The years of the life of Tsar Nicholas 2. The myth of the monarch's guilt in unleashing the Russo-Japanese war

Biography of Emperor Nicholas 2 Alexandrovich

Nicholas II Alexandrovich (born - May 6 (18), 1868, death - July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - Emperor of All Russia, from the imperial house of the Romanovs.

Childhood

Heir to the Russian throne Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich grew up in the atmosphere of a luxurious imperial court, but in a strict and, one might say, Spartan atmosphere. His father, Emperor Alexander III, and his mother, the Danish princess Dagmar (Empress Maria Feodorovna), in principle did not allow any weaknesses and sentiments in the upbringing of children. A strict daily routine was always established for them, with obligatory daily lessons, attendance at church services, indispensable visits to relatives, obligatory participation in many official ceremonies. The children slept on simple soldier bunks with hard pillows, took cold baths in the morning and were given oatmeal for breakfast.

Youth of the future emperor

1887 - Nikolai was promoted to staff captain and assigned to the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. There he was listed for two years, first acting as a platoon commander, and then as a company commander. Then, in order to join the cavalry service, his father transferred him to the Life Guards Hussar Regiment, where Nikolai took command of the squadron.

Due to his modesty and simplicity, the prince was quite popular among fellow officers. 1890 - his studies ended. The father did not burden the heir to the throne with state affairs. He appeared from time to time at meetings of the Council of State, but his gaze was constantly fixed on the clock. Like all guard officers, Nikolai devoted a lot of time to social life, often went to the theater: he adored opera and ballet.

Nicholas and Alice of Hesse

Nicholas II in childhood and youth

Obviously, women also occupied him. But it is interesting that Nicholas experienced the first serious feeling for Princess Alice of Hesse, who later became his wife. They first met in 1884 in St. Petersburg at the wedding of Ella of Hesse (Alice's older sister) with Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. She was 12 years old, he was 16. 1889 - Alix spent 6 weeks in St. Petersburg.

Later, Nikolai wrote: “I dream of marrying Alix G someday. I have loved her for a long time, but especially deeply and strongly since 1889 ... All this long time I did not believe my feeling, did not believe that my cherished dream could come true.”

In fact, the heir had to overcome many obstacles. Parents offered Nicholas other parties, but he resolutely refused to associate himself with any other princess.

Ascension to the throne

1894, spring - Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna were forced to give in to the desire of their son. Preparations for the wedding have begun. But before they could play it, on October 20, 1894, Alexander III died. For no one was the death of the emperor more significant than for the 26-year-old young man who inherited his throne.

“I saw tears in his eyes,” Grand Duke Alexander recalled. He took my arm and led me down to his room. We hugged and both cried. He couldn't collect his thoughts. He knew that he had now become emperor, and the severity of this terrible event struck him ... “Sandro, what should I do? he exclaimed pathetically. - What should happen to me, to you ... to Alix, to her mother, to all of Russia? I'm not ready to be king. I never wanted to be him. I don't understand anything about government matters. I don’t even have a clue how to talk to ministers.”

The next day, when the palace was draped in black, Alix converted to Orthodoxy and from that day on she became known as Grand Duchess Alexandra Feodorovna. On November 7, the solemn burial of the late emperor took place in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, and a week later, the marriage of Nicholas and Alexandra took place. On the occasion of mourning, there was no solemn reception and honeymoon trip.

Personal life and the royal family

1895, spring - Nicholas II moved his wife to Tsarskoe Selo. They settled in the Alexander Palace, which remained the main home of the imperial couple for 22 years. Everything here was arranged according to their tastes and desires, and therefore Tsarskoye always remained their favorite place. Nikolai usually got up at 7, had breakfast and disappeared into his office to start work.

By nature, he was a loner and preferred to do everything himself. At 11 o'clock the king interrupted his studies and went for a walk in the park. When the children appeared, they invariably accompanied him on these walks. Dinner in the middle of the day was the official ceremonial procedure. Although the empress was generally absent, the emperor dined with his daughters and members of his retinue. The meal began according to Russian custom with a prayer.

Neither Nikolai nor Alexandra liked expensive complex dishes. He received great pleasure from borscht, porridge, boiled fish with vegetables. But the favorite dish of the king was a roasted young pig with horseradish, which he washed down with port wine. After dinner, Nikolai took a ride on horseback along the surrounding country roads in the direction of Krasnoye Selo. At 4 o'clock the family gathered for tea. According to the etiquette introduced yet, only crackers, butter and English biscuits were served with tea. Cakes and sweets were not allowed. Sipping tea, Nikolai skimmed through newspapers and telegrams. Afterwards, he returned to his work, receiving a flood of visitors between 5 and 8 pm.

Exactly at 20:00, all official meetings ended, and Nicholas II could go to dinner. In the evening, the emperor would often sit in the family living room reading aloud while his wife and daughters did their needlework. According to his choice, it could be Tolstoy, Turgenev or his favorite writer Gogol. However, there could be some fashionable romance. The personal librarian of the sovereign selected for him 20 of the best books per month from all over the world. Sometimes, instead of reading, the family spent their evenings pasting photographs taken by the court photographer or themselves into green leather albums embossed with the gold royal monogram.

Nicholas II with his wife

The end of the day came at 23:00 with evening tea. Before he retired, the emperor made entries in his diary, and then took a bath, went to bed and usually fell asleep immediately. It is noted that, unlike many families of European monarchs, the Russian imperial couple had a common bed.

1904, July 30 (August 12) - the 5th child was born in the imperial family. To the great joy of the parents, it was a boy. The king wrote in his diary: “A great unforgettable day for us, on which the mercy of God so clearly visited us. At 1 o'clock in the afternoon, Alix had a son, who, during prayer, was named Alexei.

On the occasion of the appearance of the heir, cannons were fired all over Russia, bells rang and flags fluttered. However, a few weeks later the imperial couple was shocked by the terrible news - it turned out that their son had hemophilia. Next years passed in a difficult struggle for the life and health of the heir. Any bleeding, any injection could lead to death. The torments of the beloved son tore the hearts of the parents. The illness of Alexei had a particularly painful effect on the empress, who over the years began to suffer from hysteria, she became suspicious and extremely religious.

Reign of Nicholas II

Meanwhile, Russia was going through one of the most turbulent periods of its history. After the Japanese war, the first revolution began, suppressed with great difficulty. Nicholas II had to agree to the establishment of the State Duma. The next 7 years were lived in peace and even with relative prosperity.

