Nicholas II Alexandrovich
(May 6 (19), 1868, Tsarskoye Selo - on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Yekaterinburg)

Russian Emperor, who reigned from October 21 (November 2), 1894 to March 2 (March 15), 1917. From the Romanov dynasty, the eldest son and successor of Emperor Alexander III Alexandrovich and Empress Maria Feodorovna, an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences (1876).

Nikolai was educated at home as part of a large gymnasium course.
The education and training of the future emperor took place under the personal guidance of Alexander III on a traditional religious basis. The training sessions of Nicholas II were conducted according to a carefully designed program for 13 years.

Nikolai began to exercise regularly at the age of 8. The curriculum included an eight-year general education course and a five-year course in higher sciences. In 1885-1890 - according to a specially written program. It was based on a modified program of the classical gymnasium. Instead of Latin and Greek, mineralogy, botany, zoology, anatomy and physiology were studied. The courses of history, Russian literature and foreign languages ​​were expanded. The cycle of higher education included political economy, law and military affairs (military jurisprudence, strategy, military geography, service of the General Staff). There were also classes in vaulting, fencing, drawing, and music. Sovereign Alexander III and Maria Fedorovna themselves selected teachers and mentors. Among them were scientists, statesmen and military figures: K.P. Pobedonostsev, N.Kh. Bunge, M.I. Dragomirov, N.N. Obruchev, A.R. Drenteln, N.K.

Immediately after his birth, he was enrolled in the lists of several guards regiments and was appointed chief of the 65th Moscow Infantry Regiment. At the age of five, the heir was appointed chief of the Life Guards of the Reserve Infantry Regiment, and in 1875 he was enrolled in the Life Guards of the Erivan Regiment. In December 1875, Nikolai received the rank of ensign, in 1880 he was promoted to second lieutenant and after 4 years became a lieutenant.
In 1884, Nikolai entered active military service, in July 1887 he began regular military service in the Preobrazhensky Regiment and was promoted to staff captain. In 1891, Nikolai received the rank of captain, and a year later - colonel. At the same time, his father introduces him to the affairs of the country, inviting him to participate in meetings of the State Council and the Cabinet of Ministers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Railways S.Yu. Witte, in 1892 Nikolai was appointed chairman of the committee for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to gain experience in public affairs.

The emperor's education program included travels to various provinces of Russia, which he made with his father. To complete his education, his father gave him a cruiser to travel to the Far East. For nine months, he and his retinue visited Austria, Trieste, Greece, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and later returned by land through all of Siberia to the capital of Russia. In Japan, an assassination attempt was made on Nicholas (see the Otsu Incident). By the age of 23, Nikolai Romanov was a well-educated young man.

From birth, he was titled His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich. After the death of his grandfather, Alexander II, in 1881 he received the title of Tsarevich's heir.

The coronation of Nicholas II took place on May 14 (26), 1896. In the same year, the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition was held in Nizhny Novgorod, which he visited. In 1896, Nicholas II also made a big trip to Europe, meeting with Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria (grandmother of Alexandra Feodorovna). The trip ended with the arrival of Nicholas II in Paris, the capital of allied France. One of the first personnel decisions of Nicholas II was the dismissal of I. V. Gurko from the post of Governor-General of the Kingdom of Poland and the appointment of A. B. Lobanov-Rostovsky to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs after the death of N. K. Girs. The first of the major international actions of Nicholas II was the Triple Intervention.

Full title of Emperor Nicholas II as emperor from 1894 to 1917:
"God's hastening mercy, We, Nicholas II ( in some manifestos, the Church Slavonic form is Nicholas II), Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kyiv, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonese, Tsar of Georgia; Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuanian, Volyn, Podolsk and Finland; Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostoksky, Korelsky, Tversky, Yugorsky, Permsky, Vyatsky, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod Nizovsky lands?, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersky, Udorsky, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all northern countries? Lord; and Sovereign of Iversky, Kartalinsky and Kabardian lands? and regions of Armenia; Cherkasy and Mountain Princes and other Hereditary Sovereign and Possessor, Sovereign of Turkestan; Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarsen and Oldenburg and others, and others, and others.

The reign of Nicholas II was marked by the economic development of Russia. Russia was turning into an agrarian-industrial country, cities were growing, railways and industrial enterprises were being built. Nicholas made decisions aimed at the economic and social modernization of the country. Under him, the gold circulation of the ruble was introduced, the Stolypin agrarian reform was carried out, laws were adopted on workers' insurance, universal primary education, and many others aimed at the good of Russia. In foreign policy - expansion to the east, Russia's participation in blocs of European powers, the contradictions between which led to the war with Japan and the First World War.

His reign fell on the period of the struggle of various political groups hostile to Russia for power in the country, the first revolution of 1905-1907, as well as foreign policy upheavals: the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and the First World War.
However, Nicholas was forced to make decisions that were not in line with his beliefs. He was against the limitation of autocracy, the introduction of the so-called. freedom of speech, universal suffrage and other "freedoms", the purpose of which was, in fact, the overthrow of the monarchy, the destruction of Russia and the extermination of the Russian people. But there was a strong public unrest, incited by the revolutionaries, in favor of political reforms, and he had to sign the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, proclaiming these "freedoms". In addition, part of the tsar's entourage and, to horror, individual representatives of the imperial family begged to take this decision.
In 1906, the State Duma, established by the manifesto, began to work. The enormous harm caused by the Duma, into which a large amount of revolutionary wickedness has fallen, was immediately revealed. Fortunately, the emperor still had enormous power functions. He had the right to legislate; to appoint the prime minister and ministers accountable only to him; determine the course of foreign policy; was the head of the army, the court and, in fact, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The king did not want war and until the very last moment he tried to avoid a bloody clash. However, on July 19 (August 1), 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and hostilities began. Their beginning was accompanied by a strong patriotic upsurge in the country and everyone declared their unshakable loyalty to the pretole. On September 5, 1915, during a period of military setbacks, Nicholas decided to accept the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army and visited the capital only occasionally, most of the time he spent at his headquarters in Mogilev.
The war exacerbated the internal problems of the country. All sorts of enemies of the throne and Russia have found a reason to criticize the authorities. This public began to lay the main responsibility for the military failures and the protracted military campaign on the king and his entourage. Claims spread that "treason is nesting" in the government. But in fact, a terrible blow to Russia was already being prepared with might and main by the world behind the scenes, hating Our Country, Our Faith and Our Tsar. At the beginning of 1917, the high military command, headed by the tsar, together with the Entente, prepared a plan for a general offensive, according to which it was planned to end the war by the summer of 1917. The situation at the front had stabilized and victory in the war was close. The country lived a normal life, economic growth continued, there was no devastation.
Feeling that Russia would soon emerge victorious in the war and would continue to develop rapidly under the rule of the Russian Orthodox Emperor, the world enemy decided to urgently strike at the country. At the end of February 1917, unrest was provoked in Petrograd, which in a few days grew into mass demonstrations against the government and the dynasty. Initially, the tsar intended to restore order in Petrograd by force by sending troops there. However, a plot ripened: members of the imperial retinue and politicians had a truly diabolical impudence to convince the king that his renunciation was required to pacify the country. All the commanders of the fronts, except for two or three generals, were in favor of the abdication of the king. To horror, the church did not support Nicholas. Almost the entire entourage of the king demanded renunciation, some villains even shouted at him. Thus, the emperor had no other choice, because no one (the conspirators did not inform the tsar of individual cases!) declared his allegiance to him, Russia had already actually abandoned its tsar. The conspiracy won and on March 2, 1917 in Pskov, in the carriage of the imperial train, Nikolai was forced to sign (with a pencil, which he never did!) The act of abdication, transferring power to his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, who was subsequently also forced to renounce the throne. In fact, there is a lot of obscurity in this story. Nikolai then wrote in his diary: “There is treason, cowardice and deceit all around!” Indeed it was.

After the February Revolution, Nikolai, who became a citizen of the Russian state, became known as Nikolai Aleksandrovich Romanov.

March 9, 1917 Nicholas and the royal family were arrested. For the first five months they were under guard in Tsarskoye Selo, in August 1917 they were transferred to Tobolsk. In April 1918, the Bolsheviks transferred the royal family to Yekaterinburg. In mid-July 1918, white troops attacked the city and the Bolsheviks sought to get rid of the tsar as soon as possible. Satanist Lenin personally demanded to destroy the entire family of the emperor. On the night of July 17, 1918 in the center of Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the Ipatiev house, where the prisoners were imprisoned, Nikolai, the queen, five of their children and several close associates (11 people in total) were shot by Bolshevik assassins without trial or investigation. Later, Hebrew inscriptions were found on the walls of the Ipatiev house, testifying to the ritual nature of the murder.

The Sovereign Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia Nicholas II Alexandrovich was canonized together with his family by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in 1981 and by the Russian Orthodox Church MP as a martyr in 2000.

For a completely incomprehensible reason, Nicholas II is called weak-willed, although there is a lot of evidence that the tsar was distinguished by a stubborn desire to carry out his intentions, often reaching stubbornness (only once was someone else's will imposed on him - the Manifesto of October 17, 1905). According to the reviews of close people, he had exceptional self-control. He tried to meet the news of the fall of Port Arthur, other military failures or political upheavals with composure. In state affairs, the tsar showed perseverance and accuracy, never having a personal secretary. Contemporaries noted that Nikolai had a tenacious memory, keen powers of observation, was a modest, friendly and sensitive person. In fact, he was a man of a holy life.
First of all, caring about the welfare of the empire, the king valued his peace, health and well-being of his family. The emperor's family was his support, sometimes the only one, in the light of constant disappointments in the court environment, mired in intrigues. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (nee Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt) was not only a wife for the tsar, but also a friend and adviser. The habits, ideas and cultural interests of the spouses largely coincided. They got married on November 14, 1894. Their first daughter Olga was born in 1895, Tatiana - in 1897, Maria - in 1899, Anastasia - in 1901 and the heir-tsarevich Alexei - in 1904. He was terminally ill with hemophilia - blood incoagulability. The disease led to the appearance in the royal house of Grigory Rasputin, who, even before meeting with the crowned bearers, became famous for the gift of foresight and healing. Rasputin repeatedly helped Alexei overcome bouts of illness. To the public, his personality was immediately presented by the anti-Russian camarilla in a bad light, dirty ridiculous rumors spread. In reality, Rasputin played almost no role in the royal family.

Otsu Incident - an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich (later Nicholas II), which took place in the Japanese city of Otsu on May 11, 1891, during his visit to Japan.

Tsarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich, the future Tsar Nicholas II, made a round-the-world trip in 1891 with the squadron of Vice Admiral P.N. Nazimova. On the way to Vladivostok for the ceremony of the beginning of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, he paid a visit to Japan.

The attempt on the life of the Tsarevich was committed by the Japanese policeman Sanzo Tsuda. On May 11, when Nicholas was passing through Otsu, Sanzo Tsuda attacked him with a sword. He struck the Russian prince with a saber blow on the head, but at the moment of swinging the saber, he turned around and the blade slid over Nikolai's head, only slightly injuring the heir. The scar on Nikolai's face remained for life. He was saved from a second blow by two rickshaws and Prince George, who knocked down the attacker.

The next day, Emperor Meiji made a special trip from Tokyo to Kobe to apologize to Nicholas. Tsuda was sentenced to life in prison, and he soon died in a prison in Hokkaido from pneumonia.

"Lenta.ru" studies the so-called "controversial issues" of Russian history. Experts preparing a unified school textbook on the subject formulated topic No. 16 as follows: "Causes, consequences and assessment of the fall of the monarchy in Russia, the coming to power of the Bolsheviks and their victory in the Civil War." One of the key figures of this topic is the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, who was killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and canonized by the Orthodox Church at the end of the 20th century. Lenta.ru asked publicist Ivan Davydov to investigate the life of Nicholas II in order to find out whether he could be considered a saint and how the tsar's private life was connected with the "catastrophe of 1917."

In Russia, history ends badly. In the sense that it is reluctant. Our history continues to weigh on us, and sometimes on us. It seems that in Russia there is no time at all: everything is relevant. Historical characters are our contemporaries and partners in political discussions.

In the case of Nicholas II, this is quite clear: he is the last (at least for the moment) Russian tsar, he began the terrible Russian twentieth century - and the empire ended with him. The events that determined this century and still do not want to let us go - two wars and three revolutions - are episodes of his personal biography. Some even consider the murder of Nicholas II and his family to be a nationwide unforgivable sin, the retribution for which many Russian troubles are. Rehabilitation, search and identification of the remains of the royal family are important political gestures of the Yeltsin era.

And since August 2000, Nicholas has been a canonized holy martyr. Moreover, a very popular saint - just remember the exhibition "Romanovs", held in December 2013. It turns out that to spite his killers, the last Russian tsar is now more alive than all the living.

Where did bears come from

It is important to understand that for us (including those who see a saint in the last tsar), Nicholas is not at all the same person as he was for millions of his subjects, at least at the beginning of his reign.

In the collections of Russian folk legends, a plot akin to Pushkin's "The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish" is repeatedly repeated. The farmer goes for firewood and finds a magic tree in the forest. The tree asks not to destroy it, in return promising various benefits. Gradually, the old man's appetites (not without inciting from his grumpy wife) grow - and in the end he declares his desire to be king. The magic tree is horrified: is it a conceivable thing - the king has been appointed by God, how can one encroach on such a thing? And he turns a greedy couple into bears so that people are afraid of them.

