Nicholas II years of reign. Nicholas II Alexandrovich

Nature did not give Nicholas the properties important for the sovereign that his late father possessed. Most importantly, Nikolai did not have the “mind of the heart” - political instinct, foresight and that inner strength that those around him feel and obey. However, Nikolai himself felt his weakness, helplessness before fate. He even foresaw his bitter destiny: “I will undergo severe trials, but will not see reward on earth.” Nikolai considered himself an eternal loser: “I succeed in nothing in my endeavors. I have no luck”... Moreover, he not only turned out to be unprepared for ruling, but also did not like state affairs, which were torment for him, a heavy burden: “A day of rest for me - no reports, no receptions... I read a lot - again they sent heaps of papers…” (from the diary). He didn’t have his father’s passion or dedication to his work. He said: “I... try not to think about anything and find that this is the only way to rule Russia.” At the same time, dealing with him was extremely difficult. Nikolai was secretive and vindictive. Witte called him a “Byzantine” who knew how to attract a person with his trust and then deceive him. One wit wrote about the king: “He doesn’t lie, but he doesn’t tell the truth either.”

KHODYNKA

And three days later [after the coronation of Nicholas on May 14, 1896 in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin] on the suburban Khodynskoye field, where public festivities were supposed to take place, a terrible tragedy occurred. Thousands of people, already in the evening, on the eve of the day of festivities, began to gather there, hoping in the morning to be among the first to receive at the “buffet” (of which a hundred were prepared) the royal gift - one of 400 thousand gifts wrapped in a colored scarf, consisting of a “food set” ( half a pound of sausage, sausage, sweets, nuts, gingerbread), and most importantly - an outlandish, “eternal” enameled mug with a royal monogram and gilding. The Khodynskoe field was a training ground and was all pitted with ditches, trenches and holes. The night turned out to be moonless, dark, crowds of “guests” arrived and arrived, heading to the “buffets”. People, not seeing the road in front of them, fell into holes and ditches, and from behind they were pressed and pressed by those who were approaching from Moscow. […]

In total, by morning, about half a million Muscovites had gathered on Khodynka, compacted into huge crowds. As V. A. Gilyarovsky recalled,

“steam began to rise above the million-strong crowd, similar to swamp fog... The crush was terrible. Many became ill, some lost consciousness, unable to get out or even fall: deprived of feelings, with their eyes closed, squeezed as if in a vice, they swayed along with the mass.”

The crush intensified when the bartenders, fearing the onslaught of the crowd, began handing out gifts without waiting for the announced deadline...

According to official data, 1,389 people died, although in reality there were much more victims. The blood ran cold even among seasoned military men and firefighters: scalped heads, crushed chests, premature babies lying in the dust... The king learned about this disaster in the morning, but did not cancel any of the planned festivities and in the evening he opened a ball with the charming wife of the French ambassador Montebello... And although the tsar later visited hospitals and donated money to the families of the victims, it was too late. The indifference shown by the sovereign to his people in the first hours of the disaster cost him dearly. He received the nickname "Nicholas the Bloody".

NICHOLAS II AND THE ARMY

When he was heir to the throne, the young Sovereign received thorough combat training, not only in the guard, but also in the army infantry. At the request of his sovereign father, he served as a junior officer in the 65th Moscow Infantry Regiment (the first time a member of the Royal House was assigned to the army infantry). The observant and sensitive Tsarevich became familiar with the life of the troops in every detail and, having become Emperor of All Russia, turned all his attention to improving this life. His first orders streamlined production in the chief officer ranks, increased salaries and pensions, and improved soldiers' allowances. He canceled the passage with a ceremonial march and run, knowing from experience how difficult it was for the troops.

Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich retained this love and affection for his troops until his martyrdom. Characteristic of Emperor Nicholas II’s love for the troops is his avoidance of the official term “lower rank.” The Emperor considered him too dry, official and always used the words: “Cossack”, “hussar”, “shooter”, etc. It is impossible to read the lines of the Tobolsk diary of the dark days of the cursed year without deep emotion:

December 6. My name day... At 12 o'clock a prayer service was served. The riflemen of the 4th regiment, who were in the garden, who were on guard, all congratulated me, and I congratulated them on the regimental holiday.”

FROM THE DIARY OF NICHOLAS II FOR 1905

June 15th. Wednesday. Hot quiet day. Alix and I took a very long time at the Farm and were a full hour late for breakfast. Uncle Alexey was waiting for him with the children in the garden. Took a long trip in a kayak. Aunt Olga arrived for tea. Swimmed in the sea. After lunch we went for a drive.

I received stunning news from Odessa that the crew of the battleship Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky that arrived there had mutinied, killed the officers and taken possession of the ship, threatening unrest in the city. I just can't believe it!

Today the war with Turkey began. Early in the morning, the Turkish squadron approached Sevastopol in the fog and opened fire on the batteries, and left half an hour later. At the same time, “Breslau” bombarded Feodosia, and “Goeben” appeared in front of Novorossiysk.

The scoundrel Germans continue to retreat hastily in western Poland.

MANIFESTO ON THE DISSOLUTION OF THE 1st STATE DUMA JULY 9, 1906

By Our will, people chosen from the population were called to legislative construction […] Firmly trusting in the mercy of God, believing in the bright and great future of Our people, We expected from their labors the good and benefit for the country. […] We have planned major transformations in all sectors of the people’s life, and Our main concern has always been to dispel the people’s darkness with the light of enlightenment and the people’s hardships by easing land labor. A severe test has been sent down to Our expectations. Those elected from the population, instead of working on legislative construction, deviated into an area that did not belong to them and turned to investigating the actions of local authorities appointed by Us, to pointing out to Us the imperfections of the Fundamental Laws, changes to which can only be undertaken by Our Monarch’s will, and to actions that are clearly illegal, such as an appeal on behalf of the Duma to the population. […]

Confused by such disorders, the peasantry, not expecting a legal improvement in their situation, moved in a number of provinces to open robbery, theft of other people's property, disobedience to the law and legitimate authorities. […]

But let our subjects remember that only with complete order and tranquility is a lasting improvement in the people’s life possible. Let it be known that We will not allow any self-will or lawlessness and with all the might of the state we will bring those who disobey the law to submission to our Royal will. We call on all right-thinking Russian people to unite to maintain legitimate power and restore peace in our dear Fatherland.

May peace be restored in the Russian land, and may the Almighty help us to carry out the most important of our royal labors - raising the well-being of the peasantry. an honest way to expand your land holdings. Persons of other classes will, at Our call, make every effort to carry out this great task, the final decision of which in the legislative order will belong to the future composition of the Duma.

We, dissolving the current composition of the State Duma, confirm at the same time Our constant intention to keep in force the very law on the establishment of this institution and, in accordance with this Decree of Ours to the Governing Senate on July 8th, set the time for its new convening on February 20, 1907 of the year.

MANIFESTO ON THE DISSOLUTION OF THE II STATE DUMA JUNE 3, 1907

To our regret, a significant part of the composition of the second State Duma did not live up to our expectations. Many of the people sent from the population began to work not with a pure heart, not with a desire to strengthen Russia and improve its system, but with a clear desire to increase unrest and contribute to the disintegration of the state. The activities of these individuals in the State Duma served as an insurmountable obstacle to fruitful work. A spirit of hostility was introduced into the environment of the Duma itself, which prevented a sufficient number of its members who wanted to work for the benefit of their native land from uniting.

For this reason, the State Duma either did not consider the extensive measures developed by our government at all, or delayed discussion or rejected it, not even stopping at rejecting laws that punished the open praise of crimes and especially punished the sowers of trouble in the troops. Avoiding condemnation of murders and violence. The State Duma did not provide moral assistance to the government in establishing order, and Russia continues to experience the shame of criminal hard times. The slow consideration by the State Duma of the state painting caused difficulties in the timely satisfaction of many urgent needs of the people.

A significant part of the Duma turned the right to interrogate the government into a way of fighting the government and inciting distrust of it among broad sections of the population. Finally, an act unheard of in the annals of history took place. The judiciary uncovered a conspiracy by an entire part of the State Duma against the state and tsarist power. When our government demanded the temporary, until the end of the trial, removal of the fifty-five members of the Duma accused of this crime and the detention of the most incriminated of them, the State Duma did not fulfill the immediate legal demand of the authorities, which did not allow any delay. […]

Created to strengthen the Russian state, the State Duma must be Russian in spirit. Other nationalities that were part of our state should have representatives of their needs in the State Duma, but they should not and will not appear in a number that gives them the opportunity to be arbiters of purely Russian issues. In those outskirts of the state where the population has not achieved sufficient development of citizenship, elections to the State Duma should be temporarily suspended.

Holy Fools and Rasputin

The king, and especially the queen, were susceptible to mysticism. The closest maid of honor to Alexandra Fedorovna and Nicholas II, Anna Alexandrovna Vyrubova (Taneeva), wrote in her memoirs: “The Emperor, like his ancestor Alexander I, was always mystically inclined; The empress was equally mystically inclined... Their Majesties said that they believe that there are people, as in the time of the Apostles... who possess the grace of God and whose prayer the Lord hears.”

Because of this, in the Winter Palace one could often see various holy fools, “blessed” people, fortune tellers, people supposedly capable of influencing people’s destinies. This is Pasha the perspicacious, and Matryona the barefoot, and Mitya Kozelsky, and Anastasia Nikolaevna Leuchtenbergskaya (Stana) - the wife of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Jr. The doors of the royal palace were wide open for all sorts of rogues and adventurers, such as, for example, the Frenchman Philip (real name Nizier Vashol), who presented the empress with an icon with a bell, which was supposed to ring when people “with bad intentions” approached Alexandra Feodorovna. .

But the crown of royal mysticism was Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, who managed to completely subjugate the queen, and through her, the king. “Now it is not the tsar who rules, but the rogue Rasputin,” Bogdanovich noted in February 1912. “All respect for the tsar has disappeared.” The same idea was expressed on August 3, 1916 by former Minister of Foreign Affairs S.D. Sazonov in a conversation with M. Paleologus: “The Emperor reigns, but the Empress, inspired by Rasputin, rules.”

Rasputin […] quickly recognized all the weaknesses of the royal couple and skillfully took advantage of it. Alexandra Fedorovna wrote to her husband in September 1916: “I fully believe in the wisdom of our Friend, sent to Him by God, to advise what you and our country need.” “Listen to Him,” she instructed Nicholas II, “...God sent Him to you as an assistant and leader.” […]

It got to the point that individual governors-general, chief prosecutors of the Holy Synod and ministers were appointed and removed by the tsar on the recommendation of Rasputin, transmitted through the tsarina. On January 20, 1916, on his advice, V.V. was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers. Sturmer is “an absolutely unprincipled person and a complete nonentity,” as Shulgin described him.

