Russia #
Hilary Mantel writes historical fiction:
“This is something much stronger than repression. It is the deliberate construction of one reality out of the denial of another. “History’s what people are trying to hide from you, not what they’re trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through a landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury.”
Famously, Winston Churchill defined Russia as:
“a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,”
He also claimed:
How are societies are governed? Churchill, observed that:
in England everything is allowed except what is forbidden, in Germany everything is forbidden except what is permitted, in France anything goes even that which is forbidden, and in the Soviet Union everything is forbidden even what is allowed.
Unforunately Churchill’s paranoid reaction to the spread of communism after WWII, demonised the USSR’s expansion fomenting fear, giving rise to the cold war’s arms race and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa, South America and anywhere else that socialism posed a threat. Even in America, anyone who held liberal views was considered “pink” under successive governments McCarthyist “Reds under the beds” crackdowns.
There appears a Western sense of Moscow as the “other”. We do appear threatened. The West (Napoleon) attacked Russia in 1812 under Alexander I The Crimean War in 1854 under Nicholas I, and Hitler under Stalin in 1941. With the spread of the Comintern after WWII, we set up NATO as a protection to their Warsaw Pact. When Gorbachev disbanded the Warsaw Pact in 1991, why did we not disband NATO? Instead under Clinton we expanded our hegemony. And then we wonder why Russia is alarmed.
There are several reasons why Russia differs from the west.
- Its origins from maraudering Mongols of the east.
- Its remoteness before modern transport.
- The rise of the bourgeois did not eventuate.
- The reformation failed to penetrate,
- Serfdom persisted due to demands of nobility and detriment of progress.
- Industrialism was delayed by almost 200 years.
Although Mongol rule allowed Muscovy to grow and develop at the expense of the surrounding dry states, effectively fuelling the expansion of the nascent Russian Empire, it also isolated Russia from Europe. This partially explains why the kinds of major social and political reforms that were being introduced in Europe in the wake of the Renaissance and the Reformation did not reach Russia. Europe developed a middle class; Russia did not. This was to have profound consequences for the country’s subsequent development. A Short History of the World Christopher Lascelles
By the 1900’s Russia was the largest country in the world stretching from the Baltic sea 6000 miles to the Pacific crossing 11 time zones, and from the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea, comprising some 15 nationalities. It became a major multi-cultural country, however, held together by cruel barbaric force. This repression killed the spirit, brutalising the population.
Like other absolute monarchies, opposition to constituted authority was not only a political crime, but an act of blasphemy against God.
Russian history appears to have a cyclical continuum; every hundred years a new brutal tyrant emerges: Ivan the Terrible (1533), Nicholas I (1825), Stalin, (1924) Putin. (2022)
As well recurring liberal reformers follow a less obvious pattern. Peter and Catherine The Great, Alexander II, Kruschev, and Gorbachov made attempts to moderate the Russian temper without much success.
Another recurring motif is the expansion and tactical contraction of its empire. When times are tough, they give up part of their territory, only to expand again in good times.
Rise of Moscow #
In Russia, the Mongols of the Golden Horde ruled Kievan Rus through local princes who paid tribute to them. By assisting the Mongols in collecting these tributes, the insignificant trading outpost of Moscow began to flourish around the turn of the 14th century, becoming a relatively safe place to live, and attracting more wealth and people as a result. The city’s importance was put beyond doubt when the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church transferred there from the town of Vladimir, making it the spiritual capital of Russia.
Tsars - Emperors #
From about the tenth century, Russia began its expansion east and south. Each of the Romanov Czars prided themselves in growing the empire.
Ivan III
By 1480 the grand princes of Muscovy had accumulated so much wealth that nobody could challenge them. Grand Duke Ivan III of Muscovy – father of Ivan IV, known as ’the Terrible’ – began subjugating Moscow’s rival cities, and became the first Muscovite leader to adopt the title of tsar and ‘Ruler of all Rus’. It was during his reign that northern Russia was united under one sovereign, shaking off the yoke of Mongol rule. He imposed Orthodox Christianity on his people.
Ivan the Terrible conquered much ot the north and east to Siberia and Vladivostok.
Peter the Great secured vast areas of the Ukraine.
Catherine the Great forced the retreat of the Ottoman Turks from Crimea and along the Black Sea and took Alaska. Later Alexander II sold Alaska to the Americans for 7 million dollars to pay for the Crimean War.
