Tsar Nicholas II

While Tsardom (I'm so excited that's a word) officially ended in 1721, Russian autocrats, emperors, and what have you were still given the title of Tsar. Nicholas II was the last of these such rulers, his reign lasting from 1894-1917. Overall Russia under his leadership was... well, let's just say it got kinda rocky.
Nicholas II was born into the Romanov family, the then leading dynasty of Russia. He became Tsesarevich (essentially the heir) after his grandfather was assassinated. Thrown into the rather terrifying world of Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, he survived his own assassination attempt in 1891 in Japan. Right from the beginning, there were at least some people out for poor Nicky's head. From this brief introduction alone, I bet you can guess that the fate of this Tsar ends in blood. Probably some vodka as well, as it is Russia, after all.

The Tsar and his wife. She... she doesn't
look that into it.

However, being a young man, he had still a strong interest in the opposite sex despite people trying to kill him and whatnot. At his coming of age ceremony at the age of sixteen, he found himself interested in Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt - this is seemingly all well and good, but she was twelve, which makes it a little awkward looking back on it. Age wasn't what stood between them, though (although I'd understand if it did...) - the problem was Alix was a devout Lutheran and refused to convert to Nicholas' Russian Orthodoxy. He later proposed but she denied him, but was later convinced that it was her duty. Oh, young love.

The Tsar in power at the time and the father of Nicholas, Alexander III, was very sick during this period. It became apparent that soon the Tsardom will fall into the hands of Nicholas, despite the fact that he was rather ill-prepared. Alexander provided little guidance for the role, believing Nicholas to not yet be ready to take on responsibility while he was in good health. As a result, after Alexander's death, Nicholas was twenty six years old and horribly unprepared. Nicholas took the throne, and in spite of the lack of experience and responsibility in his life, he demanded full autocratic rule, denying any attempts at a constitutional monarchy that a number of peasants were suggesting. It's basically the same mentality for spoiled rich kids in modern day, except with pant-loads of power. Right from the coronation ceremony, things started going down hill for Russia.

If only the Tsar's leadership
was as high quality as his
moustache.

Through a ceremony held in the Kremlin, Nicholas became the Tsar officially. He held a festival with free food and beer some distance away in the Khodynka, a field outside Mosco. This seems all well and good, but there were some problems with the field - and the organization. The field was a training ground for the military, making it uneven and rocky. Unfortunately, not enough food or booze was brought to the ceremony - a cardinal sin for any party. This caused the 100,000 in attendance to really, really want their fair share of free food, resulting in 1,389 dead and 1,300 injured from trampling and suffocation in what is truly a low moment in human history when you get right down to it. In fairness to Nicholas II, he intended to may his respects to those who died but was called away to an important meeting with a French ambassador. Regardless, it reflected very poorly on him in the eyes of the public.

So day one for the new Tsar didn't start off so well, and in fact kicked off about as poorly as one could have ever expected. And if only it had stopped there... In all fairness, Russia is a very big country, and with big countries there's quite literally a lot more room for things to go wrong. Being big wasn't just enough either - Russia wanted to be bigger, and secure their footholds in the eastern portion of their land. Unfortunately, this was in opposition to the Japanese, who were much smaller but feisty like nobody's business. Japan wanted China and mainland Asia, and they wanted it badly enough to surprise attack the Russian military. The Russians called back their fleet (who was stationed around Europe at the time) and through a series of what wikipedia defines as "misadventures" their ships were annihilated. You see, being big isn't always a good thing - the ships were far, and the in the trip they were picked off by the Japanese and things went downhill. Sending units by land didn't help much either, as the transportation was poor as, lets not forget, Russia is freaking huge. The Tsar was eventually forced into calling for peace after a massive amount of losses in a terrible war. But things couldn't get much worse...

The most successful military campaign of Tsar Nicholas II:
the defeat of the peaceful protestors at Bloody Sunday.

...Except for when things got drastically worse. In 1905, a group consisting of 120,000 displeased but peaceful Russian protestors marched on the Winter Palace in an attempt to bring about some change in the way the country was being run. Apparently, they were actually singing hymns of "God save the Tsar" along the way, making it about as peaceful as a six figure mob can be. Fearing the worst, the military lined up and confronted the people. In a horrible event that killed 92 civilians and wounded several hundred, the military opened fire unprovoked. It would later be named "Bloody Sunday", after the song by U2 - or the other way around. Historians are uncertain.

