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The Great War - Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serb nationalists in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, Tsar Nicholas ii vacillated as to Russia's course. He neither wanted to abandon the Serbs to Austria-Hungary's not so tender mercies, nor to provoke a general war. In a series of letters exchanged with the Kaiser (the so-called "Willy and Nicky correspondence," named for the nicknames the two monarchs called each other in English), the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and attempted to get the other to stand down. Tsar Nicholas ii himself took concrete measures in this regard, demanding that Russia's mobilization be only against the Austrian border, in the hopes of preventing war with Germany. But it was too late for personal communications among monarchs to determine the course of events - the Russians had no contingency plans for a partial mobilization, and on July 31, 1914, Nicholas took the fateful step of ordering a general mobilization, which led almost immediately to a declaration of war from Germany, and the outbreak of the First World War.
The outbreak of war with Germany on August 1, 1914, found Russia grossly unprepared, and an early advance ended in staggering Russian losses. Nicholas felt it his duty to lead his army directly, assuming the role of commander-in-chief after his dismisal of his uncle, Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaievich (September 1915) following the loss of the Russian-ruled part of Poland. His efforts to oversee the operations of the war left domestic issues essentially in the hands of Alexandra. But Nicholas did not understand (since he was deliberately cut off from public opinion) how suspicious the common people were of his wife, both because she was German by birth and because of the destructive rumours that spread of her dependence on Rasputin. Rasputin's murder by a group of courtiers in December 1916 arose from anger at the damage that his influence was doing to Russia's war effort and the monarchy.
Revolution - Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
Mounting national hardship and the army's initial failure to maintain the temporary military success of June 1916 led to renewed strikes and riots in the following winter. After the "February Revolution" of March 1917 (February in the old Russian calendar) Nicholas was forced to abdicate in his own name and that of his son, in favor of his brother, Michael II, who abdicated the following day, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.
Execution - Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
The provisional Russian government kept Tsar Nicholas ii, Alexandra, and their children confined in the royal residence The Alexander Palace, until they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia in August 1917, a step by the Kerensky government designed to remove them from the capital and from possible harm. They remained in Tobolsk until after the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917 (the "October Revolution"), but were moved to Red-controlled Yekaterinburg. The last Russian Tsar and all his family, including the gravely ill Alexei, along with several family servants, were executed by firing squad in the basement of the Ipatiev House where they had been imprisoned, on the night of July 16 (or 17), 1918 by a detachment of Bolsheviks led by Yakov Yurovsky.
The execution took place when units of the Czech Legion approached Yekaterinburg, where the Tsar's family was being held in captivity. The Czechs' presence in the area was incidental as they made their retreat out of Russia. The Bolshevik jailers of the tsar feared that the Legion would take the town and free the Tsar, so the safe course seemed to be the immediate liquidation of the imperial family.
Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
For a long time, the bodies of Tsar Nicholas ii and his family were believed to have been disposed of down a mineshaft at a site called the Four Brothers. Initially, this was true—they had indeed been disposed of that way on the night of July 16/17. But Yurovsky, upon hearing the following morning that stories were abuzz in Yekaterinburg about the disposal site, went back to remove the bodies and conceal them elsewhere. He had initially intended to bury the bodies down another mineshaft some miles away, but when the vehicle carrying the bodies broke down on the way there, he made new arrangements. With two exceptions, the bodies were buried in a sealed and concealed pit on a portion of a since-abandoned cart track 12 miles north of Yekaterinburg called Koptyaki Road.
The concealment of the execution of the Royal Family and of their bodies led to rumours for many years that the Emperor or some members of his family were still alive. Several people claimed to have seen the Emperor in labour camps in Siberia in the 1930s. These claims were never taken seriously, but a number of people in the 1920s and '30s claimed more credibly to be one or other of the Romanov children. The best known of these was Anna Anderson, who maintained throughout her life that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and succeeded in persuading some members of the exiled Romanov family. It is likely that she believed her claim herself, but posthumous DNA analysis has shown it to be false.
In the early 1990s, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the bodies of the Romanovs were located, exhumed and formally identified. A secret report by Yurovsky, which came to light in the late 1970s, but did not become public knowledge until the 1990s, helped the authorities to locate the bodies. DNA analysis was a key means of identifying them. A blood sample from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (a descendant of Queen Victoria and thus a cousin of Alexandra) was used to identify Alexandra and her daughters through their mitochondrial genes. Another method for identification was the new forensic technique of the superimposition of photos over the skulls.
Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
There were two bodies missing. These were those of Alexei and one of the daughters—Tatiana, Maria or Anastasia. According to Yurovsky's account, the bodies of Alexei and one of the daughters, mistaken by Yurovsky's detachment for Alexandra, were burnt near the burial site and their ashes scattered and concealed. Some elements in Russia, particularly in the Orthodox Church, maintained that the bodies were not those of the Royal Family, but following a long series of bureaucratic and political delays, the remains of the family were reinterred in the Romanov family crypt in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998 with much ceremony on the 80th anniversary of the execution.
Tsar Nicholas ii's life was dramatized in the film Nicholas and Alexandra.
Sainthood - Biography of Tsar Nicholas ii
On August 14, 2000 Tsar Nicholas ii and his immediate family were canonized as saints by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. They had already been venerated by some members of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia for several years previous to this. According to a statement by the Moscow synod, they were glorified as saints for the following reasons:
"In the last Orthodox Russian monarch and members of his family we see people who sincerely strove to incarnate in their lives the commands of the Gospel. In the suffering borne by the Royal Family in prison with humility, patience, and meekness in their martyrs deaths in Ekaterinburg in the night of 4/17 July 1918 was revealed the light of the faith of Christ that conquers evil."
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