sons about future throne.

At the age of 8, Nicholas II began to receive general education at home. His education was carried out within the framework of the general gymnasium course, but the future tsar did not show much zeal and desire for learning. His passion was military affairs - already at the age of 5 he became the chief of the Life Guards of the Reserve Infantry Regiment and happily mastered military geography, jurisprudence and strategy. Lectures to the future monarch were read by the best scientists of world renown, who were personally selected for their son by Tsar Alexander III and his wife Maria Feodorovna.

Especially the heir excelled in the study foreign languages, therefore, in addition to English, he was fluent in French, German and Danish. After eight years of the general gymnasium program, Nicholas II began to be taught the necessary higher sciences for a future statesman, which are included in the course of the economic department of the law university.

In 1884, upon reaching adulthood, Nicholas II took the oath in the Winter Palace, after which he entered active military service, and three years later he began regular military service, for which he was awarded the rank of colonel. Fully devoting himself to military affairs, the future tsar easily adapted to the inconveniences of army life and endured military service.

The first acquaintance with state affairs at the heir to the throne took place in 1889. Then he began to attend meetings of the State Council and the Cabinet of Ministers, at which his father brought him up to date and shared his experience on how to govern the country. In the same period, Alexander III made numerous journeys with his son, starting from the Far East. Over the next 9 months, they traveled by sea to Greece, India, Egypt, Japan and China, and then through all of Siberia by land returned to the Russian capital.

Ascension to the throne

In 1894, after the death of Alexander III, Nicholas II ascended the throne and solemnly promised to protect the autocracy as firmly and steadily as his late father. The coronation of the last Russian emperor took place in 1896 in Moscow. These solemn events were marked by the tragic events at the Khodynka field, where during the distribution of royal gifts there were mass riots that took the lives of thousands of citizens.

Due to the mass crush, the monarch who came to power even wanted to cancel the evening ball on the occasion of his ascension to the throne, but later decided that the Khodynka disaster was a real misfortune, but not worth it to overshadow the coronation holiday. The educated society perceived these events as a challenge, which became the foundation stone for the creation of a liberation movement in Russia from the dictator-tsar.

Against this background, the emperor introduced a tough internal policy in the country, according to which any dissent among the people was persecuted. In the first few years of the reign of Nicholas II in Russia, a census was carried out, as well as a monetary reform, which established the gold standard of the ruble. The gold ruble of Nicholas II was equal to 0.77 grams of pure gold and was half “heavier” than the mark, but twice “lighter” than the dollar at the exchange rate of international currencies.

In the same period, the "Stolypin" agrarian reforms were carried out in Russia, factory legislation was introduced, several laws on compulsory insurance of workers and universal primary education were passed, as well as the abolition of tax collection from landowners of Polish origin and the abolition of penalties such as exile to Siberia.

In the Russian Empire during the time of Nicholas II, large-scale industrialization took place, the pace of agricultural production increased, and coal and oil production started. At the same time, thanks to the last Russian emperor, more than 70 thousand kilometers of the railway were built in Russia.

Reign and abdication

The reign of Nicholas II at the second stage took place during the years of aggravation of the domestic political life of Russia and a rather difficult foreign political situation. At the same time, the Far East direction was in the first place. The main obstacle of the Russian monarch to dominance in the Far East was Japan, which without warning in 1904 attacked the Russian squadron in the port city of Port Arthur and, due to the inaction of the Russian leadership, defeated the Russian army.

As a result of the failure of the Russian-Japanese war, a revolutionary situation began to develop rapidly in the country, and Russia had to cede the southern part of Sakhalin and the rights to the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. It was after this that the Russian emperor lost authority in the intelligentsia and ruling circles of the country, who accused the tsar of defeat and connections with, who was an unofficial "adviser" to the monarch, but who was considered in society a charlatan and a swindler, having full influence over Nicholas II.

The turning point in the biography of Nicholas II was the First World War of 1914. Then the emperor, on the advice of Rasputin, tried with all his might to avoid a bloody massacre, but Germany went to war against Russia, which was forced to defend itself. In 1915, the monarch took over the military command of the Russian army and personally traveled to the fronts, inspecting military units. At the same time, he made a number of fatal military mistakes, which led to the collapse of the Romanov dynasty and the Russian Empire.

The war exacerbated the internal problems of the country, all military failures in the environment of Nicholas II were assigned to him. Then “treason” began to “nest” in the government of the country, but despite this, the emperor, together with England and France, developed a plan for the general offensive of Russia, which should have been triumphant for the country by the summer of 1917 to end the military confrontation.

The plans of Nicholas II were not destined to come true - at the end of February 1917, mass uprisings began in Petrograd against the royal dynasty and the current government, which he initially intended to stop by force. But the military did not obey the orders of the king, and members of the monarch's retinue persuaded him to abdicate the throne, which supposedly would help suppress the unrest. After several days of painful deliberation, Nicholas II decided to abdicate in favor of his brother, Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich, who refused to accept the crown, which meant the end of the Romanov dynasty.

Execution of Nicholas II and his family

After the signing of the abdication manifesto by the tsar, the Provisional Government of Russia issued an order to arrest the tsar's family and his associates. Then many betrayed the emperor and fled, so only a few close people from his entourage agreed to share the tragic fate with the monarch, who, together with the tsar, were sent to Tobolsk, from where, allegedly, the family of Nicholas II was supposed to be transported to the USA.

After the October Revolution and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, headed by the royal family, they were transported to Yekaterinburg and imprisoned in a "special purpose house". Then the Bolsheviks began to hatch a plan for the trial of the monarch, but the Civil War did not allow their plan to be realized.

Because of this, in the upper echelons of Soviet power, it was decided to shoot the tsar and his family. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the family of the last Russian emperor was shot in the basement of the house where Nicholas II was imprisoned. The tsar, his wife and children, as well as several of his entourage were taken to the basement under the pretext of evacuation and shot point-blank without explanation, after which the victims were taken outside the city, their bodies were burned with kerosene, and then buried in the ground.

Personal life and the royal family

The personal life of Nicholas II, unlike many other Russian monarchs, was the standard of the highest family virtue. In 1889, during the visit of the German princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt to Russia, Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich paid special attention to the girl and asked his father for his blessing to marry her. But the parents did not agree with the choice of the heir, so they refused their son. This did not stop Nicholas II, who did not lose hope of marriage with Alice. They were assisted by the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna, the sister of the German princess, who arranged secret correspondence for the young lovers.

After 5 years, Tsarevich Nicholas again persistently asked his father's consent to marry a German princess. Alexander III, in view of his rapidly deteriorating health, allowed his son to marry Alice, who, after chrismation, became. In November 1894, the wedding of Nicholas II and Alexandra took place in the Winter Palace, and in 1896 the couple accepted the coronation and officially became the rulers of the country.

In the marriage of Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II, 4 daughters were born (Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia) and the only heir Alexei, who had a serious hereditary disease - hemophilia associated with the process of blood clotting. The illness of Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich forced the royal family to get acquainted with Grigory Rasputin, widely known at that time, who helped the royal heir to fight bouts of illness, which allowed him to gain a huge influence on Alexandra Feodorovna and Emperor Nicholas II.

Historians report that the family for the last Russian emperor was the most important meaning of life. He always spent most of his time in the family circle, did not like secular pleasures, especially valued his peace, habits, health and well-being of his relatives. At the same time, worldly hobbies were not alien to the emperor - he went hunting with pleasure, participated in horse riding competitions, skating with passion and played hockey.

Emperor Nicholas II Romanov (1868-1918) succeeded to the throne on 20 October 1894 after the death of his father Alexander III. The years of his reign from 1894 to 1917 were marked by the economic rise of Russia and, at the same time, the growth of revolutionary movements.

The latter was due to the fact that the new sovereign in everything followed the political guidelines that his father inspired him. In his heart, the king was deeply convinced that any parliamentary form of government would harm the empire. For the ideal, patriarchal relations were taken, where the crowned ruler acted as a father, and the people were considered as children.

However, such archaic views did not correspond to the real political situation in the country by the beginning of the 20th century. It was this discrepancy that led the emperor, and with him the empire, to the catastrophe that occurred in 1917.

Emperor Nicholas II
artist Ernest Lipgart

The years of the reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917)

The reign of Nicholas II can be divided into two stages. The first before the revolution of 1905, and the second from 1905 until the abdication of the throne on March 2, 1917. The first period is characterized by a negative attitude towards any manifestation of liberalism. At the same time, the tsar tried to avoid any political transformations and hoped that the people would adhere to autocratic traditions.

But the Russian Empire suffered a complete defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and then a revolution broke out in 1905. All this became the reasons that forced the last ruler of the Romanov dynasty to make compromises and political concessions. However, they were perceived by the sovereign as temporary, so parliamentarism in Russia was hampered in every possible way. As a result, by 1917 the emperor lost support in all strata of Russian society.

Considering the image of Emperor Nicholas II, it should be noted that he was an educated and extremely pleasant person to communicate with. His favorite hobbies were art and literature. At the same time, the sovereign did not have the proper determination and will, which were fully present in his father.

The cause of the disaster was the coronation of the emperor and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna on May 14, 1896 in Moscow. On this occasion, mass celebrations on Khodynka were scheduled for May 18, and it was announced that royal gifts would be distributed to people. This attracted a huge number of residents of Moscow and the Moscow region to the Khodynka field.

As a result, a terrible stampede arose, in which, as journalists claimed, 5 thousand people died. The Mother See was shocked by the tragedy, and the tsar did not even cancel the celebrations in the Kremlin and the ball at the French embassy. People did not forgive the new emperor for this.

The second terrible tragedy was Bloody Sunday on January 9, 1905 (for details, see the article Bloody Sunday). This time, the troops opened fire on the workers who were going to the tsar to hand over the petition. About 200 people died, and 800 were injured of varying severity. This unpleasant incident took place against the backdrop of the Russo-Japanese War, which was extremely unsuccessful for the Russian Empire. After this event, Emperor Nicholas II received the nickname Bloody.

Revolutionary sentiments turned into revolution. A wave of strikes and terrorist attacks swept across the country. They killed policemen, officers, tsarist officials. All this forced the tsar on August 6, 1905 to sign a manifesto on the creation of the State Duma. However, this did not prevent an all-Russian political strike. The emperor had no choice but to sign a new manifesto on 17 October. He expanded the powers of the Duma and gave the people additional freedoms. At the end of April 1906, all this was approved by law. And only after that revolutionary unrest went into decline.

Heir to the throne Nicholas with his mother Maria Feodorovna

Economic policy

The main creator of economic policy at the first stage of the reign was the Minister of Finance, and then Chairman of the Council of Ministers Sergei Yulievich Witte (1849-1915). He was an active supporter of attracting foreign capital to Russia. According to his project, gold circulation was introduced in the state. At the same time, domestic industry and trade were supported in every possible way. At the same time, the state strictly controlled the development of the economy.

Since 1902, the Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Plehve (1846-1904) began to exert great influence on the tsar. The newspapers wrote that he was the royal puppeteer. He was an extremely intelligent and experienced politician, capable of constructive compromises. He sincerely believed that the country needed reforms, but only under the leadership of the autocracy. This outstanding man was killed in the summer of 1904 by the Socialist-Revolutionary Sazonov, who threw a bomb into his carriage in St. Petersburg.

In 1906-1911, the decisive and strong-willed Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (1862-1911) determined the policy in the country. He fought against the revolutionary movement, peasant revolts and at the same time carried out reforms. He considered the main agrarian reform. Rural communities were disbanded, and the peasants received the rights to create their own farms. To this end, the Peasants' Bank was reorganized and many programs developed. The ultimate goal of Stolypin was the creation of a numerous layer of wealthy peasant farms. He spent 20 years doing this.

However, Stolypin's relationship with the State Duma was extremely difficult. He insisted that the Emperor dissolve the Duma and change the electoral law. Many perceived it as a coup d'état. The next Duma turned out to be more conservative in its composition and more submissive to the authorities.

But not only the Duma members were dissatisfied with Stolypin, but also the tsar and the royal court. These people did not want fundamental reforms in the country. And on September 1, 1911, in the city of Kyiv, at the play "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", Pyotr Arkadievich was mortally wounded by the Socialist-Revolutionary Bogrov. On September 5, he died and was buried in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. With the death of this man, the last hopes for reforms without a bloody revolution disappeared.

In 1913, the country's economy was on the rise. It seemed to many that the "silver age" of the Russian Empire and the era of prosperity of the Russian people had finally come. This year the whole country celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The festivities were magnificent. They were accompanied by balls and festivities. But everything changed on July 19 (August 1), 1914, when Germany declared war on Russia.

The last years of the reign of Nicholas II

With the outbreak of the war, the whole country experienced an extraordinary patriotic upsurge. Demonstrations were held in provincial cities and the capital expressing full support for Emperor Nicholas II. A struggle with everything German swept across the country. Even Petersburg was renamed Petrograd. The strikes ended, and the mobilization covered 10 million people.

At the front, Russian troops first advanced. But the victories ended in defeat in East Prussia under Tannenberg. Also at the beginning, military operations against Austria, which was an ally of Germany, were successful. However, in May 1915, the Austro-German troops inflicted a heavy defeat on Russia. She had to cede Poland and Lithuania.

The economic situation in the country began to deteriorate. The products manufactured by the military industry did not meet the needs of the front. Theft flourished in the rear, and numerous victims began to cause indignation in society.

At the end of August 1915, the emperor assumed the functions of the supreme commander in chief, removing Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich from this post. This was a serious miscalculation, since all military failures began to be attributed to the sovereign, and he did not have any military talents.

The crowning achievement of Russian military art was the Brusilovsky breakthrough in the summer of 1916. During this brilliant operation, a crushing defeat was inflicted on the Austrian and German troops. The Russian army occupied Volyn, Bukovina and most of Galicia. Large war trophies of the enemy were captured. But, unfortunately, this was the last major victory of the Russian army.