Stolypin, nominated by the emperor, began to carry out his own reforms. At one time it seemed that Russia would be able to avoid new social upheavals, but the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 made revolution inevitable. The crushing defeats of the Russian army in the spring and summer of 1915 forced Nicholas 2 to lead the troops himself.

Since that time, he was on duty in Mogilev and could not delve deeply into state affairs. Alexandra, with great zeal, undertook to help her husband, but it seems that she harmed him more than actually helped. And senior officials, and grand dukes, and foreign diplomats felt the approach of the revolution. They tried their best to warn the emperor. Repeatedly during these months, Nicholas II was offered to remove Alexandra from business and create a government in which the people and the Duma would have confidence. But all these attempts were unsuccessful. The emperor gave his word, in spite of everything, to preserve autocracy in Russia and to transfer it whole and unshakable to his son; now, when pressure was exerted on him from all sides, he remained true to his oath.

The revolution. Abdication

1917, February 22 - having not decided on a new government, Nicholas II went to Headquarters. Immediately after his departure, unrest broke out in Petrograd. On February 27, the alarmed emperor decided to return to the capital. On the way, at one of the stations, he accidentally learned that a provisional committee of the State Duma, led by Rodzianko, was already operating in Petrograd. Then, after consulting with the generals of the retinue, Nikolai decided to make his way to Pskov. Here, on March 1, Nikolai learned the latest amazing news from the commander of the Northern Front, General Ruzsky: the entire garrison of Petrograd and Tsarskoye Selo went over to the side of the revolution.

His example was followed by the guards, the Cossack convoy and the Guards crew with Grand Duke Kirill at the head. The negotiations with the commanders of the fronts, undertaken by telegraph, finally defeated the tsar. All the generals were merciless and unanimous: it was no longer possible to stop the revolution by force; in order to avoid civil war and bloodshed, Emperor Nicholas 2 must abdicate the throne. After painful hesitation late in the evening of March 2, Nicholas signed his abdication.

Arrest

Nicholas 2 with his wife and children

The next day, he ordered his train to go to Headquarters, to Mogilev, as he wanted to finally say goodbye to the army. Here, on March 8, the emperor was arrested and taken under escort to Tsarskoye Selo. From that day began for him a time of constant humiliation. The guard behaved defiantly rudely. It was even more offensive to see the betrayal of those people who are used to being considered the closest. Almost all the servants and most of the ladies-in-waiting left the palace and the empress. Doctor Ostrogradsky refused to go to the sick Alexei, saying that he "finds the road too dirty" for further visits.

In the meantime, the situation in the state began to worsen again. Kerensky, who by that time had become the head of the Provisional Government, decided that for security reasons the royal family should be sent away from the capital. After long hesitation, he gave the order to transport the Romanovs to Tobolsk. The move took place in early August in deep secrecy.

The royal family lived in Tobolsk for 8 months. Her financial situation was very cramped. Alexandra wrote to Anna Vyrubova: “I knit socks for the little one (Aleksey). He asks for a couple more, since everything is in holes ... I'm doing everything now. My father's (tsar's) trousers were torn and needed mending, and the girls' underwear was in tatters... I became completely gray-haired...' After the October coup, the situation of the prisoners became even worse.

1918, April - the Romanov family was moved to Yekaterinburg, they were settled in the house of the merchant Ipatiev, who was destined to become their last prison. 12 people settled in the 5 upper rooms of the 2nd floor. Nikolai, Alexandra and Alexei lived in the first, and the Grand Duchesses lived in the second. The rest was divided among the servants. In the new place, the former emperor and his relatives felt like real prisoners. Behind the fence and on the street there was an external guard of the Red Guards. There were always several people with revolvers in the house.

This inner guard was selected from the most reliable Bolsheviks and was very hostile. It was commanded by Alexander Avdeev, who called the emperor none other than "Nicholas the Bloody." None of the members of the royal family could retire, and even to the toilet, the grand duchesses were accompanied by one of the guards. For breakfast, only black bread and tea were served. Lunch consisted of soup and meatballs. Guards often took pieces from the pan in front of the diners. The clothes of the prisoners were completely dilapidated.

On July 4, the Ural Soviet removed Avdeev and his people. In their place came 10 Chekists led by Yurovsky. Despite the fact that he was much more polite than Avdeev, Nikolai from the first days felt the threat emanating from him. In fact, clouds were gathering over the family of the last Russian emperor. At the end of May, a Czechoslovak rebellion broke out in Siberia, the Urals and the Volga region. The Czechs launched a successful offensive against Yekaterinburg. On July 12, the Ural Soviet received permission from Moscow to decide the fate of the deposed dynasty. The council decided to shoot all the Romanovs and entrusted Yurovsky with the execution. Later, the White Guards were able to capture several participants in the execution and, from their words, restore the picture of the execution in all details.

Execution of the Romanov family

On July 16, Yurovsky handed out 12 revolvers to the Chekists and announced that the execution would take place today. At midnight, he woke up all the prisoners, ordered them to dress quickly and go downstairs. It was announced that the Czechs and Whites were approaching Yekaterinburg, and the local Soviet ruled that they should leave. Nikolai went down the stairs first, carrying Alexei in his arms. Anastasia held the spaniel Jimmy in her arms. On the ground floor, Yurovsky led them to a basement room. There he asked to wait until the cars arrived. Nicholas asked for chairs for his son and wife. Yurovsky ordered to bring three chairs. In addition to the Romanov family, Dr. Botkin, the footman Trupp, the cook Kharitonov and the Empress Demidov's room girl were here.

When everyone had gathered, Yurovsky again entered the room, accompanied by the entire detachment of the Cheka with revolvers in their hands. Stepping forward, he quickly said: "In view of the fact that your relatives continue to attack Soviet Russia, the Urals Executive Committee decided to shoot you."

Nikolay, continuing to support Alexei with his hand, began to rise from his chair. He just had time to say, "What?" and then Yurovsky shot him in the head. At this signal, the Chekists began firing. Alexandra Fedorovna, Olga, Tatyana and Maria were killed on the spot. Botkin, Kharitonov and Trupp were mortally wounded. Demidova remained on her feet. The Chekists grabbed their rifles and began to pursue her in order to finish her off with bayonets. With screams, she rushed from one wall to another and eventually fell, receiving more than 30 wounds. The dog's head was smashed with a rifle butt. When silence reigned in the room, heavy breathing of the Tsarevich was heard - he was still alive. Yurovsky reloaded the revolver and shot the boy twice in the ear. Just at that moment, Anastasia, who was only unconscious, woke up and screamed. She was finished off with bayonets and butts ...

