The Downfall Of The Romanov Dynasty

In conclusion to the fall of the Romanov dynasty, it is shown that Nicholas had the biggest impact of Russia becoming a communist country as he did not have a greater understanding on the way to run his country, he also didn’t take full responsibility for his people and the soldiers in WW1,

1914 was a devastating year for many countries of the world, as world war one began to take full effect. But as world war one shook the world; it began to question Nicholas II’s ability to rule Russia. In this essay i will discuss the extent of world war one’s responsibility in Nicholas II’s downfall, and the extent of other contributing factors. I will argue that Nicholas II’s own traits as a leader were the main reason for his downfall.

With over a century of military and civil discontent the Romanov Dynasty was bound to fall sooner or later. The fall of the Romanov Dynasty was a result of long-term causes including Tsar Alexander’s inability to satisfy his people and Tsar Nicholas II’s inability to rule to throne all together. The collapse was also an outcome of immediate causes; the effects of World War One on Russia and the 1917 revolution. All long-term and immediate cause played a crucial role in stirring the nation until Russia was clearly overdue to be overthrown.

The last Tsar Nicholas II ascended the throne in 1894 and was faced with a country that was trying to free itself from its autocratic regime. The serfs had recently been emancipated, the industry and economy was just starting to develop and opposition to the Tsar was building up. Russia was still behind Europe in terms of the political regime, the social conditions and the economy. Nicholas II who was a weak and very influenced by his mother and his wife had to deal with Russia’s troubles during his reign. In order to ascertain how successfully Russia dealt with its problems by 1914, this essay will examine the October Manifesto and the split of the opposition, how the Tsar became more reactionary after the 1905 revolution, Stolypin’s

Nicholas II was known, not only for being the Emperor of Russia but also for his character and personality which undoubtably led him to his own downfall. Nicholas was often referred to as not being ready to become Tsar as well as being a weak leader. Firstly, Nicholas II himself, amongst a very large proportion of Russian society, believed that he was not prepared to be coronated Emperor. Nicholas himself stated “What is going to happen to me and all of Russia? I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.”. (Russian Revolution Quotations 2015). Nicholas was aware of what he was getting himself into and that he was not prepared for such a role. This is further corroborated by the

The Romanov dynasty began in 1613, however 1917 saw an abrupt end to the Romanov’s with the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II. Demonstrations and strikes gripped the Russian people and with anti-governmental soldiers taking control, the Tsar had no alternative but to abdicate. Historians such as Michael Lynch1 and John Daborn2 state that in Russia’s great need of strength and power came a Tsar of weakness and limited outlook. However historians such as Ray Pearson believe that in aggressive opposition groups and with the help of the working class aimed to bring down the Tsardom at all costs.

Nicholas the Second was a large contributing cause to his own abdication. Nicholas the Second continued to make countless amounts of unreasonable decisions throughout his reign. His bad decisions drove many of his original supporters away. For example, even on the day of his coronation he managed to start off his reign on a bad foot. This was due to the fact that when many celebratory mugs were being gifted to the people of St Petersburg to celebrate the coronation of the Tsar there was not enough to go around and in an effort to acquire one of these limited mugs many citizens were brutally killed. In the interim, Nicholas showed no consideration or sympathy towards the dead or those affected and continued with the coronation. Consequently

The first of these tsars, Ivan III, also known as “Ivan the Great”, defied Mongol control and declared the autonomy of Moscow. Ivan III was soon followed by Ivan IV, also known as “Ivan the Terrible”, who declared his power by pushing aside his advisors, crowning himself tsar and crushing boyars, who were Russian nobles. At first, Ivan’s reign was successful as he added vast new territories to the Russian empire. Later, after his wife’s death, Ivan’s power and prosperity declined because he started persecuting those whom he believed opposed him. This resulted in the execution of many nobles and their families, friends, servants and peasants, in which he replaced with a new service nobility, whose loyalty was “guaranteed by their dependent on the state for land and titles.” [1] Ivan the Terrible nor Ivan III were never absolute rulers- their ways of ruling just helped lay the foundation for Russian absolutism. After Ivan IV and his successor died, Russia entered a “Time of Troubles”, which lasted from 1598-1613, in which the peasant warrior bands known as Cossacks, rebelled against their nobles who fought back and defeated the Cossacks. Ivan’s grand-nephew, Michael Romanov, was soon elected by the Zensky Sober- a body of nobles, and placed efforts toward state-building. He was succeeded by “Peter the Great”, the Russian king that truly consolidated Russian

On the 20th October 1894 Nicholas II ascended the throne as tsar of Russia. He idolised the concept of continuing to rule Russia under the autocratic system, in the same way his father and predecessor Alexander III had done so. However, Nicholas lacked the qualities and characters of the autocratic style of leadership. The

However, Nicholas’s personality was not the sole reason why the Old Regime collapsed. Chubarov argues that “another Peter the Great could have saved the Romanovs and Imperial Russia. It is obvious though that the last tsar could not” . Nicholas’s lack of

In The Reforming Tsar: The Redefinition of Autocratic Duty in Eighteenth  Century Russia, Cynthia Whittaker argues that depending on the historical, cultural and contextual period, there can be demarcated two types, both distinctive and contrasting, of Russian sovereigns, namely the “good tsar” and the “reforming tsar”. The scholar juxtaposes the two models of monarchs against the backdrop of “medieval” versus “modern” type of governance. According to it the “good tsar” typology, which is typical for the earlier Muscovy realm, defines the ruler as pious and inert, characterized by its liturgical form and static nature of the rule. The “good tsar” is bound to uphold Orthodoxy, preserve and control public order, help the poor and the underdogs

One resource used for this investigation was Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie, which describes the reign of Nicholas II. This source was published in 1967 in the United States, thus the book is a secondary source. Massie is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose work focuses on the Russian Romanovs. Massie’s alma mater includes Yale and Oxford University. The source is highly valuable in its extremely detailed and comprehensive research of nearly 600 pages, providing the thoughts of those in positions of power and interesting, insightful perspectives to the situation at the time. An analysis on connecting causes and effects are thorough and

The beginning of the 20th century brought radical changes to the social and political structure of autocratic Russia. It was a period of regression, reform, revolution and eradication. Eradication of a blood line that had remained in rule for over 300 years; the Romanov Dynasty. The central figure of this eradication was Tsar Nicholas II, often described as an incompetent leader, absent of the “commanding personality nor the strong character and prompt decision which are so essential to an autocratic ruler...” (Sir G. Buchman, British ambassador to Russia from 1910 in H. Seton-Watson, The

Tsar Alexander II and III while father and son had very different ambitions as Tsar and different view for the future of the empire. Alexander III succeeded to his father’s throne in 1894. His reign is looked upon by most historians as a time of repression that saw the undoing of many of the reforms carried out by his father. Certainly that was a time of great economic and social change but these had led, in the West of the nation, great pressure on political system. However Alexander was deeply suspicious of the direction in which his father had taken Russia and the internal reforms that he instituted were designed to correct what he saw as the too-liberal tendencies of his father's reign.

Thank you for the post and I couldn’t agree with you more with regards to Nicholas II and as a fellow scientist I appreciate your analogy. As I survive as a historian I keep comparing historical lenses in the same way I use multiple tools in the diagnosis of disease. I think Richard Pipes has summed up the significance of the cultural changes occurring among the revolutionary peasants as a major influence in the military unrest and decaying discipline. I particular enjoyed the Ferro article and how in elucidated the separation between the political and social revolutions that independently collided to form the final events in Russia. I believe it was Nicholas’s inability to address all the revolutionary influences affecting his nation.