Map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjDjnhOzqIU
More on Czars: https://www.thoughtco.com/most-important-russian-tsars-4145077
Ivan the Terrible 1st Romanov 1533 - 1548 #
Suffering from violent, paranoid delusions, he earned a ghastly reputation for slaughtering his political opponents while suppressing free speech in Russia. Ivan’s armies once destroyed an entire town, simply because the Tsar had a misinformed hunch they were plotting against him. Oh, and he “accidentally” killed his own son with a giant walking stick in 1581. As a strong leader he ruled with ruthless brutality by autocratic terror. As a first class soldier, he established Russia’s first standing army.
He tied the serfs to landowners. 11 million belonged to nobility, 12 million to the state and 1 ½ were domestic slaves.
Peter the Great 1682 - 1725 #
Peter I, the Tsar of all Russia from 1682 and the first Emperor of Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. Peter, as an autocrat, organized a well ordered police state.
Well educated by travelling to the west he started Russia looking outward in practicalities. He built the city of St Petersburg on the bones of pressganged slaves.
Peter the Great’s significance in Russian history is difficult to overestimate. Books about the “Tsar Reformer” continue to be written to this day, and we will hardly be able to describe here all of his many accomplishments and achievements. Peter the Great is beloved in Russia, and all the more so in St. Petersburg, where he is rightfully lauded as the Founder of the City, and honored with numerous memorials.
Peter the Great was the youngest son of Alexey I and his second wife, Natalya Naryshkina. Alexey was succeeded by the invalid Fyodor III, Peter’s eldest half-brother, who lasted on the throne only six years and died without surviving issue. Although only ten years old, Peter was chosen by the Boyar Duma as heir over his other half-brother, Ivan, as the latter suffered chronic physical and mental disabilities. Ivan’s sister, Sofia Alekseyevna, and her relatives in the Miloslavsky family were dissatisfied with the arrangement, however, and with the support of the elite Streltsy Guard fomented the Moscow Uprising. In the subsequent rioting and violence, Peter witnessed the slaughter of several members of his family, including two of his uncles at the hand of the Streltsy. The result of the uprising was that Sofia became regent and Ivan was crowned Ivan V, sharing the throne as a senior partner with Peter.
Peter never forgot these bloody events and many historians believe that his complex, brusque but also energetic and decisive character was shaped by these childhood experiences. Peter spent his childhood and early youth in the village of Preobrazhenskoe, not far from Moscow, where he lived with his mother, organized “mock” regiments , learned to sail on sailboats, and only rarely traveled to Moscow for official ceremonies. In 1689, at the age of seventeen, Peter successfully removed Sofia from power, and at the urging of his mother married Eudoxia Lopykhina. The marriage was not a happy one: neither Eudoxia or their son Alexey shared Peter’s interests. Many years later, Alexey was arrested, charged with treason, and died in the Peter and Paul Fortress under mysterious circumstances, while Eudoxia was divorced by Peter in 1712 and then forced to enter a convent. In the same year, Peter married Marta Skavronskaya, the future Empress Catherine I.
Peter was the first Russian monarch to receive an education both in Russia and abroad. Even as a boy, the youngest son of Tsar Alexey was naturally curious and drawn to learning, and he received his education not only from palace tutors, but also in German Town, a district of Moscow where many enlightened foreigners lived. There young Peter became interested in the latest developments in science and technology as well as natural science, which until this point had never caught the attention of Russian Tsars. Setting off to Europe in 1696 on the so-called Grand Embassy (a large Russian delegation whose purpose was to find allies for the war with Turkey), Peter travelled incognito under the pseudonym of Pyotr Mikhailov. In Prussia, the Tsar studied artillery and received a certificate as a firearms master, and in Holland he learned the craft of shipbuilding by working at the bustling Dutch docks. Then he set off to England to study the latest advances in shipbuilding and industry. In London, the young Tsar visited the Houses of Parliament, and was quite displeased with what he heard as he listened to a session of the House of Commons through an “auditory window”: this autocratic Russian monarch could not understand how the common folk could dare to publicly discuss and criticize the policies of their sovereign.
