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In-Depth Information
Unbeknownst to the public, Constantine had no
desire to be czar and had secretly abdicated his
rights in 1820. His own personality and training
and the impact of a revolt led by younger mem-
bers of prominent Russian aristocratic families
shaped the strongly autocratic character of
Nicholas's reign. To most Russians and foreign
observers, the reign of Nicholas was a time of
order, militarism, and a growing bureaucracy,
best summarized by his education minister's for-
mula of “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality.”
In domestic affairs his concern for order resulted
in repressive policies but did not close him com-
pletely to the empire's need for reform. Thus, he
was the originator of the political police known
as the Third Section, and he set the tone for
tighter discipline in the army, greater censorship
in universities and intellectual life, and restric-
tions on foreign travel. But he also charged
Mikhail
SPERANSKY
, the reformist bureaucrat,
with codifying Russia's laws, the first code since
1649. He sought to alleviate the condition of the
serfs, specifically that of Crown peasants, through
minor changes that did not challenge the institu-
tion of
SERFDOM
itself. His foreign policy was also
informed by a concern for order across Europe,
and under Nicholas Russia played the role of the
“gendarme of Europe,” intervening to suppress
revolutions in Poland (1830-31) and Hungary
(1848), and raising the fear of Russian expan-
sionism in European capitals. Nicholas also
waged successful wars against Persia (1826-28)
and Ottoman Turkey (1828-29), but a renewed
conflict with the latter in 1853 drew Russia into
the quagmire of the
CRIMEAN WAR
(1853-56),
where Russia was defeated by a coalition led by
Great Britain, France, and Turkey.
son of Czar
ALEXANDER III
and as such received
the education befitting an heir to the throne. The
assassination of his grandfather,
ALEXANDER II
,by
revolutionaries and the conservative education
he received from his principal tutor, Konstantin
Pobedonostsev, made the young Nicholas a
strong believer in divinely ordained autocratic
rule. In 1890 he began a world tour that took
him to Egypt, India, China, and Japan, where he
escaped an assassination attempt by a local
policeman. He returned to St. Petersburg in 1891
through Siberia, following the route of the pro-
jected
TRANS
-
SIBERIAN RAILROAD
, whose con-
struction he inaugurated. In 1894, against the
wishes of his parents, Nicholas married Princess
Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, who adopted the Rus-
sian name
ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA
and over the
next decade bore him four daughters and one
son. Alexander III's unexpected death in October
1894 brought the 26-year-old Nicholas to the
throne without more than passing acquaintance
with governance. His uncompromising adher-
ence to the principle of autocracy in a speech to
the Tver gentry alienated an important segment
of Russia's progressive nobility. His coronation
ceremony in
MOSCOW
in May 1896 was marred
by a mass stampede, with over 1,200 casualties,
and by the widespread perception that Nicholas
did not care about the deaths since he proceeded
with the festivities.
Nicholas's first decade in power was marked
by a renewal of clandestine and revolutionary
political activities, including the formation of
Russia's first political parties and a recession that
led to strikes in industrial areas and overall polit-
ical discontent. In foreign affairs, Russia's east-
ward expansion marked by the construction of
the Trans-Siberian Railroad, completed in 1903,
led to the occupation of Port Arthur in 1896 and
Manchuria in 1900 and eventually war with
Japan in 1904. Losing a war that most Russian
and foreign observers expected to win and a
deteriorating economic situation contributed to
the revolution that broke out across Russia in
1905, sparked by the January massacre of
unarmed workers in St. Petersburg, known as
Nicholas II
(1868-1918)
(Nikolai Aleksandrovich)
emperor
The last ruler of the
ROMANOV DYNASTY
and the
last emperor (czar) of Russia, Nicholas II was exe-
cuted by the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took
power in October 1917. Nicholas was the eldest
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