Radzig E.S. Nicholas II in the memoirs of those close to him. New and recent history. No. 2, 1999

REFORM AND COUNTER-REFORMS

The most promising path of development for the country through consistent democratic reforms turned out to be impossible. Although it was marked, as if by a dotted line, even under Alexander I, later it was either subject to distortion or even interrupted. Under that autocratic form of government, which throughout the 19th century. remained unshakable in Russia, the final word on any issue about the fate of the country belonged to the monarchs. They, by the whim of history, alternated: reformer Alexander I - reactionary Nicholas I, reformer Alexander II - counter-reformer Alexander III (Nicholas II, who ascended the throne in 1894, also had to undergo reforms after his father’s counter-reforms at the beginning of the next century) .

DEVELOPMENT OF RUSSIA DURING THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS II

The main executor of all transformations in the first decade of the reign of Nicholas II (1894-1904) was S.Yu. Witte. A talented financier and statesman, S. Witte, having headed the Ministry of Finance in 1892, promised Alexander III, without carrying out political reforms, to make Russia one of the leading industrialized countries in 20 years.

The industrialization policy developed by Witte required significant capital investments from the budget. One of the sources of capital was the introduction of a state monopoly on wine and vodka products in 1894, which became the main revenue item of the budget.

In 1897, a monetary reform was carried out. Measures to increase taxes, increased gold production, and the conclusion of external loans made it possible to introduce gold coins into circulation instead of paper bills, which helped attract foreign capital to Russia and strengthen the country's monetary system, due to which state income doubled. The reform of commercial and industrial taxation carried out in 1898 introduced a trade tax.

The real result of Witte's economic policy was the accelerated development of industrial and railway construction. In the period from 1895 to 1899, an average of 3 thousand kilometers of tracks were built in the country per year.

By 1900, Russia took first place in the world in oil production.

By the end of 1903, there were 23 thousand factory enterprises operating in Russia with approximately 2,200 thousand workers. Politics S.Yu. Witte gave impetus to the development of Russian industry, commercial and industrial entrepreneurship, and the economy.

According to the project of P.A. Stolypin, agrarian reform began: peasants were allowed to freely dispose of their land, leave the community and run farmsteads. The attempt to abolish the rural community was of great importance for the development of capitalist relations in the countryside.

Chapter 19. The reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917). Russian history

BEGINNING OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR

On the same day, July 29, at the insistence of the Chief of the General Staff Yanushkevich, Nicholas II signed a decree on general mobilization. In the evening, the head of the mobilization department of the General Staff, General Dobrorolsky, arrived at the building of the St. Petersburg main telegraph and personally brought there the text of the decree on mobilization for communication to all parts of the empire. There were literally a few minutes left before the devices were supposed to start transmitting the telegram. And suddenly Dobrorolsky was given the tsar’s order to suspend the transfer of the decree. It turned out that the tsar received a new telegram from Wilhelm. In his telegram, the Kaiser again assured that he would try to reach an agreement between Russia and Austria, and asked the Tsar not to make this difficult for him with military preparations. After reading the telegram, Nikolai informed Sukhomlinov that he was canceling the decree on general mobilization. The Tsar decided to limit himself to partial mobilization directed only against Austria.

Sazonov, Yanushkevich and Sukhomlinov were extremely concerned that Nikolai had succumbed to the influence of Wilhelm. They were afraid that Germany would get ahead of Russia in the concentration and deployment of the army. They met on the morning of July 30 and decided to try to convince the king. Yanushkevich and Sukhomlinov tried to do this over the phone. However, Nikolai dryly announced to Yanushkevich that he was ending the conversation. The general nevertheless managed to inform the tsar that Sazonov was present in the room, who would also like to say a few words to him. After a short silence, the king agreed to listen to the minister. Sazonov asked for an audience for an urgent report. Nikolai was silent again, and then offered to come to him at 3 o’clock. Sazonov agreed with his interlocutors that if he convinced the Tsar, he would immediately call Yanushkevich from the Peterhof Palace, and he would give an order to the main telegraph to the officer on duty to communicate the decree to all military districts. “After this,” Yanushkevich said, “I will leave home, break the phone, and generally make it so that I can no longer be found for a new cancellation of the general mobilization.”

For almost an entire hour, Sazonov proved to Nikolai that war was inevitable anyway, since Germany was striving for it, and that under these conditions, delaying general mobilization was extremely dangerous. In the end, Nikolai agreed. […] From the lobby, Sazonov called Yanushkevich and reported the tsar’s sanction. “Now you can break your phone,” he added. At 5 pm on July 30, all the machines of the main St. Petersburg telegraph started knocking. They sent out the tsar's decree on general mobilization to all military districts. On July 31, in the morning, it became public.

The beginning of the First World War. History of Diplomacy. Volume 2. Edited by V. P. Potemkin. Moscow-Leningrad, 1945

THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS II IN THE ASSESSMENTS OF HISTORIANS

In emigration, there was a split among researchers in assessing the personality of the last king. The debates often became harsh, and the participants in the discussions took opposing positions, from praise on the conservative right flank to criticism from liberals and denigration on the left, socialist flank.

The monarchists who worked in exile included S. Oldenburg, N. Markov, I. Solonevich. According to I. Solonevich: “Nicholas II, a man of “average abilities,” faithfully and honestly did everything for Russia that He knew how to do, that He could. No one else was able or able to do more”... “Left-wing historians speak of Emperor Nicholas II as mediocrity, right-wing historians as an idol whose talents or mediocrity are not subject to discussion.” […].

An even more right-wing monarchist, N. Markov, noted: “The sovereign himself was slandered and defamed in the eyes of his people, he could not withstand the evil pressure of all those who, it would seem, were obliged to strengthen and defend the monarchy in every possible way” […].

The largest researcher of the reign of the last Russian Tsar is S. Oldenburg, whose work remains of paramount importance in the 21st century. For any researcher of the Nicholas period of Russian history, it is necessary, in the process of studying this era, to get acquainted with the work of S. Oldenburg “The Reign of Emperor Nicholas II”. […].

The left-liberal direction was represented by P. N. Milyukov, who stated in the book “The Second Russian Revolution”: “Concessions to power (Manifesto of October 17, 1905) not only could not satisfy society and the people because they were insufficient and incomplete. They were insincere and deceitful, and the power that gave them did not for a moment look at them as if they had been ceded forever and finally” […].

Socialist A.F. Kerensky wrote in “History of Russia”: “The reign of Nicholas II was fatal for Russia due to his personal qualities. But he was clear about one thing: having entered the war and linking the fate of Russia with the fate of the countries allied with it, he did not make any tempting compromises with Germany until the very end, until his martyrdom […]. The king bore the burden of power. She weighed him down internally... He had no will to power. He kept it according to oath and tradition” […].

Modern Russian historians have different assessments of the reign of the last Russian Tsar. The same split was observed among scholars of the reign of Nicholas II in exile. Some of them were monarchists, others had liberal views, and others considered themselves supporters of socialism. In our time, the historiography of the reign of Nicholas II can be divided into three directions, such as in emigrant literature. But in relation to the post-Soviet period, clarifications are also needed: modern researchers who praise the tsar are not necessarily monarchists, although a certain tendency is certainly present: A. Bokhanov, O. Platonov, V. Multatuli, M. Nazarov.

A. Bokhanov, the largest modern historian in the study of pre-revolutionary Russia, positively assesses the reign of Emperor Nicholas II: “In 1913, peace, order, and prosperity reigned all around. Russia confidently moved forward, no unrest occurred. Industry worked at full capacity, agriculture developed dynamically, and every year brought greater harvests. Prosperity grew, and the purchasing power of the population increased year by year. The rearmament of the army has begun, a few more years - and Russian military power will become the first force in the world” […].

Conservative historian V. Shambarov speaks positively about the last tsar, noting that the tsar was too lenient in dealing with his political enemies, who were also enemies of Russia: “Russia was destroyed not by autocratic “despotism,” but rather by the weakness and toothlessness of power.” The Tsar too often tried to find a compromise, to come to an agreement with the liberals, so that there would be no bloodshed between the government and part of the people deceived by the liberals and socialists. To do this, Nicholas II dismissed loyal, decent, competent ministers who were loyal to the monarchy and instead appointed either unprofessionals or secret enemies of the autocratic monarchy, or swindlers. […].

M. Nazarov in his book “To the Leader of the Third Rome” drew attention to the aspect of the global conspiracy of the financial elite to overthrow the Russian monarchy... […] According to the description of Admiral A. Bubnov, an atmosphere of conspiracy reigned at Headquarters. At the decisive moment, in response to Alekseev’s cleverly formulated request for abdication, only two generals publicly expressed loyalty to the Sovereign and readiness to lead their troops to pacify the rebellion (General Khan Nakhichevansky and General Count F.A. Keller). The rest welcomed the abdication by wearing red bows. Including the future founders of the White Army, Generals Alekseev and Kornilov (the latter then had the task of announcing to the royal family the order of the Provisional Government for its arrest). Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich also violated his oath on March 1, 1917 - even before the Tsar’s abdication and as a means of putting pressure on him! - removed his military unit (the Guards crew) from guarding the royal family, came to the State Duma under a red flag, provided this headquarters of the Masonic revolution with his guards to guard the arrested royal ministers and issued a call for other troops to “join the new government.” “There is cowardice, treason, and deceit all around,” these were the last words in the tsar’s diary on the night of his abdication […].

Representatives of the old socialist ideology, for example, A.M. Anfimov and E.S. Radzig, on the contrary, negatively assess the reign of the last Russian Tsar, calling the years of his reign a chain of crimes against the people.

Between two directions - praise and overly harsh, unfair criticism are the works of Ananich B.V., N.V. Kuznetsov and P. Cherkasov. […]

P. Cherkasov adheres to the middle in his assessment of the reign of Nicholas: “From the pages of all the works mentioned in the review, the tragic personality of the last Russian Tsar appears - a deeply decent and delicate man to the point of shyness, an exemplary Christian, a loving husband and father, faithful to his duty and at the same time an unremarkable statesman an activist, a prisoner of once and for all acquired convictions in the inviolability of the order of things bequeathed to him by his ancestors. He was neither a despot, much less an executioner of his people, as our official historiography claimed, but during his lifetime he was not a saint, as is sometimes now claimed, although by martyrdom he undoubtedly atoned for all the sins and mistakes of his reign. The drama of Nicholas II as a politician lies in his mediocrity, in the discrepancy between the scale of his personality and the challenge of the time” […].

And finally, there are historians of liberal views, such as K. Shatsillo, A. Utkin. According to the first: “Nicholas II, unlike his grandfather Alexander II, not only did not give overdue reforms, but even if they were wrested from him by force by the revolutionary movement, he stubbornly strove to take back what was given “in a moment of hesitation.” All this “driven” the country into a new revolution, making it completely inevitable... A. Utkin went even further, agreeing to the point that the Russian government was one of the culprits of the First World War, wanting a clash with Germany. At the same time, the tsarist administration simply did not calculate the strength of Russia: “Criminal pride destroyed Russia. Under no circumstances should she go to war with the industrial champion of the continent. Russia had the opportunity to avoid a fatal conflict with Germany.”