Now, to continue this blog I have to make a point. The main purpose of these write-ups is to basically get the gist. It's not meant to be a flawless historical analysis of events, but instead a casual summary. Basically enough to answer a Jeopardy question if it comes along. While I plan on writing a blog just about why I blog these things, for now you simply need to know this - the next part is rather long and tedious, and I'm essentially taking a summary and summarizing on top of that. It's the gist of the gist.

The revolutions begin! There were a number of problems that led to the Russian Revolution of 1905 - the nationality problem, in the sense that the a number of the Tsar's anti-semetic attitudes caused some discontent among, well, the Jews. There was also severe famine which was in turn caused by a horrible economy due to the failure in the war - prices for food skyrocketed. The educated were also turning against the Tsar, and education typically goes hand in hand with power. The Tsar also introduced prohibition in an attempt to up patriotism and productivity for the war effort. However, this took a massive toll on the treasury as the alcohol could no longer be taxed. Also, you took away vodka from Russia - just not a good idea. All of these factors forced the Tsar into the creation of the Duma, basically an advisory board that introduced some basic civil liberties. However, lets not forget Nicholas really was stuck in the whole autocrat thing, so he had some issues with giving up the power to these Dumas. A number of them were made, a number dissolved, and... well, they were mostly unsuccessful, all in all.

To add to the increasingly self-destructive country, the world was on the brink of war. Despite both Germany and Russia not being particularly eager to fight each other (Russia being in horrifying disrepair and Germany not wanting to go to war with the sheer volume of soldiers at their disposal) Russia entered the war, woefully unprepared. While their armies numbered in the millions, a lack of supplies, poor transportation and what would soon be massive casualties caused increasing discontent in the people. They frequently lost battles to Germany, and their losses accounted for 1/3rd of the total military deaths in WW1.

 Demonstrating his leadership qualities
as the Tsar, Nicholas allowed this man,
Rasputin, near his wife and children.

At home the situation fared hardly better. Political unrest continued, and Nicholas II, near the warfront, was cut off from public opinion. On top of that, rumours were spread about the interference (and possible affair) of Alix with Grigori Rasputin. Rasputin. Rasputin became close with Alexandra after she became convinced he was a starets, meaning a mystic of some sorts, after his healing of their young hemophiliac heir to the throne. Rasputin later met his end at the hand of some Russian nobles, which seems to be one of few parts of his story that seems to be actually agreed upon by historians. The man is completely shrouded in mystery. He also seemed like kind of a pervert.

With the military poorly supplied (and rapidly dying), the economy in shambles and peaked political unrest, eventually the crap hit the fan. Everyone revolted, including the military, pillaging political buildings and torching police offices. In the wake of the revolution, Nicholas was finally forced to abdicate the throne. However, this wasn't just one of those cases where you say "well, I'm done and did a pretty crappy job, so I'll be walking out of here now." The Tsar cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Russians, and the people wanted their vengeance. The Bolsheviks, essentially the working class of Russia, overthrew the impromptu provisional government created to temporarily replace Nicholas, and went out for blood. Eventually, they found the former Tsar and murdered him and the entire Romanov family.

Famous Historical Figures Say the Darndest Things!

1. "I want everyone to know that I will devote all my strength to maintain, for the good of the whole nation, the principle of absolute autocracy..." Oh boy. Let me paraphrase. "For your own good, I'm going to run things by myself.
2. "Difficult day! In St. Petersburg there were serious disturbances due to the desire of workers to get to the Winter Palace. The troops had to shoot in different places of the city, there were many dead and wounded. Lord, how painful and bad!" This is from the Tsar's diary after Bloody Sunday. 
3. "The innocent blood of workers, their wives and children lies forever between you and the Russian people... may all the blood which would be spilled fall upon you, you Hangman." The words of the leader of the Bloody Sunday protest. He as well believed it to be a "difficult day."
4. "God has seen your tears and heard your prayers. Do not grieve. The Little One will not die. Do not allow doctors to bother him too much." Rasputin, upon meeting the hemophiliac son of the Tsar.
5. "...The Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet, fulfilling the will of the Revolution, resolved to shoot the former Tsar, Nikolai Romanov, who is guilty of countless, bloody, violent acts against the Russian people." Now that just about sums it up.