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Reforms and Repression

Each generation of Romanovs sought to lead in its own fashion—often recognizing the vulnerabilities of the autocratic state and how the backwardness of peasant society shackled the economy. Alexander II undertook one of Russia’s single-greatest reforms in his Emancipation Manifesto of 1861 that ended serfdom on Russia’s private estates.

Only reaction and repression came from Alexander III. With vigor, he went after the terrorist group the People’s Will, which had murdered his father. In a few years, the terrorists were all executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile. No one was in greater awe of Alexander III than his eldest son and heir, Nicholas II. When Alexander III died in 1894, no one was more terrified, feeling himself unprepared to be tsar.

Nicholas II’s Reign

The years of Nicholas II’s reign were some of the most turbulent in history. The country had finally started the process of modernization and industrialization. This gave Russia some of the highest economic growth rates in the world. However, the autocracy was unprepared to manage the transformation of Russian society.

As social tensions and mass impoverishment took a higher profile, Nicholas and his ministers decided to initiate a war with Japan. The tsar’s minister of the interior confided, “in order to hold back the tide of revolution, we need a short, victorious war.”

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The Russians weren’t in a position to win the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. Instead, they suffered an embarrassing loss. As a result, the war aggravated social and economic tensions. When earlier Romanov rulers had previously faced such uprisings, the unrest traditionally occurred at the periphery—far from the center of government power. That wasn’t the case in what became known as the Revolution of 1905.

More than 10,000 of St. Petersburg’s industrial workers and printers went on strike. On a Sunday morning in January 1905, thousands of these workers and their families—along with tens of thousands of other Russian subjects—processed to the Winter Palace, led by an orthodox priest named Father Georgy Gapon. The crowd was peaceful, but guards opened fire, killing more than 100 people in a massacre known as Bloody Sunday.

Ten months after the Bloody Sunday massacre—in October 1905—a cascade of mutinies, protests, and rebellions culminated in a countrywide strike. Now, with Russia paralyzed, Nicholas II agreed to a series of reforms known as the October Manifesto. He promised to create a parliamentary body called the State Duma and to grant amnesty for political prisoners. He affirmed the people’s right to basic civil liberties. With this the Revolution of 1905 promised a new age of constitutional rule.

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However, by spring of 1906, Nicholas had reclaimed some powers. He’d retained veto authority over the State Duma, making it unable to promulgate legislation or pass decrees that weren’t in keeping with his wishes. Violence increased rather than decreased. Revolutionary terrorists went on the offensive.

In the first eight months of 1906, 1,782 terrorist attacks claimed more than 1,300 lives. In response, Nicholas’s government executed more than 3,000 people for political crimes over the next five years. Clearly, he faced monumental public challenges, but he also confronted private and personal challenges. The biggest was in his family.

Rasputin

Nicholas and Alexandra had celebrated the birth of a son, Alexei, in 1904. With his birth, his parents believed that the dynasty would continue. However, Alexei had hemophilia. Without the medical interventions that developed later in the century, hemophilia was a devastating, life-threatening condition.

HEMOPHILIA

Alexei’s hemophilia—which prevented blood from clotting—was a truly serious condition. At the time, any bump, bruise, or scrape could prove fatal. However, by the 1930s, it would be discovered that certain snake venoms caused blood to clot when diluted. In 1937, Harvard physicians published a paper describing anti-hemophilia globulin found in plasma, which could decrease clotting time. Such measures were not available to young Alexei.

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Alexei’s precarious medical condition created the opening for the notorious Grigory Rasputin to enter the Romanovs’ inner circle. The tsar’s wife, Alexandra, made Rasputin’s acquaintance through the recommendation of friends within St. Petersburg society. Rasputin himself was a peasant from Siberia, and a self-proclaimed healer and holy man. His healing powers were questionable, and his claim to holiness was unwarranted.

Regardless of his questionable character, the Romanovs—persuaded that Rasputin alone could heal and protect Alexei—became completely dependent upon him. Rasputin did produce a temporary remedy—likely calming Alexei with some variant of hypnosis, just enough to allow his body time to heal. Unfortunately, Rasputin also used his ingratiating capacity to ruthlessly advance his own material and political positions. His crude, horrid behavior irrevocably tarnished whatever mystique and charisma the Romanovs had retained.

Rasputin with his admirers

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End of the Dynasty

In July 1914 the murder of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina touched off the outbreak of World War I. The Russian people’s patriotic fervor and dynastic appreciation was temporarily revived.

One month after the archduke’s assassination, Russia invaded what was then East Prussia. In five days of battle at Tannenberg, in present-day Poland, German forces slaughtered Russian troops. Only 10,000 out of 150,000 Russian soldiers escaped. Once the casualties mounted, the tsar and his family were considered undeserving of continued adoration and support.

In late 1916, a small group of autocrats tried to save the Romanov dynasty. Among them were a cousin to the tsar, a conservative member of the Duma, and Prince Felix Iusopov, who was among the richest men in the capital. All previous efforts to convince Nicholas and Alexandra to get rid of Rasputin had failed. This conspiratorial group believed that their only hope was to murder Rasputin.

Late on the evening of December 16, 1916, the conspirators lured Rasputin to the palace of the wealthy Prince Iusopov, with the prospect of meeting the prince’s young wife in an intimate setting. There, they first attempted to poison him and then shot him. They deposited his body in a canal.

The Romanovs were inconsolable at the death of Rasputin—but their own end was near, as well. In March 1917, after a week of massive protests, Nicholas II abdicated the throne. After almost 304 years in power, the Romanov autocracy had come to an end.

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After Abdication

Nicholas II found an element of relief—and even happiness—after his abdication. Relieved of the duties and pressures of an office he was ill-suited for, he relished the days he spent at the Catherine Palace in Tsarskoye Selo with his family.

The first revolutionary government treated the deposed monarch and his family well. This changed when a second revolution led by Bolshevik radicals established a new workers’ state. At this point, the Romanovs could feel the hostility of their captors towards them intensify.

Their treatment deteriorated when opposition to the Bolsheviks and their Soviet government brought the country to a civil war. The Bolsheviks transferred the Romanov family first to Tobolsk in western Siberia, and then to the home of a former merchant in the Ural town of Ekaterinburg.

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The former tsar, his wife, their children, and some trusted servants were now prisoners of the new Bolshevik state. Optimistically, they awaited freedom, presumed to come through a literal king’s ransom arranged by one of their relatives.

However, early on the morning of July 17, 1917, family members were awoken with word that there was fighting nearby. Guards moved them to a basement room, telling them that it would be safer there. Instead, once the family assembled, armed Bolsheviks walked in and pronounced their death sentences. Each executor had a designated target to avoid any mistakes. They proceeded to kill all five Romanovs.

SUGGESTED READINGSFiges, Revolutionary Russia.

Lincoln, The Romanovs.

Perrie, “Popular Revolts.”

Wortman, Scenarios of Power.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER1 How does the history of the era before the Romanovs came to

power help to explain the Russian willingness to embrace an autocratic system of government?

2 How does the sense of the people’s veneration for the legitimate ruler come across in Russian culture?

3 Why did the Russian people ultimately move away from the traditional cultural belief in the sanctity and goodness of the tsar?