But the joyous celebration was marred by a horrible incident when 1, revelers were killed during a stampede at Khodynka Field in Moscow. The new czar, however, refused to cancel any of the ensuing celebrations, giving the impression to his people that he was indifferent to the loss of so many lives.
In a series of further missteps, Nicholas proved himself unskilled in both foreign and domestic affairs. In a dispute with the Japanese over territory in Manchuria, Nicholas resisted any opportunity for diplomacy. Frustrated by Nicholas' refusal to negotiate, the Japanese took action in February , bombing Russian ships in the harbor at Port Arthur in southern Manchuria. The Russo-Japanese War continued for another year and a half and ended with the czar's forced surrender in September Given a large number of Russian casualties and the humiliating defeat, the war failed to draw the support of the Russian people.
Russians were dissatisfied about more than just the Russo-Japanese War. Inadequate housing, poor wages, and widespread hunger among the working class created hostility toward the government. In protest of their abysmal living conditions, tens of thousands of protestors marched peacefully upon the Winter Palace in St.
Petersburg on January 22, Without any provocation from the crowd, the czar's soldiers opened fire on the protestors, killing and wounding hundreds. The event came to be known as " Bloody Sunday ," and further stirred up anti-czarist sentiment among the Russian people. Although the czar was not at the palace at the time of the incident, his people held him responsible. The massacre enraged the Russian people, leading to strikes and protests throughout the country, and culminating in the Russian Revolution.
No longer able to ignore his people's discontent, Nicholas II was forced to act. On October 30, , he signed the October Manifesto, which created a constitutional monarchy as well as an elected legislature, known as the Duma. Yet the czar maintained control by limiting the powers of the Duma and maintaining veto power. During that time of great turmoil, the royal couple welcomed the birth of a male heir, Alexei Nikolaevich, on August 12, Apparently healthy at birth, young Alexei was soon found to be suffering from hemophilia , an inherited condition that causes severe, sometimes fatal hemorrhaging.
The royal couple chose to keep their son's diagnosis a secret, fearing it would create uncertainty about the future of the monarchy. Distraught about her son's illness, Empress Alexandra doted upon him and isolated herself and her son from the public. She desperately searched for a cure or any kind of treatment that would keep her son out of danger. In , Alexandra found an unlikely source of help—the crude, unkempt, self-proclaimed "healer," Grigori Rasputin.
Rasputin became a trusted confidante of the empress because he could do what no one else had been capable of—he kept young Alexei calm during his bleeding episodes, thereby reducing their severity.
Unaware of Alexei's medical condition, the Russian people were suspicious of the relationship between the empress and Rasputin.
Beyond his role of providing comfort to Alexei, Rasputin had also become an adviser to Alexandra and even influenced her opinions on affairs of state. Stepping in to support Serbia, a fellow Slavic nation, Nicholas mobilized the Russian army in August The Germans soon joined the conflict, in support of Austria-Hungary. Although he had initially received the support of the Russian people in waging a war, Nicholas found that support dwindling as the war dragged on.
The poorly-managed and ill-equipped Russian Army—led by Nicholas himself—suffered considerable casualties. Nearly two million were killed over the duration of the war. Adding to the discontent, Nicholas had left his wife in charge of affairs while he was away at war. In response, Nicholas II appointed himself commander-in-chief, so he could take direct control of the military from Grand Duke Nicholas, against the advice of his ministers.
In his absence, the empress grew increasingly withdrawn and ever more dependent on Rasputin, who heavily influenced her political view on matters at home. Over the course of WWI, Russia endured major losses and was subject to extreme poverty and high inflation. The Russian public blamed Nicholas II for his poor military decisions, and Empress Alexandra for her ill-advised role in government.
Because Alexandra was originally from Germany, suspicion spread that she might have even deliberately sabotaged Russia, ensuring its defeat in the war. Nicholas was still headquartered at Mogilev at the time. When he tried to get home to Petrograd, the Duma the elected legislature , which had by then turned on him, prevented him from boarding the train. After the Duma elected their own provisional committee built of progressive bloc members, and the soldiers sent to quash the St.
Petersburg riots mutinied, Nicholas II had no other choice but to step down from the monarchy. On March 15, , he abdicated the throne. He and his family were then taken to the Ural Mountains and placed under house arrest. In the spring of , Russia was engaged in a civil war. We strive for accuracy and fairness.
If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Charles II was the monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland during much of the latter half of the 17th century, marking the Restoration era. The disposal of the bodies was a gruesome muddle. They were taken to the abandoned mine shaft in a truck and their clothes were burned on a bonfire before the corpses were dropped into a pool of water at the bottom of the shaft.
It failed to conceal them and although some grenades were dropped into the shaft in an attempt to collapse it, the bodies had to be moved to a different shaft where sulphuric acid was used to destroy the faces, to prevent recognition. The second shaft also turned out to be inadequate and in the end Yurovsky's men dug a deep grave and the corpses were buried in it on July 19th.
