Lenin & Tsar Nicholas II – The Russian Revolution Documentary

The man known to history as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was born Grand Duke Nicholas

Alexandrovich Romanov on the 18th of May 1868 at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo,

the imperial retreat outside St Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.

His father, Tsarevich Alexander Alexandrovich, was the second son of Tsar Alexander II of

Russia. The younger Alexander was given an ordinary education and prepared for a life of military

service when his elder brother, Tsarevich Nicholas, died in 1865 at the age of twenty-one.

Following the death of Nicholas, Alexander became heir to the Russian throne and married

his late brotherÔÇÖs fianc?®e. Upon his fatherÔÇÖs death in 1881, Alexander assumed the throne as Tsar Alexander III.

Although most of his ancestors were German, the bulky bearded Alexander resembled a Russian

peasant and his legendary reputation for strength was reflected in his tendency to bend a fork

with his bare hands for entertainment during state dinners. Nicholas IIÔÇÖs mother Maria Fyodorovna was born Princess Dagmar of Denmark in 1847, five

years before her father became King Christian IX of Denmark. In 1863, DagmarÔÇÖs sister Princess Alexandra married Prince Albert Edward, the future Edward

VII of the United Kingdom. In September 1864, when she was not yet seventeen, Dagmar was engaged to Tsarevich Nicholas of

Russia, but after his death the following year it was decided that she would marry his

younger brother, Tsarevich Alexander, converting to Russian Orthodox Christianity and taking

the name of Maria Fyodorovna. The couple would have six children, of whom the future Nicholas II was the eldest.

A second son named Alexander died before his first birthday, but the remaining children,

two sons named George and Michael, and two daughters named Xenia and Olga, all survived

into adulthood. The Romanov family had ruled Russia since 1613, when the nobleman Mikhail Fyodorovich

Romanov was elected Tsar at the end of a fifteen-year period of anarchy and Polish occupation known

as The Time of Troubles. Nicholas IIÔÇÖs life and reign proved as troublesome as the events three centuries earlier that

placed his ancestor on the Russian throne. At his birth, the Russian Empire was the worldÔÇÖs largest country, stretching from Poland in

the west to the Pacific coast in the east, bordering the Arctic Ocean in the north with

its southern frontiers in Central Asia. This vast country owed its origins to the Grand Principality of Moscow, a modest medieval

state ruled by princes of the Rurikid dynasty, descendants of the Viking chieftain Rurik

who ruled the lands collectively known as the RusÔÇÖ from the city of Kiev in the 9th

century. After the Mongol conquest, Moscow became the most powerful of the Russian principalities

over the course of the 14th century by a combination of military force, extortion, and fidelity

to the Mongol or Tatar khan. During the following century the Muscovites claimed the legacy of the Eastern Roman Empire

after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, claiming the title of Tsar, derived from Caesar,

before expelling the Tatars, subjugating the wealthy merchant republic of Novgorod to the

northwest, and beginning its expansion eastwards towards Siberia. At the beginning of the 18th century, after a century of turmoil, Tsar Peter the Great

founded the city of St Petersburg and defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War, proclaiming

the Russian Empire in 1721. At the end of the century, Ukraine and Crimea and parts of Poland were brought under Russian

imperial rule by Catherine the Great. After repelling NapoleonÔÇÖs ill-fated invasion of 1812, Russia became one of the dominant

powers on the European continent, and in 1814 Tsar Alexander I entered Paris in triumph

at the head of a coalition army that forced Napoleon to abdicate. Both Catherine and Alexander were inspired by liberal ideas of the European Enlightenment,

but they found it difficult to reform a system of authoritarian rule which they relied on

to maintain the integrity of their state with its wide-open frontiers.

In the decades after the Napoleonic Wars Russia retained its reputation as the continentÔÇÖs

strongest military power, but despite their resplendent uniforms on parade, the Russian

army was defeated in the Crimean War, which exposed the weaknesses in the Russian administrative

and economic system. After NicholasÔÇÖs grandfather Tsar Alexander II came to the throne in 1855, he embarked

on a reform programme to modernise the Russian Empire and maintain its great power status

on the international stage while dealing with the increasing political consciousness of the urban classes and the rise of nationalism in a multi-ethnic empire where fewer than

half of the population was Russian. In 1861 Alexander abolished serfdom and gave peasants free economic rights, but the newly-emancipated

serfs were obliged to pay redemption dues to the government for forty-nine years to

compensate their former owners. In 1864 trial by jury was introduced, and elected local councils known as zemstva were

established for rural areas and later cities and towns. In order to address the deficiencies in military organisation in the Crimea, in 1874 universal

conscription was introduced and corporal punishment was banned in the army.

Nicholas spent his childhood with an affectionate and overprotective mother, and a warm-hearted

but intimidating father, a combination that may have contributed to his immaturity as

a young adult. Like other European families, NicholasÔÇÖs parents provided the general framework for

his education and upbringing, but he spent most of the childhood supervised by governesses

and governors. Between seven and ten years old, Nicholas received lessons from his governess, Alexandra

Ollongren. Aged ten, his upbringing was entrusted to the military governor General Grigory Danilovich,

who invited specialist tutors to teach the young grand duke Russian, French, English,

German, mathematics, geography, chemistry, and history, which was NicholasÔÇÖs favourite

subject. Nicholas had a close relationship with his tutor Charles Heath, an Englishman who taught

at the Alexander Lyceum, the prestigious school for the aristocratic elite in Tsarskoe Selo.

Under HeathÔÇÖs influence, Nicholas adopted the reserved manner of an English gentleman,

an attitude that would contribute to his reputation as a weak and indecisive ruler.

In March 1881, when Nicholas was thirteen years old, his grandfather Tsar Alexander

II was assassinated by the socialist revolutionary organisation the PeopleÔÇÖs Will while returning

to the Winter Palace from a military inspection. Having survived six previous assassination attempts during his reign, the mortally wounded

Alexander had his legs blown off by a bomb and was carried to the Winter Palace where

he died a couple of hours later. His grandson Nicholas was among those gathered at his bedside. While Russian tsars had often been violently removed from power by ambitious family members

in palace coups, this was the first time a Russian monarch had been killed by revolutionaries

who aimed to overthrow the monarchy. While he honoured his late fatherÔÇÖs memory by building the Church of the Saviour on Spilled

Blood at the site of the assassination, Tsar Alexander III reversed many of his predecessorÔÇÖs

liberal reforms and cracked down on left-wing revolutionary terrorist groups.

In May 1887, after an attempt on the TsarÔÇÖs life on the sixth anniversary of Alexander

IIÔÇÖs killing was uncovered, the revolutionary terrorist Alexander Ulyanov was one of five

members of the PeopleÔÇÖs Will executed for his part in the plot. AlexanderÔÇÖs death led his younger brother Vladimir to take a greater interest in revolutionary

politics. After his grandfatherÔÇÖs death and the accession of his father Alexander III, Nicholas assumed

the title of Tsarevich and became heir to the throne. He continued to live under the supervision of General Danilovich until the age of seventeen,

when he began his political education at the hands of some of the leading statesmen of the empire.

The greatest influence on the teenage Nicholas was Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the conservative

law professor who served as the secular head of the Orthodox Church.

Pobedonostsev believed that RussiaÔÇÖs communitarian political traditions were unsuited to representative

democracy and regarded the peasantry, who were largely isolated from western liberal

and socialist ideas in the cities, as the basis of Russian monarchism.

Nicholas was also taught economics by Nikolai Bunge, the liberal Minister of Finance from

1881 to 1886. Though the Russian economy developed rapidly during the reign of Alexander III and Bunge

was comfortable in the world of wealthy bankers and industrialists, NicholasÔÇÖs understanding

of economic theory remained poor throughout his life, and he would rely on the advice

of ministers on economic issues. In October 1888, while Nicholas and the imperial family were returning from the Crimea, the

imperial train derailed at Borki in Ukraine. The roof of the dining car collapsed, but Tsar Alexander used his legendary strength

to hold it up, allowing the children to escape unharmed. At the age of nineteen Nicholas was commissioned into the Preobrazhensky Guards, the senior

regiment of the imperial army. As with elite regiments in other European countries, the PreobrazhenskyÔÇÖs officers

received little military training but Nicholas was able to enjoy the society of the wealthy

young aristocrats who served as Guards officers. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was common for young European aristocrats

and royals to embark on a Grand Tour of Europe to deepen their knowledge of art and culture

and to see the monumental remnants of Greek and Roman antiquity for themselves.

Tsar Alexander turned his attention eastwards towards Asia, and in October 1890, Nicholas

was sent on an eastern Grand Tour accompanied by Prince Esper Ukhtomsky, an authority on

Asian culture, and after brief stops in Austria and Greece, where he picked up his cousin

Prince George of Greece, Nicholas visited the more exotic destinations of Egypt, India,

Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia), the Kingdom of Siam (now

Thailand), and parts of China and Japan, before returning home to St Petersburg across Siberia.

In May 1891, while Nicholas was in Otsu in Japan, he was the target of an assassination

attempt by a local policeman. Though he received a sabre wound to the face, Prince George saved his life by intercepting

the second blow. Nicholas cut short the rest of his trip and returned to St Petersburg overland in August.

He had been a member of the State Council and Committee of Ministers since his twenty-first

birthday in 1889, and in 1893 he was appointed to chair a special committee on the construction

of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In 1890, Nicholas began an affair with the seventeen-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska,

a Polish ballerina of the imperial ballet. Though the affair was actively encouraged by his parents, as heir to the Russian throne

he was expected to marry a European princess. In 1884, Nicholas was present at his uncle Grand Duke SergeiÔÇÖs wedding to Princess

Elisabeth of Hesse, one of the many German princely states that supplied brides for European

royal houses. It was there that Nicholas met ElisabethÔÇÖs twelve-year-old sister Princess Alix, who

was Queen Victoria of EnglandÔÇÖs favourite grandchild and lover of all things English.

By the early 1890s Nicholas was determined to marry the beautiful Princess Alix, and

he proposed to her in April 1894 while attending the wedding of her brother Grand Duke Ernst

Ludwig of Hesse in the German city of Coburg. The highly-religious Alix initially rejected the proposal as she was unwilling to give

up her Lutheran faith in favour of Russian Orthodoxy, but a few days later she changed

her mind and would soon become a zealous convert.