So, for his subjects, and by no means only for illiterate peasants, the king was the anointed of God, the bearer of sacred power and a special mission. Neither revolutionary terrorists, nor revolutionary theorists, nor free-thinking liberals could seriously shake this faith. Between Nicholas II, the anointed of God, crowned in 1896, the sovereign of all Russia - and the citizen Romanov, whom the Chekists killed in Yekaterinburg with his family and loved ones in 1918, is not even a distance, but an insurmountable abyss. The question of where this abyss came from is one of the most difficult in our history (generally not particularly smooth). Wars, revolutions, economic growth and political terror, reforms, reaction - everything is linked in this issue. I will not deceive - I have no answer, but there is a suspicion that some small and insignificant part of the answer is hidden in the human biography of the last bearer of autocratic power.

The frivolous son of a stern father

Many portraits have been preserved: the last tsar lived in the era of photography and loved to take pictures himself. But words are more interesting than muddy and old pictures, and a lot has been said about the emperor, and by people who knew a lot about the arrangement of words. For example, Mayakovsky, with the pathos of an eyewitness:

And I see - landau is rolling,
And in this land
A young military man is sitting
In a sleek beard.
Before him, like chumps,
Four daughters.
And on the backs of cobblestones, as on our coffins,
Retinue behind him in eagles and coats of arms.
And ringing bells
Blurred in ladies' squeak:
Hurrah! Tsar Sovereign Nicholas,
Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia.

(The poem "The Emperor" was written in 1928 and is dedicated to an excursion to the burial place of Nicholas; the poet-agitator naturally approved of the assassination of the tsar; but the verses are beautiful, nothing can be done about it.)

But that's all later. In the meantime, in May 1868, the son Nikolai was born in the family of the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich. In principle, Alexander Alexandrovich was not preparing to reign, but the eldest son of Alexander II, Nikolai, fell ill during a trip abroad and died. So Alexander III became king in a certain sense by accident. And Nicholas II, it turns out, doubly by accident.

Alexander Alexandrovich ascended the throne in 1881 - after his father, nicknamed the Liberator for the abolition of serfdom, was brutally murdered by revolutionaries in St. Petersburg. Alexander III ruled abruptly, unlike his predecessor, without flirting with the liberal public. The tsar responded with terror to terror, he caught many revolutionaries and hanged them. Among others - Alexandra Ulyanova. His younger brother Vladimir, as we know, subsequently took revenge on the royal family.

The time of bans, reactions, censorship and police arbitrariness - this is how the era of Alexander III was described by contemporary oppositionists (mainly from abroad, of course) and after them by Soviet historians. And this is also the time of the war with the Turks in the Balkans for the liberation of the "Slav brothers" (the one on which the brave intelligence agent Fandorin performed his exploits), conquests in Central Asia, as well as various economic indulgences for the peasants, strengthening the army and overcoming budget disasters.

For our story, it is important that the busy king did not have so many free minutes for family life. Almost the only (apocryphal) story about the relationship between father and son is associated with the beautiful ballerina Matilda Kshesinskaya. Allegedly, evil tongues told, the king was upset and worried that the heir could not acquire a mistress in any way. And then one day stern servants came to the son's chambers (Alexander III was a simple, rude, sharp man, he made friends mainly with the military) and brought a gift from his father - a carpet. And in the carpet - the famous ballerina. Naked. That's how we met.

Nicholas's mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna (Princess Dagmar of Denmark), had little interest in Russian affairs. The heir grew up under the supervision of tutors - first an Englishman, then local ones. Received a decent education. Three European languages, and he spoke English almost better than Russian, an in-depth gymnasium course, then some university subjects.

Later - a pleasure trip to the mysterious countries of the East. In particular, to Japan. There was trouble with the heir. During a walk, a samurai attacked the crown prince and hit the future king with a sword on the head. In pre-revolutionary foreign brochures published by Russian revolutionaries, they wrote that the heir behaved impolitely in the temple, and in one Bolshevik one, that a drunken Nikolai urinated on some statue. These are all propaganda lies. However, there was one hit. The second one managed to repulse someone from the retinue, but the sediment remained. And also - a scar, regular headaches and dislike for the Land of the Rising Sun.

According to family tradition, the heir went through something like military practice in the guard. First - in the Preobrazhensky Regiment, then - in the Life Guards Hussars. Here, too, there is no anecdote. The hussars, in full accordance with the legend, were famous for rampant drunkenness. At one time, when the regiment commander was Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Jr. (grandson of Nicholas I, cousin of the father of Nicholas II), the hussars even developed a whole ritual. Having drunk themselves to hell, they ran naked into the night - and howled, imitating a pack of wolves. And so - until the barman brings them a trough of vodka, after drinking from which the werewolves calmed down and went to sleep. So served as the heir, most likely fun.

He served merrily, lived merrily, in the spring of 1894 he became engaged to Princess Alice of Hesse (she converted to Orthodoxy and became Alexandra Feodorovna). Marrying for love is a problem for crowned persons, but the future spouses somehow worked out right away, and in the future, in the course of their life together, they showed unostentatious tenderness to each other.

Oh yes. Nikolai left Matilda Kshesinskaya immediately after the engagement. But the royal family liked the ballerina, then she was the mistress of two more grand dukes. She even gave birth to one.

In 1912, cadet V.P. Obninsky published in Berlin the book "The Last Autocrat", in which he collected, it seems, all the known defamatory rumors about the tsar. So, he reports that Nikolai tried to refuse the reign, but his father, shortly before his death, forced him to sign the corresponding paper. However, no other historian confirms this rumor.

From Khodynka to the October 17 Manifesto

The last Russian tsar was definitely unlucky. The key events of his life - and Russian history - did not put him in the best light, and often - without his obvious fault.

According to tradition, a celebration was scheduled in Moscow in honor of the coronation of the new emperor: on May 18, 1896, up to half a million people gathered for festivities on the Khodynka field (pitted with pits, bounded on one side by a ravine; generally, moderately comfortable). The people were promised beer, honey, nuts, sweets, gift mugs with monograms and portraits of the new emperor and empress. As well as gingerbread and sausage.

The people began to gather the day before, and early in the morning someone shouted in the crowd that there would not be enough gifts for everyone. A wild crush ensued. The police were unable to contain the crowd. As a result, about two thousand people died, hundreds of crippled people ended up in hospitals.

But this is in the morning. In the afternoon, the police finally coped with the riots, the dead were taken away, the blood was sprinkled with sand, the emperor arrived on the field, the subjects shouted the prescribed “hurray”. But, of course, they immediately started talking that the omen for the beginning of the reign was so-so. “Whoever began to reign over Khodynka will end up standing on the scaffold,” one mediocre but popular poet would later write. This is how a mediocre poet can turn out to be a prophet. The tsar is hardly personally responsible for the poor organization of the celebrations. But for many contemporaries, the words "Nikolai" and "Khodynka" somehow tied together.

In memory of the dead, Moscow students tried to arrange a demonstration. They were dispersed, and the instigators were caught. Nikolai showed that he was still the son of his father and did not intend to be liberal.

However, his intentions were generally vague. He visited European, let's say, colleagues (the age of empires is not yet over) and tried to persuade the leaders of world powers to eternal peace. True, without enthusiasm and without much success, everyone in Europe understood even then that a big war was a matter of time. And no one understood how big it would be, this war. Nobody understood, nobody was afraid.

The king was clearly more interested in quiet family life than state affairs. Daughters were born one after another - Olga (even before the coronation), then Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. There was no son, which caused concern. The dynasty needed an heir.

Cottage in Livadia, hunting. The king liked to shoot. The so-called "Diary of Nicholas II", all these dull, monotonous and endless "shot at crows", "killed a cat", "drank tea" - a fake; but the tsar fired on innocent crows and cats with enthusiasm.

Photo: Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky / Library of Congress

As mentioned above, the tsar became interested in photography (and, by the way, supported the famous Prokudin-Gorsky in every possible way). And also - one of the first in Europe to appreciate such a new thing as a car. I drove personally and had a fair fleet of vehicles. For pleasant activities, time flowed imperceptibly. The tsar rode a car in the parks, and Russia climbed into Asia.

Even Alexander III understood that the empire would have to seriously fight in the East, and he sent his son on a cruise for nine months for a reason. In Japan, Nikolai, as we remember, did not like it. A military alliance with China against Japan is one of his first foreign policy deals. Then there were the construction of the CER (Chinese Eastern Railway), military bases in China, including the famous Port Arthur. And the discontent of Japan, and the rupture of diplomatic relations in January 1904, and right there - an attack on the Russian squadron.

Bird cherry quietly crept like a dream
And someone "Tsushima ..." said into the phone.
Hurry, Hurry! Term ends!
"Varangian" and "Korean" went east.

This is Anna Andreevna Akhmatova.

"Varangian" and "Korean", as everyone knows, died heroically in Chemulpo Bay, but at first the reason for Japanese success was seen solely in the deceit of the "yellow-faced devils." They were going to fight with the savages, hatred moods reigned in society. And then the tsar finally had an heir, Tsarevich Alexei.

Both the tsar, and the military, and many ordinary subjects, who were then experiencing patriotic enthusiasm, somehow did not notice that the Japanese savages were seriously preparing for war, having spent a lot of money, attracted the best foreign specialists and created an army and navy that were clearly more powerful than the Russians.

Failures followed one after another. The economy of an agrarian country could not withstand the pace necessary to secure the front. Communications were no good - Russia is too big for us and our roads are too bad. The Russian army near Mukden was defeated. The huge fleet crawled around half of the Earth from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, and then near the island of Tsushima was almost completely destroyed by the Japanese in a few hours. Port Arthur surrendered. Peace had to be concluded on humiliating terms. They gave away, among other things, half of Sakhalin.

Embittered, crippled, having seen hunger, mediocrity, cowardice and thieving command, soldiers returned to Russia. Lots of soldiers.

And in Russia by that time a lot had happened. Bloody Sunday, for example, January 9, 1905. The workers, whose situation, naturally, worsened (after all, there was a war), decided to go to the tsar - to ask for bread and, oddly enough, political freedoms up to popular representation. We met a demonstration with bullets, and the figures vary - from 100 to 200 people died. The workers got angry. Nikolai was upset.

Then there was what is called the revolution of 1905 - riots in the army and cities, their bloody suppression and - as an attempt to reconcile the country - the Manifesto of October 17, which granted the Russians basic civil liberties and parliament - the State Duma. The emperor dissolved the First Duma by his decree less than a year later. He didn't like the idea at all.

All these events did not add popularity to the sovereign. Among the intelligentsia, he seems to have no supporters at all. Konstantin Balmont, a rather nasty but very popular poet in those days, published a book of poems abroad with the pretentious title "Songs of the Struggle", which contained, among other things, the poem "Our Tsar."

Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king is a bloodstain
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark.

About the scaffold and Khodynka, quoted above, - from the same place.

Tsar, war and newspapers

The time between the two wars is filled with events tight and tight. The Stolypin terror and the Stolypin land reform (“They need great upheavals, we need a great Russia,” this beautiful phrase was quoted by V.V. Putin, R.A. Kadyrov, N.S. premiere.) Economic growth. The first experiences of parliamentary work; Dumas that were always in conflict with the government and dismissed by the tsar. The undercover fuss of the revolutionary parties that destroyed the empire - the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks. Nationalist reaction, the Union of the Russian People, tacitly supported by the tsar, Jewish pogroms. The rise of the arts...

The growth of influence at the court of Rasputin - a crazy old man from Siberia, either a whip or a holy fool, who in the end managed to completely subjugate the Russian Empress to his will: the Tsarevich was sick, Rasputin knew how to help him, and this worried the queen more than all the upheavals in the external the world.

To our proud capital
He enters - God, save! -
Enchant the queen
Invisible Russia.

This is Gumilyov Nikolai Stepanovich, the poem "Man" from the book "Bonfire".

It makes no sense, perhaps, to retell in detail the history of the First World War, which thundered in August 1914 (by the way, there is an interesting and unexpected document on the state of the country on the eve of the disaster: just in 1914, John Grosvenor, an American who wrote for The National, visited Russia Geographic Magazine's large and enthusiastic article "Young Russia. The Land of Unlimited Opportunities" with a bunch of photos; the country, according to the American, was blooming).

In short, all this looked like a quote from quite recent newspapers: first, patriotic enthusiasm, then - failures at the front, the economy, unable to serve the front, bad roads.

And also - the tsar, who decided to personally lead the army in August 1915, and also - endless lines for bread in the capital and large cities, and right there - the revelry of the nouveaux riches, "rising" on millions of military contracts, and also - many thousands returning from front. Cripples and just deserters. Those who have seen death up close, the mud of gray Galicia, those who have seen Europe...

In addition, probably for the first time: the headquarters of the warring powers launched a large-scale information war, supplying the army and rear of the enemy with the most terrible rumors, including about the most august persons. And in millions of leaflets throughout the country, stories spread that our tsar was a cowardly, feeble-minded drunkard, and his wife was Rasputin's mistress and a German spy.

All this, of course, was a lie, but the important thing is this: in a world where the printed word was still believed and where ideas about the sacredness of autocratic power still flickered, they were dealt a very strong blow. It was not German leaflets or Bolshevik newspapers that broke the monarchy, but their role should not be completely discounted.

Tellingly, the German monarchy also did not survive the war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire ended. In a world where there are no secrets in power, where a journalist in a newspaper can rinse the sovereign as he wants, empires will not survive.

In view of all this, it probably becomes clearer why, when the king abdicated, this did not particularly surprise anyone. Except maybe himself and his wife. At the end of February, his wife wrote to him that hooligans were operating in St. Petersburg (this is how she tried to comprehend the February Revolution), and he demanded to suppress the unrest, no longer having loyal troops at hand. On March 2, 1917, Nicholas signed the abdication.

Ipatiev house and everything after

The Provisional Government sent the former tsar and his family to Tyumen, then to Tobolsk. The king almost liked what was happening. It's not so bad to be a private citizen and no longer responsible for a huge, war-torn country. Then the Bolsheviks moved him to Yekaterinburg.