Dedicated to the centenary of revolutionary events.

Not a single Russian tsar has created as many myths as about the last, Nicholas II. What really happened? Was the sovereign a sluggish and weak-willed person? Was he cruel? Could he have won World War I? And how much truth is in the black fabrications about this ruler?..

The candidate of historical sciences Gleb Eliseev tells.

Black legend about Nicholas II

Rally in Petrograd, 1917

Already 17 years have passed since the canonization of the last emperor and his family, but you are still faced with an amazing paradox - many, even completely Orthodox, people dispute the justice of reckoning Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich to the canon of saints.

No one raises any protests or doubts about the legitimacy of the canonization of the son and daughters of the latter Russian emperor. Nor did I hear any objections to the canonization of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Even at the Council of Bishops in 2000, when it came to the canonization of the Royal Martyrs, a special opinion was expressed only with regard to the sovereign himself. One of the bishops said that the emperor did not deserve to be glorified, because "he is a traitor ... he, one might say, sanctioned the collapse of the country."

And it is clear that in such a situation, spears are broken not at all about the martyrdom or the Christian life of Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich. Neither one nor the other raises doubts even among the most rabid denier of the monarchy. His feat as a martyr is beyond doubt.

The thing is different - in the latent, subconscious resentment: “Why did the sovereign admit that a revolution had taken place? Why didn't you save Russia? Or, as A. I. Solzhenitsyn pointedly put it in his article “Reflections on the February Revolution”: “Weak tsar, he betrayed us. All of us - for everything that follows.

The myth of a weak king who allegedly surrendered his kingdom voluntarily obscures his martyrdom and obscures the demonic cruelty of his tormentors. But what could the sovereign do under the circumstances, when Russian society, like a herd of Gadarene pigs, had been rushing into the abyss for decades?

Studying the history of the Nicholas reign, one is amazed not at the weakness of the sovereign, not at his mistakes, but at how much he managed to do in an atmosphere of fanned hatred, malice and slander.

We must not forget that the sovereign received autocratic power over Russia quite unexpectedly, after the sudden, unforeseen and unimagined death of Alexander III. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich recalled the state of the heir to the throne immediately after the death of his father: “He could not collect his thoughts. He realized that he had become the Emperor, and this terrible burden of power crushed him. “Sandro, what am I going to do! he exclaimed pathetically. - What will happen to Russia now? I'm not ready to be King yet! I can't run the Empire. I don’t even know how to talk to ministers.”

However, after a brief period of confusion, the new emperor firmly took the helm of state administration and held it for twenty-two years, until he fell victim to an apex conspiracy. Until “treason, and cowardice, and deception” swirled around him in a dense cloud, as he himself noted in his diary on March 2, 1917.

The black mythology directed against the last sovereign was actively dispelled both by emigrant historians and modern Russian ones. And yet, in the minds of many, including those who were completely churched, our fellow citizens stubbornly settled down vicious stories, gossip and anecdotes that were presented as truth in Soviet history textbooks.

The myth about the wine of Nicholas II in the Khodynka tragedy

It is customary to start any list of accusations with Khodynka - a terrible stampede that occurred during the coronation celebrations in Moscow on May 18, 1896. You might think that the sovereign ordered to organize this stampede! And if anyone is to be blamed for what happened, then the uncle of the emperor, the Moscow Governor-General Sergei Alexandrovich, who did not foresee the very possibility of such an influx of the public. At the same time, it should be noted that they did not hide what happened, all the newspapers wrote about Khodynka, all of Russia knew about her. The Russian emperor and empress the next day visited all the wounded in hospitals and defended a memorial service for the dead. Nicholas II ordered to pay pensions to the victims. And they received it until 1917, until the politicians, who had been speculating on the Khodynka tragedy for years, made it so that any pensions in Russia ceased to be paid at all.

And the slander, repeated over the years, that the tsar, despite the Khodynka tragedy, went to the ball and had fun there, sounds absolutely vile. The sovereign was indeed forced to go to an official reception at the French embassy, ​​which he could not help attending for diplomatic reasons (an insult to the allies!), He paid his respects to the ambassador and left, having been there only 15 (!) minutes.

And from this they created the myth of a heartless despot having fun while his subjects die. From here the absurd nickname “Bloody” created by the radicals and picked up by the educated public crawled.

The myth of the monarch's guilt in unleashing the Russo-Japanese war

The emperor admonishes the soldiers of the Russo-Japanese War. 1904

They say that the sovereign dragged Russia into the Russo-Japanese war, because the autocracy needed a "small victorious war."

In contrast to the "educated" Russian society, confident in the inevitable victory and contemptuously calling the Japanese "macaques", the emperor was well aware of all the difficulties of the situation in the Far East and tried with all his might to prevent war. And do not forget - it was Japan that attacked Russia in 1904. Treacherously, without declaring war, the Japanese attacked our ships in Port Arthur.

Kuropatkin, Rozhestvensky, Stessel, Linevich, Nebogatov, and any of the generals and admirals, but not the sovereign, who was thousands of miles from the theater of operations and nevertheless did everything for victory.

For example, the fact that by the end of the war, 20, and not 4 military echelons per day (as at the beginning) went along the unfinished Trans-Siberian Railway - the merit of Nicholas II himself.

And on the Japanese side, our revolutionary society “fought”, which needed not victory, but defeat, which its representatives themselves honestly admitted. For example, representatives of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party clearly wrote in an appeal to Russian officers: “Every victory of yours threatens Russia with a disaster of strengthening order, every defeat brings the hour of deliverance closer. Is it any wonder if the Russians rejoice at the success of your adversary? Revolutionaries and liberals diligently fanned the turmoil in the rear of the warring country, doing this, including with Japanese money. This is now well known.

The myth of Bloody Sunday

For decades, the tsar's duty accusation was "Bloody Sunday" - the execution of an allegedly peaceful demonstration on January 9, 1905. Why, they say, did he not leave the Winter Palace and fraternize with the people devoted to him?

Let's start with the simplest fact - the sovereign was not in Zimny, he was in his country residence, in Tsarskoye Selo. He was not going to come to the city, since both the mayor I. A. Fullon and the police authorities assured the emperor that they had "everything under control." By the way, they did not deceive Nicholas II too much. In a normal situation, the troops brought out into the street would have been sufficient to prevent riots.

No one foresaw the scale of the demonstration on January 9, as well as the activities of provocateurs. When Socialist-Revolutionary fighters began to shoot at the soldiers from the crowd of allegedly “peaceful demonstrators”, it was not difficult to foresee response actions. From the very beginning, the organizers of the demonstration planned a clash with the authorities, and not a peaceful procession. They did not need political reforms, they needed "great upheavals".