Despite his seemingly robust constitution, Tsar Alexander IIIÔÇÖs health began to fail

in 1894 and by late summer he was diagnosed with kidney disease attributed to the impact

of the Borki train disaster six years earlier. In the autumn the Tsar went to the Livadia Palace in Crimea to recuperate, and by mid-October

Tsarevich Nicholas was deputising for his father. On the 22nd of October Princess Alix arrived to receive her prospective father-in-lawÔÇÖs

blessing, and on the 1st of November 1894 Tsar Alexander III died at the age of forty-nine,

leaving his twenty-six-year-old son as Nicholas II, Tsar of Russia.

On the 26th of November, less than a month of the late tsarÔÇÖs death, court mourning

was lifted for the wedding of Nicholas and his bride, who had converted to Orthodoxy

and taken the name Alexandra Fyodorovna. Although she took a great interest in Russian religion and culture, the intelligent and

serious empress was ill-at-ease in St Petersburg society and resented the court precedence

enjoyed by her mother-in-law, Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna. Nevertheless, Nicholas and Alexandra had a happy marriage and the imperial couple would

have four daughters and one son between 1895 and 1904.

During NicholasÔÇÖ reign, the imperial familyÔÇÖs main residence was the Alexander Palace in

Tsarskoe Selo. Though the palace had a neoclassical exterior yellow walls and white columns, its interiors

were decorated in a Victorian Gothic style to suit AlexandraÔÇÖs tastes.

The family spent summers at Peterhof, around twenty miles to the west, and made occasional

visits to imperial hunting lodges in Poland and the Livadia Palace in Crimea.

Nicholas and his family enjoyed excursions to the Finnish coast on the imperial yacht,

the Standart, which was also used on occasion for state visits to European countries.

For the first decade of NicholasÔÇÖ reign, the imperial family hosted grand balls in

the Winter Palace in St Petersburg during the winter, but after 1903 the imperial family

was increasingly isolated from St Petersburg society.

Aside from occasional holidays and international trips, Nicholas kept a strict routine, starting

the day at 8 oÔÇÖclock with a swim before having breakfast and a walk in the extensive Alexander Park.

From 9.30 he attended to court business for an hour, before receiving reports from his

ministers between 10.30 and lunch at 1.00. After a forty-five minute lunch Nicholas would receive ambassadors and foreign guests in

the afternoon before tea with the family at 5 oÔÇÖclock. Between 6 and 8 in the evening there were more ministerial reports.

Dinner began at 8.00, after which Nicholas would join Alexandra and the children in the

EmpressÔÇÖs boudoir. After 10 Nicholas returned to his study and sometimes worked late into the night.

After becoming Tsar on his fatherÔÇÖs death, Nicholas admitted that he was unprepared to

take the throne. The young Tsar was indecisive and lacked confidence, and it was often said that the most powerful

individual in Russia was the last person who had spoken to the Tsar.

Empress Alexandra frequently attempted to strengthen her husbandÔÇÖs resolution by reminding

him that he was the Tsar and was appointed by God. NicholasÔÇÖ imperial majesty would have to appear in its full glory before the people

at his coronation in May 1896. Although St Petersburg had been the capital since 1712, the coronation ceremony of the

Tsars continued to be held in the former capital of Moscow. On the 26th of May 1896, Nicholas was crowned in a solemn three-hour ceremony held in the

Dormition Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin. Four days later, on the 30th of May, a large public celebration was to be held at the Khodynka

field on the outskirts of the city, with Nicholas and Alexandra set to arrive at noon.

By 6 in the morning, over half a million people had already arrived, and when rumours spread

that there were not enough complimentary souvenirs for everyone, those at the back pushed forwards,

leading to a stampede which killed over a thousand people and injured thousands more.

By the time the imperial family arrived in the afternoon, the field had been cleaned

up. That evening, Nicholas and Alexandra attended a grand ball organised by the French Embassy

to celebrate the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894. While the imperial couple did not wish to attend the ball and visited the wounded in

hospitals the following day, the image of the Tsar dancing on the day of a great tragedy

made a bad first impression. Nicholas began his reign with few close friends whom he could bring into government, and instead

relied on advice from ministers inherited from his father. He continued to be guided by PobedonostsevÔÇÖs conservativism, and for the first six years

of his reign he did not deviate very far from his fatherÔÇÖs policies. NicholasÔÇÖ desire to please everyone around him and his unwillingness to confront those

who disagreed with him resulted in incoherent and contradictory policymaking.

Rather than decide policy collectively through the Committee of Ministers, the Tsar preferred to make decisions by meeting ministers individually.

The TsarÔÇÖs main interests were in foreign, defence, and security policy, and outside

these areas ministers exercised considerable power in their own departments.

Later in his reign Nicholas suspected that powerful and effective ministers were usurping

his powers as Tsar and he played his ministers off against each other to assert his own authority,

undermining the effectiveness of his government. Like many of his predecessors, Nicholas was suspicious of the bureaucrats who served him

and believed that as Tsar he had a direct connection to the people. The Tsar considered himself a father to his subjects and was known to deal with petitions

personally, no matter how trivial. Among NicholasÔÇÖ ministers, the most influential during the early part of his reign was Minister

of Finance Sergei Witte, who had spent twenty years working in the railway industry before

being appointed Director of Railway Affairs by Minister of Finance Ivan Vyshnegradsky

in 1889. Vyshnegradsky launched a programme of industrial development funded by foreign loans and increasing

taxes on peasants and protected by high tariffs which increased the prices of imported industrial

products. These policies were adopted and expanded by Witte upon his arrival at the Ministry of

Finance in 1892 and became known as the Witte System.

The Finance Minister believed that rapid industrialisation and economic modernisation was essential if

Russia was to avoid becoming economically exploited by the worldÔÇÖs industrial powers,

a fate that seemed inevitable for the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and the Qing Empire

in China. Witte recognised that the peasants and urban poor would suffer in the process, but argued

that only by developing Russian industry using a combination of state revenues and foreign

capital and technology could Russia be able to compete with Britain, France, Germany,

and the United States. WitteÔÇÖs advocacy of the industrial economy was unpopular among the Russian landed aristocracy,

who were sceptical of capitalism and favoured the development of the agricultural economy.

When Witte proposed adopting the gold standard in 1896 in order to attract foreign investment,

he faced considerable opposition among his fellow ministers as it would increase the cost of borrowing, and it was only the forceful intervention of the Tsar on behalf of Witte

that allowed the Finance Minister to have his way. With his background in the rail industry, Witte took a special interest in the construction

of the Trans-Siberian Railway intended to link Moscow to the port of Vladivostok in

the Far East. In May 1891, while returning home from his Asian tour, Nicholas attended the ceremonies

marking the start of construction on the railway in Vladivostok, and after becoming Tsar he

maintained his interest in the Far East, believing that Russia was in a perfect position to exploit

economic advantages from the weak Chinese Empire. In 1895, Japan defeated China in an eight-month war, and at the Treaty of Shimonoseki Japan

secured possession of the Liaodong peninsula in southern Manchuria, including the strategic

naval base of Port Arthur. Since the Japanese presence in Manchuria undermined RussiaÔÇÖs own imperial ambitions in the Celestial

Empire, Russia organised an international coalition with France and Germany to force

Japan to hand their gains back to China. Under WitteÔÇÖs influence, Russia was given the right to build a section of the Trans-Siberian

Railway through northern Manchuria, reducing the length of the route. In March 1898, after Germany seized the Chinese port of Qingdao, Nicholas ensured that Russia

secured a lease on Port Arthur and the Liaodong peninsula, while the British were given the

port of Weihaiwei. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion broke out in northern China in opposition to foreign influence

in the empire. The Chinese imperial government sympathised with the Boxers and did little to suppress

the rebellion, while the international community sought and received help from home.

Russia was among the eight nations which joined together to suppress the Boxers, but Russian

forces remained in Manchuria to protect the railway and assert Russian economic control

over the province. ÔÇâ Although WitteÔÇÖs policies led to rapid economic growth, the industrialisation process was

accompanied by the movement of peasants from the countryside to work in factories in urban

centres. The cities were unable to provide the necessary housing and social infrastructure to cope

with the demand and living and working conditions were poor. In the meantime, the increase in literacy among factory workers encouraged the creation

of trade unions to defend the rights of workers. In many of these unions, radical revolutionary ideas circulated calling for the overthrow

of the Tsar and his regime. This industrialization led to not only strikes in the cities but also peasant riots in the

countryside prompted by WitteÔÇÖs high taxes and tariffs, which lead to several famines

over the course of the 1890s. Witte recognised the condition of the peasantry but was unwilling to ease the tax burden,

and instead proposed radical land reform. Witte suggested abolishing the peasant commune, the centuries-old system under which a village

and the land around it was owned collectively by the peasant community, and giving peasants

full property rights to their land. The political stability of the Russian Empire was threatened not only by workers and peasants,

but also by the intellectual classes. As in many autocratic regimes, the most radical group were university students, and in 1899

Nicholas faced student riots across the country. Although some leading instigators were expelled and conscripted to the army as a punishment,

Nicholas recognised that some of the studentsÔÇÖ complaints were justified, and the Ministry of Education took steps to abolish the hated classical curriculum and to give students

greater choice in the courses they studied. While Nicholas hoped that the Russian education system could inspire a sense of patriotism

and support for the state, university professors and even officials in the Ministry of Education

sympathised with liberal and radical ideas and resisted any decrees to impose conservative

sentiments upon students. By 1900, there were three distinct political groups forming the political opposition to

Nicholas II. The Socialist Revolutionary Party formed in 1901 and led by Viktor Chernov was the successor

to the PeopleÔÇÖs Will and the agrarian socialist movements founded in the 1860s.

The SRs believed that peasants and workers should join together in leading the socialist

revolution to overthrow the Tsar and were popular in both urban and rural areas.

The SRs promoted revolutionary terror and were responsible for assassinating the hard-line

Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904.

The Social Democrats, on the other hand, owed their allegiance to the Marxist tradition

and believed that the urban workers would serve as the vanguard of any socialist revolution.

