Tsar Nicholas II Russia

Tsar Nicholas II who is initially named Nicholi II Aleksandrovich Romanov was the last emperor of the Taser dynasty under Romanov rule. In the orthodox church of Russia, he has also known as Saint Nicholas the Passion bearer who could not excel well during his ruling and his poor judgments and steps in bloody Sunday and his role in World War I have led to the collapse of the Romnavor rule as he was abducted and executed. In 1894 when his father Alexander III died, he inherited his throne as his successor. As a strong believer in autocracy, he finally led to an elected legislature much forcefully. Some of his poor decisions during the time of World was I and bad strategies in bloody Sunday eventually angered his opponents that finally led to his abduction and then on the night of 16th or 17th July, he with his entire family was executed by Bolsheviks.

During the time of his ruling, he along with his ministers like Sergei Witte initiated and supported many political and economic reforms in Russia. He also believed and channelized modernization in Russia with the help of foreign loans that were procured by the close ties of Russia with France at that time but he did not involve and given much hold to the new parliament formed. He was in ruling under Romanov ruling from 1st November of 1894 to 15th March 1917, till he was abducted.

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Image: Illustration of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia     

The Early Life of  Nicholas II Russia

On 6th May of 1868, Nicholas II of Russia was born Nicholai Aleksandrovich Romanov to Alexander III in Pushkin, Russia. He was the firstborn child of his parents. When he was born his father Alexander Alexandrovich was the ruling emperor of the Russian empire. Maria Feodorovnab who was Nicholas II mother has her origin in Denmark where she was even born. She was very protective and caring about Nicholas II and did not keep any stone unturned to provide her first child with a nurturing environment while he was growing up. But his father Alexander had a very strong impact and influence on Nicholas II from his very childhood. He inherent his conservative religious belief and valuing autocratic government ruling from his father.  

He had a series of educators and private tutors for educating Nicholas II that included some high-ranking officials from the empire’s government like Konstantin Pobedonostsev. Though Nicholas II was very bright with History and foreign languages and even did excellent well in these subjects he had very little grasp of economics and politics. It slowly became difficult for him to comprehend the subjects. His father also failed to provide him necessary training and education on the external affairs of the Romanov rule that became the biggest weakness of the last Tsar ruler. 

In the year 1881, when Nicholas II was just 13 years of age, a revolutionary bomber assassinated Tsar Nicholas’ grandfather Alexander II and as aftermath, Nicholas’s father became the heir of the throne and took over his father’s place as Alexander III. therefore, Tsar Nicholas II was announced as the successor of the heir of the Russian empire. Nicholas II was made to join the army when he was just 19years old. He spent his next three years serving in an army before he went for a tour of entire Europe and Asia for the next 10 months of his life. Because of his passion to serve in the military, he was soon promoted to the post of Colonel. While he was serving in the military, he was allowed to participate in a few of the political meetings as the heir of the throne of his father but was not allowed to stay in the meeting held by the council of state and the ministers’ committee.  

Crowning and Marriage

On October 49 of 1894, his father at the age of 49 died due to kidney failure when Nicholas II was still young but had to resume his father’s throne to fill up the loss as his elder successor. But wrapped up in grief and poor exposure to the external affairs of the empire and the political and economic structure, he could not match up the role of his father as an heir of the empire. He never wanted to be in the ruling position as he himself confessed to one of his close friends that he absolutely had no idea of ruling business.

Within a month of his father’s demise and the unsettling conditions with the ruling and business, he was still able to marry Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. Soon after taking over the throne of Alexander III, he had pressure to marry and have his own children in order to secure the empire within the family. According to the people under the Romanov rule, Empress Alexandra was known as someone who would like to spend more time inside and therefore she preferred to be in the palace of Tsarskoe Selo majority of her time. 

Family of Tsar Nicholas II

Nicholas 2 with his wife had their first child and named her Olga who was born in the year 1895. Just a year later of his daughter’s birth, his official coronation as the king of Tsar ceremony took place as he took over the throne of Alexander II after his death. While the official ceremony of the Crowning of Nicholas II was taking place, thousands of people were dead due to stampedes because of a heavy crowd. But as he was unaware of the incident that took place, he and his wife Alexandra enjoyed the event and even went to the ball function together to take part in it as it was arranged in honor of both the King and the Queen. This didn’t go well with the common people and made a very poor first impression of King Nicholas II to his public. 