Then ... Everyone knows what happened then, in July 1918. Specific ideas of the Bolsheviks about political pragmatism. A brutal murder - the king, the queen, children, doctors, servants. Martyrdom turned the last autocrat into a holy martyr. Icons of the king are now sold in any church shop, and with a portrait there is a certain difficulty.

A brave military man with a well-groomed beard, quiet, one might even say - a kindly (forgive the dead cats) man in the street, who loved his family and simple human joys, turned out - not without the intervention of a case - at the head of the largest country in the most, probably, terrible period of its history.

It is as if he is hiding behind this story, there is little bright in him - not only in the events that passed by, touching him and his family, in the events that in the end destroyed both him and the country, creating another. It’s as if he doesn’t exist, you can’t see him behind a series of disasters.

And a terrible death removes the questions that are so fond of being asked in Russia: is the ruler to blame for the troubles of the country? Guilty. Certainly. But no more than many others. And he paid dearly, atoning for his guilt.

Titled from birth His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich. After the death of his grandfather, Emperor Alexander II, in 1881 he received the title of Tsarevich's heir.

... neither the figure nor the ability to speak the king did not touch the soldier's soul and did not make the impression that is necessary to raise the spirit and strongly attract hearts to himself. He did what he could, and one cannot blame him in this case, but he did not cause good results in the sense of inspiration.

Childhood, education and upbringing

Nikolai was educated at home as part of a large gymnasium course and in the 1890s, according to a specially written program that connected the course of the state and economic departments of the law faculty of the university with the course of the Academy of the General Staff.

The education and training of the future emperor took place under the personal guidance of Alexander III on a traditional religious basis. The training sessions of Nicholas II were conducted according to a carefully designed program for 13 years. The first eight years were devoted to the subjects of the extended gymnasium course. Particular attention was paid to the study of political history, Russian literature, English, German and French, which Nikolai Alexandrovich mastered to perfection. The next five years were devoted to the study of military affairs, legal and economic sciences, necessary for a statesman. Lectures were given by outstanding Russian scientists-academicians of world renown: N. N. Beketov, N. N. Obruchev, Ts. A. Cui, M. I. Dragomirov, N. Kh. Bunge, K. P. Pobedonostsev and others. I. L. Yanyshev taught the crown prince canon law in connection with the history of the church, the main departments of theology and the history of religion.

Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. 1896

For the first two years, Nikolai served as a junior officer in the ranks of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. For two summer seasons, he served in the ranks of the cavalry hussars as a squadron commander, and then camped in the ranks of the artillery. On August 6, he was promoted to colonel. At the same time, his father introduces him to the affairs of the country, inviting him to participate in meetings of the State Council and the Cabinet of Ministers. At the suggestion of the Minister of Railways S. Yu. Witte, in 1892 Nikolai was appointed chairman of the committee for the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway to gain experience in public affairs. By the age of 23, Nikolai Romanov was a widely educated person.

The emperor's education program included travels to various provinces of Russia, which he made with his father. To complete his education, his father gave him a cruiser to travel to the Far East. For nine months, he and his retinue visited Austria-Hungary, Greece, Egypt, India, China, Japan, and later returned by land through all of Siberia to the capital of Russia. In Japan, an assassination attempt was made on Nicholas (see the Otsu Incident). The blood-stained shirt is kept in the Hermitage.

He combined education with deep religiosity and mysticism. “The sovereign, like his ancestor, Alexander I, was always mystical,” recalled Anna Vyrubova.

The ideal ruler for Nicholas II was Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich the Quietest.

Lifestyle, habits

Tsesarevich Nikolai Alexandrovich Mountain landscape. 1886 Watercolor on paper Caption on the drawing: “Niki. 1886. July 22 "The drawing is pasted on a passe-partout

Most of the time, Nicholas II lived with his family in the Alexander Palace. In the summer, he rested in the Crimea in the Livadia Palace. For recreation, he also annually made two-week trips around the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea on the Shtandart yacht. He read both light entertainment literature and serious scientific works, often on historical topics. He smoked cigarettes, the tobacco for which was grown in Turkey and was sent to him as a gift from the Turkish Sultan. Nicholas II was fond of photography, he also liked to watch movies. All of his children were also photographed. Nikolai began to keep a diary from the age of 9. The archive contains 50 voluminous notebooks - the original diary for 1882-1918. Some of them have been published.

Nicholas and Alexandra

The first meeting of the Tsarevich with his future wife took place in 1884, and in 1889 Nikolai asked his father for his blessing to marry her, but was refused.

All correspondence between Alexandra Feodorovna and Nicholas II has been preserved. Only one letter from Alexandra Feodorovna has been lost; all her letters are numbered by the Empress herself.

Contemporaries assessed the empress differently.

The empress was infinitely kind and infinitely compassionate. It was these properties of her nature that were the motives in the phenomena that gave rise to intriguing people, people without conscience and hearts, people blinded by the thirst for power, to unite among themselves and use these phenomena in the eyes of the dark masses and the idle and narcissistic part of the intelligentsia, greedy for sensations, to discredit Royal Family for their dark and selfish purposes. The empress was attached with all her soul to people who really suffered or skillfully played out their suffering in front of her. She herself suffered too much in life, both as a conscious person - for her homeland oppressed by Germany, and as a mother - for her passionately and infinitely beloved son. Therefore, she could not help being too blind to other people who approached her, who were also suffering or seemed to be suffering ... ... The Empress, of course, sincerely and strongly loved Russia, just like the Sovereign loved her.

Coronation

Accession to the throne and beginning of reign

Letter from Emperor Nicholas II to Empress Maria Feodorovna. January 14, 1906 Autograph. "Trepov is an indispensable secretary for me, a kind of secretary. He is experienced, smart and cautious in advice. I give him thick notes from Witte to read and then he reports them to me quickly and clearly. This is of course a secret from everyone!"

The coronation of Nicholas II took place on May 14 (26) of the year (for the victims of the coronation celebrations in Moscow, see Khodynka). In the same year, the All-Russian Industrial and Art Exhibition was held in Nizhny Novgorod, which he attended. In 1896, Nicholas II also made a big trip to Europe, meeting with Franz Joseph, Wilhelm II, Queen Victoria (Alexandra Feodorovna's grandmother). The trip ended with the arrival of Nicholas II in Paris, the capital of allied France. One of the first personnel decisions of Nicholas II was the dismissal of I. V. Gurko from the post of Governor-General of the Kingdom of Poland and the appointment of A. B. Lobanov-Rostovsky to the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs after the death of N. K. Girs. The first of Nicholas II's major international actions was the Triple Intervention.

Economic policy

In 1900, Nicholas II sent Russian troops to suppress the Ihetuan uprising together with the troops of other European powers, Japan and the United States.

The revolutionary newspaper Osvobozhdenie, published abroad, made no secret of its misgivings: If the Russian troops defeat the Japanese... then freedom will be calmly strangled to the cries of cheers and the bell ringing of the triumphant Empire» .

The difficult situation of the tsarist government after the Russo-Japanese War prompted German diplomacy to make another attempt in July 1905 to tear Russia away from France and conclude a Russian-German alliance. Wilhelm II invited Nicholas II to meet in July 1905 in the Finnish skerries, near the island of Björke. Nikolay agreed, and at the meeting he signed the contract. But when he returned to St. Petersburg, he refused it, since peace with Japan had already been signed.

The American researcher of the era T. Dennett wrote in 1925:

Few people now believe that Japan was deprived of the fruits of the upcoming victories. The opposite opinion prevails. Many believe that Japan was already exhausted by the end of May and that only the conclusion of peace saved her from collapse or total defeat in a clash with Russia.

Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (the first in half a century) and the subsequent brutal suppression of the revolution of 1905-1907. (subsequently aggravated by the appearance at the court of Rasputin) led to a fall in the authority of the emperor in the circles of the intelligentsia and the nobility, so much so that even among the monarchists there were ideas about replacing Nicholas II with another Romanov.

The German journalist G. Ganz, who lived in St. Petersburg during the war, noted a different position of the nobility and intelligentsia in relation to the war: “ The common secret prayer not only of liberals, but also of many moderate conservatives at that time was: "God help us to be broken."» .

Revolution of 1905-1907

With the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Nicholas II tried to unite society against an external enemy, making significant concessions to the opposition. So after the murder of the Minister of Internal Affairs V.K. On December 12, 1904, a decree was issued "On plans for the improvement of the state order", promising the expansion of the rights of zemstvos, insurance of workers, the emancipation of foreigners and non-believers, and the elimination of censorship. At the same time, the sovereign declared: “I will never, in any case, agree to a representative form of government, for I consider it harmful to the people entrusted to me by God.”

... Russia has outgrown the form of the existing system. It is striving for a legal system based on civil freedom... It is very important to reform the State Council on the basis of the prominent participation of an elected element in it...

The opposition parties took advantage of the expansion of freedoms to intensify attacks on the tsarist government. On January 9, 1905, a large workers' demonstration took place in St. Petersburg, turning to the tsar with political and socio-economic demands. Demonstrators clashed with troops, resulting in a large number of deaths. These events became known as Bloody Sunday, the victims of which, according to V. Nevsky, were no more than 100-200 people. A wave of strikes swept across the country, the national outskirts were agitated. In Courland, the Forest Brothers began to massacre local German landowners, and the Armenian-Tatar massacre began in the Caucasus. Revolutionaries and separatists received support in money and weapons from England and Japan. So, in the summer of 1905, the English steamer John Grafton, which had run aground, carrying several thousand rifles for Finnish separatists and revolutionary militants, was detained in the Baltic Sea. There were several uprisings in the fleet and in various cities. The largest was the December uprising in Moscow. At the same time, the Socialist-Revolutionary and anarchist individual terror gained a large scope. In just a couple of years, thousands of officials, officers and policemen were killed by revolutionaries - in 1906 alone, 768 were killed and 820 representatives and agents of power were wounded.

The second half of 1905 was marked by numerous unrest in universities and even in theological seminaries: due to the riots, almost 50 secondary theological educational institutions were closed. The adoption on August 27 of a provisional law on the autonomy of universities caused a general strike of students and stirred up teachers at universities and theological academies.

The ideas of the highest dignitaries about the current situation and ways out of the crisis were clearly manifested during four secret meetings under the leadership of the emperor, held in 1905-1906. Nicholas II was forced to liberalize, moving to constitutional rule, while suppressing armed uprisings. From a letter from Nicholas II to Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna dated October 19, 1905:

Another way is the granting of civil rights to the population - freedom of speech, press, assembly and unions and inviolability of the person;…. Witte ardently defended this path, saying that although it is risky, it is nevertheless the only one at the moment ...

On August 6, 1905, the manifesto on the establishment of the State Duma, the law on the State Duma, and the regulation on elections to the Duma were published. But the revolution, which was gaining strength, easily stepped over the acts of August 6, in October an all-Russian political strike began, more than 2 million people went on strike. On the evening of October 17, Nikolai signed a manifesto promising: “1. To grant the population the unshakable foundations of civil freedom on the basis of real inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and associations. On April 23, 1906, the Basic State Laws of the Russian Empire were approved.

Three weeks after the manifesto, the government granted amnesty to political prisoners, except for those convicted of terrorism, and a little over a month later lifted prior censorship.

From a letter from Nicholas II to Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna on October 27:

The people were indignant at the arrogance and audacity of the revolutionaries and socialists ... hence the Jewish pogroms. It is amazing with what unanimity and at once this happened in all the cities of Russia and Siberia. In England, of course, they write that these riots were organized by the police, as always - an old, familiar fable! .. The cases in Tomsk, Simferopol, Tver and Odessa clearly showed how far a furious crowd can go when it surrounded houses in which revolutionaries locked themselves in, and set fire to them, killing anyone who came out.

During the revolution, in 1906, Konstantin Balmont wrote the poem "Our Tsar", dedicated to Nicholas II, which turned out to be prophetic:

Our king is Mukden, our king is Tsushima,
Our king is a bloodstain
The stench of gunpowder and smoke
In which the mind is dark. Our king is blind squalor,
Prison and whip, jurisdiction, execution,
The king is a hangman, the lower is twice,
What he promised, but did not dare to give. He's a coward, he feels stuttering
But it will be, the hour of reckoning awaits.
Who began to reign - Khodynka,
He will finish - standing on the scaffold.

Decade between two revolutions

On August 18 (31), 1907, an agreement was signed with Great Britain on the delimitation of spheres of influence in China, Afghanistan and Iran. This was an important step in the formation of the Entente. On June 17, 1910, after lengthy disputes, a law was passed that limited the rights of the Seimas of the Grand Duchy of Finland (see Russification of Finland). In 1912, Mongolia became a de facto protectorate of Russia, having gained independence from China as a result of the revolution that took place there.

Nicholas II and P. A. Stolypin

The first two State Dumas were unable to conduct regular legislative work - the contradictions between the deputies on the one hand, and the Duma with the emperor on the other - were insurmountable. So, immediately after the opening, in a response address to the throne speech of Nicholas II, the Duma members demanded the liquidation of the State Council (the upper house of parliament), the transfer of appanage (private possessions of the Romanovs), monastic and state lands to the peasants.

Military reform

Diary of Emperor Nicholas II for 1912-1913.

Nicholas II and the Church

The beginning of the 20th century was marked by a movement for reforms, during which the church sought to restore the canonical conciliar structure, there were even talks of convening a council and establishing a patriarchate, there were attempts to restore the autocephaly of the Georgian Church in the year.

Nicholas agreed with the idea of ​​an “All-Russian Church Council”, but changed his mind and on March 31, at the report of the Holy Synod on the convening of the council, he wrote: “ I acknowledge that it is impossible to...”and established a Special (pre-Council) Presence in the city to resolve issues of church reform and a Pre-Council Meeting in the city of

An analysis of the most famous canonizations of that period - Seraphim of Sarov (), Patriarch Hermogenes (1913) and John Maksimovich (-) allows us to trace the process of a growing and deepening crisis in relations between church and state. Under Nicholas II were canonized:

4 days after the abdication of Nicholas, the Synod published a message with the support of the Provisional Government.

Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod N. D. Zhevakhov recalled:

Our Tsar was one of the greatest ascetics of the Church of recent times, whose exploits were obscured only by his high rank of Monarch. Standing on the last rung of the ladder of human glory, the Sovereign saw above him only the sky, towards which his holy soul was irresistibly striving...

World War I

Along with the creation of special conferences, military-industrial committees began to emerge in 1915—public organizations of the bourgeoisie that bore a semi-oppositional character.

Emperor Nicholas II and commanders of the fronts at a meeting of the Headquarters.

After such heavy defeats of the army, Nicholas II, not considering it possible for himself to remain aloof from hostilities and considering it necessary to assume full responsibility for the position of the army in these difficult conditions, to establish the necessary agreement between the Headquarters and governments, to put an end to the disastrous isolation of power, standing at the head of the army, from the authorities governing the country, on August 23, 1915, he assumed the title of Supreme Commander-in-Chief. At the same time, some members of the government, the high army command and public circles opposed this decision of the emperor.

Due to the constant relocations of Nicholas II from Headquarters to St. Petersburg, as well as insufficient knowledge of the issues of leadership of the troops, the command of the Russian army was concentrated in the hands of his chief of staff, General M.V. Alekseev and General V.I. Gurko, who replaced him in late and early 1917. The autumn draft of 1916 put 13 million people under arms, and the losses in the war exceeded 2 million.

In 1916, Nicholas II replaced four chairmen of the Council of Ministers (I. L. Goremykin, B. V. Shtyurmer, A. F. Trepov and Prince N. D. Golitsyn), four ministers of the interior (A. N. Khvostov, B. V. Shtyurmer, A. A. Khvostov and A. D. Protopopov), three Ministers of Foreign Affairs (S. D. Sazonov, B. V. Shtyurmer and Pokrovsky, N. N. Pokrovsky), two Ministers of War (A. A. Polivanov, D.S. Shuvaev) and three Ministers of Justice (A.A. Khvostov, A.A. Makarov and N.A. Dobrovolsky).

Probing the world

Nicholas II, hoping for an improvement in the situation in the country in the event of the success of the spring offensive of 1917 (which was agreed upon at the Petrograd Conference), was not going to conclude a separate peace with the enemy - he saw the most important means of consolidating the throne in the victorious end of the war. Hints that Russia might start negotiations on a separate peace were a normal diplomatic game, forced the Entente to recognize the need to establish Russian control over the Mediterranean straits.

February Revolution of 1917

The war struck the system of economic ties - primarily between the city and the countryside. Famine began in the country. The authorities were discredited by a chain of scandals such as the intrigues of Rasputin and his entourage, as the “dark forces” then called them. But it was not the war that gave rise to the agrarian question in Russia, the sharpest social contradictions, conflicts between the bourgeoisie and tsarism and within the ruling camp. Nicholas' adherence to the idea of ​​unlimited autocratic power narrowed to the limit the possibility of social maneuvering, knocked out the support of Nicholas's power.

After the stabilization of the situation at the front in the summer of 1916, the Duma opposition, in alliance with conspirators among the generals, decided to take advantage of the situation to overthrow Nicholas II and replace him with another tsar. The leader of the Cadets P. N. Milyukov subsequently wrote in December 1917:

From February it was clear that Nikolai's abdication could take place any day, the date was February 12-13, it was said that there would be a "great act" - the abdication of the emperor from the throne in favor of the heir to Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, that Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich would be regent.

On February 23, 1917, a strike began in Petrograd, after 3 days it became general. On the morning of February 27, 1917, there was an uprising of soldiers in Petrograd and their connection with the strikers. A similar uprising took place in Moscow. The queen, who did not understand what was happening, wrote soothing letters on February 25

The queues and strikes in the city are more than provocative... This is a "hooligan" movement, young men and women run around screaming that they have no bread, and the workers do not let others work. It would be very cold, they would probably stay at home. But all this will pass and calm down if only the Duma behaves decently.

On February 25, 1917, by the manifesto of Nicholas II, the meetings of the State Duma were stopped, which further inflamed the situation. Chairman of the State Duma M. V. Rodzianko sent a number of telegrams to Emperor Nicholas II about the events in Petrograd. This telegram was received at Headquarters on February 26, 1917 at 22:00. 40 min.

I most humbly convey to Your Majesty that the popular unrest that began in Petrograd is assuming a spontaneous character and menacing proportions. Their foundations are the lack of baked bread and the weak supply of flour, which inspires panic, but mainly a complete distrust of the authorities, unable to lead the country out of a difficult situation.

The civil war has begun and is flaring up. ... There is no hope for the troops of the garrison. The reserve battalions of the guards regiments are in mutiny... Command the cancellation of your royal decree to convene the legislative chambers again... If the movement is transferred to the army... the collapse of Russia, and with it the dynasty, is inevitable.

Renunciation, exile and execution

Abdication of the throne of Emperor Nicholas II. March 2, 1917 Typescript. 35 x 22. In the lower right corner, the signature of Nicholas II in pencil: Nicholas; in the lower left corner, in black ink over a pencil, a confirmation inscription by the hand of V. B. Frederiks: Minister of the Imperial Court, Adjutant General Count Fredericks."

After the start of unrest in the capital, the tsar on the morning of February 26, 1917 ordered General S. S. Khabalov "to stop the unrest, unacceptable in the difficult time of the war." On February 27, sending General N. I. Ivanov to Petrograd

to suppress the uprising, Nicholas II departed for Tsarskoe Selo on the evening of February 28, but could not pass and, having lost contact with Headquarters, arrived in Pskov on March 1, where the headquarters of the armies of the Northern Front, General N.V. about abdication in favor of his son under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, in the evening of the same day he announced to the arrivals A.I. Guchkov and V.V. Shulgin about the decision to abdicate for his son. On March 2, at 11:40 p.m., he handed Guchkov a Manifesto of Abdication, in which he wrote: We command our brother to manage the affairs of the state in complete and indestructible unity with the representatives of the people».

The personal property of the Romanov family was looted.

After death

Glory to the saints

Decision of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church of August 20, 2000: “To glorify as martyrs in the host of new martyrs and confessors of Russia the Royal Family: Emperor Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexy, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.” .

The act of canonization was perceived by Russian society ambiguously: opponents of canonization argue that the reckoning of Nicholas II to the saints is political in nature. .

Rehabilitation

Philatelic collection of Nicholas II

In some memoir sources there is evidence that Nicholas II “sinned with postage stamps”, although this passion was not as strong as photography. On February 21, 1913, at a celebration in the Winter Palace in honor of the anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, the head of the Main Directorate of Posts and Telegraphs, Acting State Councilor M. P. Sevastyanov, presented Nicholas II with morocco-bound albums with test proof prints and essays of stamps from a commemorative series published by 300 anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. It was a collection of materials related to the preparation of the series, which was carried out for almost ten years - from 1912 to 1912. Nicholas II greatly valued this gift. It is known that this collection accompanied him among the most valuable family relics in exile, first in Tobolsk, and then in Yekaterinburg, and was with him until his death.

After the death of the royal family, the most valuable part of the collection was stolen, and the surviving half was sold to a certain officer of the English army, who was in Siberia as part of the Entente troops. He then took her to Riga. Here, this part of the collection was acquired by the philatelist Georg Jaeger, who in 1926 put it up for sale at an auction in New York. In 1930, it was again put up for auction in London, - the famous collector of Russian stamps Goss became its owner. Obviously, it was Goss who pretty much replenished it by buying missing materials at auctions and from private individuals. The 1958 auction catalog described the Goss collection as "a magnificent and unique collection of samples, prints and essays ... from the collection of Nicholas II."

By order of Nicholas II, the Female Alekseevskaya Gymnasium was founded in the city of Bobruisk, now the Slavic Gymnasium

see also

• Family of Nicholas II

fiction:

• E. Radzinsky. Nicholas II: life and death.
• R. Massey. Nicholas and Alexandra.

Illustrations

Portrait of Emperor Nicholas II by Ernst Lipgart. 1896	Portrait of Nicholas II by Ilya Galkin. 1898.
The king on a gold five-ruble coin. 1899.	Diary of Emperor Nicholas II for 1895-1896.

Years of life: 1868-1818
Years of government: 1894-1917

Born on May 6 (19 according to the old style) May 1868 in Tsarskoe Selo. The Russian emperor, who reigned from October 21 (November 2), 1894 to March 2 (March 15), 1917. Belonged to the Romanov dynasty, was the son and successor.

From birth he had the title of His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke. In 1881, he received the title of Tsarevich's Heir, after the death of his grandfather, the Emperor.

Title of Emperor Nicholas II

The full title of the emperor from 1894 to 1917: “By God's hastening mercy, We, Nicholas II (Church Slavonic form in some manifestos - Nicholas II), Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kyiv, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonese, Tsar of Georgia; Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuanian, Volyn, Podolsk and Finland; Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostoksky, Korelsky, Tversky, Yugorsky, Permsky, Vyatsky, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod of the Nizovsky lands, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsk, Rostov, Yaroslavl, Belozersky, Udorsky, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all northern countries Sovereign; and Sovereign of Iver, Kartalinsky and Kabardian lands and regions of Armenia; Cherkasy and Mountain Princes and other Hereditary Sovereign and Possessor, Sovereign of Turkestan; Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarsen and Oldenburg and others, and others, and others.

The peak of Russia's economic development and at the same time growth
revolutionary movement, which resulted in the revolutions of 1905-1907 and 1917, fell precisely on years of reign of Nicholas 2. Foreign policy at that time was aimed at Russia's participation in blocs of European powers, the contradictions that arose between which became one of the reasons for the start of the war with Japan and World War I.

After the events of the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas II abdicated the throne, and a period of civil war soon began in Russia. The Provisional Government sent him to Siberia, then to the Urals. Together with his family, he was shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918.

Contemporaries and historians characterize the personality of the last king inconsistently; most of them believed that his strategic abilities in the conduct of public affairs were not successful enough to change for the better the political situation at that time.

After the revolution of 1917, he began to be called Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov (before that, the surname "Romanov" was not indicated by members of the imperial family, the titles indicated the family affiliation: emperor, empress, grand duke, crown prince).
With the nickname Bloody, which the opposition gave him, he appeared in Soviet historiography.

Biography of Nicholas 2

He was the eldest son of Empress Maria Feodorovna and Emperor Alexander III.

In 1885-1890. received home education as part of a gymnasium course under a special program that combined the course of the Academy of the General Staff and the Faculty of Law of the University. Training and education took place under the personal supervision of Alexander III with a traditional religious basis.

Most often he lived with his family in the Alexander Palace. And he preferred to relax in the Livadia Palace in the Crimea. For annual trips to the Baltic Sea and the Finnish Sea, he had at his disposal the Shtandart yacht.

From the age of 9 he began keeping a diary. The archive has preserved 50 thick notebooks for the years 1882-1918. Some of them have been published.

He was fond of photography, he liked to watch movies. He also read serious works, especially on historical topics, and entertaining literature. He smoked cigarettes with tobacco grown specially in Turkey (a gift from the Turkish Sultan).

On November 14, 1894, a significant event took place in the life of the heir to the throne - the marriage with the German princess Alice of Hesse, who, after the rite of baptism, took the name - Alexandra Feodorovna. They had 4 daughters - Olga (November 3, 1895), Tatyana (May 29, 1897), Maria (June 14, 1899) and Anastasia (June 5, 1901). And the long-awaited fifth child on July 30 (August 12), 1904 was the only son - Tsarevich Alexei.

Coronation of Nicholas 2

On May 14 (26), 1896, the coronation of the new emperor took place. In 1896 he
made a trip to Europe, where he met with Queen Victoria (grandmother of his wife), Wilhelm II, Franz Joseph. The final stage of the trip was a visit to the capital of the allied France.

His first personnel reshuffle was the fact of the dismissal of the Governor-General of the Kingdom of Poland Gurko I.V. and the appointment of A.B. Lobanov-Rostovsky as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
And the first major international action was the so-called Triple Intervention.
Having made huge concessions to the opposition at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, Nicholas II made an attempt to unite Russian society against external enemies. In the summer of 1916, after the situation at the front had stabilized, the Duma opposition united with the generals' conspirators and decided to take advantage of the situation to overthrow the tsar.

They even called the date February 12-13, 1917, as the day the emperor abdicated from the throne. It was said that a “great act” would take place - the sovereign would abdicate the throne, and the heir Tsarevich Alexei Nikolayevich would be appointed the future emperor, and it was Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich who would become regent.

On February 23, 1917, a strike began in Petrograd, which became general three days later. On February 27, 1917, in the morning, soldiers' uprisings took place in Petrograd and Moscow, as well as their association with the strikers.

The situation escalated after the proclamation of the emperor's manifesto on February 25, 1917, on the termination of the session of the State Duma.

On February 26, 1917, the tsar gave an order to General Khabalov "to stop the riots, unacceptable in the difficult time of the war." General N.I. Ivanov was sent on February 27 to Petrograd with the aim of suppressing the uprising.

On February 28, in the evening, he went to Tsarskoe Selo, but could not pass, and, due to the loss of communication with Headquarters, he arrived in Pskov on March 1, where the headquarters of the armies of the Northern Front under the leadership of General Ruzsky was located.

Abdication of Nicholas 2 from the throne

At about three o'clock in the afternoon, the emperor decided to abdicate in favor of the Tsarevich under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, and in the evening of the same day he announced to V. V. Shulgin and A. I. Guchkov about the decision to abdicate the throne for his son. March 2, 1917 at 23:40 he handed over to Guchkov A.I. The renunciation manifesto, where he wrote: “We command our brother to rule the affairs of the state in complete and indestructible unity with the representatives of the people.”