In 1903, the Social Democratic Party split into two factions, the extreme Bolsheviks

led by Vladimir Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, while the more moderate Mensheviks were led

by Julius Martov. The third strand of opposition to the Tsar were the Liberals, who supported civil rights

and constitutional government, where political power is shared by the monarch and a democratic

assembly representing the people. The Liberals, primarily influential in the zemstva around the country, drew their support

from middle class and upper-class individuals, though they hoped to expand their support

to the working classes. The political instability in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century prompted Interior

Minister von Plehve to remark in 1903, ÔÇ£What this country needs is a short, victorious

war to stem the tide of revolution.ÔÇØ PlehveÔÇÖs comment was in reference to Minister of War General Alexei Kuropatkin, who warned

that RussiaÔÇÖs Far Eastern adventures were undermining its defences in Europe.

In February 1904, Russia and Japan went to war over control of Manchuria and Korea.

Though Nicholas had hoped to avoid war, he believed that the Russian military would easily

crush the Japanese. Contrary to the expectations of the Tsar and the international community, the Japanese

inflicted a series of heavy defeats on the Russians. In April 1904, the flagship of the Russian Pacific Fleet struck a mine near Port Arthur,

killing Admiral Stepan Makarov, the Russian navyÔÇÖs most talented naval officer.

In early September 1904, KuropatkinÔÇÖs army was defeated by a Japanese army half its size

at the Battle of Liaoyang, forcing him to abandon the city. Kuropatkin expected reinforcements from European Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railway, but

parts of the railroad were not yet complete. In the meantime, the Japanese laid siege to Port Arthur and took the port in February

1905, destroying the Russian Pacific Fleet in the process.

Later that month, the Japanese army defeated Kuropatkin at Mukden (now known as Shenyang)

and forced the Russians to retreat into northern Manchuria. The key battle of the war took place at sea at the end of May 1905, when Admiral Zinovy

RozhestvenskyÔÇÖs 2nd Pacific Squadron, which had sailed round the world on an eight-month

voyage from the Baltic Sea, was annihilated by Admiral T?ìg?ì Heihachir?ì at the Straits

of Tsushima. After mediation from President Theodore Roosevelt of the United States, the Russo-Japanese War

ended with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in September, recognising Japanese claims

over Korea and resulting in RussiaÔÇÖs evacuation of Manchuria. In line with PlehveÔÇÖs expectations, Russian setbacks in the Russo-Japanese War had made

revolution more likely, and on the 28th of July 1904, while on his way to meet the Tsar,

Plehve was killed by a bomb thrown by a Socialist Revolutionary terrorist.

Nicholas had appointed Plehve Minister of Internal Affairs in 1902 following the assassination

of his predecessor Dmitri Sipyagin, hoping that the hardline Plehve would act as a counterweight

to Witte, who was beginning to lose the TsarÔÇÖs confidence over the political instability

caused by his economic reforms. Like many Russian conservatives, Plehve believed that the workers and peasants were more loyal

to the state and presided over a policy of repression against the political parties and

the radical urban intelligentsia. Plehve was a notorious anti-Semite and considered to be responsible for the pogrom in the Moldovan

capital of Kishinev in April 1903, during which an anti-Semitic mob killed almost fifty

Jews. Though Nicholas condemned the killings and removed the local governor, he did little

to stem the pogroms between 1903 and 1906, during which over two thousand Jews were killed,

the bloodiest of which claimed the lives of four hundred Jews in the Ukrainian port of

Odessa in 1905. Following PlehveÔÇÖs assassination, Nicholas appointed the liberal Prince Pyotr Svyatopolk-Mirsky

as his successor, seemingly in response to his motherÔÇÖs pleas not to appoint another hardliner to the ministry.

Svyatopolk-Mirsky proposed a programme of reforms including religious toleration, civil

rights, and greater influence on central government by elected representatives from across the

country. While the Minister of Internal Affairs believed that the reforms were necessary to avoid revolution,

Grand Duke Sergei led the conservatives in attempting to block the reform programme.

Not long after Nicholas rejected the Interior MinisterÔÇÖs central policy of representative government in December 1904, Svyatopolk-Mirsky resigned from office.

On Sunday the 22nd of January 1905, tens of thousands of unarmed protestors marched on

the Winter Palace under the leadership of Father Gapon, a priest and trade union leader

in St Petersburg. Among GaponÔÇÖs demands for political reform were for the Tsar to hold a constituent assembly

to deliver a constitutional government in Russia. The protestors were carrying religious icons and singing patriotic songs, including the

imperial anthem God Save the Tsar, appealing to the Tsar as their protector.

Nicholas was away at Tsarskoe Selo at the time and while there was no question of him accepting GaponÔÇÖs demands, the decision to police the event using infantry soldiers

resulted in the deaths of several hundred protestors as the outnumbered soldiers blocking

the paths to Palace Square opened fire at the columns of demonstrators advancing against

them. While Nicholas expressed regret at the fatalities, the events of Bloody Sunday undermined the

TsarÔÇÖs claims to be the protector of his subjects. On the 17th of February 1905, Grand Duke Sergei was assassinated by Socialist Revolutionary

terrorists in the Kremlin. Nicholas responded by offering to establish an advisory representative body, but he refused

to consider relinquishing his powers as absolute monarch. The Tsar believed that constitutional government would make Russia more vulnerable to revolution

and anarchy, while also considering it his duty to preserve the authority he was given

by God. As a hereditary monarch, Nicholas also considered it his duty to God and Russia to produce a

son and heir. Between 1895 and 1901 Nicholas and Alexandra had four daughters in succession, Olga, Tatiana,

Maria, and Anastasia. According to the Imperial Succession Law of 1797, women could not inherit the throne unless

all male claimants were extinguished. As a result, NicholasÔÇÖ younger brother George remained the heir to the throne until his

death in 1899, upon which their youngest brother Michael became the new heir.

When Nicholas fell gravely ill in the autumn of 1900, there was some discussion about changing

the Laws of Succession so that Grand Duchess Olga could succeed him, but the TsarÔÇÖs recovery

averted succession talk. On the 12th of August 1904, Nicholas and Alexandra were granted their wish of a son whom they

named Alexei after the 17th century Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, a pious and gentle ruler who

laid the foundations for his son Peter the GreatÔÇÖs modernisation of the country by pursuing a programme of moderate reform.

Nicholas and Alexandra were naturally delighted to have a boy, but their happiness was tempered

when it emerged that Alexei suffered from haemophilia, a disease inherited from AlexandraÔÇÖs

grandmother Queen Victoria which impaired the ability of blood to clot, meaning that

cuts and bruises could potentially prove fatal. AlexandraÔÇÖs concern about her sonÔÇÖs condition caused her own health to collapse, leading

her to turn more to her faith. Rather than solving a problem, Tsarevich Alexei was another addition to his parentsÔÇÖ list

of anxieties. The defeats on land and sea during the Russo-Japanese War highlighted the weakness of the Russian

state and its military commanders and contributed to a decline in the TsarÔÇÖs prestige.

While news of Mukden and Tsushima made their way to St Petersburg, strikes and disturbances

continued throughout the country, reaching a peak at the beginning of October with strikes

in Moscow and St Petersburg. When the railwaymen went on strike, it paralysed political and economic activity and prevented

officials from travelling between St Petersburg and Moscow. After Sergei Witte advised the Tsar to make concessions to end the unrest, on the 30th

of October, Nicholas issued a manifesto drawn up by Witte promising an elected assembly

with legislative powers and to create a Council of Ministers, whose Chairman would effectively

have the powers of a prime minister. A week later, Witte was made prime minister, but despite his promises of restoring peace,

the unrest continued, and a Soviet of WorkersÔÇÖ Deputies dominated by Leon Trotsky was established

in St Petersburg, while in December the Bolsheviks led an uprising in Moscow.

Trotsky would later describe the events in 1905 as a dress rehearsal for the revolution

which would overthrow the Tsar twelve years later. For the time being, Nicholas remained in power as the revolution was brought under control

by Pyotr Durnovo, the Minister of Internal Affairs, who reasserted government control

over the transport and communications network and arrested members of the Saint Petersburg

Soviet. By the end of 1905, many liberals rallied to the government after being horrified at

the radicalism of the masses. Most liberals formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, nicknamed Kadets, hoping to use the

legislative assembly to carry out further reforms, while a conservative minority who

were satisfied by the concessions granted by the October Manifesto joined the Octobrist

Party. The new constitution was published in the spring of the following year as the Fundamental

Law of April 1906. As promised, the law created the State Duma, an elected assembly which served as the lower

house of a bicameral legislature. The upper house was the reformed State Council, whose members were appointed by the Tsar and

the nobility. Nicholas continued to assert his ÔÇ£supreme authorityÔÇØ and reserved for himself powers

to dissolve the two parliamentary bodies or to place provinces under a state of emergency.

When Tsar Nicholas II opened the Duma at the Tauride Palace in St Petersburg on the 27th

of April 1906, he was a month shy of his thirty-eighth birthday, and had been on the Russian throne

for more than a decade. During this period the Russian economy continued to industrialise, but the revolutionary organisations

which had been driven underground by his father had re-emerged. Nicholas managed to gain control of Port Arthur and southern Manchuria, only to lose it shortly

thereafter with a humiliating defeat to Japan. Despite the imperial majesty on display at the Tauride Palace, Nicholas had barely survived

the Revolution of 1905 and was forced into taking the first steps to creating a constitutional

government which he was fundamentally opposed to. The new constitutional experiment began poorly, and the Tsar resented sharing executive power

with Witte. While peasant disturbances continued in the countryside, the previously decisive Witte

could not make up his mind how to respond, leaving it up to Durnovo to pacify the country

through military force. Nicholas kept Witte in office long enough to secure a foreign loan allowing Russia to

remain on the gold standard before dismissing him in May, replacing him with the ineffectual

Ivan Goremykin. Although the electoral law for the Duma had been weighted towards the peasantry, the traditional

supporters of the monarchy, when the State Duma opened its first session in April 1906,

it was dominated by the liberal Kadets and the socialist Trudoviks. The mainstream socialist parties, the Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats, had

decided to boycott the First Duma elections. Even so, the bodyÔÇÖs demands for parliamentary government and land reform were too radical

for the Tsar, who dissolved the body in July. Elections for the Second Duma in January 1907 returned a legislature even further to the

left after the SDs and SRs agreed to participate. The Second Duma was soon dissolved, and the electoral laws changed to ensure a more conservative

legislature. While Nicholas was struggling to adapt to life as a constitutional monarch, the imperial

court welcomed the presence of Grigory Rasputin, a Siberian peasant and religious mystic.

