Nicholas II

Ernst Friedrich von Liphart painted Nicholas II in 1897 at Tsarskoye Selo: a young emperor from life, three years into a reign that had not yet met a square of petitioners. Later oil of a face. This page is the man who, on 1 November 1894, 20 October Old Style, succeeded Alexander III, and who was crowned in Moscow on 26 May 1896. Nikolay Aleksandrovich had been born on 6 May 1868, 18 May New Style, at Tsarskoye Selo, eldest son of Alexander III and Maria Fyodorovna, Dagmar of Denmark. In 1894 he married Alexandra, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. They had four daughters — Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia — and one son, Alexis. The domestic life, Britannica’s life says, was serene. The political life was not fitted to the tasks.

Neither by upbringing nor by temperament was Nicholas fitted for the complex tasks that awaited him as autocratic ruler of a vast empire. He had received a military education from his tutor. His tastes and interests were those of the average young Russian officers of his day. He had few intellectual pretensions but delighted in physical exercise and the trappings of army life: uniforms, insignia, parades. Yet on formal occasions he felt ill at ease. Though he possessed great personal charm, he was by nature timid. He shunned close contact with his subjects, preferring the privacy of his family circle. Alexandra had the strength of character that he lacked, and he fell completely under her sway. His view of his role as autocrat was childishly simple: he derived his authority from God, to whom alone he was responsible, and it was his sacred duty to preserve his absolute power intact. He lacked the strength of will necessary in one who had such an exalted conception of his task.

Soon after his accession Nicholas proclaimed his uncompromising views in an address to liberal deputies from the zemstvos. He dismissed as senseless dreams their aspirations to share in the work of government. He met the rising groundswell of popular unrest with intensified police repression. He distrusted his ministers, mainly because he felt them to be intellectually superior to himself and feared they sought to usurp his sovereign prerogatives. In pursuing the path of duty he had to wage a continual struggle against himself, suppressing his natural indecisiveness and assuming a mask of self-confident resolution. His dedication to the dogma of autocracy was an inadequate substitute for a constructive policy, which alone could have prolonged the imperial regime. Those sentences are the life’s verdict. This page may repeat them. It should not improve them.

A later view of the 1896 coronation in Moscow. Use it as the sacred theatre of a power he would not share, then return to dated policy. Gold vestments are not a Far Eastern war. They are how an autocrat liked to be seen at the beginning.

Nicholas was the first Russian sovereign to show personal interest in Asia, visiting in 1891, while still tsesarevich, India, China, and Japan. Later he nominally supervised the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. His attempt to maintain and strengthen Russian influence in Korea, where Japan also had a foothold, was partly responsible for the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. Russia’s defeat not only frustrated Nicholas’s grandiose dreams of making Russia a great Eurasian power, with China, Tibet, and Persia under its control, but also presented him with serious problems at home, where discontent grew into the revolutionary movement of 1905. For several years before 1905, and especially after that humiliating war, diverse social groups demonstrated their discontent. Their protests ranged from liberal rhetoric to strikes and included student riots and terrorist assassinations. The war is this page’s foreign fact. The square in January is the next page’s opening.

In foreign policy his naïveté and lighthearted attitude toward international obligations sometimes embarrassed his professional diplomats. The alliance with William II at Björkö in July 1905 belongs to the year the next article must narrate; name it only as a habit of the man, not as that year’s revolution. Keep Rasputin out of this page. Keep 1914 out of it. Keep the abdication out of it. Nicholas here is 1894 to the eve of Bloody Sunday: a timid autocrat, a strong wife, a sacred duty, a dismissal of dreams, a taste for parades, an Asian curiosity, a railway he nominally supervised, and a war for Korea he could not win. The next title will take the massacre, the soviets, the manifesto, the Duma, and Stolypin. This title must not steal them.