But what about the emperor himself? During the entire revolution of 1905-1907, he sought to find contact with Russian society, went for specific and sometimes even overly bold reforms (like the provision by which the first State Dumas were elected). And what did he get in return? Spitting and hatred, calls "Down with the autocracy!" and encouraging bloody riots.

However, the revolution was not "crushed". The rebellious society was pacified by the sovereign, who skillfully combined the use of force and new, more thoughtful reforms (the electoral law of June 3, 1907, according to which Russia finally received a normally functioning parliament).

The myth of how the tsar "surrendered" Stolypin

They reproach the sovereign for allegedly insufficient support for the "Stolypin reforms." But who made Pyotr Arkadyevich prime minister, if not Nicholas II himself? Contrary, by the way, to the opinion of the court and the immediate environment. And, if there were moments of misunderstanding between the sovereign and the head of the cabinet, then they are inevitable in any hard and difficult work. The supposedly planned resignation of Stolypin did not mean a rejection of his reforms.

The myth of Rasputin's omnipotence

Tales about the last sovereign cannot do without constant stories about the “dirty peasant” Rasputin, who enslaved the “weak-willed king”. Now, after many objective investigations of the “Rasputin legend”, among which A. N. Bokhanov’s “The Truth about Grigory Rasputin” stands out as fundamental, it is clear that the influence of the Siberian elder on the emperor was negligible. And the fact that the sovereign "did not remove Rasputin from the throne"? How could he remove it? From the bed of a sick son, whom Rasputin saved, when all the doctors had already abandoned Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich? Let everyone think for himself: is he ready to sacrifice the life of a child for the sake of stopping public gossip and hysterical newspaper chatter?

The myth of the fault of the sovereign in the "wrong conduct" of the First World War

Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II. Photo by R. Golike and A. Vilborg. 1913

Emperor Nicholas II is also reproached for not preparing Russia for the First World War. The public figure I. L. Solonevich most clearly wrote about the sovereign’s efforts to prepare the Russian army for a possible war and about the sabotage of his efforts by the “educated society”: we are democrats and we do not want the military. Nicholas II arming the army by violating the spirit of the Fundamental Laws: in accordance with Article 86. This article provides for the right of the government, in exceptional cases and during parliamentary recesses, to pass provisional laws and without parliament - so that they backdating would be submitted to the first parliamentary session. The Duma was dissolved (holidays), loans for machine guns went through even without the Duma. And when the session began, nothing could be done.”

And again, unlike ministers or military leaders (like Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich), the sovereign did not want war, he tried to delay it with all his might, knowing about the insufficient preparedness of the Russian army. For example, he directly spoke about this to the Russian ambassador to Bulgaria, Neklyudov: “Now, Neklyudov, listen to me carefully. Never for a moment forget the fact that we cannot fight. I don't want war. I have made it my absolute rule to do everything to preserve for my people all the advantages of a peaceful life. At this moment in history, anything that could lead to war must be avoided. There is no doubt that we cannot go to war - at least not for the next five or six years - before 1917. Although, if the vital interests and honor of Russia are at stake, we can, if it is absolutely necessary, accept the challenge, but not before 1915. But remember - not one minute earlier, no matter what the circumstances or reasons are, and no matter what position we are in.

Of course, much in the First World War did not go as planned by its participants. But why should the sovereign be blamed for these troubles and surprises, who at the beginning of it was not even the commander-in-chief? Could he personally prevent the "Samsonian catastrophe"? Or the breakthrough of the German cruisers "Goeben" and "Breslau" into the Black Sea, after which the plans for coordinating the actions of the allies in the Entente went to waste?

When the will of the emperor could improve the situation, the sovereign did not hesitate, despite the objections of ministers and advisers. In 1915, the threat of such a complete defeat loomed over the Russian army that its Commander-in-Chief - Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich - literally sobbed in despair. It was then that Nicholas II took the most decisive step - not only stood at the head of the Russian army, but also stopped the retreat, which threatened to turn into a stampede.

The sovereign did not imagine himself a great commander, he knew how to listen to the opinion of military advisers and choose good decisions for Russian troops. According to his instructions, the work of the rear was established, according to his instructions, new and even the latest equipment was adopted (like Sikorsky bombers or Fedorov assault rifles). And if in 1914 the Russian military industry produced 104,900 shells, then in 1916 - 30,974,678! So much military equipment was prepared that it was enough for five years of the Civil War, and for the armament of the Red Army in the first half of the twenties.

In 1917, Russia, under the military leadership of its emperor, was ready for victory. Many wrote about this, even W. Churchill, who was always skeptical and cautious about Russia: “Fate has not been so cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship sank when the harbor was in sight. She had already weathered the storm when everything collapsed. All the sacrifices have already been made, all the work is done. Despair and treason seized power when the task was already completed. The long retreats are over; shell hunger is defeated; weapons flowed in a wide stream; a stronger, more numerous, better equipped army guarded a vast front; rear assembly points were overflowing with people... In the government of states, when great events are taking place, the leader of the nation, whoever he may be, is condemned for failures and glorified for successes. It's not about who did the work, who drew up the plan of struggle; censure or praise for the outcome prevails on him on whom the authority of supreme responsibility. Why deny Nicholas II this ordeal?.. His efforts are downplayed; His actions are condemned; His memory is being denigrated... Stop and say: who else turned out to be suitable? There was no shortage of talented and courageous people, ambitious and proud in spirit, brave and powerful people. But no one was able to answer those few simple questions on which the life and glory of Russia depended. Holding the victory already in her hands, she fell to the ground alive, like Herod of old, devoured by worms.

At the beginning of 1917, the sovereign really failed to cope with the combined conspiracy of the top of the military and the leaders of the opposition political forces.

And who could? It was beyond human strength.

The myth of voluntary renunciation

And yet, the main thing that even many monarchists accuse Nicholas II of is precisely renunciation, “moral desertion”, “flight from office”. In the fact that, according to the poet A. A. Blok, he "renounced, as if he had surrendered the squadron."

Now, again, after the meticulous work of modern researchers, it becomes clear that no voluntary there was no abdication. Instead, a real coup d'état took place. Or, as the historian and publicist M. V. Nazarov aptly noted, it was not a “renunciation”, but a “rejection” that took place.

Even in the most remote Soviet times, they did not deny that the events of February 23 - March 2, 1917 at the tsarist Headquarters and at the headquarters of the commander of the Northern Front were an apex coup, “fortunately”, coinciding with the beginning of the “February bourgeois revolution”, started (of course same!) by the forces of the St. Petersburg proletariat.