– Why are rumors about Tsar Nicholas so widespread? II and harsh criticism against him?

– To correctly understand Tsar Nicholas II, you must be Orthodox. It is not enough to be a secular person or nominal Orthodox, or semi-Orthodox, or to perceive Orthodoxy as a hobby, while maintaining the same Soviet or Western (which is essentially the same thing) cultural baggage. One must be consciously Orthodox, Orthodox in essence, culture and worldview.

Tsar Nicholas II acted and reacted in an Orthodox manner

In other words, to understand Nicholas II, you need to have the spiritual integrity that he had. Tsar Nicholas was deeply and consistently Orthodox in his spiritual, moral, political, economic and social views. His Orthodox soul looked at the world with Orthodox eyes, he acted and reacted in an Orthodox way.

– Why do professional historians treat him so negatively?

– Western historians, like Soviet ones, have a negative attitude towards him, because they think in a secular way. Recently I read the book “Crimea” by the British historian Orlando Figes, a specialist on Russia. This is an interesting book about the Crimean War, with many details and facts, written as befits a serious scholar. However, the author by default approaches events with purely Western secular standards: if the reigning Tsar Nicholas I at that time was not a Westernizer, then he must have been a religious fanatic who intended to conquer the Ottoman Empire. With his love for detail, Fidges loses sight of the most important thing: what the Crimean War was for Russia. With Western eyes, he sees only imperialist goals, which he attributes to Russia. What motivates him to do this is his worldview as a secular Westerner.

Figes does not understand that the parts of the Ottoman Empire that Nicholas I was interested in were lands where Orthodox Christian populations had suffered under Islamic oppression for centuries. The Crimean War was not a colonial, imperialist war by Russia to advance into the territory of the Ottoman Empire and exploit it, unlike the wars waged by the Western powers to advance into and enslave Asia and Africa. In the case of Russia, it was a struggle for freedom from oppression - essentially an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist war. The goal was the liberation of Orthodox lands and peoples from oppression, and not the conquest of someone else's empire. As for the accusations of Nicholas I of “religious fanaticism,” in the eyes of secularists, any sincere Christian is a religious fanatic! This is explained by the fact that there is no spiritual dimension in the consciousness of these people. They are unable to see beyond their secular cultural environment and do not go beyond established thinking.

– It turns out that it is because of their secular worldview that Western historians call Nicholas II “weak” and “incapable”?

The myth of the “weakness” of Nicholas II as a ruler is Western political propaganda, invented at that time and still repeated today

- Yes. This is Western political propaganda, invented at that time and still repeated today. Western historians are trained and funded by the Western "establishment" and fail to see the broader picture. Serious post-Soviet historians have already refuted these accusations against the Tsar, fabricated by the West, which Soviet communists gleefully repeated to justify the destruction of the Tsar's empire. They write that the Tsarevich was “unable” to rule, but the whole point is that at the very beginning he simply was not ready to become king, since his father, Tsar Alexander III, died suddenly and relatively young. But Nikolai quickly learned and became “capable.”

Another favorite accusation of Nicholas II is that he allegedly started wars: the Japanese-Russian War, called the “Russian-Japanese”, and the Kaiser’s War, called the First World War. It is not true. The Tsar was at that time the only world leader who wanted disarmament and did not want war. As for the war against Japanese aggression, it was the Japanese themselves, armed, sponsored and incited by the USA and Great Britain, who started the Japanese-Russian War. Without warning, they attacked the Russian fleet in Port Arthur, whose name is so similar to Pearl Harbor. And, as we know, the Austro-Hungarians, spurred on by the Kaiser, who was looking for any reason to start a war, unleashed.

It was Nicholas II in 1899 who was the first in world history to call on the rulers of states for disarmament and universal peace

Let us remember that it was Tsar Nicholas II in The Hague in 1899 who was the first in world history to call on the rulers of states for disarmament and universal peace - he saw that Western Europe was ready to explode like a powder keg. He was a moral and spiritual leader, the only ruler in the world at that time who did not have narrow, nationalistic interests. On the contrary, being God’s anointed one, he had in his heart the universal task of all Orthodox Christianity - to bring all humanity created by God to Christ. Otherwise, why did he make such sacrifices for Serbia? He was a man of unusually strong will, as noted, for example, by the French President Emile Loubet. All the forces of hell rallied to destroy the king. They would not have done this if the king was weak.

– You say that Nikolai II is a deeply Orthodox person. But there’s very little Russian blood in him, isn’t there?

– Forgive me, but this statement contains a nationalist assumption that one must be of “Russian blood” in order to be considered Orthodox, to belong to universal Christianity. I think that the tsar was one 128th Russian by blood. And what? The sister of Nicholas II answered this question perfectly more than fifty years ago. In a 1960 interview with Greek journalist Ian Worres, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (1882–1960) said: “Did the British call King George VI a German? There was not a drop of English blood in him... Blood is not the main thing. The main thing is the country in which you grew up, the faith in which you were raised, the language in which you speak and think.”

– Today some Russians portray Nicholas II "redeemer". Do you agree with this?

- Of course not! There is only one redeemer - the Savior Jesus Christ. However, it can be said that the sacrifice of the Tsar, his family, servants and tens of millions of other people killed in Russia by the Soviet regime and the Nazis was redemptive. Rus' was “crucified” for the sins of the world. Indeed, the suffering of the Russian Orthodox in their blood and tears was redemptive. It is also true that all Christians are called to be saved by living in Christ the Redeemer. It is interesting that some pious, but not very educated Russians, who call Tsar Nicholas “redeemer”, call Grigory Rasputin a saint.

– Is Nikolai’s personality significant? II today? Orthodox Christians form a small minority among other Christians. Even if Nicholas II is of particular importance to all Orthodox Christians, it will still be little compared to all Christians.

– Of course, we Christians are a minority. According to statistics, of the 7 billion people living on our planet, only 2.2 billion are Christians - that’s 32%. And Orthodox Christians make up only 10% of all Christians, that is, only 3.2% are Orthodox in the world, or approximately every 33rd inhabitant of the Earth. But if we look at these statistics from a theological point of view, what do we see? For Orthodox Christians, non-Orthodox Christians are former Orthodox Christians who have fallen away from the Church, unwittingly brought into heterodoxy by their leaders for a variety of political reasons and for the sake of worldly well-being. We can understand Catholics as Catholicized Orthodox Christians, and Protestants as Catholics who have been denounced. We, unworthy Orthodox Christians, are like a little leaven that leavens the whole dough (see: Gal. 5:9).

Without the Church, light and warmth do not spread from the Holy Spirit to the whole world. Here you are outside the Sun, but you still feel the warmth and light emanating from it - also 90% of Christians who are outside the Church still know about its action. For example, almost all of them confess the Holy Trinity and Christ as the Son of God. Why? Thanks to the Church, which established these teachings many centuries ago. Such is the grace present in the Church and flowing from it. If we understand this, then we will understand the significance for us of the Orthodox emperor, the last spiritual successor of Emperor Constantine the Great - Tsar Nicholas II. His dethronement and murder completely changed the course of church history, and the same can be said about his recent glorification.

– If this is so, then why was the king overthrown and killed?

– Christians are always persecuted in the world, as the Lord told His disciples. Pre-revolutionary Russia lived by the Orthodox faith. However, the faith was rejected by much of the pro-Western ruling elite, the aristocracy and many members of the expanding middle class. The revolution was the result of a loss of faith.

Most of the upper class in Russia wanted power, just as the rich merchants and middle class in France wanted power and caused the French Revolution. Having acquired wealth, they wanted to rise to the next level of the hierarchy of values ​​- the level of power. In Russia, such a thirst for power, which came from the West, was based on blind worship of the West and hatred of one’s country. We see this from the very beginning in the example of such figures as A. Kurbsky, Peter I, Catherine II and Westerners like P. Chaadaev.

The decline of faith also poisoned the “white movement,” which was divided due to the lack of a common strengthening faith in the Orthodox kingdom. In general, the Russian ruling elite was deprived of an Orthodox identity, which was replaced by various surrogates: a bizarre mixture of mysticism, occultism, Freemasonry, socialism and the search for “truth” in esoteric religions. By the way, these surrogates continued to live in the Parisian emigration, where various figures distinguished themselves by their adherence to theosophy, anthroposophy, Sophianism, name-worship and other very bizarre and spiritually dangerous false teachings.

They had so little love for Russia that as a result they broke away from the Russian Church, but still justified themselves! The poet Sergei Bekhteev (1879–1954) had strong words to say about this in his 1922 poem “Remember, Know,” comparing the privileged position of emigration in Paris with the situation of people in crucified Russia:

And again their hearts are filled with intrigue,
And again there is betrayal and lies on the lips,
And writes life into the chapter of the last book
Vile betrayal of arrogant nobles.

These representatives of the upper classes (although not all were traitors) were financed by the West from the very beginning. The West believed that as soon as its values: parliamentary democracy, republicanism and constitutional monarchy were implanted in Russia, it would become another bourgeois Western country. For the same reason, the Russian Church needed to be “Protestantized,” that is, spiritually neutralized, deprived of power, which the West tried to do with the Patriarchate of Constantinople and other Local Churches that fell under its rule after 1917, when they lost the patronage of Russia. This was a consequence of the West's conceit that its model could become universal. This idea is inherent in Western elites today; they are trying to impose their model called the “new world order” on the whole world.

The Tsar - God's anointed, the last defender of the Church on earth - had to be removed because he was holding back the West from seizing power in the world

The Tsar - God's anointed, the last defender of the Church on earth - had to be removed because he was holding back the West from seizing power in the world. However, in their incompetence, the aristocratic revolutionaries of February 1917 soon lost control of the situation, and within a few months power passed from them to the lower ranks - to the criminal Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks set a course for mass violence and genocide, for the “Red Terror”, similar to the terror in France five generations earlier, but with much more brutal technologies of the 20th century.

Then the ideological formula of the Orthodox empire was also distorted. Let me remind you that it sounded like this: “Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality.” But it was maliciously interpreted as follows: “obscurantism, tyranny, nationalism.” Godless communists deformed this ideology even further, so that it turned into “centralized communism, totalitarian dictatorship, national Bolshevism.” What did the original ideological triad mean? It meant: “(full, embodied) true Christianity, spiritual independence (from the powers of this world) and love for the people of God.” As we said above, this ideology was the spiritual, moral, political, economic and social program of Orthodoxy.

– Social program? But the revolution occurred because there were a lot of poor people and there was merciless exploitation of the poor by super-rich aristocrats, and the tsar was at the head of this aristocracy.

