Nicolas II of Russia - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Youth

Nicolas II was the son of the emperor Alexandre III, which it succeeded on November 1st 1894 and of Dagmar of Denmark (1847-1928) (girl of Christian IX king of Denmark).

November 26th 1894, it married the princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt (1872-1918), of its true Alix first name, girl of Louis IV of Hesse - Darmstadt and Alice of Saxony-Cobourg and Gotha (deceased in 1878). Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt was the grand-daughter of the queen Victoria and Albert of Saxony-Cobourg and Gotha. She was known in Russia under the Russianized name of Alexandra Fedorovna.

Nicolas II and Alexandra Feodorovna had five children: a son, the Tsarévitch Alexis Nicolaïevitch (1904-1918) and four girls, Olga Nicolaïevna (1895-1918), Tatiana Nicolaïevna (1897-1918), Maria Nicolaïevna (1899-1918) and Anastasia Nicolaïevna (1901-1918).

Badly prepared to take up its duties, Nicolas II is regarded by the historians as a weak man, without will, constantly being subject to the influence of his wife (to which it dedicates a love without fault) or of its advisers, or of his broader entourage (like Raspoutine). Judged heading like all the weak ones, incompetent of refusal, it was too delicate and quite high to be determined coarsely and, rather than to refuse, preferred to keep silent itself.

His wife, Alexandra, were scorned by the Russians because of her German origins but also of the friendship which it dedicated to a monk, Grégori Raspoutine, which became the close friend of the imperial family: able to cure the crises of hemophilia from which the Tsarévitch Alexis suffers, Raspoutine acquired a very great influence on the Tsar and his wife before being finally assassinated by a conspiracy of top-dignitaries (the Pourichkevtch deputy and prince Youssoupov, husband of a niece of the tsar).

Deeply marked by the assassination of his grandfather the tsar liberator Alexandre II when it was 13 years old, it wanted to be, like his father, conservative. Nicolas II regarded himself as the absolute master of the Russian ground and intended as of his advent to continue the policy followed by his father, based on the maintenance of the autocracy; autocracy which he had sworn during his crowning to defend.

In 1902, Nicolas II entrusted to the count Plehve the ministry for the Interior. Although it tested sympathy to the constitutional ideas, Plehve developed a very preserving policy.

Economic development

With his advent, Nicolas II revoked the ministers of his father except for the Minister for Finance, Serge Witte, which it charged with completing the financial reform engaged under the reign of Alexandre III in order to ensure the currency value. In spite of their divergences of character, Nicolas II approved the economic development policy intensive carried out by his minister.

January 3rd 1897, it rouble-but is restored. The principal gold coin is the imperial (of a value of 15 roubles); one strikes also an half-imperial (7 roubles fifty kopecks). This resequencing of the financial system gave fresh impulse to the development of industry, particularly heavy industry.

The progress made in the field of economic development, without real concern of the fate of the workmen, involved social movements logically, as well as a rise of the traditional Russian culture which inspired to the people and to the artists the fear of the change. Nicolas II refused to see the consequences of the economic policy which it supported and endeavoured to maintain the bases of its absolute capacity.

Interior policy

On the internal plan, Nicolas II did not deviate from the preserving policy of his father, Alexandre III: its first public statement, at the time of its advent, condemned the Zemstvo tolerated by Alexandre III.

In 1897, it sent the general Golitsyne to Russianize the provinces of the the Caucasus; in 1898, it named general governor of Finland Nikolai Bobrikov, which undertakes to Russianize the population.

Foreign policy

Determined to conquer ports on the hot seas, Nicolas II engaged Russia in an expansionist policy, which was expressed first of all with the detriment of the Ottoman Empire and the Japan:

In 1896, it recommended to its ambassador with Constantinople to consider the annexation of the the Bosphorus by the Russia, forwarding to which it renonça then under the influence of Witte. Nicolas II, probably continuing the old dream to reconquer the Byzantine Empire thought of taking Constantinople - what the state of the sick man of Europe (the Ottoman Empire) him would undoubtedly have allowed - and of thus opening in Russia a port on the Mediterranean.

It then sought to extend Russia towards the the Far East, so in particular acquiring an access to the hot seas of the Pacifique. Thus was it favorable to a division of the China by the western powers which slowly cut up the empire of the Medium (Guerre of the boxers) and of the Korea, in order to acquire a port which is not taken in the ices and which could make it possible the Russian fleet to furrow the Pacific. This ambition worried the Japan which, on January 26th 1903, attacked the moored Russian squadron with Port-Arthur: it is the beginning of the Guerre Russo-Japanese woman, which was completed by the defeat of the Russia in 1905.

Since 1896, it continued the spectacular policy of bringing together with the France undertaken by his/her father Alexandre III, which allowed the establishment of the " Triple Alliance " between the France, the England and the Russia. Close financial links were tied with the subscription of the " Russian loans " , intended to finance the economic development of Russia: the France saw in the Russia the " roller compresseur" who could help it, in the event of war against the Germany, to recover the Alsace-Lorraine.