The further course of events was deplorable for the Russian Empire. Revolutionary moods intensified, discipline in the army began to fall. It became common to disobey the orders of commanders. Desertions have become more frequent. Both society and the army were annoyed by the influence that Grigory Rasputin had on the royal family. A simple Siberian peasant was gifted with extraordinary abilities. He was the only one who could relieve attacks from Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.

Therefore, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna immensely trusted the elder. And he, using his influence at court, interfered in political issues. All this, of course, irritated society. In the end, a conspiracy arose against Rasputin (for details, see the article The Murder of Rasputin). The presumptuous old man was killed in December 1916.

The coming year of 1917 was the last in the history of the Romanov dynasty. The royal power no longer controlled the country. A special committee of the State Duma and the Petrograd Soviet formed a new government headed by Prince Lvov. It demanded that Emperor Nicholas II abdicate the throne. On March 2, 1917, the sovereign signed a renunciation manifesto in favor of his brother Mikhail Alexandrovich. Michael also renounced supreme power. The Romanov dynasty ended.

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
artist A. Makovsky

Personal life of Nicholas II

Nicholas married for love. His wife was Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt. After the adoption of Orthodoxy, she took the name Alexandra Feodorovna. The marriage took place on November 14, 1894 at the Winter Palace. In marriage, the Empress gave birth to 4 girls (Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia) and in 1904 a boy was born. They named him Alex.

The last Russian emperor lived with his wife in love and harmony until his death. Alexandra Fedorovna herself had a complex and secretive character. She was shy and uncommunicative. Her world was closed on the crowned family, and the wife had a strong influence on her husband in both personal and political affairs.

As a woman, she was deeply religious and prone to all sorts of mysticism. This was greatly facilitated by the illness of Tsarevich Alexei. Therefore, Rasputin, who had a mystical talent, gained such influence at the royal court. But the people did not like the mother empress for her excessive pride and isolation. This harmed the regime to a certain extent.

After the abdication, the former Emperor Nicholas II and his family were arrested and stayed in Tsarskoye Selo until the end of July 1917. Then the crowned persons were transported to Tobolsk, and from there in May 1918 they were transported to Yekaterinburg. There they were settled in the house of the engineer Ipatiev.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the Russian Tsar and his family were brutally murdered in the basement of the Ipatiev House. After that, their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition and secretly buried (for details on the death of the imperial family, see the article of the Kingslayer). In 1998, the found remains of the dead were reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Thus ended the 300-year epic of the Romanov dynasty. It began in the 17th century in the Ipatiev Monastery, and ended in the 20th century in the house of the engineer Ipatiev. And the history of Russia continued, but in a completely different capacity.

Burial place of the family of Nicholas II
in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg

Leonid Druzhnikov

Names, titles, nicknames

First steps and coronation

Economic policy

Revolution of 1905-1907

Nicholas II and the Duma

Land reform

Military administration reform

World War I

Probing the world

Fall of the monarchy

Lifestyle, habits, hobbies

Russian

Foreign

After death

Assessment in Russian emigration

Official assessment in the USSR

church veneration

Filmography

Movie incarnations

Nicholas II Alexandrovich(May 6 (18), 1868, Tsarskoe Selo - July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - the last Emperor of All Russia, the Tsar of Poland and the Grand Duke of Finland (October 20 (November 1), 1894 - March 2 (March 15), 1917). From the Romanov dynasty. Colonel (1892); in addition, from the British monarchs he had the ranks: Admiral of the Fleet (May 28, 1908) and Field Marshal of the British Army (December 18, 1915).

The reign of Nicholas II was marked by the economic development of Russia and, at the same time, the growth of socio-political contradictions in it, the revolutionary movement that resulted in the revolution of 1905-1907 and the revolution of 1917; in foreign policy - expansion in the Far East, the war with Japan, as well as Russia's participation in the military blocs of European powers and the First World War.

Nicholas II abdicated during the February Revolution of 1917 and was under house arrest with his family in the Tsarskoye Selo Palace. In the summer of 1917, by decision of the Provisional Government, he was sent into exile with his family to Tobolsk, and in the spring of 1918 he was moved by the Bolsheviks to Yekaterinburg, where he was shot with his family and close associates in July 1918.

Canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as a martyr in 2000.

Names, titles, nicknames

Titled from birth His Imperial Highness (Sovereign) Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich. After the death of his grandfather, Emperor Alexander II, on March 1, 1881, he received the title of Tsarevich's Heir.

The full title of Nicholas II as emperor: “By God's speeding mercy, Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonese, Tsar of Georgia; Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuanian, Volyn, Podolsky and Finland; Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostoksky, Korelsky, Tversky, Yugorsky, Permsky, Vyatsky, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod Nizovsky lands?, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersky, Udorsky, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all northern countries? Lord; and Sovereign of Iversky, Kartalinsky and Kabardian lands? and regions of Armenia; Cherkasy and Mountain Princes and other Hereditary Sovereign and Possessor, Sovereign of Turkestan; Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarsen and Oldenburg and others, and others, and others.

After the February Revolution, it became known as Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov(previously, the surname "Romanov" was not indicated by members of the imperial house; titles indicated belonging to the family: Grand Duke, Emperor, Empress, Tsarevich, etc.).

In connection with the events on Khodynka and on January 9, 1905, he was nicknamed "Nikolai the Bloody" by the radical opposition; with such a nickname appeared in Soviet popular historiography. His wife privately called him "Nicky" (communication between them was mostly in English).

The Caucasian highlanders, who served in the Caucasian native cavalry division of the imperial army, called Sovereign Nicholas II "White Padishah", thereby showing their respect and devotion to the Russian emperor.

Childhood, education and upbringing

Nicholas II is the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna. Immediately upon birth, on May 6, 1868, he was named Nicholas. The baptism of the baby was performed by the confessor of the imperial family, Protopresbyter Vasily Bazhanov, in the Resurrection Church of the Grand Tsarskoye Selo Palace on May 20 of the same year; godparents were: Alexander II, Queen Louise of Denmark, Crown Prince Friedrich of Denmark, Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna.

In early childhood, the tutor of Nikolai and his brothers was the Englishman Karl Osipovich His, who lived in Russia ( Charles Heath, 1826-1900); General G. G. Danilovich was appointed his official tutor as heir in 1877. Nikolai was educated at home as part of a large gymnasium course; in 1885-1890 - according to a specially written program that connected the course of the state and economic departments of the law faculty of the university with the course of the Academy of the General Staff. The training sessions were conducted for 13 years: the first eight years were devoted to the subjects of the extended gymnasium course, where special attention was paid to the study of political history, Russian literature, English, German and French (Nikolai Alexandrovich spoke English as a mother tongue); the next five years were devoted to the study of military affairs, legal and economic sciences, necessary for a statesman. Lectures were given by world-famous scientists: N. N. Beketov, N. N. Obruchev, Ts. A. Cui, M. I. Dragomirov, N. Kh. Bunge, K. P. Pobedonostsev and others. Protopresbyter John Yanyshev taught the crown prince canon law in connection with the history of the church, the main departments of theology and the history of religion.

On May 6, 1884, upon reaching the age of majority (for the Heir), he took the oath in the Great Church of the Winter Palace, which was announced by the Supreme Manifesto. The first act published on his behalf was a rescript addressed to the Moscow Governor-General V.A.

For the first two years, Nikolai served as a junior officer in the ranks of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. For two summer seasons, he served in the ranks of the cavalry hussars as a squadron commander, and then camped in the ranks of the artillery. On August 6, 1892, he was promoted to colonel. At the same time, his father introduces him to the affairs of the country, inviting him to participate in meetings of the State Council and the Cabinet of Ministers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Railways S. Yu. Witte, in 1892 Nikolai was appointed chairman of the committee for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to gain experience in public affairs. By the age of 23, the Heir was a man who received extensive information in various fields of knowledge.

The education program included trips to various provinces of Russia, which he made with his father. To complete his education, his father gave him a cruiser to travel to the Far East. For nine months, he and his retinue visited Austria-Hungary, Greece, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and later returned by land through all of Siberia to the capital of Russia. In Japan, an assassination attempt was made on Nicholas (see the Otsu Incident). A shirt with blood stains is stored in the Hermitage.

The opposition politician, member of the State Duma of the first convocation, V.P. Obninsky, in his anti-monarchist essay “The Last Autocrat”, argued that Nikolai “at one time stubbornly renounced the throne”, but was forced to yield to the demand of Alexander III and “sign during the life of his father a manifesto on his accession to the throne."

Accession to the throne and beginning of reign

First steps and coronation

A few days after the death of Alexander III (October 20, 1894) and his accession to the throne (the Supreme Manifesto was published on October 21; on the same day the oath was taken by dignitaries, officials, courtiers and troops), November 14, 1894 in the Great Church of the Winter Palace was married to Alexandra Fedorovna; the honeymoon passed in the atmosphere of requiems and mourning visits.

One of the first personnel decisions of Emperor Nicholas II was the dismissal in December 1894 of the conflicting I.V. Gurko from the post of Governor-General of the Kingdom of Poland and the appointment in February 1895 to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs A.B. Lobanov-Rostovsky - after the death of N.K. Gears.

As a result of the exchange of notes dated February 27 (March 11), 1895, “the delimitation of the spheres of influence of Russia and Great Britain in the Pamirs region, to the east of Lake Zor-Kul (Victoria)”, along the Pyanj River, was established; The Pamir volost became part of the Osh district of the Fergana region; The Wakhan Range on Russian maps was designated Ridge of Emperor Nicholas II. The first major international act of the emperor was the Triple Intervention - simultaneous (11 (23) April 1895), at the initiative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the presentation (together with Germany and France) of demands for Japan to revise the terms of the Shimonoseki peace treaty with China, renouncing claims to the Liaodong Peninsula .

The first public speech of the emperor in St. Petersburg was his speech delivered on January 17, 1895 in the Nicholas Hall of the Winter Palace before deputations of the nobility, zemstvos and cities who arrived "to express loyal feelings to Their Majesties and bring congratulations on the Marriage"; the delivered text of the speech (the speech was written in advance, but the emperor delivered it only from time to time looking at the paper) read: “I know that in Lately in some zemstvo assemblies the voices of people carried away by senseless dreams about the participation of representatives of the zemstvos in matters of internal administration were heard. Let everyone know that I, devoting all My strength to the good of the people, will guard the beginning of autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as My unforgettable, late Parent guarded it. In connection with the tsar’s speech, Chief Prosecutor K. P. Pobedonostsev wrote to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich on February 2 of the same year: “After the speech of the Sovereign, excitement continues with chatter of all kinds. I don’t hear her, but they tell me that everywhere among the youth and the intelligentsia there are rumors with some kind of irritation against the young Sovereign. Maria Al came to see me yesterday. Meshcherskaya (ur. Panin), who came here for a short time from the village. She is indignant at all the speeches she hears about this in the living rooms. On the other hand, the words of the Sovereign made a beneficial impression on ordinary people and on the villages. Many deputies, coming here, expected God knows what, and, having heard, breathed freely. But how sad that ridiculous irritation is happening in the upper circles. I am sure, unfortunately, that most of the members of the state. The Council is critical of the act of the Sovereign and, alas, some ministers too! God knows what? was in the minds of people until this day, and what expectations have grown ... True, they gave a reason for this ... Many straight Russian people were positively confused by the awards announced on January 1st. It turned out that the new Sovereign from the first step distinguished those very whom the deceased considered dangerous. All this inspires fear for the future. In the early 1910s, a representative of the left wing of the Cadets, V.P. Obninsky, wrote about the tsar’s speech in his anti-monarchist essay: “They assured that the word “unrealizable” was in the text. But be that as it may, it served as the beginning not only of a general cooling towards Nicholas, but also laid the foundation for the future liberation movement, rallying the zemstvo leaders and instilling in them a more decisive course of action. The performance of January 17, 95 can be considered the first step of Nicholas on an inclined plane, along which he continues to roll until now, descending lower and lower in the opinion of both his subjects and the entire civilized world. The historian S. S. Oldenburg wrote about the speech on January 17: “The Russian educated society, for the most part, accepted this speech as a challenge to itself. The speech on January 17 dispelled the hopes of the intelligentsia for the possibility of constitutional reforms from above. In this regard, it served as the starting point for a new growth of revolutionary agitation, for which funds began to be found again. »

The coronation of the emperor and his wife took place on May 14 (26), 1896 ( about the victims of the coronation celebrations in Moscow, see Khodynka's article). In the same year, the All-Russian Industrial and art exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, which he visited.

In April 1896, the Russian government formally recognized the Bulgarian government of Prince Ferdinand. In 1896, Nicholas II also made a big trip to Europe, meeting with Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria (grandmother of Alexandra Feodorovna); the end of the trip was his arrival in the capital of allied France, Paris. By the time of his arrival in Britain in September 1896, there was a sharp aggravation of relations between London and Porte, formally associated with the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and the simultaneous rapprochement of St. Petersburg with Constantinople; guest? with Queen Victoria in Balmoral, Nicholas, agreeing to the joint development of a reform project in the Ottoman Empire, rejected the proposals made to him by the British government to remove Sultan Abdul-Hamid, keep Egypt for England, and in return receive some concessions on the issue of the Straits. Arriving in Paris in early October of the same year, Nicholas approved joint instructions to the ambassadors of Russia and France in Constantinople (which the Russian government had categorically refused until that time), approved the French proposals on the Egyptian question (which included "guarantees of the neutralization of the Suez Canal" - the goal, which was previously outlined for Russian diplomacy by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lobanov-Rostovsky, who died on August 30, 1896). The Paris agreements of the tsar, who was accompanied on the trip by N. P. Shishkin, provoked sharp objections from Sergei Witte, Lamzdorf, Ambassador Nelidov and others; nevertheless, by the end of the same year, Russian diplomacy returned to its previous course: strengthening the alliance with France, pragmatic cooperation with Germany on certain issues, freezing the Eastern Question (that is, supporting the Sultan and opposition to England's plans in Egypt). From the plan approved at the meeting of ministers on December 5, 1896, chaired by the tsar, it was decided to abandon the plan for the landing of Russian troops on the Bosphorus (under a certain scenario). During 1897, 3 heads of state arrived in St. Petersburg to pay a visit to the Russian emperor: Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II, French President Felix Faure; during the visit of Franz Joseph between Russia and Austria, an agreement was concluded for 10 years.