– No, it was the aristocracy that opposed the tsar and the people. The Tsar himself donated generously from his wealth and imposed high taxes on the rich under the remarkable Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, who did so much for land reform. Unfortunately, the Tsar's social justice agenda was one of the reasons why the aristocrats came to hate the Tsar. The king and the people were united. Both were betrayed by the pro-Western elite. This is already evidenced by the murder of Rasputin, which was preparation for the revolution. The peasants rightly saw this as a betrayal of the people by the nobility.

– What was the role of the Jews?

– There is a conspiracy theory that supposedly Jews alone are to blame for everything bad that has happened and is happening in Russia (and in the world in general). This contradicts the words of Christ.

Indeed, most of the Bolsheviks were Jews, but the Jews who participated in the preparation of the Russian Revolution were, first of all, apostates, atheists like K. Marx, and not believers, practicing Jews. The Jews who participated in the revolution worked hand in hand with and depended on non-Jewish atheists such as the American banker P. Morgan, as well as the Russians and many others.

Satan does not give preference to any one particular nation, but uses for his own purposes everyone who is ready to submit to him

We know that Britain organized, supported by France and financed by the USA, that V. Lenin was sent to Russia and sponsored by the Kaiser and that the masses who fought in the Red Army were Russian. None of them were Jewish. Some people, captivated by racist myths, simply refuse to face the truth: the revolution was the work of Satan, who is ready to use any nation, any of us - Jews, Russians, non-Russians, to achieve his destructive plans... Satan does not give preference to any one specific nation, but uses for his own purposes everyone who is ready to subordinate their free will to him to establish a “new world order”, where he will be the sole ruler of fallen humanity.

– There are Russophobes who believe that the Soviet Union was the successor to Tsarist Russia. Is this true in your opinion?

– Undoubtedly, there is continuity... of Western Russophobia! Look, for example, at issues of The Times between 1862 and 2012. You will see 150 years of xenophobia. It is true that many in the West were Russophobes long before the advent of the Soviet Union. In every nation there are such narrow-minded people - simply nationalists who believe that any nation other than their own should be denigrated, no matter what its political system is and no matter how this system changes. We saw this in the recent Iraq War. We see this today in news reports where the peoples of Syria, Iran and North Korea are accused of all their sins. We do not take such prejudices seriously.

Let's return to the question of continuity. After a period of complete nightmare that began in 1917, continuity actually appeared. This happened after in June 1941. Stalin realized that he could win the war only with the blessing of the Church; he remembered the past victories of Orthodox Russia, won, for example, under the holy princes and Demetrius Donskoy. He realized that any victory can be achieved only together with his “brothers and sisters,” that is, the people, and not with “comrades” and communist ideology. Geography does not change, so there is continuity in Russian history.

The Soviet period was a deviation from history, a departure from Russia’s national destiny, especially in the first bloody period after the revolution...

We know (and Churchill expressed this very clearly in his book “The World Crisis of 1916–1918”) that in 1917 Russia was on the eve of victory

What would have happened if the revolution had not happened? We know (and W. Churchill expressed this very clearly in his book “The World Crisis of 1916–1918”) that Russia was on the eve of victory in 1917. That is why the revolutionaries then rushed to take action. They had a narrow loophole through which they could operate before the great offensive of 1917 began.

If there had been no revolution, Russia would have defeated the Austro-Hungarians, whose multinational and largely Slavic army was still on the verge of mutiny and collapse. Russia would then push the Germans, or most likely their Prussian commanders, back into Berlin. In any case, the situation would be similar to 1945, but with one important exception. The exception is that the Tsarist army in 1917–1918 would have liberated Central and Eastern Europe without conquering it, as happened in 1944–1945. And she would liberate Berlin, just as she liberated Paris in 1814 - peacefully and nobly, without the mistakes made by the Red Army.

– What would happen then?

– The liberation of Berlin and therefore Germany from Prussian militarism would undoubtedly lead to the disarmament and division of Germany into parts, to its restoration as it was before 1871 - a country of culture, music, poetry and traditions. This would be the end of O. Bismarck's Second Reich, which was a revival of the First Reich of the militant heretic Charlemagne and led to A. Hitler's Third Reich.

If Russia had won, the Prussian/German government would have been diminished, and the Kaiser would have obviously been exiled to some small island, just like Napoleon. But there would be no humiliation of the German peoples - the result of the Treaty of Versailles, which directly led to the horrors of fascism and World War II. By the way, this also led to the “Fourth Reich” of the current European Union.

– Wouldn’t France, Britain and the USA oppose the relations between victorious Russia and Berlin?

The Allies did not want to see Russia as a winner. They only wanted to use her as "cannon fodder"

– France and Britain, stuck in their blood-soaked trenches or perhaps having reached the French and Belgian borders with Germany by that time, would not be able to prevent this, because a victory over the Kaiser’s Germany would be primarily a victory for Russia. And the United States would never have entered the war if Russia had not been withdrawn from it first - partly thanks to US funding of the revolutionaries. That's why the Allies did everything to eliminate Russia from the war: they did not want to see Russia as a winner. They only wanted to use it as “cannon fodder” to tire Germany out and prepare for its defeat at the hands of the Allies - and they would finish Germany off and capture it unhindered.

– Would the Russian armies have left Berlin and Eastern Europe soon after 1918?

- Yes, sure. Here is another difference from Stalin, for whom “autocracy” - the second element of the ideology of the Orthodox Empire - was deformed into “totalitarianism”, meaning occupation, suppression and enslavement through terror. After the fall of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, freedom would have come for Eastern Europe with the movement of populations to border territories and the establishment of new states without minorities: these would have been reunited Poland and the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Transcarpathian Rus, Romania, Hungary and so on. . A demilitarized zone would be created throughout Eastern and Central Europe.

This would be Eastern Europe with reasonable and secure borders

It would be an Eastern Europe with reasonable and secure borders, and the mistake of creating conglomerate states like the future (now former) Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia would be avoided. By the way, about Yugoslavia: Tsar Nicholas established the Balkan Union back in 1912 to prevent subsequent Balkan wars. Of course, he failed due to the intrigues of the German princeling (“Tsar”) Ferdinand in Bulgaria and the nationalist intrigues in Serbia and Montenegro. We can imagine that after the First World War, from which Russia emerged victorious, such a customs union, established with clear boundaries, could become permanent. This union, with the participation of Greece and Romania, could finally establish peace in the Balkans, and Russia would be the guarantor of its freedom.

– What would be the fate of the Ottoman Empire?

– The Allies already agreed in 1916 that Russia would be allowed to liberate Constantinople and control the Black Sea. Russia could have achieved this 60 years earlier, thereby preventing the massacres committed by the Turks in Bulgaria and Asia Minor, if France and Great Britain had not defeated Russia in the Crimean War. (Remember that Tsar Nicholas I was buried with a silver cross depicting the “Aghia Sophia” - the Church of the Wisdom of God, “so that in Heaven he would not forget to pray for his brothers in the East”). Christian Europe would be freed from the Ottoman yoke.

The Armenians and Greeks of Asia Minor would also be protected, and the Kurds would have their own state. Moreover, Orthodox Palestine and a large part of present-day Syria and Jordan would come under the protection of Russia. There wouldn't be any of these constant wars in the Middle East. Perhaps the current situation in Iraq and Iran could also have been avoided. The consequences would be colossal. Can we imagine a Russian-controlled Jerusalem? Even Napoleon noted that “he who rules Palestine rules the whole world.” Today this is known to Israel and the United States.

– What would be the consequences for Asia?

Saint Nicholas II was destined to “cut a window to Asia”

– Peter I “cut a window to Europe.” Saint Nicholas II was destined to “open a window to Asia.” Despite the fact that the holy king was actively building churches in Western Europe and the Americas, he had little interest in the Catholic-Protestant West, including America and Australia, because the West itself had and still has only limited interest in the Church. In the West, both then and now, the potential for the growth of Orthodoxy is low. In fact, today only a small part of the world's population lives in the Western world, despite the fact that it occupies a large area.

Tsar Nicholas's goal to serve Christ was thus more associated with Asia, especially Buddhist Asia. His Russian Empire was populated by former Buddhists who had converted to Christ, and the Tsar knew that Buddhism, like Confucianism, was not a religion but a philosophy. Buddhists called him “white Tara” (White King). There were relations with Tibet, where he was called “Chakravartin” (King of Peace), Mongolia, China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan - countries with great development potential. He also thought about Afghanistan, India and Siam (Thailand). King Rama V of Siam visited Russia in 1897, and the Tsar prevented Siam from becoming a French colony. It was an influence that would extend to Laos, Vietnam and Indonesia. The people living in these countries today make up almost half of the world's population.

In Africa, home today to almost a seventh of the world's population, the holy king had diplomatic relations with Ethiopia, which he successfully defended from colonization by Italy. The Emperor also intervened for the sake of the interests of the Moroccans, as well as the Boers in South Africa. Nicholas II's strong disgust at what the British did to the Boers is well known - and they simply killed them in concentration camps. We have reason to assert that the tsar thought something similar about the colonial policy of France and Belgium in Africa. The emperor was also respected by Muslims, who called him "Al-Padishah", that is, "The Great King". In general, Eastern civilizations, which recognized the sacred, respected the “White Tsar” much more than bourgeois Western civilizations.

It is important that the Soviet Union later also opposed the cruelty of Western colonial policies in Africa. There is also continuity here. Today, Russian Orthodox missions already operate in Thailand, Laos, Indonesia, India and Pakistan, and there are parishes in Africa. I think that today's BRICS group, consisting of rapidly developing states, is an example of what Russia could achieve 90 years ago as a member of a group of independent countries. No wonder the last Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, Duleep Singh (d. 1893), asked Tsar Alexander III to free India from exploitation and oppression by Britain.

– So, Asia could become a colony of Russia?

- No, definitely not a colony. Imperial Russia was against colonialist policies and imperialism. It is enough to compare the Russian advance into Siberia, which was largely peaceful, and the European advance into the Americas, which was accompanied by genocide. There were completely different attitudes towards the same peoples (Native Americans are mostly close relatives of Siberians). Of course, in Siberia and Russian America (Alaska) there were Russian exploitative traders and drunken fur trappers who behaved in the same way as cowboys towards the local population. We know this from the lives of Saints Stephen of Great Perm and Macarius of Altai, as well as from the lives of missionaries in eastern Russia and Siberia. But such things were the exception rather than the rule, and no genocide took place.

– All this is very good, but we are now talking about what could happen. And these are just hypothetical assumptions.

Yes, these are hypotheticals, but hypotheses can give us a vision of the future

– Yes, hypothetical assumptions, but hypotheses can give us a vision of the future. We can view the last 95 years as a hole, as a catastrophic deviation from the course of world history with tragic consequences that cost the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The world lost its balance after the fall of the bastion - Christian Russia, carried out by transnational capital with the aim of creating a “unipolar world”. This “unipolarity” is just a code for a new world order led by a single government - a world anti-Christian tyranny.