From the religious point of view, comparing the Coptes to Orthodoxe , it was interested in the Ethiopia: in 1893, the orthodoxe Churches and coptes signed agreements and, in 1900, the Leonteov general was named protective general of the equatorial possessions of the Ethiopia.

Its reign also saw the degradation of the relations between the Russia and the Germany, the German pangermanists and Austrians following a policy anti-Russian and anti-Slavic.

Constitutionalized Empire (1905-1914)

The defeat of 1905, vis-a-vis the Japan, weakened Nicolas II who added to his other problems the reputation of an overcome emperor; symbolically, it could not claim any more with being the good guard of the Russia. Moreover, economic development reinforced the land question.

As of 1904, the provincial administrations drew the attention of Nicolas II to “several questions of a general official nature”, but these requests were drawn aside by the Tsar, which considered that the problems of the State did not relate to the provincial administrations.

Gradually, of the disorders took place in the campaigns (fires of properties, strikes) and mainly in the steps of the Empire (Poland, Siberia, the Caucasus, Finland, Small-Russia) obliging the government to issue the state of siege.

The fundamental law of the State

Nicolas II had to face the Russian Révolution of 1905:

After the red Sunday of January 22nd 1905 and on the councils of Witte, which it had named Prime Minister, it promulgated, on October 17th 1905, three governmental acts granting the convocation of a representative assembly, the Douma. This proclamation reaffirmed however the intangibility of the autocratic capacity.

Two institutions appeared: the Council of Ministers, whose president was the count Witte, and the Douma.

In October 1905, for the election of the representative assembly, a law organized the electoral colleges by widening the popular representation; by creating curies of owners, peasants, townsmen and workmen, this law made it possible in the majority of the Russian population to be represented at the Duma.

April 27th 1906, Nicolas II granted finally a “Fundamental law of the State”, which constituted true a Constitution. This Fundamental law transformed Russia into a constitutional monarchy, where the autocracy cohabited with a Parliament, the Douma.

The assessment of the “constitutional” time of the reign of Nicolas II was contrasted: the Duma did not allow the urban proletariat, the farming community and to the liberals to be made represent, the electorate resident primarily consisted the aristocracy; a certain number of progress fûrent however realized, in particular in the industrial field. Modified by the government with its own way, the electoral system on-represented certain parts of the population supposed being favorable to the Tsar.

Dumas

According to the Fundamental law of 1906, the Douma was a legislative room. Of 1905 with 1914, four Dumas followed one another, largely dominated by political trainings of center-left (Parti constitutional-democrat, left Social-démocrate, Travaillistes, Socialist-revolutionists) and unceasingly in dissension with the Tsar and his government:

the first Duma , elected in 1905, was dominated by the left parties and included/understood 179 constitutional-democrats, 97 country deputies. It was unable to collaborate with the government and was dissolved in spring 1906.

the second Duma , elected in 1906 made up of 518 deputies, was largely dominated by the left parties: 65 social democrats, 104 members of the Labor Party, 37 Socialist-revolutionists. The right parties counted 99 constitutional-democrats and 54 conservatives. In conflict with the Stolypine government, it was dissolved on June 3rd 1907.

the third Duma , elected with the autumn 1907, was dominated by the right parties which obtained 33,2% of the votes and by the constitutional-democrats, who obtained them 34,8%; among the left parties, the Bolcheviks made their entry at the Duma.

the fourth Duma , elected in November 1913, saw its action made difficult by the First World War.

The Stolypine government

In 1906, Nicolas II named Piotr Stolypine president of the Council of Ministers. This one gave itself two objectives: to restore the order and to implement a reform program. It reformed thus the administration, the legal condition of the peasants, made vote agrarian laws, but founded a particularly authoritative Security policy. It created the ministries for the Social security, Work and the Public health.

It worked out a reform program aiming at founding the solid bases of a rule of law and a constitutional monarchy: abolition of the administrative exile, reforms provincial police force and assemblies.

Stolypine was assassinated under the eyes of the imperial family on September 1st 1911, with the opera of Kiev, by the Bobrov revolutionist. Its death marked the end of a policy of opening and the return of Nicolas II to a policy plus reactionary.

The war

In July 1914, after the attack of Sarajevo and the ultimatum addressed to the Serbia by the Austria-Hungary, Nicolas II issued the general mobilization in order to prepare, in the name of the Panslavisme and of the agreements of defense, to go to the help of the Serbia, people Slavic and orthodoxe. The gears of alliances led the Russia to enter the First World War to the sides of the France and the England, against the Germany, the Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.

Military operations on the face of the east opened by the offensive of the Russian troops in Prussia Orientale and Galicie, to relieve the Franco-English troops which moved back in France. This first offensive was crushed by Hindenburg with Tannenberg with two army corps taken on the face of the west, bodies which were cruelly lacking with the German army during the Bataille of the Marne and whose absence allowed safety France.