The manifesto of February 3 (15), 1899 on the order of legislation in the Grand Duchy of Finland was perceived by the population of the Grand Duchy as an infringement on its autonomy rights and caused mass discontent and protests

The manifesto of June 28, 1899 (published on June 30) announced the death of the same June 28 "Heir to the Tsarevich and Grand Duke George Alexandrovich" (the oath to the latter, as heir to the throne, was taken earlier along with the oath to Nicholas) and read further: "From now on, until The Lord is not yet pleased to bless Us with the birth of a Son, the nearest right of succession to the All-Russian Throne, on the exact basis of the main State Law on Succession to the Throne, belongs to Our Most Beloved Brother, Our Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. The absence in the Manifesto of the words “Heir Tsesarevich” in the title of Mikhail Alexandrovich aroused bewilderment in court circles, which prompted the emperor to issue on July 7 of the same year the Nominal Supreme Decree, which commanded to call the latter “Sovereign Heir and Grand Duke”.

Economic policy

According to the first general census conducted in January 1897, the population of the Russian Empire amounted to 125 million people; of these, 84 million were native to Russian; literate among the population of Russia was 21%, among persons aged 10-19 years - 34%.

In January of the same year, a monetary reform was carried out, which established the gold standard for the ruble. The transition to the golden ruble, among other things, was the devaluation of the national currency: the imperials of the previous weight and standard now read “15 rubles” - instead of 10; nevertheless, the stabilization of the ruble at the rate of "two-thirds", contrary to forecasts, was successful and without shocks.

Much attention was paid to the labor issue. Free labor was introduced in factories with more than 100 workers. health care, covering 70 percent of the total number of factory workers (1898). In June 1903, the Rules on the Remuneration of Victims of Industrial Accidents were approved by the Highest, obliging the entrepreneur to pay benefits and pensions to the victim or his family in the amount of 50-66 percent of the victim's maintenance. In 1906, workers' trade unions were created in the country. The law of June 23, 1912 introduced compulsory insurance of workers against illness and accidents in Russia. On June 2, 1897, a law on the limitation of working hours was issued, which established the maximum working day limit of no more than 11.5 hours on ordinary days, and 10 hours on Saturdays and pre-holiday days, or if at least part of the working day fell at night.

A special tax on landowners of Polish origin in the Western Territory, imposed as a punishment for the Polish uprising of 1863, was abolished. By decree of June 12, 1900, exile to Siberia was abolished as a punishment.

The reign of Nicholas II was a period of relatively high rates of economic growth: in 1885-1913, the growth rate of agricultural production averaged 2%, and the growth rate of industrial production was 4.5-5% per year. Coal mining in the Donbass increased from 4.8 million tons in 1894 to 24 million tons in 1913. Coal mining began in the Kuznetsk coal basin. Oil production developed in the vicinity of Baku, Grozny and on Emba.

The construction of railways continued, the total length of which, which was 44 thousand km in 1898, by 1913 exceeded 70 thousand km. In terms of the total length of railways, Russia surpassed any other European country and was second only to the United States. In terms of output of the main types of industrial products per capita, Russia in 1913 was a neighbor of Spain.

Foreign policy and the Russo-Japanese War

The historian Oldenburg, being in exile, argued in his apologetic work that back in 1895 the emperor foresaw the possibility of a clash with Japan for dominance in the Far East, and therefore prepared for this fight - both diplomatically and militarily. From the resolution of the tsar on April 2, 1895, on the report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, his desire for the further expansion of Russia in the South-East (Korea) was clear.

On June 3, 1896, a Russian-Chinese treaty on a military alliance against Japan was concluded in Moscow; China agreed to the construction of a railway through Northern Manchuria to Vladivostok, the construction and operation of which was provided to the Russian-Chinese Bank. On September 8, 1896, a concession agreement was signed between the Chinese government and the Russian-Chinese Bank for the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER). On March 15 (27), 1898, Russia and China in Beijing signed the Russo-Chinese Convention of 1898, according to which the ports of Port Arthur (Lyushun) and Dalny (Dalian) with adjacent territories and water space were leased to Russia for 25 years; in addition, the Chinese government agreed to extend the concession granted by it to the CER Society for the construction of a railway line (South Manchurian Railway) from one of the CER points to Dalniy and Port Arthur.

In 1898, Nicholas II turned to the governments of Europe with proposals to sign agreements on the preservation of universal peace and the establishment of limits on the constant growth of armaments. In 1899 and 1907, the Hague Peace Conferences were held, some decisions of which are still valid today (in particular, the Permanent Court of Arbitration was created in The Hague).

In 1900, Nicholas II sent Russian troops to suppress the Ihetuan uprising together with the troops of other European powers, Japan and the United States.

The lease of the Liaodong Peninsula by Russia, the construction of the Chinese Eastern Railway and the establishment of a naval base in Port Arthur, the growing influence of Russia in Manchuria clashed with the aspirations of Japan, which also laid claim to Manchuria.

On January 24, 1904, the Japanese ambassador presented the Russian Foreign Minister V. N. Lamzdorf with a note announcing the termination of negotiations, which Japan considered "useless", the severance of diplomatic relations with Russia; Japan withdrew its diplomatic mission from St. Petersburg and reserved the right to resort to "independent actions" to protect its interests, as it deemed necessary. On the evening of January 26, the Japanese fleet attacked the Port Arthur squadron without declaring war. The highest manifesto, given by Nicholas II on January 27, 1904, declared war on Japan.

The border battle on the Yalu River was followed by battles near Liaoyang, on the Shahe River and near Sandepa. After major battle in February - March 1905, the Russian army left Mukden.

The outcome of the war was decided by the naval battle of Tsushima in May 1905, which ended in the complete defeat of the Russian fleet. On May 23, 1905, the emperor received, through the US ambassador in St. Petersburg, President T. Roosevelt's proposal for mediation to conclude peace. The difficult situation of the Russian government after the Russo-Japanese War prompted German diplomacy to make another attempt in July 1905 to tear Russia away from France and conclude a Russian-German alliance: Wilhelm II invited Nicholas II to meet in July 1905 in the Finnish skerries, near the island of Björke. Nikolai agreed, and at the meeting he signed the contract; returning to St. Petersburg, he abandoned it, since on August 23 (September 5), 1905, in Portsmouth, Russian representatives S. Yu. Witte and R. R. Rosen signed a peace treaty. Under the terms of the latter, Russia recognized Korea as a sphere of influence of Japan, ceded to Japan South Sakhalin and the rights to the Liaodong Peninsula with the cities of Port Arthur and Dalniy.

The American researcher of the era T. Dennett in 1925 stated: “Few people now believe that Japan was deprived of the fruits of the upcoming victories. The opposite opinion prevails. Many believe that Japan was already exhausted by the end of May, and that only the conclusion of peace saved her from collapse or complete defeat in a clash with Russia.

Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (the first in half a century) and the subsequent suppression of the Troubles of 1905-1907. (subsequently aggravated by the appearance at the court of Rasputin) led to a fall in the authority of the emperor in the ruling and intellectual circles.

The German journalist G. Ganz, who lived in St. Petersburg during the war, noted the defeatist position of a significant part of the nobility and intelligentsia in relation to the war: “The common secret prayer not only of liberals, but also of many moderate conservatives at that time was:“ God help us to be defeated. ".

Revolution of 1905-1907

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Nicholas II made some concessions to liberal circles: after the assassination of the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. On December 12, 1904, the Supreme Decree was given to the Senate “On the plans for the improvement of the State order”, promising the expansion of the rights of zemstvos, insurance of workers, the emancipation of foreigners and non-believers, and the elimination of censorship. When discussing the text of the Decree of December 12, 1904, he, however, privately said to Count Witte (according to the latter’s memoirs): “I will never, in any case, agree to a representative form of government, because I consider it harmful to the people entrusted to me by God. »

On January 6, 1905 (the feast of Epiphany), during the blessing of water on the Jordan (on the ice of the Neva), in front of the Winter Palace, in the presence of the emperor and members of his family, at the very beginning of the singing of the troparion, a gunshot rang out, in which accidentally (according to the official version ) there was a charge of buckshot after the exercises on January 4. Most of the bullets hit the ice next to the royal pavilion and into the facade of the palace, in 4 windows of which glass was broken. In connection with the incident, the editor of the synodal publication wrote that “it is impossible not to see something special” in the fact that only one policeman named “Romanov” was mortally wounded and the flagpole of the “nursery of our ill-fated fleet” was shot through - the banner of the naval corps .

On January 9 (old style), 1905, in St. Petersburg, on the initiative of priest Georgy Gapon, a procession of workers to the Winter Palace took place. The workers went to the tsar with a petition containing socio-economic, as well as some political, demands. The procession was dispersed by the troops, there were casualties. The events of that day in St. Petersburg entered Russian historiography as "Bloody Sunday", the victims of which, according to V. Nevsky, were no more than 100-200 people (according to updated government data on January 10, 1905, 96 died in the riots and were injured 333 people, which includes some law enforcement officers). On February 4, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who professed extreme right-wing political views and had a certain influence on his nephew, was killed by a terrorist bomb in the Moscow Kremlin.

On April 17, 1905, a decree “On strengthening the principles of religious tolerance” was issued, which abolished a number of religious restrictions, in particular with regard to “schismatics” (Old Believers).

Strikes continued in the country; unrest began on the outskirts of the empire: in Courland, the Forest Brothers began to massacre local German landlords, and the Armenian-Tatar massacre began in the Caucasus. Revolutionaries and separatists received support in money and weapons from England and Japan. So, in the summer of 1905, the English steamer John Grafton, which had run aground, carrying several thousand rifles for Finnish separatists and revolutionary militants, was detained in the Baltic Sea. There were several uprisings in the fleet and in various cities. The largest was the December uprising in Moscow. At the same time, the Socialist-Revolutionary and anarchist individual terror gained a large scope. In just a couple of years, thousands of officials, officers and policemen were killed by revolutionaries - in 1906 alone, 768 were killed and 820 representatives and agents of power were wounded. The second half of 1905 was marked by numerous unrest in universities and theological seminaries: due to the riots, almost 50 secondary theological educational institutions were closed. The adoption on August 27 of a temporary law on the autonomy of universities caused a general strike of students and stirred up teachers at universities and theological academies. The opposition parties took advantage of the expansion of freedoms to intensify attacks on the autocracy in the press.

On August 6, 1905, a manifesto was signed on the establishment of the State Duma (“as a legislative institution, which is provided with preliminary development and discussion of legislative proposals and consideration of the schedule of state revenues and expenditures” - the Bulygin Duma), the law on the State Duma and the regulation on elections to the Duma. But the revolution, which was gaining strength, stepped over the acts of August 6: in October, an all-Russian political strike began, more than 2 million people went on strike. On the evening of October 17, Nikolai, after psychologically difficult hesitation, decided to sign a manifesto, commanding, among other things: “1. To grant the population the unshakable foundations of civil freedom on the basis of real inviolability of the individual, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association. 3. Establish as an unshakable rule that no law can accept force without approval State Duma and that those elected from the people should be provided with the possibility of real participation in the supervision of the regularity of the actions of the authorities appointed by us.” On April 23, 1906, the Basic State Laws of the Russian Empire were approved, providing for a new role for the Duma in the legislative process. From the point of view of the liberal public, the Manifesto marked the end of the Russian autocracy as the unlimited power of the monarch.

Three weeks after the manifesto, political prisoners were pardoned, except for those convicted of terrorism; the decree of November 24, 1905 abolished preliminary general and spiritual censorship for time-based (periodical) publications published in the cities of the empire (all censorship was abolished on April 26, 1906).

After the publication of the manifestos, the strikes subsided; the armed forces (except for the fleet, where unrest took place) remained faithful to the oath; an extreme right-wing monarchist public organization, the Union of the Russian People, arose and was secretly supported by Nicholas.

During the revolution, in 1906, Konstantin Balmont wrote the poem "Our Tsar", dedicated to Nicholas II, which turned out to be prophetic:

Our King is Mukden, our King is Tsushima,
Our King is a blood stain,
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark. Our Tsar is blind squalor,
Prison and whip, jurisdiction, execution,
Tsar hangman, the low twice,
What he promised, but did not dare to give. He's a coward, he feels stuttering
But it will be, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will finish - standing on the scaffold.

Decade between two revolutions

Milestones of domestic and foreign policy

On August 18 (31), 1907, an agreement was signed with Great Britain on the delimitation of spheres of influence in China, Afghanistan and Persia, which on the whole completed the process of forming an alliance of 3 powers - the Triple Entente, known as the Entente ( Triple Entente); however, mutual military obligations at that time existed only between Russia and France - under the agreement of 1891 and the military convention of 1892. On May 27 - 28, 1908 (O.S.), the meeting of the British King Edward VIII with the king took place on the roadstead in the harbor of Reval; The Tsar received from the King the uniform of an Admiral of the British Navy. The Revel meeting of the monarchs was interpreted in Berlin as a step towards the formation of an anti-German coalition - despite the fact that Nicholas was a staunch opponent of rapprochement with England against Germany. The agreement (Potsdam Agreement) concluded between Russia and Germany on August 6 (19), 1911 did not change the general vector of Russia's and Germany's involvement in opposing military-political alliances.