If only we realize this, then we can pick up where we left off in 1918 and bring together the remnants of Orthodox civilization throughout the world. No matter how dire the current situation may be, there is always hope that comes from repentance.

– What could be the result of this repentance?

– A new Orthodox empire with a center in Russia and a spiritual capital in Yekaterinburg, the center of repentance. Thus, it would be possible to restore balance to this tragic, out-of-balance world.

“Then you can probably be accused of being overly optimistic.”

– Look what has happened recently, since the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus' in 1988. The situation in the world has changed, even transformed - and all this thanks to the repentance of enough people from the former Soviet Union to change the whole world. The last 25 years have witnessed a revolution - the only true, spiritual revolution: a return to the Church. Taking into account the historical miracle that we have already seen (and this seemed to us, born amid the nuclear threats of the Cold War, only ridiculous dreams - we remember the spiritually gloomy 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s), why don't we imagine these possibilities discussed above in the future?

In 1914, the world entered a tunnel, and during the Cold War we lived in complete darkness. Today we are still in this tunnel, but there are already glimpses of light ahead. Is this the light at the end of the tunnel? Let us remember the words of the Gospel: “All things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). Yes, humanly speaking, the above is very optimistic, and there is no guarantee for anything. But the alternative to the above is an apocalypse. There is little time left, and we must hurry. Let this be a warning and a call to us all.

Today marks the 147th anniversary of the birth of the last Russian emperor. Although a lot has been written about Nicholas II, much of what has been written relates to “folk fiction” and misconceptions.

The king was modest in dress. Unpretentious

Nicholas II is remembered from many surviving photographic materials as an unpretentious man. He was really unpretentious when it came to food. He loved fried dumplings, which he often ordered during walks on his favorite yacht “Standart”. The king observed fasts and generally ate moderately, tried to keep himself in shape, so he preferred simple food: porridge, rice cutlets and pasta with mushrooms.

Among the guards officers, the Nikolashka snack was popular. Its recipe is attributed to Nicholas II. Sugar ground into dust was mixed with ground coffee; a slice of lemon was sprinkled with this mixture, which was used to snack on a glass of cognac.

Regarding clothing, the situation was different. The wardrobe of Nicholas II in the Alexander Palace alone consisted of several hundred pieces of military uniform and civilian clothing: frock coats, uniforms of guards and army regiments and overcoats, cloaks, sheepskin coats, shirts and underwear made in the capital's Nordenstrem workshop, a hussar mentik and a dolman, in which Nicholas II was on the wedding day. When receiving foreign ambassadors and diplomats, the king put on the uniform of the state from which the envoy was from. Often Nicholas II had to change clothes six times a day. Here, in the Alexander Palace, a collection of cigarette cases collected by Nicholas II was kept.

It must be admitted, however, that of the 16 million allocated per year to the royal family, the lion's share was spent on paying benefits for palace employees (the Winter Palace alone served a staff of 1,200 people), on supporting the Academy of Arts (the royal family was a trustee, and therefore expenses) and other needs.

The expenses were serious. The construction of the Livadia Palace cost the Russian treasury 4.6 million rubles, 350 thousand rubles per year were spent on the royal garage, and 12 thousand rubles per year on photography.

This is taking into account that the average household expenditure in the Russian Empire at that time was about 85 rubles per year per capita.

Each Grand Duke was also entitled to an annual annuity of two hundred thousand rubles. Each of the Grand Duchesses was given a dowry of one million rubles upon marriage. At birth, a member of the imperial family received a capital of one million rubles.

The Tsar Colonel personally went to the front and led the armies

Many photographs have been preserved where Nicholas II takes the oath, arrives at the front and eats from the field kitchen, where he is “the father of the soldiers.” Nicholas II really loved everything military. He practically did not wear civilian clothes, preferring uniforms.

It is generally accepted that the emperor himself directed the actions of the Russian army in . However, it is not. The generals and the military council decided. Several factors influenced the improvement of the situation at the front with Nicholas taking command. Firstly, by the end of August 1915, the Great Retreat was stopped, the German army suffered from stretched communications, and secondly, the change in the commanders-in-chief of the General Staff - Yanushkevich to Alekseev - also affected the situation.

Nicholas II actually went to the front, loved to live at Headquarters, sometimes with his family, often took his son with him, but never (unlike cousins ​​George and Wilhelm) never came closer than 30 kilometers to the front line. The emperor accepted the IV degree soon after a German plane flew over the horizon during the tsar’s arrival.

The absence of the emperor in St. Petersburg had a bad effect on domestic politics. He began to lose influence on the aristocracy and government. This proved to be fertile ground for internal corporate splits and indecision during the February Revolution.

From the emperor's diary on August 23, 1915 (the day he assumed the duties of the Supreme High Command): "Slept well. The morning was rainy; in the afternoon the weather improved and it became quite warm. At 3.30 I arrived at my Headquarters, one mile from the mountains. Mogilev. Nikolasha was waiting for me. After talking with him, the gene accepted. Alekseev and his first report. Everything went well! After drinking tea, I went to explore the surrounding area. The train is parked in a small dense forest. We had lunch at 7½. Then I walked some more, it was a great evening.”

The introduction of gold security is the personal merit of the emperor

The economically successful reforms carried out by Nicholas II usually include the monetary reform of 1897, when gold backing of the ruble was introduced in the country. However, preparations for monetary reform began in the mid-1880s, under the ministers of finance Bunge and Vyshnegradsky, during the reign.

The reform was a forced means of moving away from credit money. It can be considered its author. The tsar himself avoided solving monetary issues; by the beginning of World War I, Russia’s external debt was 6.5 billion rubles, only 1.6 billion was backed by gold.

Made personal “unpopular” decisions. Often in defiance of the Duma

It is customary to say about Nicholas II that he personally carried out reforms, often in defiance of the Duma. However, in fact, Nicholas II rather “did not interfere.” He didn't even have a personal secretariat. But under him, famous reformers were able to develop their abilities. Such as Witte and. At the same time, the relationship between the two “second politicians” was far from idyll.

Sergei Witte wrote about Stolypin: “No one destroyed at least the semblance of justice like he, Stolypin, and that was all, accompanied by liberal speeches and gestures.”

Pyotr Arkadyevich did not lag behind. Witte, dissatisfied with the results of the investigation into the attempt on his life, he wrote: “From your letter, Count, I must draw one conclusion: either you consider me an idiot, or you find that I, too, am participating in the attempt on your life...”.

Sergei Witte wrote laconically about the death of Stolypin: “They killed him.”

Nicholas II personally never wrote detailed resolutions; he limited himself to notes in the margins, most often simply putting a “read sign.” He sat on official commissions no more than 30 times, always on extraordinary occasions, the emperor’s remarks at meetings were brief, he chose one side or another in the discussion.

The Hague Court is the brilliant “brainchild” of the Tsar

It is believed that the Hague International Court was the brilliant brainchild of Nicholas II. Yes, indeed the Russian Tsar was the initiator of the First Hague Peace Conference, but he was not the author of all its resolutions.

The most useful thing that the Hague Convention was able to do concerned the laws of war. Thanks to the agreement, WWI prisoners were kept in acceptable conditions, could communicate with home, and were not forced to work; sanitary stations were protected from attack, the wounded were cared for, and civilians were not subjected to mass violence.

But in reality, the Permanent Court of Arbitration has not brought much benefit over the 17 years of its work. Russia did not even appeal to the Chamber during the crisis in Japan, and other signatories did the same. “It turned out to be nothing” and the Convention on the Peaceful Settlement of International Issues. The Balkan War and then the First World War broke out in the world.

The Hague does not influence international affairs today. Few heads of state of world powers go to the international court.

Grigory Rasputin had a strong influence on the Tsar

Even before the abdication of Nicholas II, rumors began to appear among the people about excessive influence on the tsar. According to them, it turned out that the state was ruled not by the tsar, not by the government, but by the Tobolsk “elder” personally.

Of course, this was far from the case. Rasputin had influence at court and was allowed into the emperor's house. Nicholas II and the Empress called him “our friend” or “Gregory,” and he called them “dad and mom.”

However, Rasputin still exerted influence on the empress, while state decisions were made without his participation. Thus, it is well known that Rasputin opposed Russia’s entry into the First World War, and even after Russia entered the conflict, he tried to convince the royal family to enter into peace negotiations with the Germans.

The majority (of the grand dukes) supported the war with Germany and focused on England. For the latter, a separate peace between Russia and Germany threatened defeat in the war.

We should not forget that Nicholas II was the cousin of both the German Emperor Wilhelm II and the brother of the British King George V. Rasputin performed an applied function at court - he saved the heir Alexei from suffering. A circle of ecstatic admirers actually formed around him, but Nicholas II was not one of them.

Didn't abdicate the throne

One of the most enduring misconceptions is the myth that Nicholas II did not abdicate the throne, and the abdication document is a fake. There really are a lot of oddities in it: it was written on a typewriter on telegraph forms, although there were pens and writing paper on the train where Nicholas abdicated the throne on March 15, 1917. Supporters of the version that the renunciation manifesto was falsified cite the fact that the document was signed in pencil.

There is nothing strange about this. Nikolai signed many documents in pencil. Something else is strange. If this is really a fake and the tsar did not renounce, he should have written at least something about it in his correspondence, but there is not a word about it. Nicholas abdicated the throne for himself and his son in favor of his brother, Mikhail Alexandrovich.

The diary entries of the Tsar's confessor, the rector of the Fedorov Cathedral, Archpriest Afanasy Belyaev, have been preserved. In a conversation after confession, Nicholas II told him: “...And so, alone, without a close adviser, deprived of freedom, like a caught criminal, I signed an act of renunciation both for myself and for my son’s heir. I decided that if this is necessary for the good of my homeland, I am ready to do anything. I feel sorry for my family!”.

The very next day, March 3 (16), 1917, Mikhail Alexandrovich also abdicated the throne, transferring the decision on the form of government to the Constituent Assembly.

Yes, the manifesto was obviously written under pressure, and it was not Nikolai himself who wrote it. It is unlikely that he himself would have written: “There is no sacrifice that I would not make in the name of the real good and for the salvation of my dear Mother Russia.” However, formally there was a renunciation.

Interestingly, the myths and cliches about the abdication of the tsar largely came from Alexander Blok’s book “The Last Days of Imperial Power.” The poet enthusiastically accepted the revolution and became the literary editor of the Extraordinary Commission for the Affairs of Former Tsarist Ministers. That is, he processed verbatim transcripts of interrogations.