He considered all who opposed him, regardless of their views, as malicious conspirators. Disregarding the advice of his future prime minister Witte, he refused to make concessions to the constitutionalists until events forced him to yield more than might have been necessary had he been more flexible. That sentence is the life’s hinge into 1905. Leave the yielding to the next page. Record here only the refusal and the distrust. Witte had put the rouble on gold in 1897, in this reign, under a finance minister this emperor inherited and then, in 1903, dismissed from that post. The finance years were the previous industrial title. The dismissal is a character fact: a sovereign who feared able men. Put it in one clause. Do not rewrite Witte’s budget.

Keep barge haulers out of this page except as the labour the capital already contained. Keep 1861 out of it. Keep Pobedonostsev’s 1881 lesson in one clause: the father had commanded less fear; the son antagonised the zemstvo liberals at once. Alexander III had died at Livadiya. This grandson was crowned in Moscow. The contrast is temperament, not a second famine. The previous workers had struck in 1902 and 1903. This emperor answered with police repression and a dogma. The dogma would be tested in a square in January 1905. This page should leave that square closed, with a war lost in the east and a phrase about dreams still hanging in the air.

He took autocracy as a duty owed to God. He called the wish to share it a dream without sense.

Tojo Shotaro painted Tsushima in 1905: a sea fight that broke the dream of Eurasian grandeur. Later Japanese oil, not a Russian dispatch. Use it for the defeat, then put it aside. Smoke on water is not a petition on snow. It is why discontent at home, Britannica says, grew into a revolutionary movement. The movement’s first famous morning is the next title. This title may show the sea. It may not walk to the Winter Palace.

Do not invent Khodynka. The life used here does not name that crush, and this site will not. Do not invent a conversation with Alexandra beyond her sway and his lack of strength. Do not invent the wording of the zemstvo address beyond senseless dreams. The children may be named because the life names them. Their later fate is not this page. Keep the edge for the next title. Keep this page a man, a marriage, a coronation, a phrase, and a lost war.

Paul had been killed by men who wanted a different emperor. Alexander II had been killed by men who wanted a different state. What this book can write of Nicholas here is the beginning: a timid officer on a sacred throne, a finance minister he distrusted, a Far East he wanted, a Japan that beat him. The workers of the last article had already struck. The zemstvos had already dreamed. He had already told them the dreams were senseless. 1905 would test whether a massacre could make him yield. That test is not yet. The uniform and the sea are.

Tojo’s Tsushima is Japanese memory in oil. Use it for 1904–05 at sea, then put it aside. A sinking line is not October in Petersburg and not Liphart’s young sitting that opened this page. It is the humiliation the next revolution fed on. The attempt to hold Korea, where Japan also had a foothold, had been partly responsible for the war. The defeat frustrated the dream of a great Eurasian power with China, Tibet, and Persia under control, and it presented the emperor with problems at home.

Stop this page before 9 January 1905. The next title is Russia on the edge of the twentieth century. Nicholas here is accession, coronation, Alexandra, God-given autocracy, senseless dreams, Asia, a railway in name, Korea, a lost war. Liphart’s sitting is the young face. The coronation is the rite. Tsushima is the bill. The chapter began with a son who chose to change Russia from above. It ends by introducing a grandson who would change it only when a square and a general strike forced him to promise a Duma. That promise is the last article. This one should remain a man who would not promise until he had already lost a fleet. He had already, soon after accession, told zemstvo liberals that sharing government was a senseless dream. The war made the cost of that sentence visible.

The large Russia of the nineteenth century had stood in Paris, frozen under Nicholas I, reformed under Alexander II, and stiffened under Alexander III. This Nicholas inherited the mills and the gold rouble and the clipped zemstvo and the dogma. He was not fitted for the tasks. Britannica says so twice, in temperament and in policy. This page repeats it without adding a novel. The next page will add Bloody Sunday, because the sources date it, and a manifesto, because the sources date it, and a prime minister shot in a theatre, because the sources date that too. None of those dates are this title’s to spend. This title has spent 1894, 1896, a phrase, and 1904–05 at sea. That is a reign’s beginning. The edge comes after the beginning.