On June 17, 1910, the law on the procedure for issuing laws relating to the Principality of Finland, approved by the State Council and the State Duma, was approved by the Highest, known as the law on the procedure for general imperial legislation (see Russification of Finland).

The Russian contingent, which had been in Persia since 1909 due to the unstable political situation, was reinforced in 1911.

In 1912, Mongolia became a de facto protectorate of Russia, having gained independence from China as a result of the revolution that took place there. After this revolution in 1912-1913, the Tuvan noyons (ambyn-noyon Kombu-Dorzhu, Chamzy Khamby-lama, noyon of Daa-khoshun Buyan-Badyrgy and others) several times appealed to the tsarist government with a request to accept Tuva under the protectorate of the Russian Empire. On April 4 (17), 1914, by a resolution on the report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, a Russian protectorate was established over the Uryankhai region: the region was included in the Yenisei province with the transfer of political and diplomatic affairs in Tuva to the Irkutsk Governor-General.

The beginning of military operations of the Balkan Union against Turkey in the autumn of 1912 marked the collapse of the diplomatic efforts undertaken after the Bosnian crisis by the Minister of Foreign Affairs S. D. Sazonov in the direction of an alliance with the Port and at the same time keeping the Balkan states under their control: contrary to the expectations of the Russian government, the troops of the latter successfully pushed Turks and in November 1912 the Bulgarian army was 45 km from the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (see Chataldzha battle). After the actual transfer of the Turkish army under the German command (German General Liman von Sanders at the end of 1913 took over as chief inspector of the Turkish army), the question of the inevitability of war with Germany was raised in Sazonov's note to the emperor dated December 23, 1913; Sazonov's note was also discussed at a meeting of the Council of Ministers.

In 1913, a wide celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty took place: the imperial family made a trip to Moscow, from there to Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, and then along the Volga to Kostroma, where on March 14, 1613, the first tsar from the Romanovs was called to the kingdom - Mikhail Fedorovich; in January 1914, a solemn consecration of the Fedorovsky Cathedral in St. Petersburg, erected to commemorate the anniversary of the dynasty, took place.

Nicholas II and the Duma

The first two State Dumas were unable to conduct regular legislative work: the contradictions between the deputies, on the one hand, and the emperor, on the other, were insurmountable. So, immediately after the opening, in a response to the throne speech of Nicholas II, the left Duma members demanded the liquidation of the State Council (the upper house of parliament), the transfer of monastery and state lands to the peasants. On May 19, 1906, 104 deputies of the Labor Group put forward a draft land reform (draft 104), the content of which was reduced to the confiscation of landed estates and the nationalization of all land.

The Duma of the first convocation was dissolved by the Emperor by a Personal Decree to the Senate of July 8 (21), 1906 (published on Sunday, July 9), which set the time for the convocation of the newly elected Duma on February 20, 1907; the subsequent Supreme Manifesto of July 9 explained the reasons, among which were: “Electives from the population, instead of working to build a legislative one, deviated into an area that did not belong to them and turned to investigating the actions of local authorities appointed by Us, to pointing out to Us the imperfections of the Basic Laws, changes of which can be undertaken only by Our Monarch's will, and to actions that are clearly illegal, as an appeal on behalf of the Duma to the population. By decree of July 10 of the same year, the sessions of the State Council were suspended.

Simultaneously with the dissolution of the Duma, instead of I. L. Goremykin, P. A. Stolypin was appointed to the post of chairman of the Council of Ministers. Stolypin's agrarian policy, the successful suppression of unrest, and his bright speeches in the Second Duma made him the idol of some of the right.

The second Duma turned out to be even more leftist than the first, since the Social Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who boycotted the first Duma, participated in the elections. The idea was ripening in the government to dissolve the Duma and change the electoral law; Stolypin was not going to destroy the Duma, but to change the composition of the Duma. The reason for the dissolution was the actions of the Social Democrats: on May 5, the police discovered a meeting of 35 Social Democrats and about 30 soldiers of the St. Petersburg garrison in the apartment of a Duma member from the RSDLP Ozol; in addition, the police found various propaganda materials calling for the violent overthrow of the state system, various orders from soldiers of military units and false passports. On June 1, Stolypin and the chairman of the St. Petersburg Court of Justice demanded from the Duma that the entire composition of the Social Democratic faction be removed from Duma meetings and that the immunity of 16 members of the RSDLP be lifted. The Duma did not agree to the government's demand; The result of the confrontation was the manifesto of Nicholas II on the dissolution of the Second Duma, published on June 3, 1907, along with the Regulations on elections to the Duma, that is, the new electoral law. The manifesto also indicated the date for the opening of the new Duma - November 1 of the same year. The act of June 3, 1907 in Soviet historiography was called a "coup d'etat", as it conflicted with the manifesto of October 17, 1905, according to which no new law could be adopted without the approval of the State Duma.

According to General A. A. Mosolov, Nicholas II looked at the members of the Duma not as representatives of the people, but as “just intellectuals” and added that his attitude towards the peasant delegations was completely different: “The Tsar met with them willingly and talked for a long time , without fatigue, joyfully and affably.

Land reform

From 1902 to 1905, the development of new agrarian legislation at the state level was carried out by statesmen, and Russian scientists: Vl. I. Gurko, S. Yu. Witte, I. L. Goremykin, A. V. Krivoshein, P. A. Stolypin, P. P. Migulin, N. N. Kutler, and A. A. Kaufman. The question of the abolition of the community was raised by life itself. At the height of the revolution, N. N. Kutler even proposed a project for the alienation of part of the landowners' lands. From January 1, 1907, the law on the free exit of peasants from the community (Stolypin agrarian reform) began to be practically applied. Giving peasants the right to freely dispose of their land and the abolition of communities was of great national importance, but the reform was not completed, and could not be completed, the peasant did not become the owner of land throughout the country, the peasants left the community en masse and returned back. And Stolypin sought to allocate land to some peasants at the expense of others and, above all, to preserve landownership, which blocked the way to free farming. It was only a partial solution to the problem.

In 1913, Russia (excluding the Vistula provinces) was in first place in the world in the production of rye, barley and oats, third (after Canada and the USA) in wheat production, fourth (after France, Germany and Austria-Hungary) in the production of potatoes. Russia became the main exporter of agricultural products, accounting for 2/5 of the total world export of agricultural products. Grain yield was 3 times lower than English or German, potato yield was 2 times lower.

Military administration reform

The military transformations of 1905-1912 were carried out after the defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which revealed serious shortcomings in the central administration, organization, recruitment system, combat training and technical equipment of the army.

In the first period of military reforms (1905-1908), the highest military administration was decentralized (the Main Directorate of the General Staff was established independent of the Military Ministry, the Council of State Defense was created, the inspector generals were directly subordinate to the emperor), the terms of active service were reduced (in the infantry and field artillery from 5 to 3 years, in other branches of the military from 5 to 4 years, in the Navy from 7 to 5 years), the officer corps has been rejuvenated; the life of soldiers and sailors (food and clothing allowance) and the financial situation of officers and conscripts have been improved.

In the second period of the Military Reforms (1909-1912), the centralization of the higher administration was carried out (the Main Directorate of the General Staff was included in the Military Ministry, the Council of State Defense was abolished, inspector generals were subordinate to the Minister of War); at the expense of the militarily weak reserve and fortress troops, the field troops were strengthened (the number of army corps increased from 31 to 37), a reserve was created at the field units, which, during mobilization, was allocated for the deployment of secondary ones (including field artillery, engineering and railway troops, communications units) , machine-gun teams were created in the regiments and corps squadrons, cadet schools were transformed into military schools that received new programs, new charters and instructions were introduced. In 1910, the Imperial Air Force was created.

World War I

On July 19 (August 1), 1914, Germany declared war on Russia: Russia entered the world war, which ended for her with the collapse of the empire and dynasty.

On July 20, 1914, the emperor issued and by the evening of the same day published the War Manifesto, as well as the Nominal Supreme Decree, in which he, “not recognizing it possible, for reasons of a national nature, now become the head of Our land and sea forces intended for hostilities", commanded the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich to be the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.

By decrees of July 24, 1914, classes of the State Council and the Duma were interrupted from July 26. On July 26, a manifesto was issued on the war with Austria. On the same day, the Highest Reception of the members of the State Council and the Duma took place: the emperor arrived at the Winter Palace on a yacht together with Nikolai Nikolayevich and, entering the Nikolaevsky Hall, addressed the audience with the following words: “Germany, and then Austria declared war on Russia. That huge upsurge of patriotic feelings of love for the Motherland and devotion to the Throne, which, like a hurricane, swept through all of Our land, serves in My eyes and, I think, in yours as a guarantee that Our great Mother Russia will bring the war sent by the Lord God to the desired end. I am sure that all of you and everyone in their place will help Me endure the test sent down to Me and that everyone, starting with Me, will fulfill their duty to the end. Great is the God of the Russian Land! In conclusion of his response speech, the Chairman of the Duma, Chamberlain M. V. Rodzianko, said: “Without a difference of opinions, views and convictions, the State Duma, on behalf of the Russian Land, calmly and firmly says to its Tsar: “Go for it, Sovereign, the Russian people are with you and, firmly trusting by the grace of God, will not stop at any sacrifice until the enemy is defeated and the dignity of the Motherland is protected.“”

By a manifesto of October 20 (November 2), 1914, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire: “In the hitherto unsuccessful struggle with Russia, trying by all means to increase their forces, Germany and Austria-Hungary resorted to the help of the Ottoman government and involved Turkey, blinded by them, into the war with us. . The Turkish fleet led by the Germans dared to treacherously attack Our Black Sea coast. Immediately after this, We ordered the Russian ambassador in Tsaregrad, with all the ranks of the embassy and consular, to leave the borders of Turkey. Together with the entire Russian people, we firmly believe that the current reckless intervention of Turkey in hostilities will only hasten the fateful course of events for her and open the way for Russia to resolve the problems bequeathed to her by her ancestors. historical tasks on the shores of the Black Sea. The government press organ reported that on October 21, “the day of the Ascension to the Throne of the Sovereign Emperor took in Tiflis, in connection with the war with Turkey, the nature of a national holiday”; on the same day, the deputation of 100 prominent Armenians, headed by the bishop, was received by the Viceroy: the deputation “asked the count to cast down at the feet of the Great Russia feelings of boundless devotion and ardent love of the loyal Armenian people”; then a deputation of Sunni and Shia Muslims introduced themselves.

During the period of command of Nikolai Nikolaevich, the tsar went to Headquarters several times for meetings with the command (September 21 - 23, October 22 - 24, November 18 - 20); in November 1914 he also traveled to the south of Russia and the Caucasian front.

At the beginning of June 1915, the situation on the fronts deteriorated sharply: Przemysl, a fortified city, was surrendered, captured in March with huge losses. Lvov was abandoned at the end of June. All military acquisitions were lost, the loss of the Russian Empire's own territory began. In July, Warsaw, all of Poland and part of Lithuania were surrendered; the enemy continued to advance. There was talk in society about the inability of the government to cope with the situation.

Both on the part of public organizations, the State Duma, and on the part of other groups, even many grand dukes, they started talking about creating a "ministry of public trust."

At the beginning of 1915, the troops at the front began to experience a great need for weapons and ammunition. The need for a complete restructuring of the economy in accordance with the requirements of the war became clear. On August 17, Nicholas II approved the documents on the formation of four special meetings: on defense, fuel, food and transportation. These meetings, which consisted of representatives of the government, private industrialists, the State Duma and the State Council and were headed by the relevant ministers, were supposed to unite the efforts of the government, private industry and the public in mobilizing industry for military needs. The most important of these was the Special Defense Conference.

Along with the creation of special conferences, military-industrial committees began to emerge in 1915 - public organizations of the bourgeoisie, which bore a semi-oppositional character.

On August 23, 1915, motivating his decision by the need to establish agreement between the Headquarters and the government, to put an end to the separation of the power at the head of the army from the power that controls the country, Nicholas II assumed the title of Supreme Commander, dismissing from this post the Grand Duke, popular in the army Nikolai Nikolaevich. According to a member of the State Council (monarchist by conviction) Vladimir Gurko, the emperor's decision was made at the instigation of Rasputin's "gang" and disapproved of the overwhelming majority of members of the Council of Ministers, the generals and the public.

Due to the constant relocations of Nicholas II from Headquarters to Petrograd, as well as insufficient attention to the issues of leadership of the troops, the actual command of the Russian army was concentrated in the hands of his chief of staff, General M.V. Alekseev, and General Vasily Gurko, who replaced him in late 1916 - early 1917. The autumn draft of 1916 put 13 million people under arms, and the losses in the war exceeded 2 million.

In 1916, Nicholas II replaced four chairmen of the Council of Ministers (I. L. Goremykin, B. V. Shturmer, A. F. Trepov and Prince N. D. Golitsyn), four ministers of internal affairs (A. N. Khvostov, B. V. Shtyurmer, A. A. Khvostov and A. D. Protopopov), three Ministers of Foreign Affairs (S. D. Sazonov, B. V. Shtyurmer and N. N. Pokrovsky), two Ministers of War (A. A. Polivanov, D.S. Shuvaev) and three Ministers of Justice (A.A. Khvostov, A.A. Makarov and N.A. Dobrovolsky).

On January 19 (February 1), 1917, a meeting of high-ranking representatives of the Allied Powers opened in Petrograd, which went down in history as the Petrograd Conference ( q.v.): from the allies of Russia, it was attended by delegates from Great Britain, France and Italy, who also visited Moscow and the front, had meetings with politicians of different political orientations, with leaders of the Duma factions; the latter unanimously spoke to the head of the British delegation about the imminent revolution - either from below or from above (in the form of a palace coup).

