by Lyubov Tsarevskaya

May 19th was the birthday of St. Nicholas the Passion-Bearer, last Russian Emperor, who was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church

Born 140 years ago on the day of Holy and Righteous Job the Long-Suffering, Nicholas II modeled the life of St. Job, going through suffering and bearing his cross with dignity.

During the reign of Nicholas II in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Russia made considerable progress in all areas of life. Many predicted that Russia would have an important future and a more essential role to play in the world. It was in stark contrast to these predictions that the Empire came tumbling down in 1917 in a collapse that had dramatic consequences for the Russian people.

Emperor Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar of the Romanov dynasty, ascended the throne on October 20th, 1894. In his will, his father Emperor Alexander III, who died at the age of 49, wrote the following to instruct his son in the ways to do the hard royal service to the nation: “You will have to take from me and shoulder the heavy burden of government and bear it until your good hour, the way I have done it, the way our ancestors did it. Now You will assume the God-given Empire, which I received from my father when he was bleeding to death 13 years ago… Your grandfather used his unlimited monarchial powers to carry out numerous reforms for the good of the Russian people. As a reward, he got a bomb and death from Russian revolutionaries… On that tragic day I was confronted with the question of what path I should follow. Was it to be the path that the so-called advanced society, which caught the pest of Western liberal ideas, urged me to take, or the path prompted by my own conviction, my supreme sacred duty of Tsar and my conscience? I have chosen my way. The liberals called it reactionary. But I was interested solely in the good of my people and the grandeur of Russia. I sought to secure peace both inside and outside of Russia, so that the state could develop freely and quietly, grow rich and prosper. Autocracy has created Russia’s historic identity. If autocracy tumbles down, God forbid, then the entire Russia will collapse. A collapse of the originally-Russian government will usher in an interminable era of trouble and bloody strife. I bequeath You love for everything that will ensure the good, honor, and dignity of Russia. Protect dignity, but bear in mind that You are responsible for the future of Your subjects to God. Your belief in the holiness of Your monarchial duty will underlie Your life. You must be firm and courageous, and never show weakness. You must show independence in Your foreign policy. You must never forget that Russia has no friends. Foreigners fear our hugeness. Avoid fighting wars. In domestic policy, protect the Church for it often saved Russia in the years of hardship. Strengthen the family, which is the basis of every state.”

Nicholas II ascended the throne when he was 26, and one has got to admit that, to his honour, he found strength to assume responsibility for the enormous country without shifting it onto anybody else. In his first address to the people, Nicholas II said he would follow his deceased father’s will and that he would rule for the prosperity of his subjects.

Emperor Nicholas II’s reign was not an easy one because by the early 20th century the ruling circles and the intellectuals had adopted a negative position on the fundamentals, traditions, and ideas of Russian society. The educated circles, which had caught the liberal and Marxist ideas of Western Europe, denied Russia the right to its own way of development, sought to destroy its originality, and impose the alien model of West-European development on the country. Hence the hatred for the Tsar as the embodiment of autocracy, the traditional form of government in Russia. The liberals and democrats tried to slander Nicholas II, drawing an unseemly picture of his rule. The former French President Emil Louber wrote this about the Russian Tsar in his memoirs, made public in Paris in 1910: “It is held that the Russian Emperor falls under outside influence. This is absolutely wrong. The Russian Emperor implements his own ideas. He has carefully thought-out plans that he continuously works to implement… Behind a mask of timidity he has a strong soul and a courageous heart that’s unflinchingly loyal. He knows where he is going to and what he wants.”

It is under that Tsar that Russia went through powerful economic development of the kind that it had never known before. Here are some facts and figures to illustrate the point.

Economic growth rates were the world’s highest. The tsarist government’s protectionist policy spurred home market development. Russia was the world’s only nation that could exist autonomously, irrespective of its imports or exports thanks to its mode of life. Russians manufactured all the goods they needed for home consumption. The Russian economy was not oriented to the foreign market. It is only flax and butter that Russia produced commercially for exports.

Production facilities sprang up, mineral resources were tapped.

The 7 416 kilometer-long Great Siberian Railway became the symbol of economic prosperity. It is only a power that boasted a highly-developed industrial potential that could build this kind of a trunk-railway on its own.

The people’s incomes grew twofold. Russian workers boasted the world’s highest wages, which were second to those of U.S. workers only. Russia had a deficit-free budget during the reign of Nicholas II. The taxes were the world’s lowest. The Russian rouble was truly gold, as it was backed by the gold reserve stock by more than 100%.

In 1912, Russia introduced a system of social insurance for workers and passed a number of other laws to make things easier for them. U.S. President William Taft said this in a comment on those laws: “The labor laws that Your Emperor has enacted are so perfect that no democratic country can boast anything similar.”

Economic growth entailed the growth of the population, from 139 million people in 1902 to 175 million people in 1913. Russia became the world’s third-biggest nation population-wise, trailing China and India only. The prominent French economist Edmond Teri said that if the tendency held out, Russia would dominate Europe politically and financially by the middle of the 20th century.

Where Russia did dominate at the time was in the field of culture, which the French poet Paul Valerie described as one of the world wonders. Never before had this country produced such a great number of scientists, artists, actors, musicians – Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Bunin, Vassily Surikov, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Fyodor Chaliapin, and many others who became world-famous.

