The legacy of Nicholas II today
At the root of the controversy is the young United Russia MP Natalia Poklonskaya, known for her very pious Orthodox faith and for having been appointed Attorney General of Crimea after the annexation of the peninsula. Poklonskaya, who is said to feel a strange devouring passion for Nicholas II, tried by all means to prevent the release of the film, arguing to the Prosecutor General of Russia that it contained anti-Russian and anti-religious elements. Her initiatives went unheeded, and she organised a nationwide campaign to ban all screenings of the film, which no one - not even the authorities - had yet seen. A whole community of clergy, monarchists and ultra-conservative Orthodox believers rallied to her cause. During the summer, their actions reached levels of violence rarely seen before: cinemas holding a screening were threatened with fire, Uchitel's studio was targeted by Molotov cocktail jets and two cars were burnt down in front of his lawyers' offices. But the ultra-orthodox activists got nothing from the authorities: various members of the Duma and the government took a stand in favour of the film and some of the most extreme leaders of the protesters were arrested and imprisoned. For Nicholas II, who was canonized in 2000 by the Russian Orthodox Church, remains however a character with a disputed heritage. While other historical figures are regularly reinvented by the Kremlin as levers of social cohesion around which to federate a patriotic national narrative, this is not really the case with the last tsar. Nicholas II was, in the general opinion of historians, a weak and clumsy ruler whose actions (or rather, inaction) precipitated the end of the Empire.
Young years
The young Nikolai Alexandrovich was born in 1868, while his grandfather Tsar Alexander II had just launched a series of liberal-inspired "great reforms" aimed at modernizing Russia. The most emblematic of these was undoubtedly the abolition of serfdom, pronounced in 1861. When the tsar was assassinated by a terrorist group in 1881, Alexander III ascended the throne, but Nikolai, who became tsarevich, showed little enthusiasm and predisposition to the idea of governing one day. Alexander III's policy was the opposite of his father's and heralded a particularly conservative and reactionary period in Russian history, which lasted until the revolution of 1905. During this time, the future Nicholas II remained distant from the affairs of the Court and did not take much interest in his political formation. His tutor was first Constantin Pobiedonostsev, an extremely influential conservative jurist, before the young man joined the university and then the army. From the military function, he will retain above all the rich social life, showing little appetite for strategic affairs. The tsarevich was initially supposed to play the role of representative of the Empire to the European courts, a function that suits the personality of the heir: Nikolai is interested in arts and culture, he is handsome, affable, and does not question orders. It is even his father who will go so far as to encourage his affair with the famous Kschessinska, seeing in his son a young Petsburg officer rather than a future emperor.
A premature coronation
But the disease took Alexander III prematurely, and Nicholas II was enthroned in 1894. Despite the reluctance of his family, who did not look favourably on a union with a Germanic house, he marries his cousin, the German princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt, whom he has loved since his adolescence. Nicholas II, who becomes Tsar, carries on his father's conservative policies and "counter-reforms" in every respect, except that he has neither the initiative nor the strength of character of Alexander III. The young tsar is inexperienced and disinterested, he relies on his ministers to govern and does not understand the changes taking place in the country, nor does he hear the anger that rumbles. For despite the recent abolition of serfdom, the peasant condition is deteriorating: the nobility's land is being protected at all costs and there is not enough land to provide a living for all the new small farmers, who are also under unprecedented tax pressure. In parallel with the remarkable development of industry by the Minister of Finance Serge Witte, a class of workers, also disadvantaged, appeared in the country's major cities and industrial centres. The government also restricted religious freedom and non-orthodox people were persecuted, particularly Jews: the first pogroms took place in the "Residence Zone" in the west of the Empire. Access to education was also deliberately restricted, the aim being not to provide the oppressed classes with the means of emancipation. However, Alexander II's "great reforms" nevertheless allowed the emergence of a middle class, an early bourgeoisie consisting mainly of professionals in the tertiary sector. Ironically, it was they who gradually laid the foundations of the revolution.