Rasputin was introduced to the imperial couple in late 1905 by Princess Anastasia of Montenegro,

who would later marry the TsarÔÇÖs uncle Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich.

Over the coming years, Rasputin gained considerable influence over Nicholas and Alexandra for

his ability to stop Tsarevich AlexeiÔÇÖs bleeding. Despite his condition and regular warnings from his parents, Alexei was an active child

and would occasionally hurt himself. On more than one occasion when the Tsarevich appeared to be dying, RasputinÔÇÖs intervention,

whether by touching the child or through his prayers, would seemingly cure the young boy almost instantly.

The imperial couple regarded RasputinÔÇÖs presence as a sign of the peopleÔÇÖs support

for the monarchy, though his political influence was often exaggerated by political opponents

who supported the separation of the state and the Orthodox Church. RasputinÔÇÖs presence at court damaged the prestige of the Tsar and his family and was

deemed an embarrassment by educated society, but Nicholas and Alexandra resisted calls

from Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin to expel Rasputin from St Petersburg.

Stolypin had succeeded Durnovo as Minister of Internal Affairs in the spring of 1906

before becoming Prime Minister in July. Before being promoted to ministerial level he had served as the governor of Saratov province

in southern Russia, and at the age of forty-four, he was much younger than the TsarÔÇÖs previous

ministers. Stolypin continued to crack down on peasant disturbances, and among his opponents the

hangmanÔÇÖs noose was nicknamed ÔÇ£StolypinÔÇÖs necktieÔÇØ while the trains carrying peasants

into Siberia were known as ÔÇ£StolypinÔÇÖs carriages.ÔÇØ Although a conservative nobleman, Stolypin and Agriculture Minister Alexander Krivoshein

proposed a land reform programme to weaken peasant communes and encouraged the development

of family smallholdings. He also attempted to stimulate the economic development of Siberia by offering to give

each peasant 40 acres of land to cultivate alongside other financial inducements.

He was a talented orator who made powerful speeches in the Duma, and he established a

close working relationship with Alexander Guchkov, whose Octobrist Party was the largest

in the Third Duma. This alliance began to fail in 1909 and 1910, when StolypinÔÇÖs proposals to strengthen

the zemstvo and increase social protections for factory workers were opposed by the landowners

and industrialists who dominated the Duma. In the meantime, Stolypin and GuchkovÔÇÖs efforts to increase legislative control over

the army damaged his relationship with the Tsar. StolypinÔÇÖs plans to expand the zemstvo system to Ukraine and Belarus narrowly passed the

Duma but were defeated in the State Council in March 1911. Stolypin responded by threatening to resign unless the Tsar were to use his emergency

powers to suspend the legislature and adopt the Western Zemstvo Bill by decree.

Nicholas agreed to these conditions and retained Stolypin, but the Prime MinisterÔÇÖs demands

infuriated both the Tsar and the legislature. On the 14th of September 1911, while attending a performance at the Kiev Opera with the Tsar

and his eldest daughters, Stolypin was shot by a leftist revolutionary assassin and died

four days later on the 18th. The assassin was hanged a week after StolypinÔÇÖs death, but Nicholas gave orders to drop the

investigation, prompting rumours that the assassination had been planned by supporters of the Tsar.

Stolypin was succeeded by Finance Minister Vladimir Kovkovtsov, but the new Prime Minister

lacked the presence of his predecessor and was a weak leader. Having remained at the head of the Finance Ministry, KovkovtsovÔÇÖs desire to control

spending led to clashes with General Vladimir Sukhomlinov, the Minister of War, and Alexander

Krivoshein at Agriculture. Sukhomlinov had been appointed by the Tsar in 1909 to resist StolypinÔÇÖs efforts to

give the Duma greater control over the armed forces and demanded increased investment in

the army and navy. Krivoshein was responsible for enacting StolypinÔÇÖs land reforms and provided cheap credit through

the Peasant Land Bank to allow peasants to buy their own land from nobles. He encouraged the development of schools, and by 1914 around sixty per cent of Russian

children received a primary education. In February 1914, Krivoshein managed to outmanoeuvre Kovkovstov by persuading the Tsar to appoint

his friend Peter Bark as Finance Minister and the powerless Goremykin as Prime Minister,

allowing the Minister of Agriculture to become the dominant figure in the government.

In the meantime, in 1913 Nicholas had asserted his control over security policy by appointing

Nikolai Maklakov as Minister of Internal Affairs. With the TsarÔÇÖs support, Maklakov cracked down on the revolutionary press and unsuccessfully

attempted to reduce the DumaÔÇÖs powers. In 1914, St Petersburg was hit with a series of strikes, but the rest of the country remained

calm. Widespread demonstrations of popular support in 1913 during the celebrations of 300 years

of Romanov rule convinced Nicholas that he continued to enjoy considerable support across

the country. After its inauspicious start, the constitutional experiment was bringing an element of stability

despite StolypinÔÇÖs assassination, and there was a chance that with a strong prime minister

such as Krivoshein to carry out his agenda and manage parliamentary politics, Nicholas

could be a constitutional monarch like his cousin King George V in Britain.

However, after Nicholas limited the electorate in 1907, most of the Russian population remained

without political representation and the workers and many peasants were ready to rise up against

the Tsar at any sign of weakness in the imperial regime.

The Tsar had been saved by the Russian army in 1905 and 1906, and after the humiliation

of defeat to Japan, Nicholas desperately sought to stay out of war.

Although Russia and Britain had been close to war over their competing interests in Asia,

RussiaÔÇÖs defeat in 1905 dispelled British fears of the Russian threat and led to the

signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907. Together with the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale of 1904 and the Franco-Russian alliance of

1894, this created the Triple Entente of Britain, France, and Russia.

The rival European bloc was the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, though

the latterÔÇÖs fidelity to the alliance was suspect, as it had its own territorial claims

to parts of the Austrian empire. Following the appointment of Sergei Sazonov as Foreign Minister in 1909, the Tsar pursued

a three-pronged policy to remain committed to the Triple Entente, improve relations with

Germany, and to promote unity among the Balkan states in southeast Europe against further

Austrian encroachment in old Ottoman territory after AustriaÔÇÖs annexation of Bosnia in

1908. Rather than confronting Austria, the Balkan alliance went to war with the Ottoman Empire

over Macedonia and Albania in 1912, before fighting each other for the spoils in 1913.

While Russian nationalists advocated a Pan-Slavic Union with the Balkan states, Nicholas was

more concerned about German ambitions in the Ottoman Empire. The Russian EmpireÔÇÖs Black Sea trade, including its substantial grain exports, passed through

the Straits of Constantinople, by modern-day Istanbul. In 1913 a German general Liman von Sanders was appointed commander of the Constantinople

garrison. Over the previous century the Ottomans had routinely employed foreign experts as civil

and military administrators, but the Russians feared direct German control of the Straits.

Elsewhere in Europe, a naval arms race between Britain and Germany increased the risk of war between the continentÔÇÖs most powerful states.

After the humiliation of the Russo-Japanese War, General Sukhomlinov embarked on a modernisation

programme which included the centralisation of military administration within the Ministry

of War, an increase in the size of the field army to over 1.4 million men, introducing

machine gun crews at the regimental level, and attaching an aviation detachment to each

army corps. On the 28th of June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, was assassinated

in Sarajevo by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb student.

The Austrian government in Vienna believed that the Serbian government was behind the assassination, and four weeks later, on the 23rd of July, the Austrians issued an ultimatum

to Serbia deliberately intended to provoke war. Foreign Minister Sazonov predicted that the conflict would develop into a continental

war. Russia would be duty-bound to support Serbia and Germany would join the war against Russia,

in turn resulting in hostilities between Germany and France. Since the Anglo-French entente was not a formal alliance, it was unclear whether Britain would

join the war against Germany, but even with Britain remaining on the sidelines, the war

would engulf the continent. Nicholas remained optimistic and hoped to come to an agreement with his cousin, Kaiser

Wilhelm II of Germany, but on the 30th of July Nicholas was urged by his ministers to

order the mobilisation of the Russian army, and on the 1st of August Germany declared

war on Russia. On the 3rd of August Germany declared war on France, and after the Germans crossed into

Belgium the following day, the British government answered a Belgian appeal for assistance and

went to war with Germany on the 5th. The First World War was greeted in Russia with a rare demonstration of national unity,

inspiring confidence in the Tsar that his armies would achieve victory, following the example of RussiaÔÇÖs victory over Napoleon a century earlier.

Most European military planners expected the war to be short, but the German army was the

best in Europe, and Germany and Austria enjoyed the strategic advantage of the central position,

enabling them to move their armies quickly between different fronts. Among the three Entente powers Britain and its empire had the greatest potential, but

it would take time for those resources to be deployed, leaving Russia and France to do most of the fighting on land.

In order to avoid a two-front war, the Germans hoped to launch a lightning strike to capture

Paris and defeat France while the Russian army was still mobilising, before turning

its attention back east. The Russians took advantage of this by sending two armies into Eastern Prussia ten days earlier

than the Germans expected, albeit without being perfectly equipped.

Despite initial Russian successes, in late August and early September the German Eighth

Army under General Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff Erich von Ludendorff defeated

the Russian Second and First armies in quick succession at the battles of Tannenberg and

the Masurian Lakes. Setting aside these disastrous defeats, the Russians managed to hold the Germans at bay

in Poland while a Russian offensive against the Austrians captured Galicia in Western

Ukraine. By the spring of 1915 the Russian army was facing a shortage of munitions, and after

a series of German offensives in Poland, by September the Russians were forced to abandon

Poland and Lithuania. The defeats in Poland led to the crisis in the military leadership as Supreme Commander

Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, with the support of the Duma, blamed War Minister Sukhomlinov

for the logistical failures. After being imprisoned in the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg, the Minister

of War was dismissed from office in June and replaced by General Alexei Polivanov, and

in September the Tsar dismissed his uncle Grand Duke Nicholas and assumed the supreme

command himself. By doing so, the Tsar was partly placing a check on the Duma leaders who supported the

Grand Duke, but the latter had also proven an incompetent military leader who lost his

nerve with his armies in full retreat. Without any meaningful military training himself, Nicholas did not expect to take over control

of strategic or operational decision-making, which he left in the hands of his chief of staff, Mikhail Alexeev.