Russia had indeed achieved a lot, with even more impressive achievements lying in store, provided, of course, that the country did not lose its sense of unity as a nation.

Western countries were concerned about Russia’s growing might and its increasing influence on the developments in the Far East. Russophobia became a factor in world politics. Japan was used as a tool to weaken Russia in the Far East. The Japanese launched an assault on a Russian squadron off Port Arthur in 1904. Russia was a loser throughout the first year of fighting, but then Japan exhausted itself, while Russia collected its strength to wage a full-scale war. It was clear that Japan’s defeat was a question of time, and it was at that very moment that Russia was stabbed in the back. The stabbing was the political disturbances in Russia that were caused by the liberals and revolutionaries and that made Emperor Nicholas II conclude an unequal peace treaty.

The Great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky has aptly described Russian revolutionaries as “demons,” since they were opposed to anything that was sacred to the Russian people, namely Orthodoxy, autocracy, the Russian mode of life, and suggested replacing them with foreign ways or plainly utopian schemes. In their fight against autocracy, they did not hesitate to use criminals. It was these “demons” that stirred up revolutionary unrest in 1905 and involved the working masses and university students in them. By advancing the slogans: “Down with Autocracy!” and “Long live freedom!” they struck at the very foundation of the state.

Nicholas II could certainly use force to suppress the revolt, but he chose a different way of appeasing the country. On October 17th, 1905 he signed a manifesto that granted the citizens the liberty of conscience, the freedom of speech, of assembly, of association, personal immunity, sanctity of the home, as well as the right for all social strata to elect deputies to the State Duma, which was vested with lawmaking powers. The October 17th Manifesto took the edge off the heat of the revolution in Russia. The Tsar firmly held the reins of government, the country calmed down and resumed its course of development. The well-known English writer Maurice Bering, who lived in Russia and knew it well, said in 1914 that, perhaps, Russia had never before prospered financially so well as it did under Nicholas II, when most Russians had fewer reasons for discontent than at any other moment in the past. A casual observer might be tempted to ask: “What on earth is there that the Russian people do not have?” If there was discontent, it was in the upper classes. As for the other strata, what discontent those might have had was not so intense as to bring temperature to the boiling-point.

But it was precisely when Russia was poised for take-off that a disaster struck, a one that was largely prompted by the First World War, which broke out in August 1914.

In 1907 Russia joined the Entente Cordiale, an alliance of Great Britain and France. Russia was compelled to make the move in the face of the growing expansion of the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Italy. Europe had thus seen the formation of two military blocs that were doomed to clash at some point in time. When they finally did, the world was plunged into the First World War. Unlike Great Britain and France, which pursued their own interests in fighting, Russia only defended its territorial integrity. For Russia the First World War was essentially a Patriotic war. The war prompted an unheard-of growth of patriotic spirit in Russian society and united it. Nicholas II seized the opportunity to carry out the long-awaited reform, namely banning the sale of alcoholic beverages. It was quite daring of the government to give up a most profitable component of the budget amid a raging war.

Fully honoring its pledges of an ally, Russia had repeatedly saved Great Britain and France from a crushing defeat at the cost of enormous sacrifices. The French Marshal Foch admitted that it was thanks to Russia that France had not been wiped off the map of Europe.

In 1915, things on the front took a bad turn for Russia. Russian troops suffered heavy losses, and Germans wedged themselves deeply into Russian territory. The Emperor decided this was the time when he ought to assume Supreme Command.

The war exacerbated the existing problems, the nation was growing tired of fighting. Those opposed to autocracy, particularly the social-democratic parties, used the antiwar sentiment to step up their activities. While the Emperor was at the front, the State Duma energetically stirred up anti-monarchial and antigovernment sentiment behind his back.

On February 23rd, 1917, the revolutionaries used the problems of supplying Petrograd (formerly St. Petersburg) residents with bread to stage an antigovernment demonstration. People crowded the streets and chanted: “Bread! Bread!” The city police was bewildered since they knew that the Russian capital did have foodstuffs. The next day saw the continuation of demonstrations. In some places, red flags were waved and posters were carried with the slogans: “Down with the war!” and “Down with Autocracy!”

On February 24th 240 000 workers went on strike. They were joined by the military units deployed in the capital city and swayed by social-democratic propaganda.

On February 27th, life in Petrograd came to a standstill. The revolted workers and soldiers seized the greater part of the city and the Tauric Palace with the State Duma deputies inside. On the same day, the revolutionaries set up a Council of working deputies. But the State Duma decided it should not let power out of their hands at this moment and formed a Provisional Government.

When the Tsar learned about the unrest in Petrograd, he ordered troops to be sent to the capital, but his order was ignored. Then he decided to go to Petrograd in person to look into the situation there. His close advisors betrayed him and made every effort to prevent Nicholas II from reaching the capital. The Tsar realized that both the State Duma and the Supreme Command had conspired to stage a coup.

On March 2nd aboard a train, the Sovereign was compelled to sign his abdication in favor of his brother Grand Duke Mikhail, and wrote this in his diary on the same day: “There are betrayal, cowardice, and lies all around me.” By abdicating in favor of his brother, the Tsar tried to save autocracy, and he is not to blame for Mikhail’s refusal to ascend the throne and his decision to hand power over to the Constituent Assembly.

That was the tragic end of the many-century-long era of autocracy in Russia, an end that had catastrophic consequences for the country.