As he travelled about Europe, Peter visited factories and libraries, listened to lectures at universities, and caroused with comrades, but this educational and entertaining voyage was cut short after 18 months by news of a Streltsy revolt in Moscow. For the rest of his life, Peter the Great retained his love of knowledge, new technology, and of learned people, as is evidenced by his personal belongings, library and the interiors of his palaces.
Many volumes have been written about the reforms undertaken in Russia on the initiative of Peter the Great, and discussion about them continues to this day. Some believe that these reforms allowed Russia (and thereafter the Russian Empire) to attain status as one of the leading powers in Europe. Others lament the loss of the unique cultural and spiritual traditions that had existed in Russia in the pre-Petrine period. Peter the Great introduced the Julian calendar in Russia with its celebration of the New Year on 1 January, and the tradition of decorating Christmas trees. He also forced the upper classes to dress in a European style and to shave their mustaches and beards. In order to create his own pool of broadly educated experts, Peter sent young noblemen to study abroad at the state’s expense and personally kept track of their progress.
Peter the Great founded the Russian navy and formed a regular army based on compulsory military service for all nobles and on recruitments from the peasantry and regular citizens (communities delegated a specific number of young men to army service). Foreigners familiar with the newest developments in military science were actively sought for positions as senior officers and generals, and the Tsar diligently recruited Russian experts in all fields, including shipbuilding, military affairs, the sciences, and the arts. Starting with Peter, for the next two centuries, one of the duties of Russian ambassadors serving abroad was to recruit foreign specialists to work in Russia.
Peter the Great created a system of civil service in Russia by introducing the Table of Ranks: a document defining the classification of all military, naval, court and civilian officials into fourteen classes, from fourteen as the lowest up to the first. The Table of Ranks was designed to create a “social elevator” for hardworking military and government officials and to reduce the abuse of appointments and promotions in service.
Battle of Poltava
The Northern War with Sweden (1700-1721) finally brought Peter access to the Baltic Sea and the trading possibilities in the region, and in 1703, the city of St. Petersburg was founded. In 1712, Petersburg was made the capital of Russia, and in 1721 Russia was declared an Empire, with Peter assuming the title of the Emperor of All Russia.
Peter the Great died in St. Petersburg in early 1724 in his small Winter Palace on the banks of the Winter Canal. He was the first Tsar to be buried in the Imperial crypt in the Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Catherine the Great (1729 – 1796) #
Catherine the Great was the longest serving Russian monarch, reigning from 1762 to her death in 1796. She presided over a revitalisation of Russian strength and partial Russian enlightenment. While Catherine embarked on liberal reforms, when problems emerged, she became more repressive.
Born as Sophia, in German Prussia, at sixteen, she married Grand Duke Peter, grandson of Peter the Great and heir to the Russian throne.
At first, she was viewed with suspicion in the Russian court because of her Polish roots, lack of Russian culture and liberal attitudes. However, she threw herself into Russian culture and became adept at forming relationships within the Russian court. Over time, her foreign birth became less important, as she was increasingly seen as more capable than her husband – Tsar Peter III – who was seen as weak, childish and incompetent. There was little love between Catherine and her husband. It was said that Catherine was soon engaged in various love affairs with top officials in the Russian court.
Catherine and Peter did have one son – Paul who would later succeed Catherine.
Shortly after her husband’s ascension to the throne, he was deposed and Catherine put in his place. Peter was killed shortly after; it is not known whether Catherine had any knowledge or involvement in his death.
Catherine the Great, on July 9 1762, began her reign as empress of Russia, leading her country into full participation in the political and cultural life of Europe and extending Russian territory.
“I shall be an autocrat, that’s my trade; and the good Lord will forgive me, that’s his.”
Once Catherine had gained the throne, she proved to be an astute leader, gradually widening Russia’s sphere of influence, expanding Russia’s borders and continuing a process of gradual westernisation, begun by Peter the Great. Scholars were educated in Paris and intellectuals were invited to Russia.
During her reign, Russia expanded her territories into Belarus, Poland, Lithuania. By pushing the Ottoman back she reclaimed the Crimea.
Born in Poland, she was aware of the Mennonites reputation as good farmers so she induced them to displace the Turks she had driven from the Ukraine.
The first group of six desperate Mennonite families, penniless, without food or proper migration papers left Prussia in 1786, placing blind faith in the Czarina’s liberal 1762 promises. Fortunately, they were met by two exploratory delegates on their way back from the Crimea who made official contacts with proper authorities arranging free accommodation and money.