The Tsar hoped that his presence at the front would improve coordination between military

and civil authorities, and serve to improve morale among the peasant soldiers that made

up the ranks of the Russian army. While there were many advantages to the Tsar taking over command of the Russian army, his

presence at General Headquarters in Mogilev in modern-day Belarus kept him at a distance

from the political situation in the capital city, which had been renamed Petrograd at

the beginning of the war to sound less German. On the 7th of September 1915, a majority of the DumaÔÇÖs deputies formed a Progressive

Bloc demanding political reforms and a government which enjoyed ÔÇ£public confidence.ÔÇØ

In other words, they demanded one favourable to the Progressive Bloc.

The BlocÔÇÖs initiatives were supported by the Union of Towns and the Zemstvo Union,

which were formed at the beginning of the war to coordinate local authoritiesÔÇÖ support for the war effort.

Many of the TsarÔÇÖs ministers also lobbied for GoremykinÔÇÖs dismissal as prime minister,

believing that victory could only be achieved by maintaining political unity and working

in conjunction with the industrialists and civil society leaders that led the Progressive Bloc.

Unwilling to work with Goremykin and horrified by the TsarÔÇÖs decision to assume the supreme command without consultation, the Council of Ministers effectively went on strike, infuriating

Nicholas in turn. While the ministers were afraid that as supreme commander, the Tsar would be associated with

military setbacks suffered by the army, shortly after NicholasÔÇÖ arrival the military situation

improved as Kiev was successfully defended, and the munitions crisis was overcome by effective

coordination between the Ministry of War and Russian industry. In the summer of 1916 General Alexei Brusilov led a major offensive into Galicia which broke

the Austrian lines and captured hundreds of thousands of Austrian and German prisoners.

The Russian successes forced Germany to redeploy troops from the Western Front, weakening its

assault on the French fortress of Verdun and its defence of the River Somme after the British

launched an offensive in July. While the army had enjoyed its best year in 1916, an economic crisis at home threatened

the continuation of the war effort. A shortage of food and fuel created high inflation, and the railway network was ill-equipped to

bring food surpluses from the agricultural south to the cities in the north and west

while at the same time moving troops to the frontline. While aware of these problems, the economically-illiterate Nicholas was incapable of solving them, while

his ministers were increasingly sidelined. After the ÔÇÿministerial strikeÔÇÖ in late summer of 1915, the Tsar replaced most of

his ministers with individuals who were regarded as reliable supporters of the imperial regime.

With her husband away at headquarters, the Empress Alexandra assumed a greater role in

the empireÔÇÖs domestic affairs. In January 1916 Goremykin was succeeded by Boris Sturmer, a close confidant of Alexandra.

When the Tsar sought to dismiss his Interior Minister Alexander Protopopov in November

1916 under pressure from the Duma, the Empress urged him not to give in.

AlexandraÔÇÖs German origins fuelled rumours that she was acting against RussiaÔÇÖs interests,

even though the Empress was critical of Wilhelm II and regretted the fact that her brother Ernst Ludwig was fighting in German uniform.

Alexandra was rumoured to be under the influence of Rasputin, whom she asked for advice on

ministerial appointments. The boastful Rasputin exaggerated his influence and claimed to enjoy the favours of many court

ladies, and his presence at court continued to damage the imperial familyÔÇÖs prestige

at a time when it could ill afford it. NicholasÔÇÖs relatives were increasingly concerned about Rasputin, and on the 30th of December

a group including Prince Felix Yusupov, who was married to the TsarÔÇÖs niece, and Grand

Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, NicholasÔÇÖs cousin, shot and killed Rasputin at the Yusupov Palace

in St Petersburg. With the country seemingly on the verge of revolution and unable to find a solution to

the economic crisis, the Kadet leader Pavel Milyukov stood up in the Duma in November

and asked rhetorically whether the governmentÔÇÖs failures were caused by incompetence or treason.

Once again, Nicholas was asked to appoint a government that enjoyed the confidence of the Duma, a call echoed by aristocrats and members of the imperial family.

While he privately recognised the danger of the riots and strikes in Petrograd at the

beginning of 1917, Nicholas remained optimistic about the military situation and believed

that a planned spring offensive would bring victory and improve morale at home.

On the 7th of March the Tsar left Tsarskoe Selo for Headquarters, and the following day,

disturbances began as the men of the factories joined an International WomenÔÇÖs Day demonstration

demanding bread. By the 11th almost all of the capital city was on strike, though initial attempts to

control the rioting by troops loyal to the imperial regime were successful. However, on the 12th, the Petersburg garrison mutinied and prompted Nicholas to return to

the capital. Striking railwaymen blocked the imperial train and the Tsar was forced to divert to Pskov,

where he arrived on the 14th. On the 12th of March twelve Duma deputies formed a Provisional Government to take control

of the capital, and on the same day the Petrograd Soviet of WorkersÔÇÖ and SoldiersÔÇÖ Deputies

was formed. On the evening of the 14th, General Ruzsky, commander of the northern front headquartered

in Pskov, presented Nicholas with a message from President of the Duma Mikhail Rodzianko

urging Nicholas to grant parliamentary government if he wished to retain his crown.

The Tsar initially refused, but when he changed his mind the following day it was too late,

and Rodzianko urged the Tsar to abdicate to prevent further bloodshed.

The other generals, assured by the Duma leaders that they were in control, joined in the chorus

and urged Nicholas to abdicate. On the 15th of March Nicholas agreed to abdicate in favour of his son, but after several hours

worrying about the potential fate of Alexei during a time of war and political instability,

decided that he should instead be succeeded by his brother Grand Duke Michael, who would

serve as a constitutional monarch. On the 16th of March, under pressure from the Provisional GovernmentÔÇÖs leaders, Michael

decided not to assume the throne until a constituent assembly was convened to determine whether

to retain the monarchy. After returning to Mogilev, Nicholas issued a final address to the army on the 21st of

March urging the men to continue fighting and to submit to the authority of the Provisional

Government. Later that day, Nicholas was arrested and taken back to Tsarskoe Selo, where he remained

under house arrest for the next five months. Though subject to humiliation by their guards, Nicholas and Alexandra felt a sense of relief

that the heavy burdens of government were taken away from them. There was an expectation that the former imperial couple would go into exile in Britain, and

Pavel Milyukov, now Foreign Minister in the Provisional Government, submitted a request

for asylum to the British government on behalf of Nicholas and Alexandra.

The British prime minister David Lloyd George was inclined to agree, but the TsarÔÇÖs cousin

King George V feared that granting asylum to the former Russian autocrat would damage

his standing among British socialists and place his own throne at risk. Even had such an offer been extended, Nicholas and Alexandra would have been reluctant to

abandon Russia out of a sense of duty despite their calamities.

In August 1917, the Provisional Government sent Nicholas and his family to the city of

Tobolsk in Siberia, where they lived in the former GovernorÔÇÖs residence.

The provincial city remained well-disposed towards the fallen Tsar, and Nicholas and

the children socialised in secret with the more sympathetic guards. The fate of the Romanovs was destined to get worse after November 1917, when the Bolsheviks

under Lenin overthrew the Provisional Government. Since Imperial Russia used the Julian Calendar which was twelve days behind the Gregorian

Calendar used most of the world, the event is known to history as the October Revolution.

The Provisional Government had been unable to assert its political power was in the hands

of the Petrograd Soviet, while the failure of a summer offensive in July strengthened

support for the radical Bolsheviks who demanded an end to the war.

In January 1918, the Bolsheviks consolidated their hold on power by closing down the Constituent

Assembly, where they were outnumbered by the Socialist Revolutionaries. Keen to secure his power in Russia, in March Lenin reluctantly approved the signing of

the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and its allies, surrendering control of Poland,

the Baltic states, Belarus, and Ukraine. The BolsheviksÔÇÖ suppression of the Constituent Assembly and their capitulation to Germany

created the conditions for civil war. In the spring of 1918, the Czech Legion, who were making their way east along the Trans-Siberian

Railway in order to join the allies on the Western Front, staged an uprising against

Bolshevik rule. The Bolshevik leadership had not decided what to do with the former Tsar, but LeninÔÇÖs

second-in-command Leon Trotsky hoped to bring Nicholas to Moscow for a show trial before

executing him. In April 1918 the Bolshevik revolutionary Vasily Yakovlev acted on instructions from

the central government to bring Nicholas and Alexandra to Moscow, but on the way they were

intercepted by a detachment of Bolsheviks from the Ural Soviet, who took control of the convoy and took them to their base in Ekaterinburg.

Nicholas, Alexandra, and Grand Duchess Maria arrived on the 30th of April and were imprisoned

in the house of Nikolai Ipatiev, a military engineer. The Tsarevich had been ill and had initially been left behind with three of his sisters,

but by the 23rd of May the rest of the family arrived along with their doctor, Evgeny Botkin,

and three servants. As the Czech Legion advanced on Ekaterinburg, at the beginning of July the central leadership

in Moscow decided that the Romanovs should be executed in Ekaterinburg.

On the 4th of July, the deputy head of the Ekaterinburg secret police Yakov Yurovsky

was appointed commandant of the Ipatiev House. In the early hours of the 17th of July, the family and their attendants were brought into

the basement. After the twelve men of the firing squad entered the room, Yurovsky announced that the Ural

Soviet had decided to execute the whole family. A stunned Nicholas asked, ÔÇ£What?ÔÇØ before Yurovsky repeated his orders and the firing

began. Three men in the firing squad claimed that they had fired the fatal shot that accounted

for the former Tsar, but regardless of who was responsible, Nicholas II, the last Tsar

of Russia, was dead at the age of fifty, along with his wife, his five children, and four

loyal attendants. Yurovsky ordered his men to hide the bodies at a location where they could not be found

by the counter-revolutionary White armies who were days away from Ekaterinburg.

The Soviet government claimed in public that only Nicholas had been executed, and even

when it became increasingly clear that the whole family had been eliminated, there were

rumours that Tsarevich Alexei or one of his sisters may have survived and escaped.

The memory of the dead Tsar served as a rallying-point for the monarchists and counterrevolutionaries

who opposed the Bolsheviks, but by 1921 LeninÔÇÖs forces had won the Civil War and his Soviet

regime would remain in power until 1991. From their exile in London, Paris, New York, White emigr?®s continued to hope for a collapse

of Soviet communism and the return of the Russian monarchy. In 1981, the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad canonised Nicholas II and his family, and

in 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church in Russia also agreed to confer sainthood on them.

