Nicholas II

Apr 03, 2015

1894-1917 Emperor of Russia.

The last tsar of Russia. He was forced to abdicate in 1917 during the February Revolution, and his entire family was murdered by the Bolsheviks a year later.

Background
Lived: 1868-1918.
Nicholas was the eldest son of tsar Alexander III. An insecure man, he would rather have had a simple life out of the public eye. He did not enjoy at all being the heir to the empire.

His father personally saw to it that Nicholas was well-educated.

During one of his educational trips at the age of 23, he barely survived an assassination attempt, when a Japanese bodyguard slapped his head with a sabre.

Reign
Nicholas married princess Alexandra Fyodorovna, a grandchild of Queen Victoria of England. They had 4 daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and a son Alexey, who suffered from hemophilia. Nicholas was an excellent father.

His reign started with a bad omen, when a festival in honour of the tsar’s coronation at Khodynka Field turned into a human stampede, where over a 1,000 people died. Because Nicholas II did not cancel the festive ball due to take place on the same evening, the people saw him as cold and heartless.

Despite having visited both the English Parliament and the American Congress and been seemingly impressed with democracy, Nicholas II devoted his life to the preservation of an absolute monarchy. He loved Russia and felt it was his divine responsibility and burden to maintain autocratic rule. The people’s desires for civil liberties angered him.

Murder
The entire family, the former tsarina, Nicholas himself, and their four daughters and son, was shot dead by the orders of Vladimir Lenin on 17 July 1918. Their bodies were not discovered until 1979 and not positively identified until 1998. The family was canonized as martyrs in 2000.

Alexandra Fyodorovna Romanova