The first official wagons of settlers migrated in 1788, with eventually more than 228 families making the 12-week journey.
Many Anabaptists, like the Hutterites had supported the Turks, in the hope they would destroy the powerful princes, monks and nobles in Europe, ushering in the millennium, a period of righteousness in which Christ would rule the world. It was the brutal and savage attacks of the later Ottoman Empire that dashed that hope.
Together with other migrants from Europe’s relgious wars, the Mennonites proved progressive and industrious. Their advanced farming methods improved agricultural production and for the first time Russia produced enough grains to export.
A key relationship for Catherine was with Grigory Potemkin. Their relationship was personal but also very important politically. Potemkin was very capable from a military perspective and proved to be a powerful leader in the new Russia of the south, helping to win over the people of Crimea. This helped to foster Russia as a new superpower on the European stage.
A “Potemkin village” signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside. Purportedly named for fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Alexsandrovich Potemkin to fool Empress Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787.
In her early years, Catherine held remarkably liberal attitudes. This is best exemplified by the Legislative Commission’s document of Nakaz or ‘instruction’ It contained a model of the ideal government with respect for individual rights and the pursuit of justice.
However, after the outbreak of war with the Ottoman Empire in 1768, the document became sidelined and then ignored.
Due to declining economic conditions and conscription into the Russian army, the Russian masses felt a great injustice and saw no benefit from Russia’s expansion. This led to rebellions, such as the Pugachev rebellion (1774-75) against the nobility and system of serfdom. With the help of the nobility, Catherine was able to put down the rebellion, but this hardened her stance against the liberalisation of Russian society. The nobility was given extra privileges, strengthening their power over the serf population.
Catherine was known for her great love of education, art and culture due to building the Grand Winter Palace Museum’s Art Collection.
She read widely and instituted one of the first schools for women. She corresponded with some of the greatest literary figures of the day, such as Voltaire and Diderot.
Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan. “Biography of Catherine the Great”, Oxford,
A German-born usurper, Catherine II, holds a significant place in Russian history, second only to Peter the Great.
She played a pivotal role in transforming Russia into a great empire, defying gender norms and expectations of her time. Catherine made Russia a European superpower and established foundations on which Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin based their ideologies of “Mother Russia” – she was the Mother Russia.
Alexander I 1801 - 1825 #
A deeply religious mystic, he was well intentioned but ineffective in change.
Renown for his military support for Austria vs Napoleon in 1805 and the defeat of Napoleon’s attempt to conquer Russia in 1812.
When Alexander I came to the throne in March 1801, Russia was in a state of hostility with most of Europe, though its armies were not actually fighting; its only ally was its traditional enemy, Turkey. The new emperor quickly made peace with both France and Britain and restored normal relations with Austria. His hope that he would then be able to concentrate on internal reform was frustrated by the reopening of war with Napoleon in 1805. Defeated at Austerlitz in December 1805, the Russian armies fought Napoleon in Poland in 1806 and 1807, with Prussia as an ineffective ally. After the Treaty of Tilsit (1807), there were five years of peace, ended by Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. From the westward advance of its arms in the next two years of heavy fighting,
Russia emerged as Europe’s greatest land power and the first among the continental victors over Napoleon. The immense prestige achieved in these campaigns was maintained until mid-century. During this period, Russian armies fought only against weaker enemies: Persia in 1826, Turkey in 1828–29, Poland in 1830–31, and the mountaineers of the Caucasus during the 1830s and ’40s. Alexander I as a young man had longed to reform his empire and benefit his subjects. His hopes were disappointed, partly by the sheer inertia, backwardness, and vastness of his domains, partly perhaps because of defects of his own character, but also because Napoleon’s aggressive enterprises diverted Alexander’s attention to diplomacy and defense. Russia’s abundant manpower and scanty financial resources were both consumed in war. The early years of his reign saw two short periods of attempted reform. During the first, from 1801 to 1803, the tsar took counsel with four intimate friends, who formed his so-called Unofficial Committee, with the intention of drafting ambitious reforms. In the period from 1807 to 1812, he had as his chief adviser the liberal Mikhail Speransky. Both periods produced some valuable administrative innovations, but neither initiated any basic reform. After 1815 Alexander was mainly concerned with grandiose plans for international peace; his motivation was not merely political but also religious—not to say mystical—for the years of war and national danger had aroused in him an interest in matters of faith to which, as a pupil of the 18th-century Enlightenment, he had previously been indifferent. While he was thus preoccupied with diplomacy and religion, Russia was ruled by conservatives and reactionaries, among whom the brutal but honest Gen. Aleksey Arakcheyev was outstanding.