Related material

On March 2, 1917, the Russian Emperor Nicholas II signed the abdication in favor of his brother Mikhail (who soon also abdicated). This day is considered the date of the death of the Russian monarchy. But there are still many questions about renunciation. We asked Gleb Eliseev, Candidate of Historical Sciences, to comment on them.

With the riots fanned by the Bolshevik underground in St. Petersburg, everything is now clear. The conspirators only took advantage of this circumstance, exaggerating its significance beyond measure, in order to lure the sovereign out of Headquarters, depriving him of contact with any loyal units and the government. And when the royal train with great difficulty reached Pskov, where the headquarters of General N.V. Ruzsky, the commander of the Northern Front and one of the active conspirators, was located, the emperor was completely blocked and deprived of communication with the outside world.

In fact, General Ruzsky arrested the royal train and the emperor himself. And severe psychological pressure on the sovereign began. Nicholas II was begged to give up power, which he never aspired to. Moreover, not only the Duma deputies Guchkov and Shulgin did this, but also the commanders of all (!) Fronts and almost all fleets (with the exception of Admiral A. V. Kolchak). The emperor was told that his decisive step would be able to prevent confusion, bloodshed, that this would immediately stop the Petersburg unrest ...

Now we know very well that the sovereign was basely deceived. What could he think then? At the forgotten Dno station or on the sidings in Pskov, cut off from the rest of Russia? Didn't he consider that it is better for a Christian to humbly yield to royal power than to shed the blood of his subjects?

But even under pressure from the conspirators, the emperor did not dare to go against the law and conscience. The manifesto he compiled clearly did not suit the envoys of the State Duma. The document, which was eventually made public as the text of the renunciation, raises doubts among a number of historians. The original has not been preserved; the Russian State Archives has only a copy of it. There are reasonable assumptions that the sovereign's signature was copied from the order that Nicholas II assumed the supreme command in 1915. The signature of the Minister of the Court, Count V. B. Fredericks, was also forged, allegedly confirming the abdication. Which, by the way, the count himself clearly spoke about later, on June 2, 1917, during interrogation: “But in order for me to write such a thing, I can swear that I would not have done it.”

And already in St. Petersburg, the deceived and confused Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich did what he had no right to do in principle - he transferred power to the Provisional Government. As AI Solzhenitsyn noted: “The end of the monarchy was the abdication of Mikhail. He is worse than abdicated: he blocked the way for all other possible heirs to the throne, he transferred power to an amorphous oligarchy. It was his abdication that turned the change of monarch into a revolution."

Usually, after statements about the illegal overthrow of the sovereign from the throne, both in scientific discussions and on the Web, shouts immediately begin: “Why didn’t Tsar Nicholas protest later? Why didn't he denounce the conspirators? Why didn’t he raise loyal troops and lead them against the rebels?

That is - why did not start a civil war?

Yes, because the sovereign did not want her. Because he hoped that by his departure he would calm down a new turmoil, believing that the whole point was the possible hostility of society towards him personally. After all, he, too, could not help but succumb to the hypnosis of anti-state, anti-monarchist hatred that Russia had been subjected to for years. As A. I. Solzhenitsyn rightly wrote about the “liberal-radical Field” that engulfed the empire: “For many years (decades) this Field flowed unhindered, its lines of force thickened - and pierced, and subjugated all the brains in the country, at least somewhat touched enlightenment, even the beginnings of it. It almost completely owned the intelligentsia. More rare, but its power lines were penetrated by state and official circles, and the military, and even the priesthood, the episcopate (the whole Church as a whole is already ... powerless against this Field), - and even those who most fought against the Field: the most right-wing circles and the throne itself.

And did these troops loyal to the emperor really exist? After all, even Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, on March 1, 1917 (that is, before the formal abdication of the sovereign), transferred the Guards crew subordinate to him to the jurisdiction of the Duma conspirators and appealed to other military units "to join the new government"!

The attempt of Sovereign Nikolai Alexandrovich to prevent bloodshed with the help of renunciation of power, with the help of voluntary self-sacrifice, stumbled upon the evil will of tens of thousands of those who did not want the pacification and victory of Russia, but blood, madness and the creation of a "paradise on earth" for the "new man", free from faith and conscience.

And for such “guardians of humanity”, even a defeated Christian sovereign was like a sharp knife in the throat. It was unbearable, impossible.

They couldn't help but kill him.

The myth that the execution of the royal family was the arbitrariness of the Ural Regional Council

Emperor Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei
in exile. Tobolsk, 1917-1918

The more or less vegetarian, toothless early Provisional Government limited itself to the arrest of the emperor and his family, the socialist clique of Kerensky achieved the exile of the sovereign, his wife and children in. And for whole months, until the very Bolshevik coup, one can see how the worthy, purely Christian behavior of the emperor in exile and the vicious fuss of the politicians of the “new Russia”, who sought “for a start” to bring the sovereign into “political oblivion”, contrast with each other.

And then an openly God-fighting Bolshevik gang came to power, which decided to turn this non-existence from “political” into “physical”. Indeed, back in April 1917, Lenin declared: “We consider Wilhelm II to be the same crowned robber, worthy of execution, like Nicholas II.”

Only one thing is not clear - why did they hesitate? Why didn't they try to destroy Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich immediately after the October Revolution?

Probably because they were afraid of popular indignation, they were afraid of a public reaction under their still fragile power. Apparently, the unpredictable behavior of the “abroad” was also frightening. In any case, the British Ambassador D. Buchanan warned the Provisional Government: "Any insult inflicted on the Emperor and His Family will destroy the sympathy caused by March and the course of the revolution, and will humiliate the new government in the eyes of the world." True, in the end it turned out that these were only “words, words, nothing but words.”

And yet there is a feeling that, in addition to rational motives, there was some inexplicable, almost mystical fear of what the fanatics planned to commit.

Indeed, for some reason, years after the Yekaterinburg murder, rumors spread that only one sovereign was shot. Then they announced (even at a completely official level) that the killers of the king were severely condemned for abuse of power. And even later, almost the entire Soviet period, the version of the “arbitrariness of the Yekaterinburg Soviet”, allegedly frightened by the white units approaching the city, was officially adopted. They say that the sovereign was not released and did not become the "banner of the counter-revolution", and he had to be destroyed. The fog of fornication hid the secret, and the essence of the secret was a planned and clearly conceived savage murder.