In the meantime, the remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their daughters were discovered in a ditch near the Ipatiev House in the late 1970s, and after DNA identification

in 1998 they were buried in a special chapel in the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

In 2007 further remains were discovered at a nearby site and later identified as those

of Tsarevich Alexei and either Grand Duchess Maria or Anastasia.

In 2015 the Russian Orthodox Church ordered the exhumation of the five sets of remains

in the chapel for further testing. While renewed investigations confirmed the identification of the remains in 2020, as

of 2024 they have not yet been reburied in the chapel.

The legacy of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia continues to be debated among historians of Russia,

and it is closely related to the question of whether it was possible to avoid the horrors

of Communist rule in Russia in the 20th century. Nicholas had been exposed to revolutionary violence in his early teens with the assassination

of his grandfather Tsar Alexander II, and the political instability would only increase

during his own reign. After the unexpected death of his father Alexander III in 1894, Nicholas came to the throne unprepared

for government. Despite being a well-educated and intelligent man, Nicholas was indecisive and unsocial

and initially found it difficult to stand up to his ministers. As Tsar, Nicholas was able to make his mark in foreign policy, but defeat in the Russo-Japanese

War dented his prestige and fuelled domestic opposition to his rule.

When peasant uprisings and strikes broke out in response to heavy taxation and poor working

conditions, Nicholas wavered between granting concessions and suppressing unrest by force.

Although personally a kind and gentle man, his unwillingness to surrender the powers

which he considered to be given to him by God and his belief that the Russian political system was unsuited to representative democracy meant that he only agreed to establish an

elected legislative assembly in October 1905 in order to keep his throne.

After doing so, he could only work with the Duma when the electoral laws were amended to exclude the majority of the population.

Despite all the difficulties he faced, Nicholas ultimately relied on the army to crack down

on disturbances, and it was only the First World War which created the conditions for

Nicholas to give up his throne in March 1917. Though a prisoner after his abdication, Nicholas felt a sense of liberation after being relieved

of the burdens of government, but any hopes of a comfortable retirement were extinguished

by the Bolshevik Revolution, leading to a brutal end at the Ipatiev House.

What do you think of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia? Was he a weak and incompetent ruler and a brutal autocrat who was responsible for cracking

down on political opposition and encouraging anti-Semitic pogroms, or did he not go far

enough in using force to maintain political stability in the empire? Please let us know in the comment section and in the meantime, thank you very much for

watching.

The man known to history as Vladimir Lenin was born as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov on the

22nd, April 1870, or the 10th of April, using the old style Julian calendar, in the city

of Simbirsk over 700 kilometres to the east of the Russian capital, Moscow.

His father was Ilya Nikolayevich Ulyanov who had been born into a serf family in Russia

in 1831, but had earned his freedom in his youth and then studied physics and mathematics

at Kazan University. He subsequently enjoyed a successful career as an educator and public school overseer

in Russia and rose to become a state councillor, a position which meant that in the early 1880s

the Ulyanovs became part of the minor Russian nobility based on IlyaÔÇÖs contributions to

public education within the Russian Empire. VladimirÔÇÖs mother was Maria Alexandrovna Blank, who was of mixed German, Swedish, Russian

and Jewish ancestry. It seems likely that Vladimir never knew of his motherÔÇÖs Jewish heritage.

She and Ilya had eight children in total, two of whom died in infancy.

Vladimir was the third eldest, arriving after Anna in 1864 and Alexander in 1866.

VladimirÔÇÖs childhood was comfortable, in line with his fatherÔÇÖs increasingly successful

career. For instance, as well as living in a well-appointed home in Simbirsk, the Ulyanovs also holidayed

at a manor in Kokushkino in the countryside. Vladimir also emerged as his fatherÔÇÖs son, displaying a considerable intellect by his

teenage years, excelling at school and becoming an accomplished chess player.

But the upper middle class idyll of his childhood years was soon shattered.

When he was fifteen years of age his father died prematurely of a brain haemorrhage in January 1886, an event which had a profound impact on Vladimir who after this, began to

become an increasingly reactionary and rebellious character. The situation was massively compounded the following year when his older brother, Alexander,

who had left to attend Saint Petersburg State University some time earlier, was implicated

in a conspiracy to assassinate the ruler of the Russian Empire, Alexander III.

VladimirÔÇÖs brother, along with several others, were executed shortly afterwards for their

role in the conspiracy. Vladimir would never be the same again and his descent into extremist politics in Russia

can be traced to this event. VladimirÔÇÖs subsequent actions and those of his brother Alexander in 1887 must be viewed

in relation to the political landscape of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth

century. For centuries Russia had largely lain outside of the mainstream of European politics and

culture but beginning with the reign of Peter I in the late seventeenth century and early

eighteenth centuries, efforts had been made to modernise and reform the country to make

it more like other European states such as France and the Austrian Empire.

This work was continued by his near successor, Catherine the Great, who was German herself

and wanted to make Russia a modern nation. This all occurred as the Russian Empire was expanding dramatically and by the end of the

eighteenth century Russian explorers and colonists had reached as far as the Bering Straits and

Manchuria, extending the Russian state as far as the Pacific Ocean, while in the west

Catherine began a series of conquests which brought parts of the Caucasus, Poland and

Ukraine under Russian rule. Yet despite all of this, the country remained backward in many respects.

Serfdom, under which Russian commoners were tied to the land and their manorial lord as

a quasi-slave, still predominated across the country; the economy remained resoundingly

rural; the Orthodox Church had a huge influence over society; and the country was incredibly

authoritarian, being ruled by the Tsars and the nobility in their own interest.

In a world where nations like the United States, Britain and France were emerging in their

modern form in the nineteenth century, the Russian Empire looked politically and socially

backwards by comparison. These issues were compounded by events in the years before VladimirÔÇÖs birth and while

he was growing up. In 1855 Alexander II ascended to the throne as Tsar of Russia.

He was a liberal reformer who wished to drag Russia into the modern world. Thus, in 1861 he brought serfdom to an end and emancipated the serfs of Russia in one

of the most striking social reforms of the nineteenth century. He also sought to reform the courts, policing and education system.

However, in 1866 he only just survived an assassination attempt and thereafter his liberal

inclinations were toned down. But the reforms he had initiated had let the genie out of the bottle so to speak in Russia.

New ideas were being discussed in a more tolerant environment, driven by writers like Fyodor

Dostoyevsky, Pyotr Kropotkin and Mikhail Bulgokov, who questioned Russian society and discussed

ideas and political theories like anarchism, nihilism and communism.

Many Russians wanted further reforms of society as a result, notably the creation of a parliament

and an end to the autocratic state ruled by the Tsars. Groups such as the Narodniks and the PeopleÔÇÖs Will emerged as politico-terrorist organisations

agitating for these changes and it was the latter group which in 1881 succeeded in assassinating

Alexander II. This ushered in a period of even greater discontent as he was succeeded by his son, Alexander

III, who was opposed to the reforms his father had implemented and wanted to crack down on

liberal dissent in Russia. Thus, the country Vladimir was growing up in during the 1880s was a powder-keg of political

discontent and instability. It was in this political environment that Vladimir arrived in 1887 to Kazan University

to commence his studies. He was almost immediately involved in a protest against the governmentÔÇÖs crackdown on student

societies which were perceived as hotbeds of political dissent. His role in this, resulted in a brief arrest and his expulsion from the university, but

his brief spell there had ignited the fire of political radicalisation. In the months that followed, Vladimir began reading voraciously of various Russian and

European political writers. Amongst others he was soon attracted to the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,

two German political philosophers and social critics who had been deeply critical of the

manner in which industrial society was developing and who had postulated in their 1848 pamphlet,

The Communist Manifesto, that bourgeois capitalist society should be replaced by one in which

the industrial proletariat took everything in society into communal ownership.

This appealed to Vladimir at a time when industrialisation was beginning to rapidly advance in Russian

cities like Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan and Samara. However, it was not the only intellectual influence on him at this time and his political

views were still under formation, although there is no doubt they were radical even before

he reached his twentieth year. In 1890, VladimirÔÇÖs mother was able to use her familyÔÇÖs connections within the Russian

education system to ensure that he was able to sit exams at the University of St Petersburg

in lieu of completing his studies at Kazan University. He passed with first class honours and thereafter took up a position as a legal assistant in

Samara during the 1890s. Throughout these years he continued to foster his political radicalism and was involved

in numerous political organisations. RussiaÔÇÖs radical politics was buoyant at this time owing to events in 1891.

A dry autumn was followed by a bitterly cold winter where temperatures dropped to below

-30 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country along the course of the River Volga.

This was followed by a particularly dry spring and summer in 1892, all of which combined

to cause harvest failures across much of Russia. Famine struck thereafter and this was compounded by the incompetent response of the government

of Tsar Alexander III and other pillars of Russian society such as the Orthodox Church.

By the time the famine abated in late 1892 over 350,000 people had died of starvation

and millions more were malnourished or badly impacted in some other way.

As criticism of the government escalated radical groups such as the communists and nihilists

gained ever greater numbers of supporters in Russia. As the political radicalism of Russian society increased, Lenin found himself feeling marginalised

in provincial Samara and so it was, that in 1893 he set off for the capital, Saint Petersburg.

There he continued to work as a legal assistant, but his energies were primarily poured into

working to foster the Marxist and communist movement in the city. Socially revolutionary groups such as these were effectively outlawed by the government

of Alexander III, however his premature death from kidney failure in 1894 brought his son

Nicholas II to the throne, but while he was more liberal than his father the political

environment would remain repressive. No sooner had he arrived in the capital than Vladimir became involved with a revolutionary

communist cell in the city whose members primarily came from the Technological Institute of Saint

Petersburg. They termed themselves Social Democrats in emulation of the Social Democratic Party of

Germany which was Marxist and communist in its ideology. Already by the spring of 1894 Vladimir was under observation by the secret police in

Saint Petersburg as he had come to their attention as a rising Marxist figure.

Nevertheless, his politics only became more radical in the months that followed, particularly

so after he met and entered into a relationship with Nadezhda Krupskaya, whom he referred

to as Nadya, a schoolteacher who espoused radical Marxist political views.

