During the February Revolution, Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia
since 1894, is forced to abdicate the throne by the Petrograd
insurgents, and a provincial government is installed in his place.
Crowned
on May 26, 1894, Nicholas was neither trained nor inclined to rule,
which did not help the autocracy he sought to preserve in an era
desperate for change. The disastrous outcome of the Russo-Japanese War
led to the Russian Revolution
of 1905, which the czar diffused only after signing a manifesto
promising representative government and basic civil liberties in Russia.
However, Nicholas soon retracted most of these concessions, and the
Bolsheviks and other revolutionary groups won wide support. In 1914,
Nicholas led his country into another costly war, and discontent in
Russia grew as food became scarce, soldiers became war-weary, and
devastating defeats on the eastern front demonstrated the czar’s
ineffectual leadership.
In March 1917, the army garrison at
Petrograd joined striking workers in demanding socialist reforms, and
Czar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Nicholas and his family were
first held at the Czarskoye Selo palace, then in the Yekaterinburg
palace near Tobolsk. In July 1918, the advance of counterrevolutionary
forces caused the Yekaterinburg Soviet forces to fear that Nicholas
might be rescued. After a secret meeting, a death sentence was passed on
the imperial family, and Nicholas, his wife, his children, and several
of their servants were gunned down on the night of July 16.