Nicholas 2 and his family from March 9 to August 14, 1917 lived under arrest in the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo.
In connection with the intensification of the revolutionary movement in Petrograd, the Provisional Government decided to transfer the royal prisoners to the depths of Russia, fearing for their lives. After long disputes, Tobolsk was chosen as the city of settlement of the former emperor and his relatives. They were allowed to take personal belongings, necessary furniture with them and offer the attendants a voluntary escort to the place of the new settlement.

On the eve of his departure, A.F. Kerensky (head of the Provisional Government) brought the brother of the former tsar, Mikhail Alexandrovich. Mikhail was soon exiled to Perm and on the night of June 13, 1918 was killed by the Bolshevik authorities.
On August 14, 1917, a train set off from Tsarskoye Selo under the sign "Japanese Mission of the Red Cross" with members of the former imperial family. He was accompanied by a second squad, which included guards (7 officers, 337 soldiers).
The trains arrived in Tyumen on August 17, 1917, after which the arrested were taken on three ships to Tobolsk. The Romanovs were settled in the governor's house, specially renovated for their arrival. They were allowed to go to worship at the local Church of the Annunciation. The regime of protection of the Romanov family in Tobolsk was much easier than in Tsarskoye Selo. They led a measured, calm life.

The permission of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (All-Russian Central Executive Committee) of the fourth convocation to transfer Romanov and members of his family to Moscow for the purpose of holding a trial against them was received in April 1918.
On April 22, 1918, a convoy with machine guns of 150 people left Tobolsk for the city of Tyumen. On April 30, the train arrived in Yekaterinburg from Tyumen. To accommodate the Romanovs, a house was requisitioned, which belonged to the mining engineer Ipatiev. The staff also lived in the same house: the cook Kharitonov, Dr. Botkin, the room girl Demidova, the lackey Trupp and the cook Sednev.

The fate of Nicholas 2 and his family

To resolve the issue of the future fate of the imperial family in early July 1918, the military commissar F. Goloshchekin urgently left for Moscow. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars authorized the execution of all the Romanovs. After that, on July 12, 1918, on the basis of the decision taken, the Ural Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies at a meeting decided to execute the royal family.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, in the Ipatiev mansion, the so-called "House of Special Purpose", the former emperor of Russia, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, their children, Dr. Botkin and three servants (except for the cook) were shot.

The personal property of the Romanovs was looted.
All members of his family were canonized by the Catacomb Church in 1928.
In 1981, the last tsar of Russia was canonized by the Orthodox Church abroad, and in Russia the Orthodox Church canonized him as a martyr only 19 years later, in 2000.

In accordance with the decision of August 20, 2000 of the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, the last emperor of Russia, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, princesses Maria, Anastasia, Olga, Tatiana, Tsarevich Alexei were canonized as holy new martyrs and confessors of Russia, revealed and unmanifested.

This decision was perceived by society ambiguously and was criticized. Some opponents of canonization believe that reckoning Tsar Nicholas 2 to the face of the saints is most likely a political character.

The result of all the events related to the fate of the former royal family was the appeal of the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, head of the Russian Imperial House in Madrid, to the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation in December 2005, demanding the rehabilitation of the royal family, who was shot in 1918.

On October 1, 2008, the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (Russian Federation) decided to recognize the last Russian emperor and members of the royal family as victims of illegal political repressions and rehabilitated them.

Until the end of his days, Tsar Nicholas II kept a certain notebook. This is a summary of the history of Russia, which was led by one of his great ancestors - the reformer Tsar Alexander II, being the heir to the throne. "Romanovs..." - the notebook is proudly titled. "Romanovs" - this is how you can name three whole centuries of Russian history.

1. "Excursion to heraldry"
Full title of Emperor Nicholas II
Nicholas II
"By God's grace, We, Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All Russia, Moscow, Kyiv, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia, Tsar of Tauric Chersonese, Tsar of Georgia; Sovereign of Pskov and Grand Duke of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volyn, Podolsky and Finland; Prince of Estonia, Livonia, Courland and Semigalsky, Samogitsky, Belostok, Korelsky, Tver, Yugorsky, Perm, Vyatka, Bulgarian and others; Sovereign and Grand Duke of Novgorod Nizov lands, Chernigov, Ryazan, Polotsky, Rostov, Yaroslavl , Belozersky, Udora, Obdorsky, Kondia, Vitebsk, Mstislav and all northern countries Sovereign; and Sovereign of the Iberian, Kartalinsky and Kabardian lands and regions of Armenia; Cherkasy and Mountain Princes and other Hereditary Sovereign and Possessor, Sovereign of Turkestan; Heir of Norway, Duke of Schleswig- Holstein, Stormman, Dietmarsen and Olbdenburg and others, and others, and others "
Great State Emblem
In a golden shield is a black double-headed eagle crowned with two imperial crowns, above which is the same, but larger crown, from under which the fluttering ends of the ribbon of the St. Andrew's Order emerge. The state eagle holds a scepter and orb in its paws. On the chest of the eagle is placed the Moscow coat of arms: in a red shield with gold edges, St. George in silver arms and a blue robe, on a silver horse covered with purple and gold fringe, striking a golden dragon with green wings with a spear, also golden, with an eight-pointed cross on top of the shaft. The shield is crowned with the helmet of Prince Alexander Nevsky. The namet is black with gold. Around the shield is the chain of the Order of St. Andrew the First-Called. Shield-bearers - Archangel Michael and Archangel Gabriel. The canopy is golden, crowned with the imperial crown, embroidered with Russian eagles and lined with ermine. On the canopy there is a red inscription "GOD WITH US". Above the canopy there is a state banner, with a shaft topped with an eight-pointed cross. The golden canvas of the gonfalon depicts the middle state emblem, but without the nine shields surrounding it. The main shield is surrounded below by nine shields with coats of arms of possessions, surmounted by the corresponding crowns. Above it are six more shields with territorial coats of arms.
Family coat of arms of His Imperial Majesty
The shield is split. To the right - the coat of arms of the Romanov family: in a silver field, a red vulture holding a golden sword and a tarch crowned with a small scarlet eagle; on a black border are eight severed lion heads, four gold and four silver. To the left - the coat of arms of Schleswig-Holstein: a quarter-part shield with a tip and a small shield in the middle; in the first part - the Norwegian coat of arms: in a red field, a golden crowned lion with a silver halberd; in the second part - the coat of arms of Schleswig: in a golden field, two blue leopard lions; in the third part - the coat of arms of Holstein: in a red field a crossed small shield, silver and red; around the shield is a silver, cut into three parts, a nettle leaf and three silver nails with ends to the corners of the shield; in the fourth part - the Stormarn coat of arms: in a red field a silver swan with black paws and a golden crown around its neck; at the end - the coat of arms of Ditmarsen: in a red field, golden, with a raised sword, a rider on a silver horse covered with black cloth; the middle small shield is also dissected: in the right half is the coat of arms of Oldenburg: in a golden field there are two red belts; on the left - the coat of arms of Delmengorst: in a blue field, a golden cross with a sharp end at the bottom. This small shield is surmounted by a grand ducal crown, and the main one by a royal crown.