The 1905 revolution
As early as 1898, the Social Democratic Party (Marxist) and the Social Revolutionary Party (populist-inspired) structured a large part of the opposition around them. At the beginning of the century, peasant, workers and student revolts multiplied. In 1904, as social unrest shook the country more and more violently, Nicholas II was convinced by a group of adventurers-courtists who wanted Russia to invade Korea, then under the influence of a military alliance with Japan, in order to advance their economic interests. Against the advice of his advisers, the tsar launches into what will become the Russian-Japanese war. In 1905, Russia lost the war miserably, as it was unable to bring enough military equipment to its eastern flank and was generally ill-prepared to face Japanese superiority. There is no support for the war and the government among Russian society. On January 22, 1905, the forces of law and order suppressed in blood a demonstration, mostly by workers, which brought the czar the grievances of the people in his palace in St. Petersburg: it was the "Red Sunday" and the beginning of the 1905 revolution. Between peasant revolts, workers' strikes and the political demands of the liberal classes, the revolution ended with the promulgation, at Witte's initiative, of the "October Manifesto," which transformed autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. In the texts, the second part of the reign of Nicholas II thus breaks radically with the reactionary period that preceded it. In reality, the establishment of a new legislative power (the Duma) was instrumentalized by the Tsar and the Conservative Party, who quickly eliminated the revolutionary majority and turned it into a right-wing body that blocked any attempt at social progress.
A cultural revival: the silver age
At the same time, the first decades of the century and the more liberal climate that nevertheless set in after 1905 were to foster a major cultural revival in Russia, the "Silver Age". A sort of liberal "reaction" to the demand for civism and utilitarianism that permeated the realistic artistic production of the late 19th century, the Silver Age was first of all that of poetry, but also of a return to romanticism and religious themes. Its most famous representatives were the poet Anna Akhmatova, the composer Igor Stravinsky and the director Constantin Stanislavsky, for the period also saw the apogee of Russian theatre and ballet. But despite its artistic richness, the Silver Age reveals the paradoxes of its time: it is a "class" current and belongs only to an educated elite. But this new modern elite is not a political force supporting the tsarist power, on the contrary: it is its political and constitutional demands combined with the social demands of the workers and peasants that made the revolutionary moment possible.
Conservatism and mysticism: the influence of Rasputin
Apart from his military failures in the East, it was therefore above all his narrow-minded conservatism that made Nicholas II particularly unpopular on the domestic scene. Immobilist and docile, the tsar was strongly influenced by his wife, Empress Alexandra, who gradually took control of the country's affairs. Reactionary, very pious and austere, the former German princess is particularly hated by the Russian people. It is through her that the mystical priest Rasputin will enter the intimacy of the imperial family as early as 1907, succeeding (at least apparently) in curing the haemophilia of the young tsarevitch Alexis. The wandering mystic would become particularly popular with the women of the court, where he was said to have a debauched life and an insatiable sexual appetite in addition to his gifts as a healer. When Russia, in support of Serbia, enters the war in 1914, Rasputin's influence becomes critical. Nicholas II takes the decision to replace his uncle Grand Duke Nicholas in the supreme command of the armed forces, against the advice of his government, which knows him to be an execrable strategist. But the tsar thus distances himself from the court and leaves the empress and her faithful adviser Rasputin as de facto rulers of the country. They are then suspected of being spies in the service of the Germans, and the Russian ruling elite plunges into a chaos without name. The peasant priest and the mystic tsarina operate reshuffle after reshuffle, seeking to form a reactionary government that is totally subservient to them. Rasputin was finally assassinated in 1916 following a conspiracy fomented by conservatives who thought they could prevent the fall of the Romanov dynasty and thus of the Empire. But it is already too late for that: the complete disconnection from the reality of the imperial couple combined with the terrible pressure that the war effort puts on the population (famine, inflation, civilian victims) precipitates the end of the Empire.
A dynasty dies out
Two weeks of popular riots in St. Petersburg in early 1917 will lead to the February Revolution: Nicholas II abdicates in favour of a provisional government. The destiny of the man who had never wanted to govern began to resemble furiously that of Louis XVI. He is first locked up in his palace in Tsarskoye Selo with his wife "the German" and their children, then the family is transferred to Tobolsk in Siberia. The October Revolution came: the putsch of the Bolsheviks of the Petrograd Soviet definitively annihilated the provisional government and the Mensheviks and Socialists. The imperial family was then moved to Ekaterinburg in the spring of 1918, and soon afterwards civil war broke out, pitting the counter-revolutionary "Whites" against the Bolsheviks. In July, as the White Army approached the city, the Romanovs were shot by their guards, members of the Urals Executive Committee. Nicholas II, a "bloodthirsty tyrant" against whom the resentment of the Bolshevik soldiers is boundless, is targeted by all the shots and falls first. Thus the assassinated tsar became a martyr, the eternal symbol of a pious and imperial Russia forever lost. But also the one who, through his incompetence, was directly responsible for the end of the Russian Empire and the advent of the Soviet state.