Then they were blessed with their second daughter in 1897 and was named Tatiana. Then there was the arrival of their third daughter down the year in 1899 whom they named Maria. In 1901, they were again the parent of their fourth girl who was named Anastasia. Finally, in the year 1904, the couple was blessed with a baby boy that they were longing for such a long time to be the next successor of the throne and named him Alexei. But following his birth, he was soon diagnosed with hemophilia and his parents again came under concern for his well-being. 

Nicholas II then began to search and made many royals and qualified doctors to treat him and even went to an extent of letting the monk who later turned as a mystical adviser in the court of Tsar under the ruling of Nicholas II, Rasputin, hypnotize the boy. He was a very devoted family man as per his biographies as his journals of the Tsar court that was aimed to take regular notes of the political and financial dealings and the day-to-day activities that go in the empire were filled with the day-to-day notes of the health and requirements of his wife and children instead.  

Attacks 

1. Japan Attack

In the early period under Nicholas II ruling his main objective under the foreign policy is the maintain the status of Russia with Europe rather than aim to expand territory by conquering European lands. But later in years, Russia underwent a huge growth in technology especially in the far eastern regions of Russia. Because of the same, Russia by the mid starting of the year 1890, experienced a sharp increase in their economy. In the following year with the construction of the trans-Siberian railway that aimed at connecting Russia with the pacific coast actually came as a huge threat for Japan.

Japan finally decided to attack Russia and declared war against them in the year 1904. By the following year, the entire army of Nicholas II under Tsar ruling was destroyed by the Japanese army in the battle of Tsushima. After the destructive defeat of Nicholas II, he was forced to agree with Japan and thus locked the peace treaty with Japan. It was more of a peace negotiation of Russia with Japan but soon Nicholas II had to shift his attention to much bigger trouble.  

2. Bloody Sunday

On one of the Sunday of January, that is 5th January 1905, a non-violent peaceful demonstration was carried out by Father George Gapon with thousands of other common workers on the street of St. Petersburg demanding the reforms in the working conditions of workers and formation of an assembly in the court of Tsar. But without considering their demands, the troops of Nicholas II on his order fired on thousands of the workers and killing many of them that were later came to be popularly known as a bloody Sunday.

Annoyed and angered workers with the decision of the ruler, called for the strike all over Russia and the peasants also came for the support of the workers and that finally led to the rise in many other demonstrations all over Russia and the troops of ruler Nicholas II started working on violently suppressing their uprisings. This has further aggravated the tension among the common people against the ruler. Even when he considered himself as an absolute ruling power he was finally forced to create an elected assembly that he named Duma but Nicholas II desperately affirmed his directions neglecting the government reforms. 

World War I

As World War I broke out, against the will of the ministry of an elected assembly, Nicholas II declared himself as the commander in chief of the army to snatch away the controlling power from Grand Duke Nicholas for himself. Thus he remained away from his empire in Tasrskoe Selo and lived in st. Petersburg during the period of late 1915 till August of 1918. During this period the empress Alexandra took over the ruling decision in his absence.

But because of her poor political decisions were highly influenced by Rasputin due to her much dependency on him and her withdrawal from the rest of the committee. As a result, many of the ministries resigned from their designation and was rapidly replaced by Alexandra’s self-appointed people under the influence of Rasputin until the day he was killed by the nobles in the year 1916. 

Tsar Nicholas II Death

As Russia under the military direction of Nicholas II performed poorly in WWI, Russia soon came under huge poverty because of high inflation. Entire Russia blamed Nicholas II for his poor directions to his troops as commander in chief and his wife, Empress Alexandra for her ill decisions for the government and many also believed that as she has her origin in Germany she deliberately took the decision to sabotage Russia in WWI. in 1917, a riot broke out against the troops of Tsar ruling in st. Petersberg and the king were prevented by the Duma as all the nobles of the legislation turned against taking a train to his hometown Petrograd. Later the elected assembly choose their progressive block members and the troops were soon sent to St. Petersburg to stop the riot. Soon Nicholas II had to step down from his throne and then he with his entire family was abducted to the Ural mountains and kept under house arrest until they were all assassinated by Bolsheviks under the direction of Vladimir Lenin on the 16th and 17th night of July 1918 in Yekaterinburg, Russia and that’s how the Tsar ruling came to a complete end in Russia.