Its exact details and background have not yet been clarified, the testimony of eyewitnesses is amazingly confused, and even the discovered remains of the Royal Martyrs still raise doubts about their authenticity.

Now only a few unambiguous facts are clear.

On April 30, 1918, Sovereign Nikolai Alexandrovich, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and their daughter Maria were taken under escort from Tobolsk, where they had been in exile since August 1917, to Yekaterinburg. They were taken into custody in former home engineer N. N. Ipatiev, located on the corner of Voznesensky Prospekt. The remaining children of the emperor and empress - daughters Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia and son Alexei were reunited with their parents only on May 23.

Was this an initiative of the Yekaterinburg Soviet, not coordinated with the Central Committee? Unlikely. Judging by indirect data, in early July 1918, the top leadership of the Bolshevik Party (primarily Lenin and Sverdlov) decided to "liquidate the royal family."

For example, Trotsky wrote about this in his memoirs:

“My next visit to Moscow fell after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:

Yes, where is the king?

- It's over, - he answered, - shot.

Where is the family?

And his family is with him.

All? I asked, apparently with a hint of surprise.

Everything, - Sverdlov answered, - but what?

He was waiting for my reaction. I didn't answer.

- And who decided? I asked.

We have decided here. Ilyich believed that it was impossible to leave us a living banner for them, especially in the current difficult conditions.

(L.D. Trotsky. Diaries and letters. M .: Hermitage, 1994. P. 120. (Entry dated April 9, 1935); Lev Trotsky. Diaries and letters. Edited by Yuri Felshtinsky. USA, 1986 , p.101.)

At midnight on July 17, 1918, the emperor, his wife, children and servants were awakened, taken to the basement and brutally murdered. Here in the fact that they were killed brutally and cruelly, in an amazing way, all the testimonies of eyewitnesses, which differ so much in the rest, coincide.

The bodies were secretly taken outside Yekaterinburg and somehow tried to destroy them. Everything that remained after the desecration of the bodies was buried just as discreetly.

The Yekaterinburg victims had a premonition of their fate, and it was not for nothing that Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna, while imprisoned in Yekaterinburg, crossed out the lines in one of the books: “Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ went to death as if on a holiday, facing inevitable death, retaining the same wondrous peace of mind that never left them for a minute. They walked calmly towards death because they hoped to enter into a different, spiritual life, opening up for a person beyond the grave.

P.S. Sometimes they notice that "here, de Tsar Nicholas II atoned for all his sins before Russia with his death." In my opinion, this statement reveals some kind of blasphemous, immoral quirk of public consciousness. All the victims of the Yekaterinburg Golgotha ​​were "guilty" only of stubborn confession of the faith of Christ until their very death and fell a martyr's death.

And the first of them was the sovereign-passion-bearer Nikolai Alexandrovich.

On the screen saver is a photo fragment: Nicholas II in the imperial train. 1917

Nicholas 2 Alexandrovich (May 6, 1868 - July 17, 1918) - the last Russian emperor, who ruled from 1894 to 1917, the eldest son of Alexander 3 and Maria Feodorovna, was an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the Soviet historiographic tradition, he was given the epithet "Bloody". The life of Nicholas 2 and his reign are described in this article.

Briefly about the reign of Nicholas 2

During the years there was an active economic development of Russia. At the same time, the country lost to the sovereign in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which was one of the reasons for the revolutionary events of 1905-1907, in particular, the adoption of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, according to which the creation of various political parties was allowed, and also formed The State Duma. According to the same manifesto, agrarian activity began. In 1907, Russia became a member of the Entente and participated in the First World War as part of it. In August 1915, Nikolai 2 Romanov became the supreme commander in chief. On March 2, 1917, the sovereign abdicated. He and his entire family were shot. The Russian Orthodox Church canonized them in 2000.

Childhood, early years

When Nikolai Aleksandrovich was 8 years old, his home education began. The program included a general education course lasting eight years. And then - a course of higher sciences lasting five years. It was based on the program of the classical gymnasium. But instead of Greek and Latin the future king mastered botany, mineralogy, anatomy, zoology and physiology. The courses of Russian literature, history and foreign languages ​​were expanded. In addition, the higher education program included the study of law, political economy and military affairs (strategy, jurisprudence, the service of the General Staff, geography). Nicholas 2 was also engaged in fencing, vaulting, music, and drawing. Alexander 3 and his wife Maria Feodorovna themselves chose mentors and teachers for the future tsar. Among them were military and statesmen, scientists: N. Kh. Bunge, K. P. Pobedonostsev, N. N. Obruchev, M. I. Dragomirov, N. K. Girs, A. R. Drenteln.

Carier start

From childhood, the future emperor Nicholas 2 was interested in military affairs: he perfectly knew the traditions of the officer environment, the soldier did not shy away, realizing himself as their mentor-patron, he easily endured the inconveniences of army life during camp maneuvers and training camps.

Immediately after the birth of the future sovereign, he was enrolled in several guards regiments and made commander of the 65th Moscow Infantry Regiment. At the age of five, Nicholas 2 (dates of reign - 1894-1917) was appointed commander of the Life Guards of the Reserve Infantry Regiment, and a little later, in 1875, of the Erivan Regiment. The future sovereign received his first military rank (ensign) in December 1875, and in 1880 he was promoted to second lieutenant, and four years later - to lieutenant.

For real military service Nicholas 2 entered in 1884, and starting in July 1887 he served in and reached the rank of staff captain. He became a captain in 1891, and a year later - a colonel.

Beginning of the reign

After a long illness, Alexander 1 died, and Nicholas 2 took over the reign in Moscow on the same day, at the age of 26, on October 20, 1894.

During his solemn official coronation on May 18, 1896, dramatic events took place on the Khodynka field. There were mass riots, thousands of people were killed and injured in a spontaneous stampede.

The Khodynka field was not previously intended for festivities, since it was a training base for the troops, and therefore it was not landscaped. There was a ravine right next to the field, and the field itself was covered with numerous pits. On the occasion of the celebration, the pits and the ravine were covered with boards and covered with sand, and along the perimeter they set up benches, booths, stalls for distributing free vodka and food. When people, attracted by rumors about the distribution of money and gifts, rushed to the buildings, the decks that covered the pits collapsed, and people fell, not having time to stand up: a crowd was already running along them. The police, swept away by the wave, could not do anything. Only after reinforcements arrived did the crowd gradually disperse, leaving the bodies of mutilated and trampled people on the square.