Acceptance by Nicholas II of the Supreme Command of the Russian Army

Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich's overestimation of his abilities resulted in a number of major military mistakes, and attempts to deflect the relevant accusations from himself led to the inflating of Germanophobia and spy mania. One of these most significant episodes was the execution of the innocent case of Lieutenant Colonel Myasoedov, where Nikolai Nikolaevich played first violin along with A. I. Guchkov. The front commander, due to the disagreement of the judges, did not approve the verdict, but Myasoedov’s fate was decided by the resolution of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich: “Hang anyway!” This case, in which the Grand Duke played the first role, led to an increase in the clearly oriented suspicion of society and played its role, including in the May 1915 German pogrom in Moscow. The military historian A. A. Kersnovsky states that by the summer of 1915 “a military catastrophe was approaching Russia”, and it was this threat that became the main reason for the Highest decision to remove the Grand Duke from the post of Commander-in-Chief.

General M. V. Alekseev, who arrived at Headquarters in September 1914, was also “struck by the turmoil reigning there, confusion and despondency. Both, Nikolai Nikolayevich and Yanushkevich, were confused by the failures of the North-Western Front and do not know what to do.

Failures at the front continued: on July 22, Warsaw and Kovno were surrendered, the fortifications of Brest were blown up, the Germans were approaching the Western Dvina, and the evacuation of Riga was begun. In such conditions, Nicholas II decided to remove the Grand Duke who could not cope and himself to stand at the head of the Russian army. According to the military historian A. A. Kersnovsky, such a decision of the emperor was the only way out:

On August 23, 1915, Nicholas II assumed the title of Supreme Commander-in-Chief, replacing Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, who was appointed commander of the Caucasian Front. M. V. Alekseev was appointed chief of staff of the headquarters of the Supreme Commander. Soon, the state of General Alekseev changed dramatically: the general cheered up, his anxiety and complete confusion disappeared. The general on duty at Headquarters, P.K. Kondzerovsky, even thought that good news had come from the front, which made the chief of staff cheer up, but the reason was different: the new Supreme Commander-in-Chief received a report from Alekseev on the situation at the front and gave him certain instructions; a telegram was sent to the front that "now not a step back." The breakthrough of Vilna-Molodechno was ordered to be liquidated by the troops of General Evert. Alekseev was busy carrying out the order of the Sovereign:

Meanwhile, Nikolai's decision caused a mixed reaction, given that all the ministers opposed this step and in favor of which only his wife unconditionally spoke. Minister A. V. Krivoshein said:

The soldiers of the Russian army met the decision of Nicholas to take the post of Supreme Commander without enthusiasm. At the same time, the German command was satisfied with the departure of Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich from the post of supreme commander in chief - they considered him a tough and skillful opponent. A number of his strategic ideas were praised by Erich Ludendorff as eminently bold and brilliant.

The result of this decision of Nicholas II was colossal. During the Sventsyansky breakthrough on September 8 - October 2, the German troops were defeated, and their offensive was stopped. The parties switched to a positional war: the brilliant Russian counterattacks that followed in the Vilna-Molodechno region and the events that followed made it possible, after a successful September operation, no longer fearing an enemy offensive, to prepare for a new stage of the war. All over Russia, work was in full swing on the formation and training of new troops. The industry at an accelerated pace produced ammunition and military equipment. Such work became possible due to the emerging confidence that the enemy's offensive was stopped. By the spring of 1917, new armies had been raised, better supplied with equipment and ammunition than at any time before in the entire war.

The autumn draft of 1916 put 13 million people under arms, and the losses in the war exceeded 2 million.

In 1916, Nicholas II replaced four chairmen of the Council of Ministers (I. L. Goremykin, B. V. Shtyurmer, A. F. Trepov and Prince N. D. Golitsyn), four ministers of the interior (A. N. Khvostov, B. V. Shtyurmer, A. A. Khvostov and A. D. Protopopov), three Ministers of Foreign Affairs (S. D. Sazonov, B. V. Shtyurmer and N. N. Pokrovsky), two Ministers of War (A. A. Polivanov, D.S. Shuvaev) and three Ministers of Justice (A.A. Khvostov, A.A. Makarov and N.A. Dobrovolsky).

By January 1, 1917, there were changes in the State Council. Nicholas expelled 17 members and appointed new ones.

On January 19 (February 1), 1917, a meeting of high-ranking representatives of the allied powers opened in Petrograd, which went down in history as the Petrograd Conference (q.v.): from the allies of Russia, it was attended by delegates from Great Britain, France and Italy, who also visited Moscow and the front, had meetings with politicians of different political orientations, with the leaders of the Duma factions; the latter unanimously spoke to the head of the British delegation about the imminent revolution - either from below or from above (in the form of a palace coup).

Probing the world

Nicholas II, hoping for an improvement in the situation in the country in the event of the success of the spring offensive of 1917 (which was agreed upon at the Petrograd Conference), conclude separate peace he did not intend to deal with the enemy - he saw the most important means of strengthening the throne in the victorious end of the war. Hints that Russia might start negotiations for a separate peace were a diplomatic game that forced the Entente to recognize the need for Russian control over the Straits.

Fall of the monarchy

The rise of revolutionary sentiment

The war, during which there was a broad mobilization of the able-bodied male population, horses and a massive requisition of livestock and agricultural products, had a detrimental effect on the economy, especially in the countryside. In the environment of the politicized Petrograd society, the authorities turned out to be discredited by scandals (in particular, those related to the influence of G. E. Rasputin and his proteges - “dark forces”) and suspicions of treason; Nicholas' declarative adherence to the idea of ​​"autocratic" power came into sharp conflict with the liberal and leftist aspirations of a significant part of the Duma members and society.

General A. I. Denikin testified about the mood in the army after the revolution: “As for the attitude to the throne, then, as a general phenomenon, in the officer corps there was a desire to distinguish the person of the sovereign from the court filth that surrounded him, from the political mistakes and crimes of the royal government, which clearly and steadily led to the destruction of the country and the defeat of the army. They forgave the sovereign, they tried to justify him. As we will see below, by 1917 even this attitude in a certain part of the officer corps had shaken, causing the phenomenon that Prince Volkonsky called the "revolution from the right", but already on purely political grounds.

Since December 1916, a "coup" in one form or another was expected in the court and political environment, the possible abdication of the emperor in favor of Tsarevich Alexei under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.

On February 23, 1917, a strike began in Petrograd; after 3 days it became universal. On the morning of February 27, 1917, the soldiers of the Petrograd garrison rebelled and joined the strikers; Only the police counteracted the rebellion and unrest. A similar uprising took place in Moscow. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, not realizing the seriousness of what was happening, wrote to her husband on February 25: “This is a“ hooligan ”movement, young men and girls run around screaming that they have no bread, and the workers do not let others work. It would be very cold, they would probably stay at home. But all this will pass and calm down if only the Duma behaves decently.

On February 25, 1917, by decree of Nicholas II, the meetings of the State Duma were terminated from February 26 to April of the same year, which further aggravated the situation. Chairman of the State Duma M. V. Rodzianko sent a number of telegrams to the emperor about the events in Petrograd. Telegram received at Headquarters on February 26, 1917 at 22:40: “I most humbly inform Your Majesty that the popular unrest that began in Petrograd is taking on a spontaneous character and menacing proportions. Their foundations are the lack of baked bread and the weak supply of flour, inspiring panic, but mainly complete distrust of the authorities, unable to lead the country out of a difficult situation. In a telegram on February 27, 1917, he reported: “The civil war has begun and is flaring up. Command the cancellation of your Highest Decree to convene legislative chambers again. If the movement is transferred to the army, the collapse of Russia, and with it the dynasty, is inevitable.

The Duma, which then had high authority in a revolutionary-minded environment, did not obey the decree of February 25 and continued to work in the so-called private meetings of members of the State Duma, convened on the evening of February 27 by the Provisional Committee of the State Duma. The latter assumed the role of a body of supreme power immediately after its formation.

Renunciation

On the evening of February 25, 1917, Nikolai ordered General S.S. Khabalov by telegram to stop the unrest by military force. Having sent General N.I. Ivanov to Petrograd on February 27 to suppress the uprising, Nicholas II departed for Tsarskoye Selo on the evening of February 28, but could not get through and, having lost contact with Headquarters, arrived in Pskov on March 1, where the headquarters of the armies of the Northern Front of General N V. Ruzsky. At about 3 pm on March 2, he decided to abdicate in favor of his son under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, in the evening of the same day he announced to the arrivals A. I. Guchkov and V. V. Shulgin about the decision to abdicate for his son.

On March 2 (15) at 11:40 p.m. (in the document, the time of signing was indicated as 3 p.m.), Nikolai handed over to Guchkov and Shulgin the Manifesto of renunciation, which, in particular, read: representatives of the people in legislative institutions, on the basis that they will establish, taking an inviolable oath to that. ".

Some researchers question the authenticity of the manifesto (renunciation).

Guchkov and Shulgin also demanded that Nicholas II sign two decrees: on the appointment of Prince G. E. Lvov as head of government and Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich as supreme commander; the former emperor signed decrees, indicating in them the time of 14 hours.

General A.I. Denikin stated in his memoirs that on March 3, in Mogilev, Nikolai told General Alekseev:

On March 4, a moderately right-wing Moscow newspaper reported the words of the emperor to Tuchkov and Shulgin in this way: “I thought it all over,” he said, “and decided to abdicate. But I renounce not in favor of my son, since I must leave Russia, since I leave the Supreme Power. To leave my son, whom I love very much, in Russia, to leave him in complete obscurity, I in no way consider it possible. That is why I decided to transfer the throne to my brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.”

Link and execution

From March 9 to August 14, 1917, Nikolai Romanov and his family lived under arrest in the Alexander Palace of Tsarskoye Selo.

At the end of March, the Minister of the Provisional Government, P. N. Milyukov, tried to send Nicholas and his family to England, in the care of George V, to which the preliminary consent of the British side was obtained; but in April, due to the unstable internal political situation in England itself, the King chose to abandon such a plan - according to some evidence, against the advice of Prime Minister Lloyd George. However, in 2006, some documents became known that, until May 1918, the MI 1 unit of the British military intelligence agency carried out preparations for the operation to rescue the Romanovs, which was never brought to the stage of practical implementation.

In view of the strengthening of the revolutionary movement and anarchy in Petrograd, the Provisional Government, fearing for the lives of the prisoners, decided to transfer them deep into Russia, to Tobolsk; they were allowed to take the necessary furniture, personal belongings from the palace, and also to invite the attendants, if they wish, to voluntarily accompany them to the place of new accommodation and further service. On the eve of his departure, the head of the Provisional Government A.F. Kerensky arrived and brought with him the brother of the former emperor, Mikhail Alexandrovich (Mikhail Alexandrovich was exiled to Perm, where on the night of June 13, 1918 he was killed by local Bolshevik authorities).

On August 14, 1917, at 6:10 a.m., a train with members of the imperial family and servants under the sign "Japanese Mission of the Red Cross" set off from Tsarskoye Selo. On August 17, the train arrived in Tyumen, then the arrested were transported by river to Tobolsk. The Romanov family settled in the governor's house specially renovated for their arrival. The family was allowed to walk across the street and the boulevard to worship at the Church of the Annunciation. The security regime here was much lighter than in Tsarskoye Selo. The family led a calm, measured life.

In early April 1918, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) authorized the transfer of the Romanovs to Moscow for the purpose of holding a trial against them. At the end of April 1918, the prisoners were transferred to Yekaterinburg, where a house belonging to mining engineer N.N. was requisitioned to house the Romanovs. Ipatiev. Here, five people of the attendants lived with them: the doctor Botkin, the lackey Trupp, the room girl Demidova, the cook Kharitonov and the cook Sednev.

In early July 1918, the Ural military commissar F.I. Goloshchekin went to Moscow to receive instructions on the further fate of the royal family, which was decided on highest level the Bolshevik leadership (except V.I. Lenin, Ya. M. Sverdlov took an active part in deciding the fate of the former tsar).

On July 12, 1918, the Ural Soviet of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies, in the conditions of the retreat of the Bolsheviks under the onslaught of the White troops and members of the Constituent Assembly of the Czechoslovak Corps loyal to the Committee, adopted a resolution on the execution of the entire family. Nikolai Romanov, Alexandra Fedorovna, their children, Dr. Botkin and three servants (except for the cook Sednev) were shot in the "House of Special Purpose" - the Ipatiev mansion in Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Senior investigator for especially important cases of the General of the Prosecutor's Office of Russia Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation of the criminal case into the death of the royal family, came to the conclusion that Lenin and Sverdlov were against the execution of the royal family, and the execution itself was organized by the Ural Council, where the Left SRs had great influence, in order to disrupt the Brest peace between Soviet Russia and Kaiser Germany. The Germans after the February Revolution, despite the war with Russia, were worried about the fate of the Russian imperial family, because the wife of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, was German, and their daughters were both Russian princesses and German princesses.

Religiosity and a view of their power. Church politics

Former member of the Holy Synod in the pre-revolutionary years, Protopresbyter Georgy Shavelsky (he was in close contact with the emperor at Headquarters during the World War), while in exile, testified to the “humble, simple and direct” religiosity of the tsar, to his rigorous attendance of Sunday and holiday services, about “ generous outpouring of many good deeds for the Church. V. P. Obninsky, an opposition politician of the early 20th century, also wrote about his "sincere piety, manifested at every worship service." General A. A. Mosolov noted: “The Tsar thoughtfully treated his rank of God's anointed. One should have seen with what attention he considered requests for pardon for those sentenced to death. He took from his father, whom he revered and whom he tried to imitate even in everyday trifles, an unshakable faith in the fatefulness of his power. His calling came from God. He was responsible for his actions only before his conscience and the Almighty. The king answered to his conscience and was guided by intuition, instinct, that incomprehensible one, which is now called the subconscious. He bowed only before the elemental, irrational, and sometimes contrary to reason, before the weightless, before his ever-growing mysticism.