By that time he had also become involved in the underground publishing of Marxist pamphlets

in the city. It was this activity which eventually saw him and several dozen of his associates arrested

by the authorities in 1895, just as they had been preparing to publish a communist newspaper

called The WorkerÔÇÖs Cause. Lenin was refused legal representation following his arrest and was detained for over a year

before he was sentenced. This was a formative period in his life, as he began working on a book entitled The Development

of Capitalism in Russia while in jail. Eventually late in 1896 he was sentenced to three years in exile in Siberia, the cold,

vast and inhospitable region of Russia beyond the Ural Mountains. This was not a prison sentence, but the Russian state viewed exile to Siberia as effectively

removing a political threat from civilization, so remote and under-populated was Siberia.

He was joined there by Nadya in 1898 and they were wed within weeks.

Owing to medical complications which Nadya suffered from, though, they would never have children.

Vladimir continued to write throughout this time, eventually publishing The Development of Capitalism in Russia under the pseudonym ÔÇÿVladimir IlinÔÇÖ in 1899.

His exile ended in the early spring of 1900, but the authorities forbade him from returning

to Saint Petersburg and so it was, that he briefly settled in Pskov, a city south of

the capital. Here Vladimir became involved in publishing a new revolutionary newspaper entitled Iskra

meaning The Spark, however he quickly realised that he would be re-arrested and suffer an

even greater sentence if he continued to operate on Russian soil. Consequently, in the summer of 1900 he left for Switzerland, connecting with some revolutionary

groups there before relocating to Munich in the German Empire where he was joined by Nadya

in 1901. It was at this time that he began writing under the name which he would become synonymous

with: Lenin. By 1902 he and Nadya had moved again, this time to London, where Lenin ran Iskra from

afar, with the paper being smuggled into Russia. It was during this time in exile in London that Lenin composed his most famous written

work, ÔÇÿWhat is to be Done?ÔÇÖ in 1902. In this, he rejected the view held by many communists that it was inevitable that the

proletariat would move society towards a socialist state in advance of a communist one.

Adherents of this view claimed that the role of communist parties was simply to shepherd

that process along. Instead Lenin believed a more interventionist line was needed in order to ensure the victory

of communism over capitalism, if needs be by overt armed struggle.

His belief was that the working conditions of the proletariat and other factors did create

a greater desire for a socialist state amongst the workers of countries like Russia, Germany

and Britain, but they would not move towards socialism and then communism without a revolutionary

movement to guide them there. Once this was achieved in one nation, Lenin believed that the state would serve to drive

the international communist movement. As such Lenin now conceived of the Russian communist movement as what he termed the ÔÇ£vanguard

of the proletariat,ÔÇØ a movement which would lead the proletariat of Russia and then Europe

towards communism. But inherent in this view was a danger. If the communist parties in Russia were responsible for the communist movement both at home and

internationally, then surely all manner of conduct by the Russian communist movement could be justified as necessary for the greater good of international communism?

In London Lenin also became involved in one of the critical episodes in the early history of the Russian communist movement.

While Lenin was in exile in Siberia in 1898, the disparate revolutionary cells and groups

that constituted Russian communism had united into the Russian Social Democratic Labour

Party or RSDLP, formed at an underground conference held in the city of Minsk in March 1898.

The party was soon being targeted by the Russian secret police, the Okhrana, and several of

its leaders were arrested and imprisoned within months of its establishment. Accordingly, a decision was taken to hold the RSDLPÔÇÖs 2nd Party Congress abroad when

it was held in 1903. However, when the delegates met in London in a chapel on Tottenham Court Road in August,

divisions soon began to appear. One faction, led by Julius Martov, argued that party membership should be kept broad

in order to appeal to as many people as possible back in Russia, as industrial workers there

still only constituted 3% of the population. However, the other faction, which Lenin quickly emerged as the leader of, argued that membership

should be restricted to more committed revolutionaries. When a vote was held on the matter in November, the party split in two.

LeninÔÇÖs group became known as the Bolsheviks and the other faction were known thereafter

as the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were the smaller grouping, though confusingly Bolshevik actually means

ÔÇÿmajorityÔÇÖ and Menshevik means ÔÇÿminorityÔÇÖ, a contradiction owing to the fact that the

majority of the editorial board of Iskra voted in favour of LeninÔÇÖs faction.

The split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks did not result in the creation of two autonomous

political parties immediately. Rather these now became two factions operating within the RSDLP.

Nevertheless the division between them was extremely acrimonious, fuelled by Lenin himself

who in the summer of 1904 published a treatise entitled One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,

which bitterly attacked the Mensheviks. These actions were successful and by early 1905, the Bolsheviks were acquiring control

over the central committee of the RSDLP. The timing was propitious, as important events were occurring in Russia in the first months

of 1905. On the 22nd of January that year, a procession of several thousand unarmed workers marched

on the TsarÔÇÖs Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg to peacefully present a petition for an improvement

of workersÔÇÖ rights in Russian factories. In a striking overreaction, government forces opened fire on the protestors, killing over

150 people and injuring hundreds more in what became known as Bloody Sunday.

This, combined with RussiaÔÇÖs defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, incited a revolution across

Russia in 1905, with workers striking in many cities, portions of the army mutinying and

agrarian unrest across the countryside. The Revolution of 1905 was the spark which led Lenin to return to Russia for the first

time in five years. He was soon in Saint Petersburg where he was central to establishing a new communist newspaper

entitled Novaya Zhizn, meaning New Life. Through this and his other writings, he advocated in favour of trying to expand the RSDLP membership

at this time of intense revolutionary fervour in Russia, but the moment was already passing

the party by. In October 1905 the Tsar, Nicholas II, issued what is known as the October Manifesto.

In this he made wide-ranging concessions to the myriad protestors throughout Russia.

These included a declaration that many civil rights which had been established elsewhere in Europe as far back as the eighteenth century would now be granted to Russian citizens,

while the Manifesto also promised that a new Russian parliament to be known as the Duma

would be created and political parties could be established to elect members to this legislative

assembly. This had the effect of ending the political crisis and concluding the Revolution of 1905,

however, thereafter, Nicholas reneged on most of his promises.

While a State Duma was established, Nicholas disbanded the first one which was elected

in 1906 when the membership of the parliament was deemed to be too radical.

Further Dumas were conservative and ineffective organs of government.

Meanwhile martial law was quickly imposed in 1906 and political dissent was crushed

across Russia in the years that followed. As the political crackdown gathered pace in 1906 and 1907 Lenin and the Bolsheviks considered

their options. The Revolution of 1905 had clearly been a false dawn.

What then was the path forward? One faction, led by a rising figure within the Georgian branch of the communist movement,

Joseph Stalin, advocated engaging in a terror campaign whereby state institutions would

be attacked, a programme which would have the added benefit of helping finance the RSDLP.

There were few supporters of this, though Lenin was not entirely opposed to it.

By early 1906 in the face of the crackdown, he had slipped over the border into the Grand

Duchy of Finland, which was a constituent part of the Russian Empire, though ruled somewhat

autonomously. Here the Bolsheviks were able to operate with some freedom for a time in 1906 and could

easily get their printed material into Saint Petersburg and Moscow from just across the

Finnish border. Yet it was soon realised that there would need to be a return to the tactics employed

between 1900 and 1905. Once again the RSDLP leaders would head into exile further to the west in countries like

Britain where their activities were more tolerated than in the autocratic east.

By 1907 Lenin was back in London where the Bolsheviks successfully resumed control over

the RSDLP against the Menshevik faction at the partyÔÇÖs Fifth Congress which took place

that summer. A decision was then taken to move the partyÔÇÖs headquarters to Paris, where Lenin and Nadya

had relocated by the end of 1908, as part of their never-ending lives as nomadic revolutionaries,

but not before Lenin had spent several months undertaking research in the British Museum in London in the summer of 1908, work which became the basis of his book Materialism and

Empirio-Criticism. The subsequent move to Paris also proved transient and over the next several years Lenin spent

stints, usually consisting of a few months at a time, in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Prague

and Krakow. These were years of decline for him as his influence with the RSDLP seemed to ebb as

some elements within the party favoured entering into parliamentary politics back in Russia,

despite the fact that the State Duma Tsar Nicholas II had established in 1905 was little

more than a smokescreen to pretend that parliamentary representation had been granted in Russia.

Moreover, both his and NadyaÔÇÖs health were declining. Lenin was probably suffering from the early stages of acute atherosclerosis, a disease

which leads to an abnormal build-up of fat and cholesterol on the artery walls, though

some have hypothesised that his health problems may have stemmed from neuro-syphilis.

Whatever the exact cause of his ailment, it began to cause considerable problems during these years in exile, as his star waned within the Russian communist movement.

Meanwhile, in 1912 the split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was formalised as they

divided into two separate political parties. The opportunity for Lenin to re-establish himself as a central figure within the Bolshevik

Party and for the Russian communist movement to reignite itself emerged in the strangest

of fashions, specifically the outbreak of a European war. For years tensions between the major European powers had been building over a myriad of

issues, most notably the rise of the German Empire as a challenge to British supremacy,

colonial rivalry amongst all the major powers in the Scramble for Africa and a similar Scramble

for Asia, and regional tensions over the changing political situation in the Balkans where the

Ottoman Empire was collapsing after centuries of dominating the region. Russia was particularly concerned with the latter issue where it was in competition with

the Empire of Austria-Hungary to succeed the Turks as the dominant regional power.

Thus, when a regional crisis arose there in the summer of 1914 it soon escalated into

a war between Russia and Austria-Hungary. Within days Germany had joined Austria-Hungary and the British and the French had in turn

declared war on the governments in Berlin and Vienna in support of their Russian ally.

The First World War had commenced. By the end of it, Russia would be transformed.

When the war broke out in the finals days of July 1914, Lenin was in Galicia, a region

which straddles the borders of Poland and Ukraine today but which formed part of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire in the early twentieth century. He was briefly imprisoned by the Austro-Hungarian authorities owing to his Russian citizenship,

but he was soon able to prove that he was anything but a supporter of the Tsarist regime of Nicholas II.

Thus he was released and he and Nadya headed to neutral Switzerland where they spent the

next two years as the war raged around them in Europe. There he continued to write and theorise, publishing Imperialism: The Highest Stage

of Capitalism in 1917. By now LeninÔÇÖs political thought was beginning to mature and he was willing to diverge from

orthodox Marxism in a way which few communist ideologues were by the 1910s.