The first years of the reign

In the first years of the reign of Nicholas 2, a general census of the country's population and a monetary reform were carried out. During the reign of this monarch, Russia became an agrarian-industrial state: railways were built, cities grew, industrial enterprises. The sovereign made decisions aimed at the social and economic modernization of Russia: the gold circulation of the ruble was introduced, several laws on workers' insurance, Stolypin's agrarian reform was carried out, laws on religious tolerance and universal primary education were adopted.

Main events

The years of the reign of Nicholas 2 were marked by a strong aggravation in the internal political life of Russia, as well as a difficult foreign policy situation (the events of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the Revolution of 1905-1907 in our country, the First World War, and in 1917 - the February Revolution) .

The Russo-Japanese War, which began in 1904, although it did not cause much damage to the country, however, significantly shook the authority of the sovereign. After numerous failures and losses in 1905, the Battle of Tsushima ended in a crushing defeat for the Russian fleet.

Revolution 1905-1907

On January 9, 1905, the revolution began, this date is called Bloody Sunday. Government troops shot down a demonstration of workers, organized, as is commonly believed, by George of the transit prison in St. Petersburg. As a result of the executions, more than a thousand demonstrators died, who participated in a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace in order to submit a petition to the sovereign about the needs of the workers.

After this uprising swept many other Russian cities. Armed performances were in the navy and in the army. So, on June 14, 1905, the sailors took possession of the battleship Potemkin, brought it to Odessa, where at that time there was a general strike. However, the sailors did not dare to land ashore to support the workers. "Potemkin" headed to Romania and surrendered to the authorities. Numerous speeches forced the king to sign the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, which granted citizens civil liberties.

Not being a reformer by nature, the king was forced to implement reforms that did not correspond to his convictions. He believed that in Russia the time had not yet come for freedom of speech, a constitution, and universal suffrage. However, Nicholas 2 (whose photo is presented in the article) was forced to sign the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, as an active public movement for political transformation began.

Establishment of the State Duma

The State Duma was established by the tsar's manifesto of 1906. In the history of Russia, for the first time, the emperor began to rule in the presence of a representative elected body from the population. That is, Russia is gradually becoming a constitutional monarchy. However, despite these changes, the emperor during the reign of Nicholas 2 still had enormous powers of authority: he issued laws in the form of decrees, appointed ministers and the prime minister, accountable only to him, was the head of the court, the army and the patron of the Church, determined foreign policy the course of our country.

The first revolution of 1905-1907 showed the deep crisis that existed at that time in the Russian state.

Personality of Nicholas 2

From the point of view of his contemporaries, his personality, main character traits, advantages and disadvantages were very ambiguous and sometimes caused conflicting assessments. According to many of them, Nicholas 2 was characterized by such an important feature as weak will. However, there is a lot of evidence that the sovereign stubbornly strove to implement his ideas and undertakings, sometimes reaching stubbornness (only once, when signing the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, he was forced to submit to someone else's will).

In contrast to his father, Alexander 3, Nicholas 2 (see his photo below) did not create the impression of a strong personality. However, according to people close to him, he had exceptional self-control, sometimes interpreted as indifference to the fate of people and the country (for example, with composure that struck the sovereign’s entourage, he met the news of the fall of Port Arthur and the defeat of the Russian army in World War I war).

Being engaged in state affairs, Tsar Nicholas 2 showed "extraordinary perseverance", as well as attentiveness and accuracy (for example, he never had a personal secretary, and he put all the seals on letters with his own hand). Although, in general, the management of a huge power was still a "heavy burden" for him. According to contemporaries, Tsar Nicholas 2 had a tenacious memory, observation, in communication he was a friendly, modest and sensitive person. Most of all, he valued his habits, peace, health, and especially the well-being of his own family.

Nicholas 2 and his family

The support of the sovereign was his family. Alexandra Fedorovna was not just a wife for him, but also an adviser, a friend. Their wedding took place on November 14, 1894. The interests, ideas and habits of the spouses often did not coincide, largely due to cultural differences, because the empress was a German princess. However, this did not interfere with family harmony. The couple had five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei.

The drama of the royal family was caused by the illness of Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia (blood incoagulability). It was this disease that caused the appearance in the royal house of Grigory Rasputin, who was famous for the gift of healing and foresight. He often helped Alexei cope with bouts of illness.

World War I

1914 was a turning point in the fate of Nicholas 2. It was at this time that the First World War began. The sovereign did not want this war, trying until the very last moment to avoid a bloody massacre. But on July 19 (August 1), 1914, Germany nevertheless decided to start a war with Russia.

In August 1915, marked by a series of military setbacks, Nicholas 2, whose reign was already drawing to a close, assumed the role of commander in chief of the Russian army. Previously, it was assigned to Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich (the Younger). Since then, the sovereign only occasionally came to the capital, spending most of his time in Mogilev, at the headquarters of the Supreme Commander.

The First World War intensified Russia's internal problems. The king and his entourage began to be considered the main culprit of the defeats and the protracted campaign. There was an opinion that treason was "breeding" in the Russian government. At the beginning of 1917, the military command of the country, headed by the emperor, created a plan for a general offensive, according to which it was planned to end the confrontation by the summer of 1917.

Abdication of Nicholas 2

However, at the end of February of the same year, unrest began in Petrograd, which, due to the lack of strong opposition from the authorities, grew in a few days into mass political uprisings against the tsar's dynasty and government. At first, Nicholas 2 planned to use force to achieve order in the capital, but, realizing the true scale of the protests, he abandoned this plan, fearing even more bloodshed that it could cause. Some of the high-ranking officials, political figures and members of the sovereign's retinue convinced him that a change in government was necessary to suppress the unrest, the abdication of Nicholas 2 from the throne.

After painful reflections on March 2, 1917 in Pskov, during a trip on the imperial train, Nicholas 2 decided to sign an act of abdication from the throne, transferring the reign to his brother, Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich. However, he refused to accept the crown. The abdication of Nicholas 2 thus meant the end of the dynasty.

Last months of life

Nicholas 2 and his family were arrested on March 9 of the same year. First, for five months they were in Tsarskoye Selo, under guard, and in August 1917 they were sent to Tobolsk. Then, in April 1918, the Bolsheviks moved Nicholas and his family to Yekaterinburg. Here, on the night of July 17, 1918, in the center of the city, in the basement in which the prisoners were imprisoned, Emperor Nicholas 2, his five children, his wife, as well as several close associates of the king, including the family doctor Botkin and servants, without any trial and the investigations were shot. In total, eleven people were killed.

In 2000, by decision of the Church, Nicholas 2 Romanov, as well as his entire family, were canonized, and an Orthodox church was erected on the site of the Ipatiev house.