Former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Gurko in his émigré essay (1927) emphasized: “Nicholas II's idea of ​​the limits of the power of the Russian autocrat was at all times wrong. Seeing in himself, first of all, God's anointed one, he considered every decision he made to be lawful and essentially correct. “It is my will,” was the phrase that repeatedly flew from his lips and, in his opinion, was supposed to stop all objections to the assumption he had made. Regis voluntas suprema lex esto - this is the formula with which he was penetrated through and through. It was not a belief, it was a religion. Ignoring the law, not recognizing either existing rules or ingrained customs was one of the distinguishing features of the last Russian autocrat. According to Gurko, this view of the nature and nature of his power also determined the degree of the emperor’s goodwill towards his closest employees: “He disagreed with the ministers not on the basis of disagreements in understanding the procedure for managing this or that branch of the state system, but only because any department showed excessive goodwill towards the public, and especially if he did not want and could not recognize the royal power in all cases as unlimited. In most cases, the disagreement between the Tsar and his ministers boiled down to the fact that the ministers defended the rule of law, and the Tsar insisted on his omnipotence. As a result, only such ministers as N.A. Maklakov or Stürmer, who agreed to the violation of any laws to preserve ministerial portfolios, remained in the Sovereign's favor.

The beginning of the 20th century in the life of the Russian Church, of which he was the secular head according to the laws of the Russian Empire, was marked by a movement for reforms in church administration, a significant part of the episcopate and some laity advocated the convening of an all-Russian local council and the possible restoration of the patriarchate in Russia; in 1905 there were attempts to restore the autocephaly of the Georgian Church (then the Georgian Exarchate of the Russian Holy Synod).

Nicholas, in principle, agreed with the idea of ​​the Cathedral; but he considered it untimely and in January 1906 he established the Pre-Council Presence, and by the Highest Command of February 28, 1912 - "at the Holy Synod, a permanent pre-Council meeting, until the convocation of the Council."

On March 1, 1916, he ordered that “for the future, the reports of the Ober-Procurator to His Imperial Majesty on matters relating to the internal structure of church life and the essence of church administration should be made in the presence of the leading member of the Holy Synod, for the purpose of their comprehensive canonical coverage,” which was welcomed in the conservative press as "a great act of royal trust"

In his reign was accomplished unprecedented (for the synodal period) big number canonizations of new saints, and he insisted on the canonization of the most famous - Seraphim of Sarov (1903) despite the unwillingness of the chief prosecutor of the Synod Pobedonostsev; were also glorified: Theodosius of Chernigov (1896), Isidor Yuryevsky (1898), Anna Kashinskaya (1909), Euphrosyne of Polotsk (1910), Euphrosyn of Sinozersky (1911), Iosaf of Belgorod (1911), Patriarch Hermogenes (1913), Pitirim Tambov (1914) ), John of Tobolsk (1916).

As Grigory Rasputin (who acted through the empress and hierarchs loyal to him) intensified in synodal affairs in the 1910s, dissatisfaction with the entire synodal system grew among a significant part of the clergy, who, for the most part, reacted positively to the fall of the monarchy in March 1917.

Lifestyle, habits, hobbies

Most of the time, Nicholas II lived with his family in the Alexander Palace (Tsarskoye Selo) or Peterhof. In the summer, he rested in the Crimea in the Livadia Palace. For recreation, he also annually made two-week trips around the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea on the Shtandart yacht. He read both light entertainment literature and serious scientific works, often on historical topics; Russian and foreign newspapers and magazines. Smoked cigarettes.

He was fond of photography, he also liked to watch movies; all his children also took pictures. In the 1900s, he became interested in a then new type of transport - cars ("the king had one of the most extensive car parks in Europe").

The official government press organ in 1913, in an essay on the domestic and family side of the emperor's life, wrote, in particular: “The sovereign does not like the so-called secular pleasures. His favorite entertainment is the hereditary passion of the Russian Tsars - hunting. It is arranged both in the permanent places of the Tsar's stay, and in special places adapted for this - in Spala, near Skiernevitsy, in Belovezhye.

At the age of 9 he began to keep a diary. The archive contains 50 voluminous notebooks - the original diary for 1882-1918; some of them have been published.

Family. Spouse's political influence

The first conscious meeting of Tsarevich Nicholas with his future wife took place in January 1889 (the second visit of Princess Alice to Russia), when a mutual attraction arose. In the same year, Nikolai asked his father for permission to marry her, but was refused. In August 1890, during Alice's 3rd visit, Nikolai's parents did not allow him to see her; A letter in the same year to Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna from the English Queen Victoria, in which the grandmother of a potential bride probed the prospects for a marriage, also had a negative result. However, due to the deteriorating health of Alexander III and the perseverance of the Tsesarevich, on April 8 (O.S.) 1894 in Coburg at the wedding of the Duke of Hesse Ernst-Ludwig (brother of Alice) and Princess Victoria-Melita of Edinburgh (daughter of Duke Alfred and Maria Alexandrovna) their engagement took place, announced in Russia by a simple newspaper notice.

On November 14, 1894, the marriage of Nicholas II with the German princess Alice of Hesse took place, who, after chrismation (performed on October 21, 1894 in Livadia), took the name of Alexandra Feodorovna. In subsequent years, they had four daughters - Olga (November 3, 1895), Tatiana (May 29, 1897), Maria (June 14, 1899) and Anastasia (June 5, 1901). On July 30 (August 12), 1904, the fifth child and only son, Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich, appeared in Peterhof.

All correspondence between Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II has been preserved (in English); only one letter from Alexandra Feodorovna has been lost, all her letters are numbered by the empress herself; published in Berlin in 1922.

Senator Vl. I. Gurko attributed the origins of Alexandra's intervention in the affairs of state government to the beginning of 1905, when the tsar was in a particularly difficult political situation - when he began to transmit state acts issued by him for viewing; Gurko believed: “If the Sovereign, due to his lack of the necessary internal power, did not possess the authority proper for a ruler, then the Empress, on the contrary, was all woven from authority, which also relied on her inherent arrogance.”

About the role of the empress in the development of the revolutionary situation in Russia in the last years of the monarchy, General A. I. Denikin wrote in his memoirs:

Personal assessments of contemporaries who knew him

Different opinions about the willpower of Nicholas II and his accessibility to the influences of the environment

Former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Count S. Yu. Witte, in connection with critical situation on the eve of the publication of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, when the possibility of introducing a military dictatorship in the country was discussed, he wrote in his memoirs:

General A.F. Rediger (as Minister of War in 1905-1909, twice a week had a personal report to the sovereign) in his memoirs (1917-1918) wrote about him: “Before the report began, the sovereign always talked about something extraneous; if there was no other topic, then about the weather, about his walk, about the test portion, which was served to him daily before reports, then from the Convoy, then from the Consolidated Regiment. He was very fond of these cookings and once told me that he had just tasted pearl barley soup, which he cannot achieve at home: Kyuba (his cook) says that such a fat can only be achieved by cooking for a hundred people The sovereign considered it his duty to appoint senior commanders know. He had an amazing memory. He knew a lot of people who served in the Guard or for some reason they saw, he remembered the military exploits of individuals and military units, he knew the units that rebelled and remained loyal during the unrest, he knew the number and name of each regiment, the composition of each division and corps, the location many parts ... He told me that in rare cases of insomnia, he begins to list the shelves in memory in order of numbers and usually falls asleep when he reaches the reserve parts that he does not know so firmly. In order to know life in the regiments, he daily read the orders for the Preobrazhensky Regiment and explained to me that he reads them daily, since if you just miss a few days, you will spoil yourself and stop reading them. He liked to dress lightly and told me that he sweated otherwise, especially when he was nervous. At first, he willingly wore a white jacket of a marine style at home, and then, when the old uniform with crimson silk shirts was returned to the arrows of the imperial family, he almost always wore it at home, moreover, in the summer heat - right on his naked body. Despite the hard days that fell to his lot, he never lost his composure, he always remained an even and affable, equally diligent worker. He told me that he was an optimist, and indeed, even in difficult times, he kept faith in the future, in the power and greatness of Russia. Always friendly and affectionate, he made a charming impression. His inability to refuse someone's request, especially if it came from a well-deserved person and was somehow feasible, sometimes interfered with the case and put the minister in a difficult position, who had to be strict and renew the command staff of the army, but at the same time increased the charm his personality. His reign was unsuccessful and, moreover, through his own fault. His shortcomings are visible to everyone, they are also visible from my real memories. His merits are easily forgotten, since they were visible only to those who saw him close, and I consider it my duty to note them, especially since I still remember him with the warmest feeling and sincere regret.

In close contact with the tsar in the last months before the revolution, Protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy Georgy Shavelsky, in his study, written in exile in the 1930s, wrote about him: from people and life. And Emperor Nicholas II raised this wall even higher with an artificial superstructure. It was itself characteristic feature his mental disposition and his regal action. This happened against his will, thanks to his manner of treating his subjects. Once he told the Minister of Foreign Affairs S. D. Sazonov: “I try not to seriously think about anything, otherwise I would have been in a coffin a long time ago.” He put his interlocutor in a strictly defined framework. The conversation began exclusively apolitical. The sovereign showed great attention and interest in the personality of the interlocutor: in the stages of his service, in exploits and merits. But as soon as the interlocutor went beyond this framework - to touch on any ailments of the current life, the sovereign immediately changed or directly stopped the conversation.

Senator Vladimir Gurko wrote in exile: “The public environment that was to the heart of Nicholas II, where he, by his own admission, rested his soul, was the environment of guards officers, as a result of which he so willingly accepted invitations to officer meetings of the guards most familiar to him in terms of their personnel. regiments and, it happened, sat on them until the morning. His officer meetings were attracted by the ease that reigned in them, the absence of painful court etiquette, in many ways, the Sovereign retained children's tastes and inclinations until old age.

Awards

Russian

• Order of St. Andrew the First-Called (05/20/1868)
• Order of St. Alexander Nevsky (05/20/1868)
• Order of the White Eagle (05/20/1868)
• Order of St. Anne 1st class (05/20/1868)
• Order of St. Stanislaus 1st class (05/20/1868)
• Order of St. Vladimir 4th class (08/30/1890)
• Order of St. George 4th class (25.10.1915)

Foreign

Higher degrees:

• Order of the Wendish Crown (Mecklenburg-Schwerin) (01/09/1879)
• Order of the Netherlands Lion (03/15/1881)
• Order of Merit of Duke Peter-Friedrich-Ludwig (Oldenburg) (04/15/1881)
• Order of the Rising Sun (Japan) (09/04/1882)
• Order of Fidelity (Baden) (05/15/1883)
• Order of the Golden Fleece (Spain) (05/15/1883)
• Order of Christ (Portugal) (05/15/1883)
• Order of the White Falcon (Saxe-Weimar) (05/15/1883)
• Order of the Seraphim (Sweden) (05/15/1883)
• Order of Ludwig (Hesse-Darmstadt) (05/02/1884)
• Order of St. Stephen (Austria-Hungary) (05/06/1884)
• Order of Saint Hubert (Bavaria) (05/06/1884)
• Order of Leopold (Belgium) (05/06/1884)
• Order of St. Alexander (Bulgaria) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Württemberg Crown (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Savior (Greece) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Elephant (Denmark) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Holy Sepulcher (Patriarchate of Jerusalem) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Annunciation (Italy) (05/06/1884)
• Order of Saint Mauritius and Lazarus (Italy) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Italian Crown (Italy) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Black Eagle (German Empire) (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Romanian Star (05/06/1884)
• Order of the Legion of Honor (05/06/1884)
• Order of Osmanie (Ottoman Empire) (07/28/1884)
• Portrait of the Persian Shah (07/28/1884)
• Order of the Southern Cross (Brazil) (09/19/1884)
• Order of Noble Bukhara (02.11.1885), with diamond signs (27.02.1889)
• Family Order of the Chakri Dynasty (Siam) (03/08/1891)
• Order of the Crown of the State of Bukhara with diamond signs (11/21/1893)
• Order of the Seal of Solomon 1st class (Ethiopia) (06/30/1895)
• Order of the Double Dragon, studded with diamonds (04/22/1896)
• Order of the Sun Alexander (Emirate of Bukhara) (05/18/1898)
• Order of the Bath (Britain)
• Order of the Garter (Britain)
• Royal Victorian Order (Britain) (1904)
• Order of Charles I (Romania) (15.06.1906)

After death

Assessment in Russian emigration

In the preface to his memoirs, General A. A. Mosolov, who for a number of years was in the close circle of the emperor, wrote in the early 1930s: “Tsar Nicholas II, His family and His entourage were almost the only object of accusation for many circles representing Russian public opinion pre-revolutionary era. After the catastrophic collapse of our fatherland, the accusations focused almost exclusively on the Sovereign. General Mosolov assigned a special role in the aversion of society from the imperial family and from the throne in general - to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna: “the discord between society and the court became so aggravated that society, instead of supporting the throne, according to its rooted monarchical views, turned away from it and with real malevolence looked at his downfall.

From the beginning of the 1920s, monarchically-minded circles of the Russian emigration published works about the last tsar, which had an apologetic (later also hagiographic) character and propaganda orientation; the most famous among those was the study of Professor S. S. Oldenburg, published in 2 volumes in Belgrade (1939) and Munich (1949), respectively. One of the final conclusions of Oldenburg read: “The most difficult and most forgotten feat of Emperor Nicholas II was that He, under incredibly difficult conditions, brought Russia to the threshold of victory: His opponents did not let her cross this threshold.”