Young Soviet propaganda actively campaigned against the creation of the role of the martyr tsar. Its effectiveness can be judged from the diary of the peasant Zamaraev (he kept it for 15 years), preserved in the museum of the city of Totma, Vologda region. The peasant's head is full of cliches imposed by propaganda:

“Romanov Nikolai and his family have been deposed, are all under arrest and receive all food on a par with others on ration cards. Indeed, they did not care at all about the welfare of their people, and the people’s patience ran out. They brought their state to hunger and darkness. What was going on in their palace. This is horror and shame! It was not Nicholas II who ruled the state, but the drunkard Rasputin. All the princes were replaced and dismissed from their positions, including the commander-in-chief Nikolai Nikolaevich. Everywhere in all cities there is a new department, the old police are gone.”

Emperor Nicholas II Romanov (1868-1918) ascended the throne on October 20, 1894, after the death of his father Alexander III. The years of his reign from 1894 to 1917 were marked by the economic rise of Russia and at the same time the growth of revolutionary movements.

The latter was due to the fact that the new sovereign followed in everything the political guidelines that his father had instilled in him. In his soul, the king was deeply convinced that any parliamentary forms of government would harm the empire. Patriarchal relations were taken as the ideal, where the crowned ruler acted as a father, and the people were considered as children.

However, such archaic views did not correspond to the real political situation that had developed in the country at the beginning of the 20th century. It was this discrepancy that led the emperor, and with him the empire, to the disaster that occurred in 1917.

Emperor Nicholas II
artist Ernest Lipgart

Years of reign of Nicholas II (1894-1917)

The years of the reign of Nicholas II can be divided into two stages. The first before the revolution of 1905, and the second from 1905 until the abdication of the throne on March 2, 1917. The first period is characterized by a negative attitude towards any manifestation of liberalism. At the same time, the tsar tried to avoid any political transformations and hoped that the people would adhere to autocratic traditions.

But the Russian Empire suffered a complete defeat in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and then in 1905 a revolution broke out. All this became the reasons that forced the last ruler of the Romanov dynasty to make compromises and political concessions. However, they were perceived by the sovereign as temporary, so parliamentarism in Russia was hindered in every possible way. As a result, by 1917 the emperor had lost support in all layers of Russian society.

Considering the image of Emperor Nicholas II, it should be noted that he was an educated and extremely pleasant person to talk to. His favorite hobbies were art and literature. At the same time, the sovereign did not have the necessary determination and will, which were fully present in his father.

The cause of the disaster was the coronation of the emperor and his wife Alexandra Feodorovna on May 14, 1896 in Moscow. On this occasion, mass celebrations on Khodynka were scheduled for May 18, and it was announced that royal gifts would be distributed to people. This attracted a huge number of residents of Moscow and the Moscow region to Khodynskoye Field.

As a result of this, a terrible stampede arose in which, as journalists claimed, 5 thousand people died. The Mother See was shocked by the tragedy, and the tsar did not even cancel the celebrations in the Kremlin and the ball at the French embassy. People did not forgive the new emperor for this.

The second terrible tragedy was Bloody Sunday on January 9, 1905 (read more in the article Bloody Sunday). This time, the troops opened fire on the workers who were going to the Tsar to present the petition. About 200 people were killed, and 800 were injured of varying degrees of severity. This unpleasant incident occurred against the backdrop of the Russo-Japanese War, which was fought extremely unsuccessfully for the Russian Empire. After this event, Emperor Nicholas II received the nickname Bloody.

Revolutionary sentiments resulted in a revolution. A wave of strikes and terrorist attacks swept across the country. They killed policemen, officers, and tsarist officials. All this forced the tsar to sign a manifesto on the creation of the State Duma on August 6, 1905. However, this did not prevent an all-Russian political strike. The Emperor had no choice but to sign a new manifesto on October 17. He expanded the powers of the Duma and gave the people additional freedoms. At the end of April 1906, all this was approved by law. And only after this the revolutionary unrest began to decline.

Heir to the throne Nicholas with his mother Maria Feodorovna

Economic policy

The main creator of economic policy at the first stage of the reign was the Minister of Finance, and then the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Sergei Yulievich Witte (1849-1915). He was an active supporter of attracting foreign capital to Russia. According to his project, gold circulation was introduced in the state. At the same time, domestic industry and trade were supported in every possible way. At the same time, the state strictly controlled the development of the economy.

Since 1902, the Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Pleve (1846-1904) began to have a great influence on the tsar. The newspapers wrote that he was the royal puppeteer. He was an extremely intelligent and experienced politician, capable of constructive compromises. He sincerely believed that the country needed reforms, but only under the leadership of the autocracy. This extraordinary man was killed in the summer of 1904 by the Socialist Revolutionary Sazonov, who threw a bomb at his carriage in St. Petersburg.

In 1906-1911, policy in the country was determined by the decisive and strong-willed Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin (1862-1911). He fought the revolutionary movement, peasant revolts and at the same time carried out reforms. He considered the main thing to be agrarian reform. Rural communities were dissolved, and peasants received the rights to create their own farms. For this purpose, the Peasant Bank was transformed and many programs were developed. Stolypin's ultimate goal was to create a large layer of wealthy peasant farms. He set aside 20 years for this.

However, Stolypin's relations with the State Duma were extremely difficult. He insisted that the emperor dissolve the Duma and change the electoral law. Many perceived this as a coup d'etat. The next Duma turned out to be more conservative in its composition and more submissive to the authorities.

But not only the Duma members were dissatisfied with Stolypin, but also the tsar and the royal court. These people did not want radical reforms in the country. And on September 1, 1911, in the city of Kyiv, at the play “The Tale of Tsar Saltan,” Pyotr Arkadyevich was mortally wounded by the Socialist Revolutionary Bogrov. On September 5 he died and was buried in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. With the death of this man, the last hopes for reform without a bloody revolution disappeared.

In 1913, the country's economy was booming. It seemed to many that the “Silver Age” of the Russian Empire and the era of prosperity for the Russian people had finally arrived. This year the whole country celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. The festivities were magnificent. They were accompanied by balls and folk festivals. But everything changed on July 19 (August 1), 1914, when Germany declared war on Russia.

The last years of the reign of Nicholas II

With the outbreak of the war, the whole country experienced an extraordinary patriotic upsurge. Demonstrations took place in provincial cities and the capital expressing full support for Emperor Nicholas II. The fight against everything German swept across the country. Even St. Petersburg was renamed Petrograd. The strikes stopped, and mobilization covered 10 million people.

At the front, Russian troops initially advanced. But the victories ended in defeat in East Prussia under Tannenberg. Also, military operations against Austria, an ally of Germany, were initially successful. However, in May 1915, Austro-German troops inflicted a heavy defeat on Russia. She had to cede Poland and Lithuania.

The economic situation in the country began to deteriorate. The products produced by the military industry did not meet the needs of the front. Theft flourished in the rear, and numerous victims began to cause indignation in society.

At the end of August 1915, the emperor assumed the functions of supreme commander-in-chief, removing Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich from this post. This became a serious miscalculation, since all military failures began to be attributed to the sovereign, who did not have any military talents.

The crowning achievement of Russian military art was the Brusilov breakthrough in the summer of 1916. During this brilliant operation, a crushing defeat was inflicted on the Austrian and German troops. The Russian army occupied Volyn, Bukovina and most of Galicia. Large enemy war trophies were captured. But, unfortunately, this was the last major victory of the Russian army.

The further course of events was disastrous for the Russian Empire. Revolutionary sentiments intensified, discipline in the army began to decline. It became common practice not to follow orders from commanders. Cases of desertion have become more frequent. Both society and the army were irritated by the influence that Grigory Rasputin had on the royal family. A simple Siberian man was gifted with extraordinary abilities. He was the only one who could relieve attacks from Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from hemophilia.

Therefore, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna trusted the elder immensely. And he, using his influence at court, intervened in political issues. All this, naturally, irritated society. In the end, a conspiracy arose against Rasputin (for details, see the article The Murder of Rasputin). The presumptuous old man was killed in December 1916.

The coming year 1917 was the last in the history of the House of Romanov. The tsarist government no longer controlled the country. A special committee of the State Duma and the Petrograd Council formed a new government, headed by Prince Lvov. It demanded that Emperor Nicholas II abdicate the throne. On March 2, 1917, the sovereign signed a manifesto of abdication in favor of his brother Mikhail Alexandrovich. Michael also renounced supreme power. The reign of the Romanov dynasty is over.

Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
artist A. Makovsky

Personal life of Nicholas II

Nikolai married for love. His wife was Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt. After converting to Orthodoxy, she took the name Alexandra Fedorovna. The wedding took place on November 14, 1894 in the Winter Palace. During the marriage, the Empress gave birth to 4 girls (Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia) and in 1904 a boy was born. They named him Alexey

The last Russian emperor lived with his wife in love and harmony until his death. Alexandra Fedorovna herself had a complex and secretive character. She was shy and uncommunicative. Her world was confined to the crowned family, and the wife had a strong influence on her husband in both personal and political affairs.

She was a deeply religious woman and prone to all mysticism. This was greatly facilitated by the illness of Tsarevich Alexei. Therefore, Rasputin, who had a mystical talent, gained such influence at the royal court. But the people did not like Mother Empress for her excessive pride and isolation. This to a certain extent harmed the regime.

After his abdication, former Emperor Nicholas II and his family were arrested and remained in Tsarskoye Selo until the end of July 1917. Then the crowned persons were transported to Tobolsk, and from there in May 1918 they were transported to Yekaterinburg. There they were settled in the house of engineer Ipatiev.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the Russian Tsar and his family were brutally murdered in the basement of the Ipatiev House. After this, their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition and secretly buried (for more details about the death of the imperial family, read the article Regicides). In 1998, the found remains of the murdered were reburied in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg.

Thus ended the 300-year epic of the Romanov dynasty. It began in the 17th century in the Ipatiev Monastery, and ended in the 20th century in the house of engineer Ipatiev. And the history of Russia continued, but in a completely different capacity.

Burial place of the family of Nicholas II
in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg

Leonid Druzhnikov

Dedicated to the centenary of revolutionary events.

Not a single Russian tsar has had as many myths created as about the last one, Nicholas II. What really happened? Was the sovereign a sluggish and weak-willed person? Was he cruel? Could he have won the First World War? And how much truth is there in the black fabrications about this ruler?..

The story is told by Gleb Eliseev, candidate of historical sciences.

The Black Legend of Nicholas II

Rally in Petrograd, 1917

17 years have already passed since the canonization of the last emperor and his family, but you are still faced with an amazing paradox - many, even quite Orthodox, people dispute the fairness of canonizing Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich.

No one raises any protests or doubts about the legitimacy of the canonization of the son and daughters of the last Russian emperor. I have not heard any objections to the canonization of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Even at the Council of Bishops in 2000, when it came to the canonization of the Royal Martyrs, a special opinion was expressed only regarding the sovereign himself. One of the bishops said that the emperor did not deserve to be glorified, because “he is a state traitor... he, one might say, sanctioned the collapse of the country.”