During and following the Congress of Vienna the priority was for peace through a balance of power. The secondary objective was to “turn back the clock”. Napoleon had “liberated” the areas he conquered by abolishing monarchies. The Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, Prussia and France wanted to re-instate hereditary rule by Monarchs by eliminating popular rule. Article six explicitly stated that popular governments were to be destroyed and royal monarchies reestablished. Britain abstained.
Many enlightened nobility advocated for the emancipation of the serfs, resisted by others who relied on them for army services, agricultural labour and in textile and metallurgical plants.
Alexander’s reforms were mostly talk as few laws were promulgated - gesture politics at its best. In 1803 a law provided for the voluntary release of serfs from their masters - only 32,000 in twenty years. Education improvements suffered due to a lack of funds. he became distracted by the Napoleonic Wars, issues with Poland and revolutionary unrest in Western Europe. Later he became more arbitrary, intolerant and reactionary, losing interest in domestic and constitutional reform.
Dissidents began to form secret patriotic (and, later, revolutionary) societies in Russia—the Union of Salvation (1816), the Union of Welfare (1818), the Northern Society (1821), and the Southern Society (1821).
When he died of fever in 1825, there was some confusion as to his successor, resulting in the Decembrist uprising.
Victory in war after 1812, had strengthened those who upheld the established order, serfdom and all. The mood was one of intense national pride: Orthodox Russia had defeated Napoleon, and therefore it was not only foolish but also impious to copy foreign models.
Educated young Russians, who had served in the army and seen Europe, who read and spoke French and German and knew contemporary European literature, felt otherwise.
Masonic lodges and secret societies flourished in the early 1820s. From their deliberations emerged a conspiracy to overthrow the government, inspired by a variety of ideas: some looked to the United States for a model, others to Jacobin France. The conspirators, known as the Decembrists because they tried to act in December 1825 when the news of Alexander I’s death became known and there was uncertainty about his successor, were defeated and arrested; five were executed, and many more sentenced to various terms of imprisonment in Siberia.
Nicholas I 1825 - 1855 #
Nicholas I, who succeeded after his elder brother Constantine had finally refused the throne, was deeply affected by these events and set himself against any major political change, though he did not reject the idea of administrative reform.
Decembrists, were Russian revolutionaries who led an unsuccessful uprising on Dec. 26, 1825, who through their martyrdom provided a source of inspiration to succeeding generations of Russian dissidents. The Decembrists were primarily members of the upper classes who had military backgrounds participating in the Russian occupation of France after the Napoleonic Wars or served elsewhere in western Europe.Having seen the liberal reforms of Napoleonic Europe, they attempted to introduce them in Russia.
The Northern Society, taking advantage of the brief but confusing interregnum following the death of Tsar Alexander I, staged an uprising, convincing some of the troops in St. Petersburg to refuse to take a loyalty oath to Nicholas I and to demand instead the accession of his brother The Grand Duke Constantine. The rebellion, however, was poorly organized and easily suppressed. 3000 troops mutinied by marching to the Senate Square and stood for four hours in the bitter cold while their leaders harangued amongst themselves until darkness fell. The government cavalry charged and field guns were brought in and fired into the crowd, which fled.
Colonel Prince Sergey Trubetskoy, who was to be the provisional dictator, fled immediately. An extensive investigation in which Nicholas personally participated ensued; all confessed to all kinds of things, resulting in the trial of 289 Decembrists, the execution of 5 of them (Pavel Pestel, Sergey Muravyov-Apostol, Pyotr Kakhovsky, Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, and Kondraty Ryleyev), the imprisonment of 31, and the banishment of the rest to Siberia.
Pushkin, in 1820, at the age of twenty, was banished from St. Petersburg for writing anti-authoritarian verses (notably “Ode to Liberty,” which was later found among the possessions of the Decembrist rebels).