Official assessment in the USSR

An article about him in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1st edition; 1939): “Nicholas II was just as limited and ignorant as his father. The features of a stupid, narrow-minded, suspicious and proud despot inherent in Nicholas II during his tenure on the throne received a particularly vivid expression. The mental squalor and moral decay of the court circles reached their extreme limits. The regime was rotten in the bud Until the last minute, Nicholas II remained what he was - a stupid autocrat, unable to understand either the environment or even his own benefits. He was preparing to march on Petrograd in order to drown the revolutionary movement in blood, and together with the generals close to him discussed the plan of treason. »

The later (post-war) Soviet historiographical publications, intended for a wide range, in describing the history of Russia during the reign of Nicholas II, sought, as far as possible, to avoid mentioning him as a person and personality: for example, “A Handbook on the History of the USSR for Preparatory Departments of Universities” ( 1979) on 82 pages of text (without illustrations), outlining the socio-economic and political development of the Russian Empire in this period, mentions the name of the emperor, who was at the head of the state at the time described, only once - when describing the events of his abdication in favor of his brother (nothing is said about his accession; the name of V.I. Lenin is mentioned 121 times on the same pages).

church veneration

Since the 1920s, in the Russian diaspora, at the initiative of the Union of Zealots for the Memory of Emperor Nicholas II, regular funeral commemorations of Emperor Nicholas II were held three times a year (on his birthday, name day and on the anniversary of the murder), but his veneration as a saint began to spread after Second World War.

On October 19 (November 1), 1981, Emperor Nicholas and his family were glorified by the Russian Church Abroad (ROCOR), which at that time did not have church communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in the USSR.

The decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of August 20, 2000: “To glorify the Imperial Family as martyrs in the host of new martyrs and confessors of Russia: Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexy, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.” Memorial Day: 4 (17) July.

The act of canonization was perceived by Russian society ambiguously: opponents of canonization argue that the proclamation of Nicholas II as a saint was of a political nature.

In 2003, in Yekaterinburg, on the site of the demolished house of engineer N. N. Ipatiev, where Nicholas II and his family were shot, the Church-on-the-Blood was built? in the name of All the Saints who shone in the Russian land, in front of which a monument to the family of Nicholas II was erected.

Rehabilitation. Identification of remains

In December 2005, the representative of the head of the Russian Imperial House, Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, sent a statement to the Russian prosecutor's office about the rehabilitation of the executed ex-emperor Nicholas II and members of his family as victims of political repression. According to the application, after a series of refusals to satisfy, on October 1, 2008, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation made a decision (despite the opinion of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, who stated in court that the requirements for rehabilitation do not comply with the provisions of the law due to the fact that these persons were not arrested for political reasons , and no court decision on execution was made) on the rehabilitation of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family.

On October 30 of the same 2008, it was reported that the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation decided to rehabilitate 52 people from the entourage of Emperor Nicholas II and his family.

In December 2008, at a scientific and practical conference held on the initiative of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, with the participation of geneticists from Russia and the United States, it was stated that the remains found in 1991 near Yekaterinburg and buried on June 17, 1998 in the Catherine's aisle of the Peter and Paul Cathedral (St. Petersburg), belong to Nicholas II. In January 2009, the Investigative Committee completed the investigation of the criminal case into the circumstances of the death and burial of the family of Nicholas II; the investigation was terminated “due to the expiration of the statute of limitations for bringing to justice and the death of the perpetrators of the premeditated murder”

The representative of M. V. Romanova, who calls herself the head of the Russian Imperial House, stated in 2009 that “Maria Vladimirovna fully shares the position of the Russian Orthodox Church on this issue, which did not find sufficient grounds for recognizing the “Ekaterinburg remains” as belonging to members of the Royal Family.” Other representatives of the Romanovs, led by N. R. Romanov, took a different position: the latter, in particular, took part in the burial of the remains in July 1998, saying: “We have come to close the era.”

Monuments to Emperor Nicholas II

Even during the life of the last Emperor, at least twelve monuments were erected in his honor, connected with his visits to various cities and military camps. Basically, these monuments were columns or obelisks with the imperial monogram and the corresponding inscription. The only monument, which was a bronze bust of the Emperor on a high granite pedestal, was erected in Helsingfors for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. To date, none of these monuments has survived. (Sokol K. G. Monumental monuments of the Russian Empire. Catalog. M., 2006, pp. 162-165)

By the irony of history, the first monument to the Russian Tsar-Martyr was erected in 1924 in Germany by the Germans who fought with Russia - the officers of one of the Prussian regiments, whose Chief was Emperor Nicholas II, "erected a worthy monument to Him in an extremely honorable place."

Currently, monumental monuments to Emperor Nicholas II, from small busts to bronze sculptures in full height, installed in the following cities and settlements:

• settlement Vyritsa, Gatchina district, Leningrad region On the territory of the mansion of S. V. Vasiliev. Bronze statue of the Emperor on a high pedestal. Opened in 2007
• ur. Ganina Yama, near Yekaterinburg. In the complex of the monastery of the Holy Royal Passion-bearers. Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened in the 2000s.
• Yekaterinburg city. Near the Church of All Saints in the Russian land shone (Church-on-Blood). The bronze composition includes figures of the Emperor and members of His Family. Opened on July 16, 2003, sculptors K. V. Grunberg and A. G. Mazaev.
• With. Klementyevo (near the city of Sergiev Posad), Moscow region. Behind the altar of the Assumption Church. Plaster bust on a pedestal. Opened in 2007
• Kursk. Next to the church of the saints Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia (pr. Friendship). Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened on September 24, 2003, sculptor V. M. Klykov.
• Moscow city. At the Vagankovsky cemetery, next to the Church of the Resurrection of the Word. Memorial monument, which is a marble cross and four granite slabs with carved inscriptions. Opened May 19, 1991, sculptor N. Pavlov. On July 19, 1997, the memorial was seriously damaged by an explosion, was subsequently restored, but in November 2003 it was again damaged.
• Podolsk, Moscow region On the territory of the estate of V.P. Melikhov, next to the Church of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers. The first plaster monument by sculptor V. M. Klykov, representing a full-length statue of the Emperor, was opened on July 28, 1998, but on November 1, 1998 it was blown up. A new, this time bronze, monument based on the same model was reopened on January 16, 1999.
• Pushkin. Near the Feodorovsky Sovereign Cathedral. Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened on July 17, 1993, sculptor V.V. Zaiko.
• Saint Petersburg. Behind the altar of the Exaltation of the Cross Church (Ligovsky pr., 128). Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened May 19, 2002, sculptor S. Yu. Alipov.
• Sochi. On the territory of the Michael - Archangel Cathedral. Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened November 21, 2008, sculptor V. Zelenko.
• settlement Syrostan (near the city of Miass) of the Chelyabinsk region. Near Holy Cross Church. Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened in July 1996, sculptor P. E. Lyovochkin.
• With. Taininskoye (near the city of Mytishchi), Moscow Region. Statue of the Emperor in full growth on a high pedestal. Opened May 26, 1996, sculptor V. M. Klykov. On April 1, 1997, the monument was blown up, but three years later it was restored according to the same model and reopened on August 20, 2000.
• settlement Shushenskoye, Krasnoyarsk Territory. Near the factory entrance of Shushenskaya Marka LLC (Pionerskaya st., 10). Bronze bust on a pedestal. Opened on December 24, 2010, sculptor K. M. Zinich.

• In 2007, at the Russian Academy of Arts, the sculptor Z. K. Tsereteli presented a monumental bronze composition consisting of the figures of the Emperor and members of His Family, standing in front of the executioners in the basement of the Ipatiev House, and depicting the last minutes of their lives. To date, not a single city has yet expressed a desire to establish this monument.

The memorial temples - monuments to the Emperor should include:

• Temple - a monument to the Tsar - Martyr Nicholas II in Brussels. It was founded on February 2, 1936, built according to the project of the architect N.I. Istselenov, and solemnly consecrated on October 1, 1950 by Metropolitan Anastassy (Gribanovsky). The temple - a monument is under the jurisdiction of the ROC (h).
• Church of All Saints in the Russian land shone (Temple - on - Blood) in Yekaterinburg. (See a separate article on Wikipedia about him)

Filmography

Several feature films have been made about Nicholas II and his family, among which we can distinguish Agony (1981), the English-American film Nicholas and Alexandra ( Nicholas and Alexandra, 1971) and two Russian films The Tsar Killer (1991) and The Romanovs. Crowned family "(2000). Hollywood made several films about the allegedly saved daughter of Tsar Anastasia "Anastasia" ( Anastasia, 1956) and "Anastasia, or the secret of Anna" ( , USA, 1986), as well as the cartoon "Anastasia" ( Anastasia, USA, 1997).

Movie incarnations

• Alexander Galibin (Life of Klim Samgin 1987, "The Romanovs. Crowned Family" (2000)
• Anatoly Romashin (Agony 1974/1981)
• Oleg Yankovsky (Regicide)
• Andrei Rostotsky (Split 1993, Dreams 1993, Your Cross)
• Andrey Kharitonov (Sins of the Fathers 2004)
• Borislav Brondukov (Kotsiubinsky Family)
• Gennady Glagolev (Pale Horse)
• Nikolai Burlyaev (Admiral)
• Michael Jayston ("Nicholas and Alexandra" Nicholas and Alexandra, 1971)
• Omar Sharif (Anastasia, or Anna's Secret) Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, USA, 1986)
• Ian McKellen (Rasputin, USA, 1996)
• Alexander Galibin ("The Life of Klim Samgin" 1987, "Romanovs. Crowned Family", 2000)
• Oleg Yankovsky ("Regicide", 1991)
• Andrey Rostotsky ("Split", 1993, "Dreams", 1993, "Own Cross")
• Vladimir Baranov (Russian Ark, 2002)
• Gennady Glagolev ("White Horse", 2003)
• Andrei Kharitonov ("Sins of the Fathers", 2004)
• Andrey Nevraev ("Death of the Empire", 2005)
• Evgeny Stychkin (You are my happiness, 2005)
• Mikhail Eliseev (Stolypin... Unlearned Lessons, 2006)
• Yaroslav Ivanov ("Conspiracy", 2007)
• Nikolai Burlyaev (Admiral, 2008)

On December 12, Channel One will show an 8-episode dedicated to the last days of the reign of Emperor Nicholas II, as well as one of the most mysterious close associates of the royal family - the elder. Nicholas II and his family (wife and children) - the last representatives of the Romanov dynasty and the last rulers of the Russian Empire, who were shot by the Bolsheviks in July 1918.

In Soviet textbooks, the autocrat was presented as a “strangler of freedoms” who was not interested in state affairs, and the Russian Orthodox Church (though already today) canonized the tsar as a martyr and passion-bearer. Let's figure out how modern historians evaluate life and rule.

Life and reign of Nicholas II

Nicholas - the eldest son of Emperor Alexander III - was born in Tsarskoye Selo on May 6 (18), 1868. The heir to the throne received a deep education at home: he knew several languages, world history, understood economics and military affairs. Together with his father, Nikolai made many trips to the provinces of Russia.

Alexander III did not make indulgences: he wanted the offspring to behave like ordinary children - they played, fought, sometimes played pranks, but most importantly, they studied well and "did not think about any thrones."

Contemporaries described Nicholas II as very easy to communicate, full of true human dignity. He never interrupted his interlocutor and did not raise his voice, even at the lowest in rank. The emperor was indulgent to human weaknesses and good-naturedly treated ordinary people- to the peasants, however, he never forgave what he called "dark money matters."

In 1894, after the death of his father, Nicholas II ascended the throne. The years of his reign fell on a turbulent period in history. Revolutionary currents were born all over the world, in 1914 the First World War began. However, even in such difficult times, he managed to significantly improve the economic situation of the state.

Here are just some facts about the reign of Nicholas II:

• During his reign, the population of the empire increased by 50 million people.
• 4 million rubles, left by Alexander III as a legacy to children and kept in a London bank, were spent on charity.
• The emperor approved all petitions for pardon that were sent to him.
• The grain harvest has doubled.
• Nicholas II carried out a military reform: he reduced the terms of service, improved living conditions for soldiers and sailors, and also contributed to the rejuvenation of the officers.
• During the First World War, he did not sit out in the palace, but took command of the Russian army, finally managing to repulse Germany.

However, the emerging revolutionary moods increasingly captured the thoughts of people. On March 2, 1917, under pressure from the high command, he handed over the Abdication Manifesto, in which he bequeathed the army to obey the Provisional Government.

Modern historians believe that the Manifesto was a forgery. In the original draft, Nicholas II only urged to listen to the bosses, observe discipline and “defend Russia with all your might.” Later, Alekseev only added a couple of sentences (“I am addressing you for the last time ...”) to change the meaning of the words of the autocrat.

Wife of Nicholas II - Alexandra Feodorovna

The Empress (née Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt) was born on May 25 (June 6), 1872. She received a new name after baptism and marriage with Nicholas II. The upbringing of the future empress was carried out by the English Queen Victoria, who adored her granddaughter.

Alice graduated from the University of Heidelberg with a bachelor's degree in philosophy.

In May 1884, at the wedding of her sister Elizabeth Feodorovna, she met Nikolai Alexandrovich. The wedding took place on November 14 (26), 1894, just 3 weeks after the death of Emperor Alexander.

During the war years, Empress Alexandra and the Grand Duchesses personally assisted in operations in hospitals, received amputated limbs from surgeons and washed festering wounds.

Despite the fact that the Empress was not popular in her new homeland, she herself fell in love with Russia with all her heart. The daughter of Dr. Botkin wrote in her diary that after Nicholas II read the manifesto about the war with Germany (her historical homeland), Alexandra cried with joy.