Only six days later Ekaterinburg fell to White troops and officers went at once to the Ipatiev house. The execution room had been scrubbed, but there were bullet marks and bloodstains on the walls. In the following year the White regime in Siberia sent an investigator, Nicholas Sokolov, to Ekaterinburg.
What had happened was common knowledge in the town; captured guards confessed and Sokolov found the first mine shaft with objects that had belonged to the family, but no bodies. They were not discovered until , but two bodies were missing, thought to be those of Alexei and Anastasia or Marie.
Two bodies now known to be those of : Romanovs were subsequently found in another grave near Ekaterinburg, though there had long been speculation that they had somehow got away. The crisis of World War I placed the fragile regime under intolerable stress.
Petersburg which had been renamed Petrograd during the war to sound less German and was soon forced to abdicate, replaced by a republic under a provisional government. The reburial of the Romanovs was a solemn state event meant to showcase the Russian nation's reconciliation with its past. In a televised procession, soldiers in dress uniform carried coffins down a red carpet, past Romanov descendants and assembled dignitaries, and into the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St.
President Yeltsin, a former Communist Party leader, told those gathered that the lesson of the 20th century was that political change must never again be enforced by violence. Priests from the resurgent Russian Orthodox Church offered blessings, but, notably, the patriarch of the church was not in attendance. At that time the Orthodox Church, which had been an intrinsic part of the Romanov system of rule, was reestablishing itself as a national power.
Many members of its hierarchy resented the fact that the burial ceremony had been directed almost entirely by Yeltsin's secular political agenda to promote a liberal democratic Russia. A decade later scientists announced that the two bodies found in the second grave were Alexei and Maria. This time the church publicly objected to the findings of the "foreign experts" many members of the forensic teams were American and even questioned the earlier identifications of Nicholas and the others.
The church had canonized the family in , which meant that any physical remains were now holy relics. It was essential, the church maintained, that it have a role in making sure the bodies were correctly identified. Yeltsin had resigned the presidency of the Russian Federation in and handed over power to a little-known ex-KGB colonel named Vladimir Putin.
The young leader regarded the fall of the USSR as "the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century," and as soon as he took office he started centralizing power, reining in foreign influences and promoting a combination of nationalism, Orthodox faith, and aggressive foreign policy. It was an effective approach that, ironically, could have been taken from any number of Romanov tsars' playbooks. Putin was no closet royalist, but he was an admirer of the autocracy perfected by the Romanovs.
Though born under Soviet communism, he had a pragmatist's understanding of history, in particular the fact that the most forceful leaders of Russia, from Peter the Great to Catherine the Great to Joseph Stalin, had managed to personify the essence of not just the state but the Russian soul, and Russia's uniqueness in world history.
Like the first Romanov rulers, Putin came to power during a time of troubles, and like his forebears he set about restoring the power of the state and the persona of its ruler. Rejecting the findings of the international scientists was, of course, a power grab by the newly emboldened church, and it was supported by the growing anti-Western sentiment promoted by the Kremlin and shared by much of Russian society.
By agreeing to the church's conditions, Putin was appeasing an important ally. But the move also reflected conspiracy theories which often had anti-Semitic undercurrents spreading among ultranationalists about the remains.
One was that Lenin and his henchmen, many of whom were Jewish, had demanded that the heads of the saintly Romanovs be brought to Moscow as a sort of diabolical Hebraic-Bolshevik tribute. Was this the reason for the shattered state of the bones? Were these bones really the Romanovs? Or had someone escaped? These questions might seem easy to dismiss, but there is long-established tradition in Russia of murdered royals suddenly reappearing. During the Time of Troubles, in the 17th century, there were not one but three impostor, known as the False Dmitris, who claimed to be Prince Dmitri, last son of Ivan the Terrible.
And after more than imposters claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia. At first, during the spring of , the ex-imperial family was allowed to live in relative comfort at a favorite residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, not far from Petrograd. Nicholas's cousin, King George V of England, offered him sanctuary, but then changed his mind and withdrew the offer.
It was not the finest moment for the House of Windsor, but it is unlikely that it made any difference. The window of opportunity was short; demands for the ex-tsar to stand trial were growing. Alexander Kerensky, first justice minister and then prime minister of the provisional government, moved the royals to the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, in distant Siberia, to keep them safe.
Their stay there was bearable but depressing. Boredom turned to danger when Kerensky was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks in October Lenin famously said that "revolutions are meaningless without firing squads," and he was soon considering, along with lieutenant Yakov Sverdlov, whether to place Nicholas on public trial—to be followed by his execution—or just kill the entire family.
The Bolsheviks faced a desperate civil war against the Whites, counterrevolutionary armies backed by Western powers. Lenin responded with unbridled terror.
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