For his political verses and epigrams, political poems, Pushkin was banished from St. Petersburg in May 1820 to a remote southern province. He was taken ill and, while convalescing, traveled in the northern Caucasus and later to Crimea with General Rayevski, a hero of 1812, and his family. In 1826, he was allowed to return to Moscow—with Tsar Nicholas I as his personal censor. He eventually went back to St. Petersburg, where he died, at the age of thirty-seven, after an eminently avoidable duel.
When Europe was convulsed by revolution in 1848 (see Revolutions of 1848), Russia and Great Britain alone among the great powers were unaffected, and in the summer of 1849 the tsar sent troops to crush the Hungarians in Transylvania. Russia was not loved, but it was admired and feared. To the upper classes in central Europe, Nicholas I was the stern defender of monarchical legitimacy; to democrats all over the world, he was “the gendarme of Europe” and the chief enemy of liberty. But the Crimean War (1853–56) showed that this giant had feet of clay. The vast empire was unable to mobilize, equip, and transport enough troops to defeat the medium-size French and English forces under very mediocre command. Nicholas died in the bitter knowledge of general failure.
After the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, his opposition to all change, his suspicion of even mildly liberal ideas, and his insistence on an obscurantist censorship reached their climax.
Extremely repressive - The Nicholas System of control - callous, petty, vindictive. Because he feared the masses, demanded blind obedience rather than individual initiative. First duty of subjects to obey authority of God and state. Nicholas introduced German administrators. Due to paranoia had secret police who stood outside the law, making everyone live in fear of informers, mainly directed at intellectuals, writers, journalists and teachers. Forbad travel without permission and prohibited subversive literature, censoring newspapers, journals and university lectures.
His education policies were based on piety and the orthodoxy of autocracy, patriotism and nationalism. He wanted to freeze the existing social structures, discouraging the lower classes from advanced education. Schools for the lower orders simply taught practical skills.
Herzen, the illegitimate son of a Russian nobleman who spent six years in prison and internal exile without compromising his ideals. a distinguished philosopher, Russia’s first self-proclaimed socialist, strongly criticised Nicholas for moral, cultural and spiritual deprivation of the youth who became spiritless, alienated and impotent.
Nicholas declared the professor insane and forbade him to write anymore.
Herzen left Russia in 1847 (a year after his father had died, leaving him a large fortune), and never returned. But he also never stopped being Russian to the core, even with an umbrella in his hand. Herzen reminds us that “there is no landfall on the paradisal shore,” and that “our meaning is in how we live in an imperfect world, in our time.”
“It takes wit and courage to make our way while our way is making us,“with no consolation to count on but art and the summer lightning of personal happiness.”
Foreign Policy
Nicholas increased his prestige by assisting the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire and made some territorial gains from Persia around the Caspian Sea in 1826 and from the Ottomans in the Caucasus near Blisia in 1828. Encouraged by the decline of “the old man of Europe”, he expressed the intention of further attacks on the Ottoman Empire.
Worried that Russia might disturb the delicate balance of power in Europe by invading the Ottoman Empire to gain access to an ice free port through the Black Sea and the Dardanelles, Britain and France organised an Expeditionary Force.
Despite having 300,000 serfs fighting an expeditionary force of 90,000 French British and Turkish, they lost the Crimean War - 1854 - 56, due to a lack of esprit de corps.
He was also not successful in Afghanistan. From the 1830’s both England and Russia were afraid of each others expansion around India. When the British attacked Afghanistan in 1839, Nicholas assisted them and the English were annihilated, as was he when he attempted to control Afghanistan.
Nicholas died during the Crimean war in 1855, where his serfs fought without esprit de corps.
Alexander II 1855 - 1881 #
Genuine reformer - freed serfs immediately following Crimean War and began liberal moves to modernise and emancipate the population. Became disillusioned with slow progress and was assassinated by a terrorist bomb.
Alexander III 1881 - 1894 #
Old, reactionary and ineffective. Attempted to Russify everyone.
Nicholas II 1894 - 1917 #
Young, impressionable, naive, easily manipulated but autocratic. Hapless, Nicholas acquired an image of an accident prone incompetent leader. On the day of his coronation in 1884, traditionally a day of celebration when the Czar hands out token gifts for his subjects, panic broke out as the crowd rushed forward to the palace and about 1500 people were killed in the crush.
………
Editing in progress