And it is clear that in such a situation the spears are not broken at all over the martyrdom or Christian life of Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich. Neither one nor the other raises doubts even among the most rabid monarchy denier. His feat as a passion-bearer is beyond doubt.

The point is different - a latent, subconscious resentment: “Why did the sovereign allow a revolution to happen? Why didn’t you save Russia?” Or, as A. I. Solzhenitsyn so neatly put it in his article “Reflections on the February Revolution”: “Weak tsar, he betrayed us. All of us - for everything that follows."

The myth of the weak king, who supposedly voluntarily surrendered his kingdom, obscures his martyrdom and obscures the demonic cruelty of his tormentors. But what could the sovereign do in the current circumstances, when Russian society, like a herd of Gadarene pigs, was rushing into the abyss for decades?

Studying the history of Nicholas's reign, one is struck not by the weakness of the sovereign, not by his mistakes, but by how much he managed to do in an atmosphere of whipped-up hatred, malice and slander.

We must not forget that the sovereign received autocratic power over Russia completely unexpectedly, after the sudden, unforeseen and unanticipated death of Alexander III. Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich recalled the state of the heir to the throne immediately after his father’s death: “He could not gather his thoughts. He was aware that he had become the Emperor, and this terrible burden of power crushed him. “Sandro, what am I going to do! - he exclaimed pathetically. - What will happen to Russia now? I am not yet prepared to be a King! I can't rule the Empire. I don’t even know how to talk to ministers.”

However, after a brief period of confusion, the new emperor firmly took the helm of government and held it for twenty-two years, until he fell victim to a conspiracy at the top. Until “treason, cowardice, and deception” swirled around him in a dense cloud, as he himself noted in his diary on March 2, 1917.

The black mythology directed against the last sovereign was actively dispelled by both emigrant historians and modern Russian ones. And yet, in the minds of many, including fully churchgoers, of our fellow citizens, evil tales, gossip and anecdotes, which were presented as truth in Soviet history textbooks, stubbornly linger.

The myth of the guilt of Nicholas II in the Khodynka tragedy

It is tacitly customary to start any list of accusations with Khodynka - a terrible stampede that occurred during the coronation celebrations in Moscow on May 18, 1896. You might think that the sovereign ordered this stampede to be organized! And if anyone is to be blamed for what happened, then it would be the emperor’s uncle, Moscow Governor-General Sergei Alexandrovich, who did not foresee the very possibility of such an influx of public. It should be noted that they did not hide what happened, all the newspapers wrote about Khodynka, all of Russia knew about her. The next day, the Russian emperor and empress visited all the wounded in hospitals and held a memorial service for the dead. Nicholas II ordered the payment of pensions to the victims. And they received it until 1917, until politicians, who had been speculating on the Khodynka tragedy for years, made it so that any pensions in Russia ceased to be paid at all.

And the slander that has been repeated for years sounds absolutely vile, that the tsar, despite the Khodynka tragedy, went to the ball and had fun there. The sovereign was indeed forced to go to an official reception at the French embassy, ​​which he could not help but attend for diplomatic reasons (an insult to the allies!), paid his respects to the ambassador and left, having spent only 15 (!) minutes there.

And from this they created a myth about a heartless despot, having fun while his subjects die. This is where the absurd nickname “Bloody”, created by radicals and picked up by the educated public, came from.

The myth of the monarch's guilt in starting the Russo-Japanese War

The Emperor bids farewell to the soldiers of the Russo-Japanese War. 1904

They say that the sovereign pushed Russia into the Russo-Japanese War because the autocracy needed a “small victorious war.”

Unlike the “educated” Russian society, which was confident in the inevitable victory and contemptuously called the Japanese “macaques,” the emperor knew very well all the difficulties of the situation in the Far East and tried with all his might to prevent war. And we must not forget - it was Japan that attacked Russia in 1904. Treacherously, without declaring war, the Japanese attacked our ships in Port Arthur.

For the defeats of the Russian army and navy in the Far East, one can blame Kuropatkin, Rozhdestvensky, Stessel, Linevich, Nebogatov, and any of the generals and admirals, but not the sovereign, who was located thousands of miles from the theater of military operations and nevertheless did everything for victory.

For example, the fact that by the end of the war there were 20, and not 4, military trains per day along the unfinished Trans-Siberian Railway (as at the beginning) is the merit of Nicholas II himself.

And our revolutionary society “fought” on the Japanese side, which needed not victory, but defeat, which its representatives themselves honestly admitted. For example, representatives of the Socialist Revolutionary Party clearly wrote in their appeal to Russian officers: “Every victory of yours threatens Russia with the disaster of strengthening order, every defeat brings the hour of deliverance closer. Is it any surprise if the Russians rejoice at the success of your enemy?” Revolutionaries and liberals diligently stirred up trouble in the rear of the warring country, doing this, among other things, with Japanese money. This is now well known.

The Myth of Bloody Sunday

For decades, the standard accusation against the Tsar remained “Bloody Sunday” - the shooting of a supposedly peaceful demonstration on January 9, 1905. Why, they say, didn’t he leave the Winter Palace and fraternize with the people loyal to him?

Let's start with the simplest fact - the sovereign was not in Winter, he was at his country residence, in Tsarskoe Selo. He did not intend to come to the city, since both the mayor I. A. Fullon and the police authorities assured the emperor that they “had everything under control.” By the way, they didn’t deceive Nicholas II too much. In a normal situation, troops deployed to the streets would be enough to prevent unrest.

No one foresaw the scale of the January 9 demonstration, as well as the activities of the provocateurs. When Socialist Revolutionary militants began shooting at soldiers from the crowd of supposedly “peaceful demonstrators,” it was not difficult to foresee retaliatory actions. From the very beginning, the organizers of the demonstration planned a clash with the authorities, and not a peaceful march. They did not need political reforms, they needed “great upheavals.”

But what does the sovereign himself have to do with it? During the entire revolution of 1905–1907, he sought to find contact with Russian society and made specific and sometimes even overly bold reforms (like the provisions according to which the first State Dumas were elected). And what did he receive in response? Spitting and hatred, calls “Down with autocracy!” and encouraging bloody riots.

However, the revolution was not “crushed.” The rebellious society was pacified by the sovereign, who skillfully combined the use of force and new, more thoughtful reforms (the electoral law of June 3, 1907, according to which Russia finally received a normally functioning parliament).

The myth of how the Tsar “surrendered” Stolypin

They reproach the sovereign for allegedly insufficient support for “Stolypin’s reforms.” But who made Pyotr Arkadyevich prime minister, if not Nicholas II himself? Contrary, by the way, to the opinion of the court and immediate circle. And if there were moments of misunderstanding between the sovereign and the head of the cabinet, then they are inevitable in any intense and complex work. Stolypin's supposedly planned resignation did not mean a rejection of his reforms.

The myth of Rasputin's omnipotence

Tales about the last sovereign are not complete without constant stories about the “dirty man” Rasputin, who enslaved the “weak-willed tsar.” Now, after many objective investigations of the “Rasputin legend”, among which “The Truth about Grigory Rasputin” by A. N. Bokhanov stands out as fundamental, it is clear that the influence of the Siberian elder on the emperor was negligible. And the fact that the sovereign “did not remove Rasputin from the throne”? Where could he remove it from? From the bedside of his sick son, whom Rasputin saved when all the doctors had already given up on Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich? Let everyone think for themselves: is he ready to sacrifice the life of a child for the sake of stopping public gossip and hysterical newspaper chatter?

The myth of the sovereign’s guilt in the “misconduct” of the First World War

Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II. Photo by R. Golike and A. Vilborg. 1913

Emperor Nicholas II is also reproached for not preparing Russia for the First World War. The public figure I. L. Solonevich wrote most clearly about the efforts of the sovereign to prepare the Russian army for a possible war and about the sabotage of his efforts on the part of the “educated society”: “The “Duma of People’s Wrath”, as well as its subsequent reincarnation, rejects military loans: We are democrats and we don’t want militarism. Nicholas II arms the army by violating the spirit of the Basic Laws: in accordance with Article 86. This article provides for the right of the government, in exceptional cases and during parliamentary recess, to pass temporary laws without parliament - so that they are retroactively introduced at the very first parliamentary session. The Duma was dissolving (holidays), loans for machine guns went through even without the Duma. And when the session began, nothing could be done.”

And again, unlike ministers or military leaders (like Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich), the sovereign did not want war, he tried to delay it with all his might, knowing about the insufficient preparedness of the Russian army. For example, he directly spoke about this to the Russian ambassador to Bulgaria Neklyudov: “Now, Neklyudov, listen to me carefully. Do not forget for one minute the fact that we cannot fight. I don't want war. I have made it my immutable rule to do everything to preserve for my people all the advantages of a peaceful life. At this moment in history, it is necessary to avoid anything that could lead to war. There is no doubt that we cannot get involved in a war - at least for the next five or six years - until 1917. Although, if the vital interests and honor of Russia are at stake, we will be able, if absolutely necessary, to accept the challenge, but not before 1915. But remember - not one minute earlier, whatever the circumstances or reasons and whatever position we are in.”

Of course, many things in the First World War did not go as the participants planned. But why should these troubles and surprises be blamed on the sovereign, who at the beginning was not even the commander-in-chief? Could he have personally prevented the “Samson catastrophe”? Or the breakthrough of the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau into the Black Sea, after which plans to coordinate the actions of the Allies in the Entente went up in smoke?

When the will of the emperor could correct the situation, the sovereign did not hesitate, despite the objections of ministers and advisers. In 1915, the threat of such complete defeat loomed over the Russian army that its Commander-in-Chief, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, literally sobbed in despair. It was then that Nicholas II took the most decisive step - he not only stood at the head of the Russian army, but also stopped the retreat, which threatened to turn into a stampede.

The Emperor did not consider himself a great commander; he knew how to listen to the opinions of military advisers and choose successful solutions for the Russian troops. According to his instructions, the work of the rear was established; according to his instructions, new and even cutting-edge equipment was adopted (like Sikorsky bombers or Fedorov assault rifles). And if in 1914 the Russian military industry produced 104,900 shells, then in 1916 - 30,974,678! So much military equipment was prepared that it was enough for five years of the Civil War, and for arming the Red Army in the first half of the twenties.