Coats of arms of Their Majesties Empresses
The large coat of arms of Their Majesties the Empresses is the same as the middle Russian State Emblem, with the only difference that the coats of arms surrounding the main shield are placed with it on the same shield and in its middle, above the small shield, is the crown of Monomakh. To this coat of arms, on the same or another shield, the family coat of arms of the empress joins. Above the shield or shields, instead of a helmet, there is a small imperial crown. Around the coat of arms are signs of the orders of St. Andrew the First-Called and St. Catherine the Great Martyr.
The small coat of arms of Their Majesties is the same as the small state coat of arms, combined with the family coat of arms of the Empress; the shield is surmounted by the imperial crown and decorated with signs of the orders of St. Andrew the First-Called and St. Catherine the Great Martyr.
The coats of arms of the Romanov family, and all members of the imperial family (large and small, established by the degree of their origin from the person of the emperor), were approved on December 8, 1856. The drawings of these coats of arms are reproduced in the Complete Collection of Laws, vol. XXXII (1857) under No. 31720. Descriptions of these coats of arms are given in the Code of Laws of the Russian Empire, vol. I, part 1, Code of Fundamental State Laws. Ed. 1906 Appendix II.
Nicholas II Alexandrovich (05/06/1868 - 07/17/1918)
Emperor of All Russia (10/21/1894 - 03/2/1917), ascended the throne after the death of his father Alexander III, on October 21, 1894. On May 14, 1895, the coronation of Nicholas II took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The coronation was marked by a crush on the Khodynka field, in which several hundred people died.
The ancestors of the boyar family of the Romanovs were a noble native of the Prussian land Andrei Ivanovich Kobyla with his brother Fedor, who came to Russia in the XIV century. They gave rise to numerous offspring and many noble Russian families.
The great-great-granddaughter of Andrei Kobyla Anastasia became the queen - the wife of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The tsarina's brother Nikita Romanovich was especially close to the cruel tsar. But Ivan the Terrible dies. According to his will, Nikita Romanovich is appointed one of the guardians - advisers to his nephew - the new Tsar Fedor. The struggle for power begins.
At the slander of the all-powerful Boris Godunov, Tsar Fyodor's father-in-law, the eldest of Nikita Romanovich's sons was tonsured a monk under the name Filaret.
Tsar Fedor dies, and the ancient Rurik dynasty ends. And then the dark times come in Russia - the times of Troubles. Election to the kingdom of Boris Godunov, suspected of the murder of the heir to the throne, the young Dmitry; unprecedented famine and pestilence; death of Godunov; the invasion of the Poles into Russia and the impostor False Dmitry, planted by the Poles on the Russian throne; general impoverishment, cannibalism and robbery ...
Then, in the days of the Time of Troubles, Filaret Romanov was returned from exile and became Metropolitan of Rostov.
But the Poles were expelled from Moscow, the false tsar died, and in 1613 the Great Zemsky Sobor finally ends the terrible era of the interregnum and the Time of Troubles.
The son of Metropolitan Filaret, Mikhail Romanov, who was at that time in the Kostroma Ipatiev Monastery, was unanimously elected to the kingdom. On February 21, 1613, the three-hundred-year history of the Romanov dynasty began.
As a result of endless dynastic marriages, almost no Russian blood remained in the veins of the Russian Romanov tsars by the 20th century ... But the "Russian tsar" is already a nationality. And the German princess, who became famous under the name of Empress Catherine the Great, felt truly Russian. So Russian that when her brother was about to visit Russia, she said indignantly: "Why? There are plenty of Germans in Russia without him." And the father of Nicholas - Alexander III - both in appearance and in habits - a typical Russian landowner who loves everything Russian. And the proud formula - "Autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationality" - is in the German blood of Russian tsars.
Nikolay's mother is the Danish princess Dagmara, his grandmother is the Danish queen. Grandmother was nicknamed "the mother-in-law of all Europe": her countless daughters, sons and grandchildren related to each other almost all royal houses, uniting the mainland from England to Greece in such a funny way.
Her daughter Princess Dagmar was first engaged to the eldest son of Alexander II - Nicholas. But Nicholas dies of consumption in Nice, and Alexander becomes heir to the throne. Together with the title, the new heir married the bride of his late brother: on his deathbed, the dying Nikolai himself joined their hands. The Danish Princess Dagmara became Her Imperial Highness Maria Feodorovna.
The marriage turned out to be happy. They have many children. Alexander was a wonderful family man: keeping the foundations of the family and the state is his main commandment.
- Constancy - the main motto of Father Nicholas - the future Emperor Alexander III.
- Reforms, changes and search - the main motto of his grandfather, Emperor Alexander II.
And these frequent fascinations with new ideas found a kind of continuation in the grandfather's endless love interests. In 1880, Nicholas' grandmother, Maria Alexandrovna, the official wife of Alexander II, died.
His grandfather marries his mistress. Although the smart and scrupulous princess is in a hurry to renounce the rights to the throne for her son, everyone understands that the impossible today is already tomorrow ... Alexander II is 62 years old, but he is in the prime of life and health. Nikolai's father is clearly relegated to the background. And suddenly, a few months after the "shameful" marriage - a bomb explosion on the Catherine's Canal. And, of course, Nicholas heard what was said around: "God's punishment to the sinful king."
Nicholas II received a good education at home, spoke French, English and German. In 1885-90, a series of classes took place from the course of the Academy of the General Staff and the humanities faculties. To complete his education, the Tsarevich spent several camp periods near the capital. In October 1890, Grand Duke Nikolai Alexandrovich made this journey through Vienna, Greece and Egypt to India, China and Japan. The return journey of Nikolai Alexandrovich lay through the whole of Siberia. The emperor was simple and easily accessible. Contemporaries noted two shortcomings in his character - weak will and inconstancy. Emperor Nicholas II, almost immediately after the death of Alexander III, against the will of his mother, married the daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt Ludwig IV, Alice-Victoria-Helena-Louise-Beatrice (in Orthodoxy, Alexandra Feodorovna). Alexandra Fedorovna (1872-1918) graduated from Heidelberg University with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. She had a strong will, which explains her influence on her husband. From this marriage were born four daughters and a son. But Nicholas II was never a political pawn on the throne. He knew what he was doing and did what he wanted. "The beginnings of autocracy" Nicholas II defended stubbornly, without giving up a single significant position.
In the field of foreign policy, Nicholas II took some steps to stabilize international relations. In 1898, the Russian emperor turned to the governments of Europe with proposals to sign agreements on the preservation of world peace and the establishment of limits on the constant growth of armaments. The Hague Peace Conferences were held in 1899 and 1907, some decisions of which are still valid today. In 1904, Japan declared war on Russia, which ended in 1905 with the defeat of the Russian army. Under the terms of the peace treaty, Russia paid Japan about 200 million rubles for the maintenance of Russian prisoners of war and ceded to it half of the island of Sakhalin and the Kwantung region with the fortress of Port Arthur and the city of Dalniy. The defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the revolution of 1905 sharply weakened the international position of Russia - it was necessary to urgently look for allies. The attempted rapprochement with Germany did not meet the national interests of Russia, and the treaty had to be abandoned. The rapprochement between Russia and the countries of the Entente began. In 1914, on the side of the Entente countries against Germany, Russia entered the First World War. The tsar's uncle, Nikolai Nikolaevich, was appointed commander-in-chief. But, fearing that the ever-increasing popularity of Nikolai Nikolayevich in the army and in the country could cost him the throne, on August 23, 1915, the tsar removed Nikolai Nikolayevich from his post and transferred him to the Caucasian front, taking over the command in chief. It is possible that Nikolai Nikolayevich's frank dislike for Rasputin served as an additional reason for disgrace. Rasputin was not a jester under the tsar. Arriving at the palace from the taiga, he quickly got used to it thanks to his intelligence and insight. Using the boundless confidence of Nicholas and Alexandra, Rasputin did what he wanted: he replaced ministers, sought profitable military contracts, and interfered in politics. In monarchical circles, a conspiracy against Rasputin was ripening. On the night of December 16-17, Rasputin was killed in the palace of Prince Yusupov.
The beginning of the reign of Nicholas II coincided with the rapid growth of capitalism in Russia. The emperor is increasingly looking for ways of rapprochement with the big bourgeoisie and support from the prosperous peasantry. The State Duma was established (1906), without the approval of which no law could enter into force. According to the project of P.A. Stolypin, an agrarian reform was carried out. The entire reign of Nicholas II passed in an atmosphere of a growing revolutionary movement, inflating nationalism and encouraging Black Hundred organizations. Due to the implementation of repressive measures (Bloody Sunday, punitive expeditions, courts-martial), he went down in history as Nicholas "Bloody". In early 1905, a revolution broke out in Russia, initiating some reforms. In August 1915, the "Progressive Bloc" was created in the State Duma and the conditions for the transition from autocracy to a constitutional monarchy were formulated through a "bloodless" parliamentary revolution. In September, the Progressive Bloc proposed a new composition of the government, taking into account the opinion of the Duma majority. However, Nicholas II, in response to a more than mild "ultimatum", closed the meeting of the Duma, having missed the last chance to save the monarchy.
Failures at the front, revolutionary propaganda, devastation, ministerial leapfrog, etc. caused sharp dissatisfaction with the autocracy in various circles of society. An uprising broke out in Petrograd, which could not be suppressed. On March 2, 1917, Nicholas II (given the poor health of his son Alexei) abdicated in favor of his brother Mikhail Alexandrovich. Mikhail Alexandrovich also signed the Manifesto on abdication. The republican era began in Russia. From March 9 to August 14, 1917, the former emperor and members of his family were kept under arrest in Tsarskoye Selo. The revolutionary movement intensifies in Petrograd and the provisional government, fearing for the lives of the royal prisoners, decides to transfer them to the depths of Russia. After the October Revolution, on April 30, 1918, the prisoners were transferred to Yekaterinburg, where on the night of July 17, 1918, the former emperor, his wife, children, the doctor and servants who remained with them were shot by the Chekists. The bodies of the executed have disappeared. Their remains were found and identified only after almost eight decades. Now Nicholas II and his family are buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
Nicholas II: Diary of the collapse of the Empire
Prologue
The century was then living out its last years. As now, older people then lived with a sad feeling that they no longer had anything to do with the future, which promised humanity the flourishing of science and serene prosperity. But young people lived in anticipation of what was to come. A century came with a special, mystically multiple number - "Twentieth".
And two of the happiest young people - Nicky and Alix - lovers who happened to be united in marriage, and the rulers of one sixth of the world also lived in this happy future.
May 14, 1896, Moscow... The Kremlin cathedrals were ringing. Young Nikolai and the fair-haired beauty empress entered the Assumption Cathedral. And the bell ringing subsided, and the ancient square crowded with people fell silent. And a great moment came: the Sovereign accepted the crown from the hands of the Metropolitan and placed it on his head...
July 18, 1918. Yekaterinburg.
“The corpses were put in a pit and their faces and all bodies were doused with sulfuric acid, both to make them unrecognizable and to prevent the stench from decomposition ... Having thrown earth and brushwood, they put sleepers on top and drove several times - there were no traces of the pit.” (From the "Note" of Y. Yurovsky, who led the execution of the Royal Family on the night of July 17, 1918)
"But though you rise high like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, I will bring you down from there too, says the Lord." (Words from the Bible that the queen read to her daughter on July 16, 1918 - on the last day of their life.)
Until the end of his days, Tsar Nicholas II kept a certain notebook. This is a summary of the history of Russia, which was led by one of his great ancestors - the reformer Tsar Alexander II, being the heir to the throne.
"Romanovs..." - the notebook is proudly titled.
"Romanovs" - this is how you can name three whole centuries of Russian history.
Under the dictation of the teacher, Nikolai's grandfather wrote down a blissful story about the founding of his dynasty: "Mother, shedding tears of tenderness, herself blessed him for the kingdom. Mikhail's consent to become king was greeted with joy by all the inhabitants, who rejoiced. Mikhail, who did not stay long in the Ipatiev Monastery, moved to Moscow ..."
The mysticism of history: the monastery was called Ipatiev, from where the first Romanov was called to the kingdom. And the house where the last reigning Romanov, Nicholas II, passed away, was called Ipatievsky after the name of the owner of the house, engineer Ipatiev.
Michael is the name of the first tsar from the House of Romanov and the name of the last one, in whose favor Nicholas II unsuccessfully abdicated.
Flipping through the Royal Diaries
Prominent Bolsheviks then lived in the Metropol. They often invited writers and journalists there. And they remembered how it all happened... They drank tea as a bite, crunched with sugar and told how the bullets bounced off the girls and flew around the room... They were seized with fear, and they could not finish off the boy... he kept crawling on the floor , covering with a hand from shots ...
Photos, photos... A tall thin beauty and a sweet young man - the time of their engagement.
The first child is a girl with weak legs... And now four daughters are sitting on a leather sofa... And now a boy has appeared - the long-awaited heir to the throne. Here he is with a dog, here he is on a bicycle with a huge wheel.
But Nikolai and the future English King George, they look at each other - strikingly, ridiculously similar (their mothers were sisters). A photograph of the royal hunt: a huge deer with giant antlers lies on the snow ... And here is the rest: Nikolai is bathing - he dived and swims completely naked - and from the back of his naked strong body.
Nikolay kept his diary for 36 years continuously. 50 notebooks are written from beginning to end in his neat handwriting. But the last, 51st notebook is only half filled: life was cut short - and there were empty, gaping pages, carefully numbered for future use by the author. In this diary there are no reflections and rare assessments. A diary is a record of the main events of the day, nothing more. But his voice was there. The mystical power of genuine speech...
This silent, withdrawn person will tell. He is an author.
The author was born on May 6, 1868.
An old photograph of a baby with long curls in a lace shirt trying to look into a book held by his mother. Nicholas is here for a year.
The reason why, since 1882, Nikolai began to continuously fill out his diary is the fateful day of Russian history - March 1, 1881.
On a chilly night on March 1, 1881, the lights were not turned off for a long time in one of the St. Petersburg apartments. On the eve, from early morning, some young people constantly ran into the apartment. From eight in the evening, six people remained in the apartment: four men and two women. One was Vera Figner, the famous leader of the Narodnaya Volya terrorist organization. The other is Sofia Perovskaya.
Vera Figner and four men worked all night. By morning they had filled the kerosene tins with "explosive jelly". There were four homemade bombs.
The case was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, one of the greatest reformers in Russian history. In those spring days, he was preparing to give Russia the desired constitution, which was supposed to introduce feudal despotism into the circle of civilized European states. But young people were afraid that the constitution would create false satisfaction in society, would lead Russia away from the coming revolution.
By that time, the revolutionary terrorists had already made seven unsuccessful attempts on the tsar. Twenty-one death penalties was the price.
"A revolutionary, there is a man doomed..." - this is a quote from Bakunin's famous Catechism of a Revolutionary. According to this "Catechism", the revolutionary must: break with the laws and conventions of the civilized world, renounce all personal life and blood ties in the name of the revolution. To despise society, to be merciless towards it, not to expect mercy from society yourself and to be ready for death. And to exacerbate the misfortunes of the people by all means, pushing them towards revolution. To know: all means are justified by one end - the Revolution ...
They decided to lubricate the motionless Russian cart with blood. And forward - there, by 1917, to the Yekaterinburg basement, to the great Red Terror - roll, roll ...
Tsar Alexander II died in agony in the palace.
"Spilled royal blood" gave rise to his diary. Nicholas - Heir. Now his life belonged to history - from the New Year he must record his life.

Diary cover
In the autumn of 1882 he sang a song.
This song impressed him so much that he wrote it down on the back cover of his very first diary.
"The song we sang while one of us was hiding:
"Down by the river,
Down and down the Kazanka
The gray drake swims.
Along the coast,
Along the steep
The good fellow is coming.
He with curls
He is with blond
Talking...
To whom are my curls
Who are my fair-haired
Get to comb?
Got curls
Russes got
To scratch the old grandmother.
No matter how she scratches
No matter how she strokes
Just pulling hair."
This folk song about the old woman-death, combing the curls of the dead young man, opens his diary.

Diary of a youth
"My diary began to be written on January 1, 1882 ... Sandro, Sergei ... skated, played ball. When dad left, we started to fight in the snow..."
The boys are playing... Life is a holiday. Sergei and Sandro (Alexander) are the sons of Grand Duke Mikhail, his grandfather's brother.
The eldest of the Mikhailovichi, his namesake Nikolai, the famous liberal historian, mockingly observes their games: he will always treat Emperor Nike with slight irony.
And all this cheerful, laughing company then ...
"Later" is when Nikolai and Georgy Mikhailovichi will be shot in the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress. And at the bottom of the mine with a shot in the head, another participant in these fun games, Sergei Mikhailovich, will lie down.

Circumstances of his life
The shadow of the murdered father haunts Alexander III. A chain of guards along the fence, guards around the palace, guards inside the park ... With this prison accent, the life of young Nikolai begins.
The tsar and his guests are drinking tea on the balcony, while Misha is playing below. Heroic fun: the father takes a watering can and pours water over the boy from above. Misha is happy. Misha laughs, the king laughs, the guests laugh.
But suddenly an unexpected remark follows: "And now, dad, it's your turn." The emperor obediently exposes his bald head, and Misha pours water over him from head to toe...
But the iron will of the father will break Michael's childhood independence - both brothers will grow up kind, soft and shy. These are often the children of strong fathers.
It was then that Nicholas comprehended the bitterest thing for the lad: they don’t love you - they love their brother! No, no, it didn't make him angry, sullen, less obedient. He just became secretive.
Alexander III ascended the throne with understandable logic: there were reforms under his father, - how did it end? Murder. And Pobedonostsev was called to power.
In his keynote speech, Pobedonostsev explained: Russia is a special country: reforms, a free press will certainly end in debauchery and confusion in it.
Alexander III had the nickname "Peacemaker". He avoided wars, but the army towered over society like its former bulk. The army, which has always been strong in Russia. "Not by laws, not by civilization, but by the army," Count Witte wrote. "Russia is not a commercial or agricultural state, but a military state, and its calling is to be a thunderstorm of light," it was written in a textbook for cadet corps. The army is first of all obedience and diligence. And both of these qualities, already present in a timid young man, will be perniciously developed by the army...
The heir to the throne is serving in the guard. Ever since the 18th century, the most noble, richest families in Russia sent their children to the guards, to St. Petersburg. Drunkenness, revelry, gypsies, duels - a gentleman's set of a guardsman. All palace coups in Russia are carried out by the guards. The guardsmen enthroned Elizabeth and Catherine II, killed the emperors Peter III and Paul I. But the guards not only made trips to the imperial palace, in all the great battles of Russia - the guards were ahead.

Diary of a Young Man
"Alix G." - so he called her then in his diary.
Endless letters from Nikolai, hundreds of letters... Her diaries - or rather, what's left. She burned her diaries in early March 1917, when the empire perished. There are only brief notes for 1917 and 1918 - the last two years of her life... Notebooks with extracts from the works of theologians and philosophers, lines of favorite poems, transcribed by her.
But here is another special notebook - also a collection of sayings, but an unexpected philosopher who dominated the mind and soul of the brilliantly educated Alix G. This is a semi-literate Russian peasant Grigory Rasputin.
The daughter of Ernest Ludwig IV, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, and Alice of England, she was born in Darmstadt in 1872.
Alix's mother died at 35. There was a big family left. Alix is ​​the youngest. The elder sister Victoria, named after her grandmother, the Queen of England, married the Prince of Battenberg, commander-in-chief of the English fleet, the second sister Ella was preparing to become the wife of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. And finally, Irene, the third sister, became the wife of Prince Heinrich, the brother of the German Emperor Wilhelm. Thus, these Hessian princesses will unite the Russian, English and German imperial houses by family ties.
After the death of her mother, Alix is ​​taken away by her grandmother - the English Queen Victoria ... The Victorian era - customs, style of furniture and lifestyle. Queen Victoria impeccably observes tradition: power belongs to parliament, wise advice to the queen.
Alix G. is the favorite granddaughter of the liberal queen. A fair-haired beauty girl ... For her bright character, the English court calls her "Sunny Ray", however, the German court called her "Spitzbube" (naughty, bully) for mischief and rebelliousness.
A lonely girl travels through the royal palaces of her many relatives. In 1884, twelve-year-old Alix was brought to Russia.
Idyll: he fell in love with her at first sight.
He asked his mother for a diamond brooch and gave it to Alix G. She accepted it. Nicholas was happy, but he did not know Alix well. The next day, at a children's ball in the Anichkov Palace, dancing, she painfully stuck a brooch into his hand. Silently, without saying a word.
And just as silently, Nikolai gave this brooch to his sister Xenia.
To take back in 10 years. This brooch will have a terrible fate.
His 1889 diary opens with a photograph of the young Alix, which he pasted in after she had left. He starts to wait.
On the next visit of the blond princess - a year later - the unfortunate Nikolai is not allowed to see her.
"December 21, 1890. My dream is to someday marry Alix G. I have loved her for a long time, but even deeper and stronger since 1889, when she spent 6 weeks in St. Petersburg in the winter. I resisted my feelings for a long time, trying to deceive myself the impossibility of realizing my cherished dream ... The only obstacle or abyss between her and me is a matter of religion. Except this barrier there is no other, I am almost convinced that our feelings are mutual. Everything is in the will of God, trusting in his mercy, I calmly and humbly looking to the future."

