The Fall of the Romanovs Part 1

 Russian history is always complicated. In the Middle Ages it was a small kingdom of Vikings centered in Kyiv. Gradually it spread to include the area ruled by Moscow. By the mid 16th century the center of power had shifted to Moscow. Under the Grand Prince Ivan IV (known as "Ivan the Terrible") the power of Muscovy continued to grow. Ivan was proclaimed the first Tsar and ruled until 1575.

After that time Russia expanded its territory to create a large empire. By the time of Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725) and Catherine the Great (r. 1762-1796) Russia had expanded considerably. The Romanovs had ruled Russia since 1613 under Michael I. Russia remained a feudal empire, essentially, not freeing the serfs until 1861 under Alexander II. Despite this, the vast majority of Russia's population lived in grinding poverty while the nobility and royalty lived in splendor.

Then we come to Nicholas II. He has become a poster child for royal incompetence, and deserves every bit of it. Nicholas and his family lived in isolated splendor with palaces, beautiful clothing, and fancy food. Prior to Nicholas' reign, unrest had begun in Russia by 1825 with the Decembrist revolt. As the 19th century progressed there seemed to be little change other than the freeing of the serfs.That was significant  but it did not effectively improve the economic hopes of former serfs. Poverty still reigned supreme.

Mahatma Gandhi famously said that "poverty is the worst form of violence" and 19th century Russia is a classic example of that. Socialist groups became active as time went on. This came to a head on March 13, 1881 when a Socialist group called the "People's Will" assassinated Tsar Alexander II by throwing a bomb into his carriage in St. Petersburg. Among those implicated in the assassination was Aleksandr Ulyanov, who was executed for his participation. His brother, who came to be known as Vladimir Lenin, rose to prominence later.

Czarist Russia presented itself as an enlightened empire. The nobility had relatives and contacts all over Europe and they lived on large estates farmed by large numbers of laborers. It was very much an agricultural society.

The stamp above, from 1889, typified the postal imagery of the time. This sort of general image, proudly displaying the Russian double-headed eagle, presented an imagery of stability and of empire. As the 19th century progressed nothing could have been further from the truth.

Peter the Great, 1913 commemorative issue

Nicholas II came to the throne after his father, Alexander III died in 1894 at the age of 49. Nicholas came to the throne at the age of 26, completely unprepared to rule such a vast empire. He soon married his first cousin Alexandra, another grandchild of Queen Victoria of England.

Nicholas resisted all efforts on the part of his government to modernize Russia. He grudgingly allowed for the formation of an elected Duma ("house") after the 1905 Winter Palace massacre. His usual tactic was to try to repress political dissidence with military force.

In 1913 the Romanovs celebrated three centuries on the throne, with lavish balls, church services and other commemorative activities. Russia also issued a set of stamps depicting notable Romanov rulers including Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and of course, Nicholas II.

Catherine the Great, 1913 commemorative

 issue

 

 

Nicholas II 1913 commemorative issue

 
I'm sure that the vast majority of Russians were not impressed with the lavish celebrations of a family that kept them in poverty. The family also hid a catastrophic secret. Their son, Alexis, was a hemophiliac. Hemophilia is passed down through mothers to their sons, and Victoria's family was rife with it. At that time hemophilia was a death sentence. They tried all sorts of medical treatments and eventually latched on to a classic social climber, Grigori Rasputin. I don't have a stamp for him. There aren't any. Rasputin mesmerized the family with his repeated healings of Alexis from 1907-1916. During his ten years of influence Rasputin drank and caroused his way through Russian high society. By 1916 the nobility had had enough and he was killed by members of the Romanov family.

Concurrent with Rasputin's grip on the Romanovs, Russia's participation in World War I was disastrous. Failure after failure led Nicholas to decide to command the army himself. He traveled by train to be nearer the troops. This couldn't have been a more incompetent decision, for he left his even more incompetent wife, Alexandra, in charge of the government.

Conditions in Russia deteriorated and inflation set in, illustrated by the 1913 stamp depicting Nicholas overstamped with ten kopeks over seven. Inflation like this is never a good sign and is often the beginning of the end.

With the war taking millions of soldiers' lives and starvation setting in, the Russian people had had enough. On February 28, 1917 the military in St. Petersburg refused to fight, and formed the Petrograd Soviet. On March 15 Nicholas abdicated the throne.

A provisional government was set up as a republic. The rest of 1917 was rocky, with several governments taking over in succession. This imperforate stamp from the first provisional government of 1917 is a reprint of a czarist era stamp. They reused old plates to save on expense and provide some semblance of postal services to the country.

Nicholas and his family were famously killed on July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg in Siberia.

In the next installment I'll look at the beginnings of the Soviet Union and the humanitarian catastrophe that followed.

As a postscript to this look at the fall of the Romanovs I wouldn't say that they deserved what happened to them. However, they brought it on themselves. At every turn Nicholas could have adapted and kept his throne. It's possible that with the assassination of Alexander II the country had already gone past any hope of a constitutional monarchy. We'll never know.

Nicholas was not a good ruler. He knew it, too. At his father’s death he lamented that he didn’t want to be Czar and that he had no idea what to do. However, convinced that God had destined him to be Czar he went ahead. He wasn’t a bad person but he was totally unfit for the task of ruling such an empire in a time of rapid change. He was easily swayed, to the point that one courtier quipped that the most important person in Russia was the most recent person Nicholas had spoken with.

With the empire seething with potential revolution Nicholas and his family continued their summers on the Crimea, yacht excursions on the Baltic Sea, and all the time, hiding the hemophilia of their son, Alexis. Nicholas knew that his son would not live to see twenty.

The 1905 Winter Palace demonstration should have been a wake up call. Had Nicholas embraced a constitutional monarchy he would have lived out his days as the ceremonial monarch of Russia. But, it didn’t happen that way. He wanted total control, and his total control led to his own demise. He grudgingly agreed to a Duma, or legislature, but he had the power to dismiss it whenever he wanted to and could veto anything they did. He dismissed it several times.
 

Lenin himself did not expect the overthrow of the Romanvs to happen during his lifetime but he was happy to jump on the wagon when the opportunity presented itself. More next time.