Nicholas II Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov
Coronation:
Predecessor:	Alexander III
Successor:	Mikhail Alexandrovich (did not take the throne)
Heir:
Religion:	Orthodoxy
Birth:
Buried:	Secretly buried presumably in the forest near the village of Koptyaki, Sverdlovsk region, in 1998 the alleged remains were reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral
Dynasty:	Romanovs
	Alexander III
	Maria Fedorovna
	Alisa Gessenskaya (Alexandra Feodorovna)
	Daughters: Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia Son: Alexey
Autograph:
Monogram:

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, Tsarskoye 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, Kyiv, 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, Podolsk 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 his native language); 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.

May 6, 1884, upon reaching the age of majority (for the Heir), took the oath in big church 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 to gain experience in public affairs. railway. 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 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 recently the voices of people who were carried away by senseless dreams about the participation of representatives of the zemstvos in matters of internal administration have been heard in some zemstvo meetings. 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 baffled by the awards announced on January 1st. It turned out that the new Sovereign from the first step distinguished those whom the deceased considered dangerous. All this inspires fear for the future. In the early 1910s, V.P. Obninsky, a representative of the left wing of the Cadets, 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, 1995 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: “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 was held 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 Tsesarevich 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 It is not pleasing to the Lord to bless Us with the birth of a Son, the next 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. In factories with more than 100 workers, free medical care was introduced, 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 Saturday 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 Russia was given the ports of Port Arthur (Lushun) and Dalny (Dalian) with adjacent territories and water space for lease 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 maintaining universal peace and setting limits on the constant growth of armaments. The Hague Peace Conferences were held in 1899 and 1907. separate solutions which operate to this day (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 Minister of Foreign Affairs 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 a 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, a peace treaty was signed in Portsmouth by Russian representatives S. Yu. Witte and R. R. Rosen. 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 the study of 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 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 provisional 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 that commanded, 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 could take effect without the approval of the State Duma, and that those elected from the people should be provided with the opportunity to really participate in supervising the regularity of the actions of the authorities appointed by us. On April 23, 1906, the Basic state laws Russian Empire, which provided 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 both preliminary general and spiritual censorship for time-based (periodical) publications published in the cities of the empire (April 26, 1906, all censorship was abolished).

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 tacitly 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 bloodstain
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 turned 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 the 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 address 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 was: “The elected 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 that the Duma remove the entire composition of the Social Democratic faction from Duma meetings and remove immunity from 16 members of the RSDLP. 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'état", 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 spoke for a long time , without fatigue, joyfully and affably.

Land reform

From 1902 to 1905, both statesmen and Russian scientists were involved in the development of new agrarian legislation at the state level: 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 has become the main exporter of agricultural products, accounting for 2/5 of the world's agricultural exports. 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.

During 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 our entire 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 course of events fatal to her and open the way for Russia to solve the historical tasks bequeathed to her by her ancestors 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, a deputation of 100 prominent Armenians headed by a bishop was received by the Viceroy: the deputation “asked the count to cast down at the feet of the Monarch of Great Russia the 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 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 that 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 issues of command and control 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

The reassessment by Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich of his abilities resulted in a number of major military mistakes, and attempts to deflect the relevant accusations from himself led to inflated 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. 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 Supreme Decision on the removal of the Grand Duke from the post of Commander-in-Chief.

General M. V. Alekseev, who came to 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 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), was not going to conclude a separate peace with the enemy - he saw the most important means of consolidating 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 officers wavered, 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 10:40 pm: “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 p.m. 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 accommodate 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 Brest Peace between Soviet Russia and Imperial 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 expressed. 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. This view of the nature and nature of his power, according to Gurko, also determined the degree of the emperor's goodwill towards his closest employees: of 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 autocephaly 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, an unprecedented (for the synodal period) large number of canonizations of new saints was accomplished, and he insisted on the canonization of the most famous - Seraphim of Sarov (1903) despite the reluctance of the Chief Procurator 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 tsar 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

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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:

“All sorts of options regarding Rasputin’s influence penetrated the front, and censorship collected enormous material on this subject even in soldiers’ letters from the army in the field. But the most striking impression was made by the fateful word: It refers to the Empress. In the army, loudly, not embarrassed by either place or time, there was talk of the empress' insistent demand for a separate peace, of her betrayal of Field Marshal Kitchener, about whose trip she allegedly informed the Germans, etc. Experiencing the past with memory, given that The impression that the rumor about the betrayal of the Empress made in the army, I believe that this circumstance played a huge role in the mood of the army, in its attitude towards both the dynasty and the revolution. General Alekseev, to whom I asked this painful question in the spring of 1917, answered me somehow vaguely and reluctantly: When parsing the papers, the empress found a map with a detailed designation of the troops of the entire front, which was made only in two copies - for me and for the sovereign. This made a depressing impression on me. Few people could use it ... Say no more. Changed the conversation ... History will undoubtedly find out the extremely negative influence that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna had on the management of the Russian state in the period preceding the revolution. As for the question of “treason”, this unfortunate rumor was not confirmed by a single fact, and was subsequently refuted by an investigation of Muravyov’s commission specially appointed by the Provisional Government, with the participation of representatives from the Council of R. [Workers] and S. [Soldatsky] Deputies. »

Personal assessments of contemporaries who knew him

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

The former Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Count S. Yu. Witte, in connection with the 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, 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, remembered the military exploits of individuals and military units, knew the units that rebelled and remained loyal during the riots, 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 shelves in memory in numerical order 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 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. This was the most characteristic feature of his spiritual make-up 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 the 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 the Russian public opinion of the 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 rotting 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 revolutionary movement 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 World War II.

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.

Decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of August 20, 2000: “To glorify as passion-bearers in the host of new martyrs and confessors of Russia the Royal Family: 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 Temple-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 former 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 , a judgment about the execution was not accepted) about 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 persons who committed the deliberate 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 installed 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 - 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 full-length bronze statues, are installed in the following cities and towns:

• 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. 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 (z).
• 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

Tradition

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.

Tradition

Alexander III did not make concessions: 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 had a good-natured attitude towards ordinary people - peasants, but 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.

Arguments and Facts

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 Alexander III inherited from children and kept in the Bank of London, 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.

Kommersant

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

Subscription to publications

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.

Arguments and Facts

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, 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

Sites - Google

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

Wikipedia

Olga - the eldest daughter of 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

Wikipedia

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

Wikipedia

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. AT 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

Wikipedia

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

Wikipedia

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

All of Switzerland in the palm of your hand

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.