"I fell passionately in love... Little K."
That St. Petersburg March evening that has sunk into oblivion, trotters approaching the famous Yacht Club. (Brilliant officers of the guard, the imperial retinue and members of the imperial family were members of the club.) Then, in March 1890, the name of Little K.
All club members are balletomanes. The street where the St. Petersburg Ballet School was located has been a favorite place for walks of the capital's dandies throughout the century. An old tradition of the Petersburg nobility: the mistress is a ballerina.
Just like the guard, the ballet is associated with the palace. The director of the imperial theaters must be a diplomat and strategist - and at all times be aware of the complex disposition of the relationship between his subordinates and members of the imperial family. Arriving at the ballet, the first thing the audience is interested in is the "highest presence": who is sitting in the imperial box - often this determines the position of the ballerina.
Matilda Kshesinskaya was born in 1872. She will die in Paris in 1971, a year before her centenary. In Paris, she will write memoirs - a touching story about the love of a young ballerina for the heir to the throne. She will write about that evening on March 23, 1890 - about the evening in the disappeared "Atlantis".
After the graduation ball, where the emperor and the heir were present, the tables were laid. They were seated at a separate table, and suddenly the tsar asked: "Where is Kshesinskaya II?"
The young ballerina was brought to the royal table, the Emperor himself seated the ballerina next to the heir and jokingly added: "Just please don't flirt too much." To the amazement of the young ballerina, Nikolai sat silently beside her all evening.
We will replace the romantic story of Kshesinskaya with a prose narrative. So, the king himself sits the girl next to his son and even admonishes: "Just don't flirt ..." You can't say it more clearly.
Syphilis claimed thousands of young lives, drunkenness and brothels were part of the life of the Guards. The health of the heir concerned the fate of the whole country. Kshesinskaya is a brilliant candidate: an affair with a future ballet star could only decorate the biography of a young man. But the main thing was to make him forget the Hessian princess. That is why this parish in the school was conceived.
Only in the summer the little big-eyed girl managed to continue the affair. In July 1890, Matilda Kshesinskaya was accepted into the troupe of the Mariinsky Imperial Theater. In Krasnoe Selo, the guards were teaching, in which Nikolai took part. There the imperial ballet danced the summer season.
She knew it would happen during the intermission: the Grand Dukes loved to come backstage. And he will surely come with them. I knew he wanted to come.
And he came. So they met backstage. He spoke some insignificant words, but she kept waiting ... And again the next day he was backstage, and again - nothing. Once, during the intermission, she was detained. And when she ran onto the stage, heated, with flaming eyes ... how she was afraid to miss her timid admirer ... Nikolai was already leaving. When he saw her, he let out a jealous, helpless, "I'm sure you were just flirting!" And, confused, he ran out ... So he explained himself.
The Royal Family occupied the first left box. The box was almost on stage. And, dancing, Kshesinskaya II devoured with her huge eyes the heir, who was sitting in the box with his father. Vsevolozhsky understood everything - and from that moment he made sure that this ballerina got the parts in the ballets. In the shortest possible time, she will win the position of the prima donna of the imperial ballet.
"June 17 ... Detachment maneuvers took place ... I positively like Kshesinskaya II very much."
"June 30. Krasnoe Selo. The case on the hill flared up strongly ... I was in the theater, talking with Little K. in front of the window [of the box]."
In Paris, she recalled how he stood in the window of the box, and she was on the stage in front of him. And again the conversation ended in a delightful nothing. And then he came to say goodbye: he was leaving on a trip around the world.
She didn't understand him. And everything was so simple: the expectation of Alix G. He remained faithful.
"March 25. I returned to Anichkov with snow falling in flakes. And this is called spring? I dined with Sergei at my place, and then went to visit the Kshesinskys, where I spent a pleasant hour and a half ..."
Kshesinskaya recalled that March Petersburg day ... The maid reported that a certain Guards officer, Mr. Volkov, wanted to see her. The surprised ballerina, who did not know Mr. Volkov, nevertheless ordered him to be shown into the living room. And she could not believe her eyes - Nikolai was standing in the living room. For the first time they were alone. They explained themselves, and ... nothing more! After a "pleasant hour and a half" he left, to Little K's amazement!
The next day, she receives a note: "Since I met you, I've been in a blur. I hope I can come back soon. Nicky."
Now for her he is Nicky. A charming and, surprisingly for morals, an innocent love game begins. His corps mates bring flowers from a lover. And the lover himself is now a frequent guest in the apartment of Felix Kshesinsky.
"April 1 ... A very strange phenomenon that I notice in myself: I never thought that two identical feelings, two loves were simultaneously combined in my soul. Now the fourth year has already begun that I love Alix G. and constantly cherish the thought, if God will let me marry her someday... And from the camp of 1890 to this time I passionately fell in love (platonically) with Little K. An amazing thing, our heart. after that, that I am very amorous."
The emperor is worried - his game is still fruitless. Isn't that why the decisive onslaught of the "lady" began?
Yes, she finally managed to get Nikolai to make a decision. On the Promenade des Anglais, a "delightful hotel" was rented, where platonic love was finally to end. Little K. left home and openly became the Tsarevich's mistress.
So she won. But victory was the beginning of the end.
She stopped being a dream. And he yearned more and more for the distant beauty. Life and dreams: a small accessible Matilda - and a high royal princess. Little K disappears from the diaries.
At the beginning of 1894, it became clear that Alexander III did not have long to live. It was necessary to urgently prepare the marriage of the heir. Diplomats started to work, - continuous correspondence began between St. Petersburg and Darmstadt.
In April, the wedding of Alix's brother Ernie with the Saxe-Coburg princess Victoria-Melitta was scheduled in Coburg. Emperor Wilhelm II, the Queen of England, countless princes came to Coburg. On the threshold of a formidable new century, one of the last brilliant balls of royal Europe took place.
Russia was represented by a powerful landing of grand dukes. A priest also arrived, Father John Yanyshev, the confessor of the Royal Family. His presence spoke clearly of the most serious intentions of the arrivals. Ekaterina Adolfovna Schneider also arrived in Coburg - she taught Russian to Ella, Alix's sister. If the case was successful, she was supposed to teach the Russian language to the Hessian princess.
So, at Ernie's wedding, Alix's engagement was to take place. Everyone knew it.
"April 8. A wonderful, unforgettable day in my life! The day of my engagement to my dear, beloved Alix. After a conversation with her, we explained ourselves to each other ... happened ... Then a ball was arranged. I had no time for dancing, I walked and sat in the garden with my bride. I can’t even believe that I have a bride. "
In a letter to his mother, he described in more detail the strange despair and tears of Alix:
He gave her a ruby ​​ring and returned the same brooch - once presented at the ball. She wore his ring around her neck, along with a cross, and the brooch was always with her.
From her letter on the 22nd anniversary of the engagement:
"April 8, 1916. I would like to hug you tightly and relive our wonderful days of grooming. Today I will wear your expensive brooch ... I can still feel your gray clothes ... her smell - there, by the window, in Coburg castle..."
In the dirty fire pit where their clothes were burned on the morning of July 17, 1918, a 12-carat diamond will be found. What's left of the brooch. She was with her to the end.
But then ... how happy he was then! And she also tried to be happy. But still she continued to cry these days. The people around didn't understand. Watching her tears, the ingenuous maid of honor wrote down in her diary what she had to write down: Alix does not love her future husband. Yes, she herself did not understand her tears ...
"Those sweet kisses that I dreamed and yearned for so many years and that I no longer hoped to receive ... If I decide on something, then it will be forever. The same thing in my love and affection - too big a heart, it devours me ..." (Letter dated April 8, 1916.)
And he - he was recklessly happy. All his life he will cheerfully remember how the orchestra played in Coburg Castle and how, during the wedding ceremony, tired of dinner, Uncle Alfred (Duke of Edinburgh) fell asleep and dropped his stick with a roar ... How he believed then in the future! And all these uncles and aunts (queen, emperor, dukes, princes, princes), who then decided the fate of peoples, crowded in the halls of the Coburg castle and also believed in the future. If only they could see the future then!
Newlyweds Ernie and Ducky, "a good couple", will soon disperse, sister Ella will die at the bottom of the mine. Uncle Willy, who is so fond of military uniforms and expects a military alliance with Russia, will start a war with Russia. And Uncle Pavel, who is now dancing the mazurka, will lie with a bullet through his heart, and Nicky himself...
"But though you rise high like an eagle and make your nest among the stars, I will bring you down from there too, says the Lord."
The emperor was dying. In the emperor's bedroom - the priest John of Kronstadt and the king's confessor father John Yanyshev. And doctors. They met near the dying man: impotent medicine and omnipotent prayer, which eased his last suffering.
Its end. The bedroom doors opened. The body of the dead emperor is drowning in a huge Voltaire chair. The Empress embraces him. A little further away is a pale Nicky. The emperor died sitting in a chair.
novel in letters
She: "CA, 1914, September 19. My dear, my dear, I am so happy for you that you managed to go, because I know how deeply you suffered all this time ... However, what I am now experiencing with you, with our dear Motherland and people, I ache with my soul and for my little "old" Motherland, for its troops, for Ernie... Due to selfishness, I already suffer from separation now. We are not used to being separated... Here It's been 20 years since I'm yours, and what a blessing all those years have been..."
He: "Stavka 09/22/14. Heartfelt thanks for the nice letter ... What a horror it was to part with you, dear children, although I knew that it would not be for long ..."
"Good morning, my treasure..."
"This terrible war - will it ever end? I am sure that Wilhelm sometimes experiences despair at the thought that he himself, under the influence of the Russophobic clique, started the war and is leading his people to death. My heart bleeds at the thought of how much work papa and Ernie spent in order for our little homeland to flourish ... "
"Our Friend helps you to carry a heavy cross and a great responsibility, everything will go well - the truth is on our side." ("Our Friend", "Gr." or "He" - as she called the "Holy Devil" in her correspondence. This third one will be constantly present in her letters. She will mention him a hundred and fifty times.)
"I kissed your pillow. Mentally I see you lying in your compartment and mentally I shower kisses on your face."
"Oh, this terrible war! .. The thought of other people's suffering, shed blood torments the soul ..."
"My beloved sun, dear wife. I read your letter and almost burst into tears ... My love, you are terribly lacking, so lacking that it is impossible to express! I will try to write very often, because, to my surprise, I am convinced that I can write while the train is moving... My hanging trapezoid turned out to be very practical and useful. It's really a great thing on the train, it gives a shake to the body and the whole organism."
From the memoirs of K. Sheboldaev (retired, worked in the Ministry of Internal Affairs):
“Then it was already a special entertainment for the elite - to take them to the house where the royal family was shot. By the way, they showed me the place near the fence where he had a trapezoid. When he arrived, he immediately hung it up and began to twist the “sun”. they climbed over the fence. Then they immediately decided to make a double fence."
Samsonov's army had already died in the swamps of Prussia, defeats and losses cooled the enthusiasm. Wounded, refugees, sweat, blood and dirt. The whole of Europe was immersed in this horror.
"11/25/14. I am writing a few lines to you in the greatest haste. We spent all this morning at work. One soldier died during the operation - such a horror ... The girls showed courage, although they had never seen death so close ... Can you imagine how it shocked us. How close death is always."
"04/08/15... How time flies - it's already been 21 years! You know, I saved this "princess" dress that I was wearing that morning, and I'll put on your favorite brooch..."
"05/04/15 ... How sad that we are not spending your birthday together! This is the first time ... Ah, the cross placed on your shoulders is so hard! How I would like to help you carry it, although mentally I do it in prayer...
At this time, defeats at the front forced them to look for scapegoats. The real spy mania began. At first they wanted to make the Jews spies. The military field court in Dvinsk hanged several "for espionage". Later it turned out: they are innocent. But by that time, the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich had already matured a plan: the Commander-in-Chief decided to hunt bigger game.
"German - spy" - much easier!
And poor Alix decided to show that she, too, takes part in the common concern - catching spies. She finds her own: Quartermaster General Danilov. This is one of the most talented and malicious-speaking generals in the Headquarters and, the enemy of "our Friend" ...
In early June, K.R. suffocated during an attack of angina pectoris. The poet was the last Romanov, who was solemnly buried in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the case of spies has already crept up to Rasputin's entourage.
Was Rasputin really a German spy? Of course not. He devotedly served the Family. But he had a problem: Alix kept demanding new predictions, and he couldn't be wrong. Therefore, in Rasputin's apartment, in fact, there was his think tank: clever businessmen, industrialists - "smart people" ... He shared with them military information that came from the queen. After that, the cunning man realized what his next prophecy should be ... And, one of these "smart" could represent German intelligence. Rasputin was just a man. Cunning and ... simple-minded.
Terrible rumors spread around Petrograd: the tsar was deposing Nikolasha and himself becoming the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. It was a shock. Nikolai Nikolayevich, with his authority, popularity in the army, is also a weak tsar, and then there are rumors about the German queen, her relations with the enemy and the dirty "Elder" !!!
She: "08/22/15. My dear, beloved ... They have never seen such determination in you before ... You finally show yourself as a Sovereign, a real autocrat, without whom Russia cannot exist ... Forgive me, I beg you that I haven't left you alone, my angel, all these days, but I know your exceptionally gentle nature too well... I suffered so terribly, I was physically overworked during these two days, I was morally exhausted... You see, they are afraid of me and that's why they come to you when you are alone. They know that I have a strong will and I realize that I am right - and now you are right, we know it, make them tremble before your will and firmness. God is with you and our Friend is for you ... I am always with you and nothing will separate us ... "
He: "08/25/15... Thanks be to God, everything has passed - and here I am with this new responsibility on my shoulders... But may the Will of God be done..."
He became Commander-in-Chief of the retreating army.
From that moment on, with all her temperament, with all her passion and with all her indomitable will, she begins to help him lead the country and the army.
She: "01/28/16. Again, the train takes away my treasure from me, but I hope not for long. I know that I should not say that from a woman who has been married for a long time, it may seem ridiculous, but I am not able to resist As the years go by, love grows stronger... It was so good when you read aloud to us. And now I can still hear your sweet voice... Oh, if our children could be as happy in their married life... Oh, what a I'll be alone at night!"
The queen writes about a wounded Jew who was in her hospital: “While in America, he did not forget Russia and suffered greatly from homesickness, and as soon as the war began, he rushed here to join the soldiers and defend his homeland. Now, having lost hand in the service in our army and having received the St. Motherland".
So she complained to him about the laws of his empire.
He: "06/07/16... At the request of a wounded Jew, I wrote: to allow widespread residence in Russia."
She: "04/08/16... Christ is risen! My dear Nicky, on this day, the day of our engagement, all my tender thoughts are with you... Today I will put on that expensive brooch..."
At this time, Alix fell into a trap. The spy case continued. Together with Sukhomlinov, Manasevich-Manuilov, a former agent of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and banker Rubinshtein were involved. Both of them are close to Rasputin. But the horror of the situation did not stop there. For through Rubinstein, Alix secretly transferred money to Germany to her impoverished relatives. She needed a devoted minister of the interior who could set them free and put an end to this deed, terrible for the "Friend" and for her.
She: "September 7, 1916. My beloved! Grigory earnestly asks to appoint Protopopov to the post. You know him, and he made a good impression on you. He is a member of the Duma, and therefore he will know how to behave with them ..."
Throughout 1916 - until the death of the empire - there was a ministerial leapfrog. Goremykin, Shturmer, Trepov, Golitsyn replace each other at the head of the government.
The figure of Protopopov seemed to Nikolai successful. He enjoyed authority in the Duma. Quite recently, Protopopov was in England at the head of a Duma delegation and had great success there, Duma chairman Rodzianko favored him. It seemed that a man had been found who would reconcile Nicholas with the Duma. But as soon as the Duma found out that Protopopov was approved by the tsarina and Rasputin, his fate was sealed. Protopopov becomes hated by everyone.
Nikolay's rage is boundless (rarely!), he even slammed his fist on the table: "Before I appointed him, he was good for them, now he is not good, because I appointed him."
"Dark rumors of betrayal and treason are spreading from end to end. These rumors climb high and spare no one... The name of the Empress is increasingly repeated along with the names of the adventurers surrounding her... What is this - stupidity or treason?" asked the leader of the Cadets, Milyukov, in his famous speech from the Duma rostrum.
Miliukov wanted to prove that this was the stupidity of the government. But the country repeated: "Treason!"
"Rumors of treason played a fatal role in the attitude of the army towards the dynasty" (Denikin).
“With horror, I often wondered if the Empress was in a conspiracy with Wilhelm,” Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich would say after the revolution in his interview with a Petrograd newspaper.
He: "November 2 ... My priceless one. Nikolai Mikhailovich came here for one day, and we had a long conversation with him last night, about which I will tell you in the next letter, today I am very busy ..."
He was cunning. He simply did not know how to tell her about this conversation. And he made up his mind: he sent her a letter, which Nikolai Mikhailovich gave him.
Here are excerpts from that letter:
“Repeatedly you told me that you have no one to believe that you are being deceived. If this is so, the same phenomenon should be repeated with your wife, who loves you dearly, but is mistaken thanks to the malicious sheer deception of the people around her ... If you are not in the power to remove this influence from her, then at least protect yourself from constant interference and whispering through your beloved spouse ... I hesitated for a long time to reveal the whole truth, but after your mother and your sisters convinced me to do this, I decided ... Believe me me: if I press so hard on your own liberation from the shackles that have been created ... then only for the sake of hope and hope to save you, your throne and our dear Motherland from the most serious and irreparable consequences.
In conclusion, Nikolai Mikhailovich suggested that he be granted "the desired ministry responsible to the Duma and do it without pressure from outside," and "not in the same way as the memorable act of October 17, 1905."
So he threatened a new revolution. And reminded me of the old revolution.
She: "November 4 ... I read Nikolai's letter and am terribly indignant. Why didn't you stop him in the middle of a conversation and tell him that if he touches this subject or me again, then you will send him to Siberia, since this already bordering on high treason. He always hated me and spoke ill of me all these 22 years ... You, my dear, are too kind, condescending and soft. This man should tremble before you, he and Nikolasha are your greatest enemies in the family ... Wife is your support, she stands behind you like a stone wall ... "
Now she starts a fight with the entire Romanov Family.
"4.12.16... Show them that you are the master. The time for indulgence and gentleness has passed. Now comes the kingdom of will and power! They should be taught obedience. Why do they hate me? Because they know that I have a strong will and that when I am convinced of the rightness of something (and if a Friend has blessed me), then I do not change my mind. It is unbearable for them. And I would warn you ... "
He: "11/10/16. Things are not going well in Romania ..."
What was the extent of his participation in the war? A pathetic, weak-willed executor of the desires of a hysterical wife and Rasputin - such is the answer given by the coming revolution.
And here is another opinion.
W. Churchill, who in 1917 was the British Minister of War, wrote in his book "The World Crisis": "Fate was not so cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship sank when the harbor was already in sight. ... All the sacrifices had already been made, all the work was completed ... The long retreats were over. The shell shortage was defeated. Armaments flowed in a wide stream. A stronger, more numerous, better equipped army guarded a huge front ... Despite the mistakes - big and terrible - the system that embodied in him, which he led, to which he gave a vital spark with his personal properties, by that moment had won the war for Russia ... "
"The Spirit of Grigory Rasputin-New" promised:
"Russian Tsar! Know that if your relatives commit the murder, then not one of your family, relatives and children, will live longer than two years ... They will be killed by the Russian people ... They will kill me. I am no longer alive. Pray. Pray "Be strong. Take care of your chosen kind."
Was Rasputin's prediction only a peasant's cunning? Or dictated by the dark power of the "Holy Devil"? Or both?.. For this intoxicated man, mad in debauchery, was indeed a forerunner. Those hundreds of thousands of peasants who will trample their palaces, kill them themselves and leave their corpses like carrion without burial...
And Alix shows Nika the terrible testament of the "Starets" ... He tries to calm her down: all the precepts of Grigory are now being fulfilled ... Trepov, who was not beloved by the Empress, is expelled and the decrepit Golitsyn is appointed to the prime minister - which means that the beloved "Friend" Protopopov becomes the de facto head of government . All this causes a revolt in society: there are endless congresses - city, zemstvo, noblemen - and all are against the new government. While everyone is waiting for the revolution, it has already begun. "Holy devil" was right - immediately after his death - it began!
Execution
Yurovsky entered the Ipatiev House in the guise of a deliverer. He informs Nikolai about the endless thefts of the former guards. Buried silver spoons were found in the garden. They are solemnly returned to the Family.
The king understood: until his fate is decided. And, of course, he believed. This secretive and, moreover, such a gullible man did not know the slogan of the great revolutions: "Rob the loot." It seemed to him that for the first time understanding arose between him and this power so incomprehensible to him. The city will fall. And they decided to take his life. But at the same time, of course, they must give the Family, safe and sound, what belongs to it: jewelry. It is unclear where they will have to live after. And what will they have to live on? He was the father of the family, he had to think about their future. He was glad of this unspoken gentlemen's agreement...
From the diary: “June 21. Today there was a change of commandant. During lunch, Beloborodov and others came and announced that instead of Avdeev, the one whom we took for a doctor, Yurovsky, was appointed. In the afternoon, before tea, he and his assistant compiled an inventory of gold things: ours and children. They took most of them with them. They explained that an unpleasant story had happened in our house ... It's a pity for Avdeev, but he is to blame for not keeping his people from stealing from the chests in the shed. "
But Alix did not believe the new commandant. She didn't believe a single word they said. And she was happy that she had so prudently hidden all the most valuable things.
“June 21 (July 4), Thursday,” she wrote. “Avdeev has been removed, and we are getting a new commandant. With a young assistant who seemed more decent compared to others - vulgar and unpleasant ... All our guards inside have been replaced .. "Then they told us to show all our jewels that we had on. The young man copied them carefully and then they took them away."
The "young assistant" of the commandant, who "seemed more decent" to Alix, was indeed a most pleasant young man. Clear-eyed, in a clean kosovorotka, with a name that caresses the ear of the queen, - Gregory. This was Nikulin, who in just a few days would shoot at her son.