In August 1915, Nicolas II took the functions of supreme commander of the armies, drawing aside his/her uncle the large-duke Nicolas Nicolaïevitch Romanov. By doing this, it left the capacity to the hands of the empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Raspoutine. Its general headquarter was too far from Pétrograd.

Abdication

The Révolution of February 1917 rang the knell of the imperial mode. Dominated by the empress Alexandra Feodorovna (itself hated because of its German origins), the government lost the support of the Russian people, which revolted with Pétrograd itself, making 1 300 dead.

February 10th, 1917, the president of the Duma submitted to Nicolas II a report giving a report on impossibility of controlling the Empire, by underlining the need for forming a responsible government in front of the Douma. The commander-in-chiefs of the armies decided, semi-officially, in favor of the abdication of the tsar, whom they considered it unable to lead the Russian armies to the victory.

Not being able to be solved to separate from his/her son the tsarévitch Alexis Nicolaïevitch which was only 13 years old, and suffering of hemophilia, was unable to reign, Nicolas II abdicated on March 2nd 1917 Calendrier Julien or March 15th 1917 of the Gregorian Calendrier, in favor of his/her brother, the large-duke Michel (Mikhail Alexandrovich Romanov), which, surprised, ends up refusing the capacity. Nicolas II was stopped by the provisional government on March 10th.

Imprisonment and the assassination

Imprisoned in Tsarskoe Selo, then with Tobolsk and finally with Iekaterinbourg, Nicolas II and his family were carried out without any judgment in the cellars of the Villa Ipatiev (property of an industrialist of this last city: Nicholaï Ipatiev), on July 17th 1918, by a group of Bolsheviks ordered by Iakov Sverdlov and Iakov Yourovsky, perhaps on the order of Lénine; the Bolchéviques feared that the symbol even autocracy in Russia, the Tsar, is not released by the White.

The bodies of the imperial family charged on a truck then were transferred in a forest close to Iekaterinbourg. They were thrown in a mine shaft from where they were, a few days, withdrawn later to be buried under a forest road.

Controversies

The fate of the imperial family remained prone to controversies for a long time: if judge Nicolas Sokolov, dispatched by the admiral Koltchak, concludes immediately with the collective massacre and the incineration from the bodies, various historians - being based in that on rumors spread in the area of Iekaterinbourg - disputed its conclusions. Thus the historian Marina Gray, girl of the general Dénikine, tried to show the survival of part of the imperial family.

Anna Anderson

The controversy was mainly fed by the business Anna Anderson: February 17th, 1920, a German officer fishes out, in a channel of Berlin, an young woman who had just thrown herself to it. Refusing to speak, it was interned in a lunatic asylum where it ends up declaring its identity with the Anastasia large-duchess, last girl of Nicolas II.

Known under the successive names of Anna Tchaîkovsky then Anna Anderson, it was in the center of a long largely mediatized enigma, punctuated of many lawsuits brought with the imperial family Romanov in order to be made recognize like Anastasia. She was definitively déboutée by the Court of appeal of Karlsruhe, on February 17th 1970.

Married with the American doctor John Manahan, she died on February 12th 1984 with Charlottesville, with the the United States.

Analyzes DNA showed that Anna Anderson could not be the Anastasia large-duchess: these same analyzes also contradict a long time allowed assumption according to which Mrs. Anderson was a named Polish worker Franziska Schanzkowska.

Confirmation and burial

In 1990, the bodies of the imperial family were found and exhumed, then identified by an analysis DNA. Two bodies miss, that of the Tsarévitch Alexis Nicolaïevitch, 14 years, and that of the one of the girls Anastasia Nicolaïevna, 17 years: according to the report/ratio of Yourovsky, which directed the execution, these two bodies were flarings. According to certain sources, it would be the body of Maria Nicolaïevna, 19 years, (and not that of Anastasia) which would miss.

July 16th 1997, Nicolas II was buried with its family (except the two not found bodies) in the Cathedral Pierre-and-Paul with Saint-Petersbourg, as well as Doctor Eugene Botkine, family practitioner imperial, and their servants: Anna Demidova, Ivan Kharitonov and Alexeï Trupp. They were buried in the presence of the descendants of the Romanov family, in particular the large duke Nicolas Romanovitch, chief of the imperial house of Russia.

According to recent excavations, one would have found the bodies (untraceable until now) of the two children of the last tsar. Analyzes DNA are in hand.

Canonization

August 14th 2000, Nicolas II and his family were canonized by the orthodoxe Church of Russia, which regards them as dead Martyr S.

Anecdote

First cousins by their mothers, Nicolas II of Russia and his cousin George V of the United Kingdom resembled themselves such a point that they were often confused one with the other. To note that Michael de Kent resembles also much Nicolas II of Russia.

Thus, the shortly of the Russian Revolution and the execution of the imperial family, one day that the king Georges V appeared in the part where found the large-duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, sister of Nicolas II, surrounded by its servants, the latter mistook on the personal identity, they threw to the feet of the English sovereign believer that Nicolas II of Russia was ressuscity.

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