Nicholas: The LastTsarIn his book, The Last Tsar, Edvard Radzinskydescribes a very interesting viewpoint of the life and death of NicholasAlexandrovich, the last Russian Tsar. Radzinsky’s illustration of thisill-fated monarch follows the diaries of Nicholas from their beginningon March 1, 1881, to the final entry on July 16, 1918. 1 Radzinsky mainlygoes over pre-marital relationship between Nicholas and Alexandra, themedical condition of Nicholas’ son, Alexei, and the imprisonment and executionof Nicholas and his family. The relationship between Nicholas II andAlexandra began in 1884. Alexandra, the daughter of Louis IV, the GrandDuke of Hesse-Darmstadt, a tiny state in Germany, was born in 1872.
2 Hergrandmother was Queen Victoria of England, her oldest sister married anEnglish prince, her second sister married a Russian Grand Duke and herthird sister married a German prince. Nicholas and Alexandra met duringthe wedding of her second sister, Ella, to Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich. Alexandra was only twelve and Nicholas was only sixteen, but he statedin his diary that he fell in love with her a first sight. Nicholas’ father,Tsar Alexander III, did not approve of Alexandra, because of the fact thatshe was the granddaughter of the English Queen. Instead, he suggested thatNicholas marry a princess from the House of Orleans. His decision was baselymainly on politics, as he was striving for an alliance between Russia andFrance.
Alexander’s suggestion did not have any effect on Nicholas, ashe seemed certain to marry his childhood sweetheart, Alexandra. That daycame in 1894, when Alexander was on his deathbed, suffering from a kidneydisease that he had contracted in a train wreck six years earlier. On April8, 1894, at the wedding of Alexandra’s brother, her and Nicholas were engaged. 3On November 14, 1894, a month after the death of his father Nicholas marriedAlexandra and officially became the tsar of Russia. Alexei Nikolaevich, the first son of Nicholasand Alexandra was born on July 30, 1904, following the births of four daughters. The problem of who would rule Russia in case of an accident to Nicholaswas solved.
However, there was a new problem, as Alexei was diagnosed withhemophilia. Hemophilia is a disease that weakened the walls of the arteriesso that “any blow or intense pressure can cause the blood vessels to burstand can mean the end. “4 Rumours of a holy man, named Grigory Rasputin,however, living in the backwoods of Siberia gave rise to Alexander’s hopesthat her son’s hemophilia could be cured. Rasputin possessed what somecalled a gift of healing, as he repeatedly healed possibly fatal woundssuffered by Alexei. 5 The first time he helped Alexei was when Alexei hadsuffered a bruise on his leg was in agonizing pain.
Rasputin walked toAlexei’s bed, grasped Alexei’s leg and healed the possibly fatal bruise. There are many stories where Rasputin healed Alexei without physicallybeing there. For example, in 1912, Alexei was suffering from a common cold. When he tried to blow his nose, the blood vessels burst and the blood beganto gush. The doctors could do nothing to help. When all hope was fading,they received a telegram from Rasputin.
It read “God will help you, behealthy,”6Nicholas II was forced to end the Romanovrule over Russia after three hundred years, as he forfeited the throneon March 2, 1917 because of the Russian Revolution. However, the peoplewere still so upset with him, that the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ andSoldiers’ Deputies passed a decree the day following the abdication. TheDeputies ordered the arrest of Nicholas II and the members of the Romanovdynasty on March 3, 1917. The family and everyone who remained with themwere to be isolated from the outside world within the confines of Alexander’sPalace, complete with an inside and outside guard. However, soon after,rumours were spreading that claimed the imperial family had escaped toEngland.
Therefore, the provisional government sent the family and theirservants to Tobolsk, in Siberia, on July 31, 1917. 7 After spending aboutnine months under heavy supervision, the family was going to be transportedto Moscow to stand trial for treason against Russia. However, this planwas only a fake, as the family was never intended to make it to Moscow. The real plan was that the Uralite Bolsheviks would seize the train onits way to Moscow and take the family to the Uralite capital of Ekaterinburg. 8In Ekaterinburg, the family was put in a prison in one of the town’s largesthouses, the Ipatiev House.
About two months later, when the Ural capitalwas surrounded by the Czech Legion and the White Army who were intent onoverthrowing the Bolsheviks, a decision about the family had to be made. The Bolsheviks sent a telegram to Moscow containing the plans for an executionof the imperial family on July 16, 1918. 9 Once the consent came from Moscow,the family was awakened in the early hours of July 17 and taken down tothe cellar for what they thought was a family photograph. However, theyall realized there would be no photograph, when Yakov Yurovsky, a memberof the Uralites, read out the family’s death sentence.
As soon as he hadfinished, the shots began and minutes later, the family and their servantslay dead in a pool of their own blood. They loaded up the bodies into atruck and buried them in a pre-selected gravesite. Thus, within a time span of just over ayear, both the rule and lives of the imperial family were ended by revolutionaries,and one of the greatest dynasty’s the world has ever known came to an end.
