Tsar Nicholas II And The Great Russian Empire Into A Series Of Fragmented States

It all began in 1894 when a man named Alexander III (Tsar of Russia), died leaving his son Nicholas II to become the tsar of Russia at the age of 26. In 1894 Nicholas married Alexander the princess of Germany; they had 5 children, 4 girls and a boy. There only son Alexei was born with hemophilia.

Soldiers lacked weapons, food, and sufficient communication. As the war continued, unrest of the Russian people grew (Voglsinger). The Romanov family was not completely disconnected from the war. The Romanov daughters worked diligently in the hospital wing of the palace aiding wounded soldiers, as well as keeping them company while healing (Yudina). In the middle of the Revolution all of the children fell ill with the measles, Anastasia being the last to catch the illness. The children were alone with their mother while Nicholas II was at the General Headquarters in Mogilev (Yudina). While he was there, Nicholas received war reports and met with Nikolai Vladimirovich Ruzskii, a military leader (Raleigh). In attempt to not worry his family he hid the actual reason for being in Mogilev (Yudina). The Romanov family had been in control of Russia for three centuries until March 1917 when Nicholas II relinquished the throne hoping to prevent civil war (Biography.com). Following the abdication of the throne, Nicholas II returned to his family where they were under house arrest. In August the family decided it would be best to move to a small Siberian city, Tobolsk (Yudina). The family moved into their mansion and lived quiet lives rarely taking walks outside or to church. The Bolsheviks had taken control of Russia and Nicholas II was summoned to his trial in Moscow (Yudina). When Empress

Born May 6, 1868, Nicholas inherited the Russian throne when Nicholas II's father, Tsar Alexander III, died of kidney disease on October 20, 1894. On May 26, 1896, Nicholas II and Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt were crowned Tsar and Tsarina in an old Ouspensky Cathedral in Moscow.

During the years following the death of Lenin in 1924, there was an immense power struggle in the politburo of the Communist Party, as its leading figures competed to replace him. By 1929, Joseph Stalin had defeated his rivals - and therefore become leader of the party - through three stages: the defeat of the left opposition (and therefore Trotsky), the united opposition (Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky), and finally the right deviation (Bukharin). Stalin gained power due to a number of factors, particularly his position as General Secretary of the party, along with his other roles, but also through errors made by the Bolsheviks, most notably their underestimation and dismissal of Stalin. However, his position as General Secretary gave

Joseph Stalin, from the time that he was a low level revolutionary to the years that he spent as the dictator of the Soviet Union, always knew what he needed to do to achieve his goals. His organized rise to power allowed him to gain a steady flow of followers who would support him for decades to come. Stalin received a minor government position in 1917, but by the time a new leader was needed in 1924, he “had turned the largely routine post of Party general secretary into the most powerful office in the Soviet Union” (“Joseph Stalin) and “had built a personal empire for himself through his control over committee appointments at all levels . . . expand[ing] the leading Party organs with his supporters, who then voted against his rivals”

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

Joseph Stalin greatly influenced Russia in the years 1924 through 1932. His rise to this power can be explained by the Russian Revolutionary experience that allowed him to gain authority in Russia. Although historians often refer to Stalin as a ruthless, mindless dictator, he redirected the Russian Revolution to major economic development. Stalin’s character in Russia during the Revolution catalyzed the many events that took place during the time period. Because of Stalin’s ability to both appeal to the masses, and take advantage of events, like Lenin’s death, Stalin was able to rise to power. Essentially, the Russian Revolution fostered the development of Stalin’s dictatorship leading the country into a state of economic growth and influence. The Revolution fostered Stalin’s ability to maintain a central leadership, use violence to gain control, and regenerate a previously disconnected economy.

Thirdly, the Tsar had the benefit of controlling the army and the secret police force, the Okhrana. The Tsar was the commander and chief of the Russian army, he had total control of it and they had been loyal to the Tsar for many years (Nicholas I had an input in creating the Okhrana). The army and the Okhrana were used very efficiently by the Tsars. If anybody opposed the Tsar with violent protests or demonstrations, the army would be called in and many of the protesters would be shot and trampled on by horses. As well as removing current threats to the Tsar, the armies input effected possible opponents, as they knew what their own fate would be if they also tried to oppose the ‘Dear father’. The Okhrana was also very effective, it was known for infiltrating opposition groups and dividing them even further. If an opposition group member was caught, they would be exiled to Siberia to die a cold and

In 1917, Russia was crumbling into pieces. The World War I was draining all of Russia’s resources. There was shortage of food throughout the country, which left people starving. At the battlefront, millions of Russian soldiers were dying, they did not possess many of the powerful weapons that their opponents had. The government under Czar Nicholas II was disintegrating, and a provisional government had been set up. In November of 1917, Lenin and his communist followers known as the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government and set a communist government in Russia. However, in 1924, Lenin died and Josef Stalin assumed leadership of the Soviet Union, which was the name for the communist Russia. Stalin was a ruthless leader who brought

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

Although they were father and son, the reigns of Alexander II and Alexander III took off in completely different directions. Alexander II was committed to his empire by vowing to reform Russia, making it more in line with nineteenth-century western society. His son, on the other hand, was the unprepared tsar, whose actions were literally reactions to his father’s unexpected assassination. Consequently, Alexander II went down in history as much more productive in the field of domestic policy; in dealing with revolutionaries; and in his foreign policy than his son Alex III would ever be.

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

The text “A Family Romanov” weaves the facts about the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, into a detailed story of the decisions he made, his family life, and those who were affected by his choices, the common people of Russia. Beginning his life as a neglected child, Nicholas II was born into a family who had been at the top of the autocracy for hundreds of years. After his father was murdered, Nicholas was thrown into this leadership position with no experience whatsoever. After reading this historical piece, I believe the author wanted us to know how the Tsar’s decisions affected the peasant class citizens of Russia, how the autocracy and

The Russian coup d'état of 1917 was caused by various circumstances, with the event in itself labeled as a “major political upheaval” (). The people of Russia were unsatisfied with the oppressive autocratic rule of Nicholas II and the loss of a vast amount of men and resources in World War I, the people of Russia supported Vladimir Lenin with the Bolsheviks backing him in overthrowing Nicholas II. The Bolsheviks were not a mass party with substantial support; they were a 300,000 man organization which had merely seized power and had to do much to keep it. After the Bolsheviks were crushed in the voting in November, Lenin ordered the infantile