Nevertheless, the liberals considered her the head of the court Germanophile group and accused Nicholas II of being too dependent on the opinion of his wife. Because of the negative attitude, the princess, who was once sparkling with joy, “the ray of sunshine of Windsor” (as Nicholas II called Alexandra at one time) gradually became isolated in a narrow circle of her family and 2-3 close associates.

Especially a lot of controversy was caused by her friendship with the old man, the Siberian peasant Grigory Rasputin.

Children of Nicholas II

The family of Nicholas II Romanov raised five children: four daughters (Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia) and a son - the heir to the throne Alexei Nikolayevich.

Olga Nikolaevna Romanova

Olga - eldest daughter Nicholas II - gave the impression of a tender and fragile girl. From an early age, she showed a passion for books and was a very erudite child. However, at times the Grand Duchess was hot-tempered and stubborn. Teachers noted that the girl had an almost absolute ear for music - she could play almost any melody heard somewhere.

Princess Olga did not like luxury and was modest. She did not like housekeeping, but she enjoyed reading, playing the piano and drawing.

Tatyana Nikolaevna Romanova

Tatyana Nikolaevna was born on May 29, 1897. As a child, most of all she loved to ride a pony and a tandem bike with her sister Olga, she could wander around the garden for hours, picking flowers and berries.

In character, Tatyana was like her mother: she laughed less often than other sisters, and was often thoughtful and strict.

Unlike her older sister, the girl loved to be in charge, and she did it very well. When her mother was absent, Tatyana embroidered, ironed linen and managed to follow the younger children.

Maria Nikolaevna Romanova

The third daughter in the family of Nicholas II - Maria - was born on the night of June 14, 1899 in a summer residence in Peterhof. Very large and strong for her age, she subsequently carried her brother Alexei in her arms when it was difficult for him to walk. Because of her simplicity and cheerful disposition, the sisters called her Masha. The girl loved to talk with the soldiers of the guard and always remembered the names of their wives, who had how many children.

At the age of 14, she became a colonel of the 9th Kazan Dragoon Regiment. Then her romance broke out with officer Demenkov. When her lover went to the front, Maria personally sewed a shirt for him. IN telephone conversations he assured me that the shirt fit. Unfortunately, the end of the love story was tragic: Nikolai Demenkov was killed during the civil war.

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova

Princess Anastasia was born when the family of Nicholas II and Alexandra already had three daughters. Outwardly, she looked like her father, often laughed out loud and laughed. From the diaries of those close to the royal family, you can find out that Anastasia was distinguished by a very cheerful and even mischievous character. The girl loved to play bast shoes and forfeits, she could tirelessly rush around the palace, playing hide and seek, climbed trees. But in her studies she was never particularly diligent and even tried to bribe teachers with bouquets of flowers.

Alexey Nikolaevich Romanov

The long-awaited son of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna was the youngest of the children of the royal couple. The boy was born on July 30 (August 12), 1904. At first, the Tsarevich grew up cheerful cheerful child, but later a terrible genetic disease appeared - hemophilia. This complicated the education and training of the future emperor. Only Rasputin managed to find a way to alleviate the boy's suffering.

Aleksey Nikolaevich himself wrote in his diary: “When I am king, there will be no poor and unhappy people, I want everyone to be happy.”

Execution of Nicholas II and his family

After signing the manifesto from March 9 to August 14, 1917, the royal family of Nicholas II lived under arrest in Tsarskoye Selo. In the summer they were moved to Tobolsk, where the regime was a little lenient: the Romanovs were allowed to walk across the street to the Church of the Annunciation and lead a quiet home life.

While in prison, the family of Tsar Nicholas II did not sit idle: the former monarch personally chopped firewood and looked after the garden.

In the spring of 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee decided to transfer the Romanov family to Moscow for trial. However, it never took place. On July 12, the Ural Soviet of Workers' Deputies decided to execute the former emperor. Nicholas II, Alexandra Fedorovna, their children, as well as Dr. Botkin and servants were shot in Yekaterinburg in the “House of Special Purpose” on the night of July 17, 1918.

Today marks the 147th anniversary of the birth of the last Russian emperor. Although a lot has been written about Nicholas II, much of what has been written refers to "folk fiction", delusions.

The king was modest in dress. unpretentious

Nicholas II was remembered by the many surviving photographic materials as an unpretentious man. In food, he was really unpretentious. He loved fried dumplings, which he often ordered while walking on his favorite yacht Shtandart. The king kept fasts and generally ate moderately, tried to keep himself in shape, so he preferred simple food: cereals, rice cutlets and pasta with mushrooms.

Among the guards officers, the snack "nikolashka" was a success. Her recipe is attributed to Nicholas II. Powdered sugar was mixed with ground coffee, this mixture was sprinkled with a slice of lemon, which was used to eat a glass of cognac.

With regard to clothing, the situation was different. The wardrobe of Nicholas II in the Alexander Palace alone consisted of several hundred pieces of military uniform and civilian clothing: frock coats, uniforms of guards and army regiments and overcoats, cloaks, sheepskin coats, shirts and underwear made in the Nordenstrem workshop in the capital, a hussar mentik and dolman, in which Nicholas II was on the wedding day. When receiving foreign ambassadors and diplomats, the tsar put on the uniform of the state where the envoy came from. Often, Nicholas II had to change clothes six times a day. Here, in the Alexander Palace, a collection of cigarette cases collected by Nicholas II was kept.

It must, however, be admitted that out of the 16 million allocated per year for the royal family, the lion's share went to pay benefits for employees of the palaces (one Winter Palace served a staff of 1200 people), to support the Academy of Arts (the royal family was a trustee, so they bore the costs) and other needs.

The spending was serious. The construction of the Livadia Palace cost the Russian treasury 4.6 million rubles, 350 thousand rubles a year were spent on the royal garage, and 12 thousand rubles a year for photographing.

This is taking into account the fact that the average expenditure of households in the Russian Empire at that time was about 85 rubles per capita per year.

Each Grand Duke was also entitled to an annual annuity of two hundred thousand rubles. Each of the Grand Duchesses was given a dowry of one million rubles upon marriage. At birth, a member of the imperial family received a capital of one million rubles.

The Tsar Colonel personally went to the front and led the armies

Many photographs have been preserved where Nicholas II takes the oath, arrives at the front and eats from the field kitchen, where he is "the father of the soldiers." Nicholas II really loved everything military. He practically did not wear civilian clothes, preferring uniforms.

It is generally accepted that the emperor himself led the actions of the Russian army in. However, it is not. The generals and the military council decided. Several factors influenced the improvement of the situation at the front with the assumption of command by Nikolai. Firstly, by the end of August 1915, the Great Retreat was stopped, the German army suffered from stretched communications, and secondly, the situation was also affected by the change of the commanders-in-chief of the General Staff - Yanushkevich to Alekseev.

Nicholas II really went to the front, loved to live in Headquarters, sometimes with his family, often took his son with him, but never (unlike his cousins ​​George and Wilhelm) approached the front line closer than 30 kilometers. The emperor accepted IV degree shortly after a German plane flew over the horizon during the arrival of the king.

The absence of the emperor in St. Petersburg had a bad effect on domestic policy. He began to lose influence on the aristocracy and the government. This proved fertile ground for intra-corporate splits and indecision during the February Revolution.

From the emperor's diary on August 23, 1915 (the day he assumed the duties of the Supreme High Command): "Slept well. The morning was rainy: in the afternoon the weather improved and it became quite warm. At 3.30 he arrived at his Headquarters, one verst from the mountains. Mogilev. Nikolasha was waiting for me. After talking with him, he accepted the gene. Alekseev and his first report. Everything went well! After drinking tea, I went to inspect the surrounding area. The train stops in a small dense forest. Dined at 7½. Then I took another walk, the evening was excellent.

The introduction of gold security is the personal merit of the emperor

It is customary to refer to the economically successful reforms that Nicholas II carried out as the monetary reform of 1897, when the gold backing of the ruble was introduced in the country. However, preparations for monetary reform began as early as the mid-1880s, under the finance ministers Bunge and Vyshnegradsky, during the reign.

The reform was a forced means of avoiding credit money. can be considered its author. The tsar himself avoided resolving monetary issues; by the beginning of World War I, Russia's external debt was 6.5 billion rubles, only 1.6 billion were secured with gold.

Made personal "unpopular" decisions. Often in defiance of the Duma

It is customary to say about Nicholas II that he personally carried out reforms, often in defiance of the Duma. However, in fact, Nicholas II rather "did not interfere." He didn't even have a personal secretariat. But under him, well-known reformers were able to develop their abilities. Such as Witte and. At the same time, relations between the two "second politicians" were far from idyllic.

Sergei Witte wrote about Stolypin: "No one has destroyed even the semblance of justice as he, Stolypin, and that's all, accompanied by liberal speeches and gestures."

Pyotr Arkadyevich did not lag behind. Witte, dissatisfied with the results of the investigation about the attempt on his life, he wrote: “From your letter, Count, I must draw one conclusion: either you consider me an idiot, or you find that I am also participating in the attempt on your life ... ".

About the death of Stolypin, Sergei Witte wrote succinctly: "Killed."

Nicholas II personally never wrote detailed resolutions, he limited himself to marginal notes, most often he simply put a “reading mark”. He sat on official commissions no more than 30 times, always on extraordinary occasions, the emperor's remarks at meetings were brief, he chose one side or another in the discussion.

The Hague court is a brilliant "brainchild" of the king

It is believed that the Hague International Court was the brilliant brainchild of Nicholas II. Yes, indeed the Russian Tsar was the initiator of the First Hague Peace Conference, but he was not the author of all its decisions.

The most useful thing that the Hague Convention was able to do concerned military laws. Thanks to the agreement, the prisoners of war of the First World War were kept in acceptable conditions, they could contact the house, they were not forced to work; sanitary posts were protected from attacks, the wounded were cared for, the civilian population was not subjected to mass violence.

But in reality, the Permanent Court of Arbitration has not brought much benefit in its 17 years of operation. Russia did not even approach the Chamber during the Japanese crisis, and so did the other signatories. “Turned into a zilch” and the Convention on the Peaceful Settlement of International Issues. The Balkans broke out in the world, and then the First World War.

The Hague does not influence international affairs even today. Few of the heads of state of world powers appeal to the international court.

Grigory Rasputin had a strong influence on the king

Even before the abdication of Nicholas II, rumors began to appear among the people about excessive influence on the king. According to them, it turned out that the state was controlled not by the tsar, not by the government, but personally by the Tobolsk "elder".

Of course, this was far from true. Rasputin had influence at court, and was well received into the emperor's house. Nicholas II and the Empress called him “our friend” or “Gregory”, and he called them “dad and mother”.

However, Rasputin still exerted influence on the empress, while government decisions were made without his participation. Thus, it is well known that Rasputin opposed Russia's entry into the First World War, and even after Russia's entry into the conflict, he tried to convince the royal family to go to peace negotiations with the Germans.

Most of the (grand dukes) supported the war with Germany and focused on England. For the latter, a separate peace between Russia and Germany threatened defeat in the war.

Do not forget that Nicholas II was a cousin of both the German Emperor Wilhelm II and the brother of the British King George V. Rasputin also performed an applied function at court - he relieved the suffering of the heir Alexei. A circle of exalted admirers really formed around him, but Nicholas II did not belong to them.

Didn't abdicate

One of the most enduring misconceptions is the myth that Nicholas II did not abdicate, and the abdication document is a fake. It really has a lot of oddities: it was written on a typewriter on telegraph forms, although there were pens and writing paper on the train where Nicholas abdicated on March 15, 1917. Supporters of the version about the falsification of the renunciation manifesto cite the fact that the document was signed with a pencil.

There is just nothing strange about this. Nikolai signed many documents with a pencil. Another strange thing. If this is really a fake and the tsar did not renounce, he should have written at least something about it in his correspondence, but there is not a word about this. Nicholas abdicated for himself and his son in favor of his brother, Mikhail Alexandrovich.

The diary entries of the tsar's confessor, rector of the Fedorovsky Cathedral, Archpriest Athanasius Belyaev, have been preserved. In a conversation after confession, Nicholas II told him: “... And now, alone, without a close adviser, deprived of liberty, like a caught criminal, I signed an act of renunciation both for myself and for my son’s heir. I decided that if it is necessary for the good of the motherland, I am ready for anything. I'm sorry for my family!".

The very next day, March 3 (16), 1917, Mikhail Alexandrovich also abdicated, transferring the decision on the form of government to the Constituent Assembly.

Yes, the manifesto was obviously written under pressure, and it was not Nicholas himself who wrote it. It is unlikely that he himself would have written: "There is no sacrifice that I would not make in the name of a real good and for the salvation of my dear Mother Russia." However, there was a formal renunciation.

Interestingly, the myths and cliches about the abdication of the king largely came from the book of Alexander Blok " Last days imperial power." The poet enthusiastically accepted the revolution and became the literary editor of the Extraordinary Commission for the affairs of the former tsarist ministers. That is, he literally processed the verbatim records of interrogations.

Against the creation of the role of the tsar-martyr, young Soviet propaganda carried out active agitation. Its effectiveness can be judged from the diary of the peasant Zamaraev (he kept it for 15 years), preserved in the museum of the city of Totma, Vologda region. The head of a peasant is full of cliches imposed by propaganda:

“Romanov Nikolai and his family have been deposed, they are all under arrest and receive all the food on an equal basis with others on the cards. Indeed, they did not at all care about the welfare of their people, and the patience of the people burst. They brought their state to hunger and darkness. What was going on in their palace? This is terrible and shameful! It was not Nicholas II who ruled the state, but the drunkard Rasputin. All the princes were replaced and dismissed from their posts, including the commander-in-chief Nikolai Nikolaevich. Everywhere in all cities there is a new administration, there is no old police.”