In 1917, Russia, under the military leadership of its emperor, was ready for victory. Many people wrote about this, even W. Churchill, who was always skeptical and cautious about Russia: “Fate has never been as cruel to any country as to Russia. Her ship sank while the harbor was in sight. She had already weathered the storm when everything collapsed. All the sacrifices have already been made, all the work has been completed. Despair and betrayal took over the government when the task was already completed. The long retreats are over; shell hunger is defeated; weapons flowed in a wide stream; a stronger, more numerous, better equipped army guarded a huge front; the rear assembly points were crowded with people... In the management of states, when great events happen, the leader of the nation, whoever he is, is condemned for failures and glorified for successes. The point is not who did the work, who drew up the plan of struggle; blame or praise for the outcome falls on the one who has the authority of supreme responsibility. Why deny Nicholas II this ordeal?.. His efforts are downplayed; His actions are condemned; His memory is being defamed... Stop and say: who else turned out to be suitable? There was no shortage of talented and courageous people, ambitious and proud in spirit, courageous and powerful people. But no one was able to answer those few simple questions on which the life and glory of Russia depended. Holding victory already in her hands, she fell to the ground alive, like Herod of old, devoured by worms.”

At the beginning of 1917, the sovereign really failed to cope with the joint conspiracy of the top military and the leaders of opposition political forces.

And who could? It was beyond human strength.

The myth of voluntary renunciation

And yet, the main thing that even many monarchists accuse Nicholas II of is precisely renunciation, “moral desertion,” “flight from office.” The fact that he, according to the poet A. A. Blok, “renounced, as if he had surrendered the squadron.”

Now, again, after the scrupulous work of modern researchers, it becomes clear that there is no voluntary there was no abdication. Instead, a real coup took place. Or, as the historian and publicist M.V. Nazarov aptly noted, it was not “renunciation,” but “renunciation” that took place.

Even in the darkest Soviet times, they did not deny that the events of February 23 - March 2, 1917 at the Tsarist Headquarters and in the headquarters of the commander of the Northern Front were a coup at the top, “fortunately”, coinciding with the beginning of the “February bourgeois revolution”, launched (of course Well!) by the forces of the St. Petersburg proletariat.

Material on the topic

On March 2, 1917, Russian Emperor Nicholas II signed an abdication of the throne in favor of his brother Mikhail (who soon also abdicated). This day is considered the date of the death of the Russian monarchy. But there are still many questions about renunciation. We asked Gleb Eliseev, candidate of historical sciences, to comment on them.

With the riots in St. Petersburg fueled by the Bolshevik underground, everything is now clear. The conspirators only took advantage of this circumstance, exorbitantly exaggerating its significance, in order to lure the sovereign out of Headquarters, depriving him of contact with any loyal units and the government. And when the royal train, with great difficulty, reached Pskov, where the headquarters of General N.V. Ruzsky, commander of the Northern Front and one of the active conspirators, was located, the emperor was completely blocked and deprived of communication with the outside world.

In fact, General Ruzsky arrested the royal train and the emperor himself. And cruel psychological pressure began on the sovereign. Nicholas II was begged to give up power, which he never aspired to. Moreover, this was done not only by Duma deputies Guchkov and Shulgin, but also by the commanders of all (!) fronts and almost all fleets (with the exception of Admiral A.V. Kolchak). The Emperor was told that his decisive step would be able to prevent unrest and bloodshed, that this would immediately put an end to the St. Petersburg unrest...

Now we know very well that the sovereign was basely deceived. What could he have thought then? At the forgotten Dno station or on the sidings in Pskov, cut off from the rest of Russia? Didn’t you consider that it was better for a Christian to humbly cede royal power rather than shed the blood of his subjects?

But even under pressure from the conspirators, the emperor did not dare to go against the law and conscience. The manifesto he compiled clearly did not suit the envoys of the State Duma. The document, which was eventually published as a text of renunciation, raises doubts among a number of historians. Its original has not been preserved; only a copy is available in the Russian State Archives. There are reasonable assumptions that the sovereign's signature was copied from the order on the assumption of supreme command by Nicholas II in 1915. The signature of the Minister of the Court, Count V.B. Fredericks, who allegedly certified the abdication, was also forged. Which, by the way, the count himself clearly spoke about later, on June 2, 1917, during interrogation: “But for me to write such a thing, I can swear that I would not do it.”

And already in St. Petersburg, the deceived and confused Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich did something that, in principle, he had no right to do - he transferred power to the Provisional Government. As A.I. Solzhenitsyn noted: “The end of the monarchy was the abdication of Mikhail. He is worse than abdicating: he blocked the path to all other possible heirs to the throne, he transferred power to an amorphous oligarchy. His abdication turned the change of monarch into a revolution.”

Usually, after statements about the illegal overthrow of the sovereign from the throne, both in scientific discussions and on the Internet, cries immediately begin: “Why didn’t Tsar Nicholas protest later? Why didn’t he expose the conspirators? Why didn’t you raise loyal troops and lead them against the rebels?”

That is, why didn’t he start a civil war?

Yes, because the sovereign did not want her. Because he hoped that by leaving he would calm down the new unrest, believing that the whole point was the possible hostility of society towards him personally. After all, he, too, could not help but succumb to the hypnosis of the anti-state, anti-monarchist hatred to which Russia had been subjected for years. As A. I. Solzhenitsyn correctly wrote about the “liberal-radical Field” that engulfed the empire: “For many years (decades) this Field flowed unhindered, its lines of force thickened - and penetrated and subjugated all the brains in the country, at least in some way touched enlightenment, at least the beginnings of it. It almost completely controlled the intelligentsia. More rare, but permeated by its power lines were state and official circles, the military, and even the priesthood, the episcopate (the entire Church as a whole is already... powerless against this Field), and even those who fought most against the Field: the most right-wing circles and the throne itself."

And did these troops loyal to the emperor exist in reality? After all, even Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich on March 1, 1917 (that is, before the formal abdication of the sovereign) transferred the Guards crew subordinate to him to the jurisdiction of the Duma conspirators and appealed to other military units to “join the new government”!

The attempt of Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich to prevent bloodshed by renouncing power, through voluntary self-sacrifice, ran into the evil will of tens of thousands of those who wanted not the pacification and victory of Russia, but blood, madness and the creation of “heaven on earth” for a “new man”, free from faith and conscience.

And even the defeated Christian sovereign was like a sharp knife in the throat of such “guardians of humanity.” He was intolerable, impossible.

They couldn't help but kill him.

The myth that the execution of the royal family was the arbitrariness of the Ural Regional Council

Emperor Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei
in the link. Tobolsk, 1917-1918

The more or less vegetarian, toothless early Provisional Government limited itself to the arrest of the emperor and his family, the socialist clique of Kerensky achieved the exile of the sovereign, his wife and children to. And for whole months, right up to the Bolshevik revolution, one can see how the dignified, purely Christian behavior of the emperor in exile contrasts with the evil vanity of the politicians of the “new Russia”, who sought “to begin with” to bring the sovereign into “political oblivion.”

And then an openly atheistic Bolshevik gang came to power, which decided to transform this non-existence from “political” into “physical”. After all, back in April 1917, Lenin declared: “We consider Wilhelm II to be the same crowned robber, worthy of execution, as Nicholas II.”

Only one thing is unclear - why did they hesitate? Why didn’t they try to destroy Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich immediately after the October Revolution?

Probably because they were afraid of popular indignation, afraid of public reaction with their still fragile power. Apparently, the unpredictable behavior of “abroad” was also frightening. In any case, the British Ambassador D. Buchanan warned the Provisional Government: “Any insult inflicted on the Emperor and His Family will destroy the sympathy aroused by March and the course of the revolution, and will humiliate the new government in the eyes of the world.” True, in the end it turned out that these were just “words, words, nothing but words.”

And yet there remains a feeling that, in addition to rational motives, there was some inexplicable, almost mystical fear of what the fanatics were planning to do.

After all, for some reason, years after the Yekaterinburg murder, rumors spread that only one sovereign was shot. Then they declared (even at a completely official level) that the Tsar’s killers were severely condemned for abuse of power. And later, for almost the entire Soviet period, the version about the “arbitrariness of the Yekaterinburg Council”, allegedly frightened by the white units approaching the city, was officially accepted. They say that so that the sovereign would not be released and become the “banner of the counter-revolution,” he had to be destroyed. The fog of fornication hid the secret, and the essence of the secret was a planned and clearly conceived savage murder.

Its exact details and background have not yet been clarified, the testimony of eyewitnesses is surprisingly confused, and even the discovered remains of the Royal Martyrs still raise doubts about their authenticity.

Now only a few unambiguous facts are clear.

On April 30, 1918, Emperor Nikolai Alexandrovich, his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and their daughter Maria were escorted from Tobolsk, where they had been in exile since August 1917, to Yekaterinburg. They were placed in custody in the former house of engineer N.N. Ipatiev, located on the corner of Voznesensky Prospekt. The remaining children of the Emperor and Empress - daughters Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia and son Alexei - were reunited with their parents only on May 23.

Was this an initiative of the Yekaterinburg Council, not coordinated with the Central Committee? Hardly. Judging by indirect evidence, at the beginning of July 1918, the top leadership of the Bolshevik party (primarily Lenin and Sverdlov) decided to “liquidate the royal family.”

Trotsky, for example, wrote about this in his memoirs:

“My next visit to Moscow came after the fall of Yekaterinburg. In a conversation with Sverdlov, I asked in passing:

Yes, where is the king?

“It’s over,” he answered, “he was shot.”

Where is the family?

And his family is with him.

All? - I asked, apparently with a tinge of surprise.

That’s it,” Sverdlov answered, “but what?”

He was waiting for my reaction. I didn't answer.

-Who decided? - I asked.

We decided here. Ilyich believed that we should not leave them a living banner, especially in the current difficult conditions.”

(L.D. Trotsky. Diaries and letters. M.: “Hermitage”, 1994. P.120. (Record dated April 9, 1935); Leon Trotsky. Diaries and letters. Edited by Yuri Felshtinsky. USA, 1986 , p.101.)

At midnight on July 17, 1918, the emperor, his wife, children and servants were awakened, taken to the basement and brutally killed. It is in the fact that they killed brutally and cruelly that all the eyewitness accounts, so different in other respects, amazingly coincide.

The bodies were secretly taken outside of Yekaterinburg and somehow tried to be destroyed. Everything that remained after the desecration of the bodies was buried just as secretly.

The Yekaterinburg victims had a presentiment of their fate, and it was not for nothing that Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna, during her imprisonment in Yekaterinburg, wrote out the lines in one of her books: “Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ went to death as if on a holiday, facing inevitable death, they retained the same wonderful peace of mind , which did not leave them for a minute. They walked calmly towards death because they hoped to enter into a different, spiritual life, which opens up for a person beyond the grave.”

P.S. Sometimes they notice that “Tsar Nicholas II atoned for all his sins before Russia with his death.” In my opinion, this statement reveals some kind of blasphemous, immoral quirk of public consciousness. All the victims of the Yekaterinburg Golgotha ​​were “guilty” only of persistent confession of the faith of Christ until their death and died a martyr’s death.

And the first of them is the passion-bearer sovereign Nikolai Alexandrovich.

On the screensaver there is a fragment of a photo: Nicholas II on the imperial train. 1917