"I'm dead but not yet buried"
After the shooting in the room of Dr. Botkin, Yurovsky took the papers of the last Russian life doctor ...
“... I don’t think that I was ever destined to write anywhere from somewhere. In essence, I died - I died for my children, for the cause ... I died, but not yet buried or buried alive - as you wish: the consequences are almost identical ... My children may have hope that we will meet again sometime in this life, but I personally do not indulge myself with this hope and look straight into the eyes of unvarnished reality ... "
On June 12, having returned from Moscow, Goloshchekin called a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Ural Council. He did not say a word about his agreement with Moscow, only the narrowest circle - the Presidium of the Ural Council - learned about them. Ordinary members of the Council were sure: today they themselves must decide on the fate of the Romanovs. The whites came up. Everyone understood what this decision could mean in his life.
And yet they unanimously adopted this Decree. The decision of the Ural Council on the execution ...
"June 30. Saturday. Alexei took his first bath after Tobolsk. His knee is recovering, but he cannot straighten it completely. The weather is warm and pleasant. We have no news from outside."
With this hopeless phrase, the day after the Decree on execution, Nikolai ended his diary. Then there are empty pages, carefully numbered by him until the end of the year.
These days Yurovsky often left the house. Not far from the village, in a dense forest, there were abandoned mines... "The family has been evacuated to a safe place..." Yurovsky and Yermakov were looking for this safe place here.
The family was getting ready for bed. Before going to bed, she described in detail in her diary the whole day - the last day.
At 11 o'clock the light in their room went out...
In the house opposite Ipatievskoye, where the guards lived on the second floor, ordinary city dwellers lived on the first floor. Silent shots... many shots.
- Heard?
- Heard.
- Understood?
- Understood.
Life was dangerous in those years, and people were fearful, they learned well: only the fearful survive. And that's why they said nothing more to each other, hiding in their rooms until the morning. They later told the White Guard investigator about this nightly conversation.

July 17th
On July 17, for the uninitiated members of the Executive Committee of the Council, Beloborodov played a funny scene called: "The message about the execution of Moscow, which knows nothing."
"In view of the approach of the enemy to Yekaterinburg and the disclosure of the Cheka of a large White Guard conspiracy aimed at kidnapping the former tsar and his family, Nikolai Romanov was shot in our hands by a decree of the Presidium of the Regional Council, and his family was evacuated to a safe place."
And the day before - on July 17 at nine o'clock in the evening - the dedicated members of the Council sent the following encrypted telegram to the dedicated members of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee:
"Moscow, the Kremlin, to the Secretary of the Council of People's Commissars Gorbunov with a reverse check. Tell Sverdlov that the whole family suffered the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die during the evacuation."
This telegram was later captured by the White Guards in the Yekaterinburg telegraph office, and it was deciphered by the White Guard investigator Sokolov.
4. Prayer to the Holy Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II
O holy passion-bearer Tsar Martyr Nicholas, the Lord has chosen His Anointed One, in a hedgehog graciously and the right to judge your people and the guardian of the Kingdom of the Orthodox being.
This royal ministry and the care of souls with the fear of God did you. Testing thee, like gold in the furnace, let the bitter sorrow of the Lord let you go, like Job the Long-suffering, after the throne of the Royal deprivation and martyrdom of the sender. All this meekly enduring, like a true servant of Christ, now enjoying the highest glory at the Throne of all the Tsar, together with the holy martyrs: the holy Empress Alexandra, the holy youth Tsarevich Alexy, the holy Princesses Olga, Tatiana, Mary and Anastasia and with your faithful servants, also with Holy Martyr Princess Elizabeth and with all the Royal Martyrs and Holy Martyr Barbara.
But as if having the boldness of the greatness of Christ the Tsar, for His sake all suffered, pray with them, may the Lord forgive the sin of the people who did not forbid your murder, the Tsar and Anointed of God, may the Lord deliver the suffering country of Russia from the fierce atheists, for our sins and apostasy from allowed God, and will raise the throne of Orthodox Tsars, but he will give us forgiveness of sins and instruct us in every virtue, may we acquire humility, meekness and love, even these martyrs are revealed, may we be vouchsafed the Kingdom of Heaven, go with you and all the saints new martyrs and confessors Let us glorify the Russian Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and forever and forever and ever. Amen.

Bibliography
Edvard Radzinsky "Nicholas II"
Orthodox brotherhood in the name of Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir
Russian Heraldry
Computer textbook: "History of Russia in the XX century" (Clio Soft)
Russia before the second coming
House of Romanovs
For the preparation of this work, materials from the site statya.ru were used.