In particular he rejected MarxÔÇÖs idea that every society had to gradually transition

from autocracy in the shape of kings and emperors to a bourgeois democracy governed by the middle

and upper classes before it could transition to a socialist revolution and then communism.

Lenin, always with an eye to the situation in Russia where no bourgeois democracy could

be said to have yet emerged, theorised in Switzerland in the mid-1910s that it was possible

for a state to move straight from autocracy to a socialist revolution, effectively skipping

the development of a bourgeois democracy. Such an experiment would soon be attempted in Russia.

As LeninÔÇÖs political thought was evolving in the peaceful Alpine region, RussiaÔÇÖs

war effort was proceeding dismally. The Russian army was poorly commanded and badly trained and in the German imperial army

on the Eastern Front it faced the most effective military in the world.

Matters were compounded when Tsar Nicholas II decided to take command of the army himself.

1916 actually saw Russian gains, most notably through the Brusilov Offensive which resulted

in the capture of extensive territory in Poland, while RomaniaÔÇÖs entry into the war on the

side of Britain, France and Russia also aided the Russian war effort in the Balkans.

However, by the end of the year food shortages and social unrest were escalating within Russia

itself as the war crippled supply lines and caused scarcity everywhere.

Disaffection at the Tsarist government was also running at an all-time high owing to concerns about the influence over the imperial family of Grigory Rasputin, a mystic and self-proclaimed

holy man. Eventually this spilled over on the 23rd of February 1917 into mass protests in Saint

Petersburg, which had been renamed Petrograd in 1914, and then other Russian cities.

Over the next week the Tsarist government gradually lost control of the country and by early March it was clear that the military was no longer willing to intervene in a decisive

way to save Nicholas II. With his family surrounded in Petrograd and himself surrounded by hostile troops as he

attempted to make his way back to the capital from the Eastern Front, the Tsar eventually took the advice of the army chiefs and several senior members of the Duma and abdicated the

throne on the 3rd of March 1917. The brief February Revolution had brought the Romanov dynasty to an end after 300 years

of ruling Russia. ÔÇâ In Switzerland Lenin was soon abreast of what

was occurring back home. Within days he was preparing to return to Russia again after many more years in exile.

His power within the Bolshevik movement had revived during the war owing to his stance that the communist movement should refuse to play any role in the conflict, instead

lambasting it as a clash of capitalists and imperialist regimes. He was facilitated in his efforts to head back to Russia by the German government who

provided a sealed train to him and a few dozen other Russian dissidents to travel from the

Swiss-German border to the North Sea, the belief being that Lenin would serve to destabilise

RussiaÔÇÖs politics and potentially aid the German war effort on the Eastern Front.

By March the company had reached the Baltic Sea, where they headed by ferry to neutral

Sweden and then onwards by land north through Sweden and into Finland.

Along the way they received updates of developments in Petrograd where the State Duma had formed

a provisional government, one which looked set to be dominated by a mix of centrist revolutionaries

and the liberal aristocracy. But this new regime had immediately run into trouble as the Russian lines on the Eastern

Front literally collapsed in the face of mounting desertions and a lack of leadership.

Thus, when LeninÔÇÖs train pulled into Petrograd on the 16th of April 1917 the new regime was

already experiencing difficulties. He immediately set to work bolstering the Bolshevik cause, addressing large rallies

of proletarian workers in the city in the late spring and early summer, as well as distributing

the ÔÇÿApril ThesesÔÇÖ which he had written on his journey back to Russia and which called

for a new government based around workersÔÇÖ councils called ÔÇÿsovietsÔÇÖ.

Tensions built in the weeks that followed, culminating in mid-July, a period which has

become known as the July Days and during which workers and soldiers engaged in violent demonstrations

against the government, fuelled by Bolshevik agitation. In the aftermath of the July Days the provisional government moved to suppress the Bolsheviks

and Lenin and many of his followers fled over the border to the semi-autonomous Grand Duchy

of Finland. Other senior members of the party such as Leon Trotsky, an emerging theorist and organiser,

were arrested in Petrograd. From Helsinki in the early autumn of 1917 Lenin and his followers began plotting a new

counter-revolution in Russia to overthrow the provisional government. They were not alone and elements within the Russian army and navy were plotting similar

initiatives against the provisional government, which was effectively living on borrowed time

owing to poor handling of the war and failure to stabilise the domestic situation.

Throughout the autumn the political situation remained tense in Russia, with the commander-in-chief

of the Russian military, General Lavr Kornilov, attempting a military takeover.

In order to suppress this, the provisional government was forced to turn to the communists and their workersÔÇÖ soviets in Petrograd for help, a development which strengthened

the cause of the Bolsheviks. Lenin was consequently able to slip back across the border into the capital in early October,

where Leon Trotsky had been elected as head of the Petrograd soviet. The Bolsheviks had also managed to outflank their rivals within the Russian communist

movement, the Mensheviks, by this time. The latter had played a greater role in the State Duma over the years and had co-operated

more with the provisional government since March, whereas the Bolsheviks were increasingly

able to capitalise on their persistently uncompromising attitude since the 1900s.

Thus, by the time Lenin returned to Petrograd in October the time was wholly propitious

for the Bolsheviks to try to seize power in Russia once and for all.

The coup which occurred in Petrograd on the 7th of November 1917 or the 25th of October

in the Julian calendar which Russia used at the time, was one of the seminal moments in modern world history, lauded thereafter by the communist movement as the October Revolution.

It followed from several weeks of planning by Lenin, Trotsky and others in Petrograd

in early and mid-October. Armed militias were prepared in Petrograd, Moscow and other cities to move against the

government. It is a sign of how powerful the movement had become that the provisional government

was aware of what was being planned, but could not stop it, despite efforts to effectively

shut down the city of Petrograd on the 24th of October to forestall a further revolution.

Lenin and Trotsky responded by calling on the Military-Revolutionary Committee and the

soviets to occupy government buildings on the 25th of October. By the end of the day most of Petrograd and Moscow were under Bolshevik control.

The following day Bolshevik Red Guards, as their revolutionary soldiers were termed,

entered the Winter Palace in Petrograd and effectively removed the provisional government

from power. That evening a congress of RussiaÔÇÖs workersÔÇÖ councils, the soviets, was convened in Petrograd,

which culminated the following day, the 27th of October, in the declaration of a new socialist

government. In order not to alienate the bulk of the Russian population, most of whom were still agrarian

agricultural workers, talk of a communist state was initially limited, but that is what

was effectively established in late October 1917.

Within days the revolutionaries made some of their views and intentions known to the wider political community across Russia.

This was a polyglot empire which stretched from the Baltic Sea in Europe to the Pacific

Ocean and from the Arctic Circle south into the deserts of Central Asia.

It incorporated a vast array of different people including Russians, Ukrainians, Poles,

Georgians, Finns, Latvians, Estonians, Lithuanians, Moldovans, Kazakhs, Turkmen, Armenians and

the various ethnic peoples of the thinly populated Siberian region beyond the Ural Mountains.

It was with the goal of assuring this vast array of people that the new government would rule Russia for all its people that the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia was

issued on the 2nd of November 1917, just days after the Bolsheviks had seized power in Petrograd.

This affirmed that all ethnic people living under Russian rule were equal and sovereign

and had a right to self-determination. It also abolished religious and national privileges in line with Marxist ideology.

The document, which was signed by Lenin and Joseph Stalin, who had risen to become a senior figure within the Bolshevik movement since his first emergence during the Revolution

of 1905, is a striking testament to the idealism of the Bolshevik revolution at its outset.

The Declaration was effectively saying that the imperialism which had characterised the Russian Empire would not be maintained.

The subject people of the Tsars could decide their own political future.

Within months the communist regime would begin to completely renege on this promise.

The October Revolution did not result automatically in the creation of a one-party state.

The provisional government had been preparing to hold elections for the formation of a new constituent assembly prior to the Revolution and the Bolsheviks followed through with this

plan early in 1918. There were, after all, other elements within the revolutionary movement in Russia which

had a claim to power, notably the Mensheviks and other leftist and revolutionary groups.

Accordingly a Russian Constituent Assembly met in January 1918, but events were overtaking

it as the Bolsheviks, who in March 1918 were to formally rechristen themselves as the Russian

Communist Party, aspired to absolute power. In the months that followed real power was increasingly vested in the hands of the workersÔÇÖ

councils or soviets in cities like Petrograd and Moscow, while centralised power was monopolised

by the Political Bureau or Politburo of the Russian Communist Party.

In tandem the party began a concentrated campaign of expelling Mensheviks and members of other

socialist and revolutionary groups from the soviets and other political bodies.

Thus, by the end of 1918 the Russian Communist Party had effectively turned Russia into a

one-party state which they controlled. Lenin emerged in the course of this formative year as the head of the new communist state.

Perhaps most importantly he was the chair of Sovnarkom, the name of the Council of PeopleÔÇÖs

Commissars which effectively oversaw the governance of the soviets or workersÔÇÖ councils throughout

Russia on behalf of the Russian Communist Party. It would subsequently become one of the main executive branches of the government of what

was evolving into the Soviet Union. The chairs of Sovnarkom would later serve as the official head of state, but these titles

and roles were still evolving in 1918. As well as chairing Sovnarkom Lenin also sat on the Politburo and the Council of Labour

and Defence. Thus, when Lenin relocated to the Kremlin in Moscow, the ancient centre of government

prior to the moving of the capital to Saint Petersburg by Tsar Peter I in the early eighteenth

century, he did so as the most powerful figure within the new communist regime.

This came at a cost though. With the political environment still highly unstable there were three serious attempts

on his life alone in 1918. The third assassination attempt on the morning of the 30th of August 1918 resulted in Lenin

being shot twice and badly wounded, with blood entering his lungs.

His health, which had been precarious for years, rapidly declined in the period thereafter.

In tandem with this reorganisation of the government in 1918 to establish a country

ruled by the Politburo, Sovnarkom and the soviets, 1918 saw the Communist Party begin

to introduce a number of major economic reforms in line with Marxist ideology.

As early as the 8th of November 1917, less than two weeks after the October Revolution,

a Decree on Land was issued by the new government. This declared that all the land across Russia which was owned by the old Russian nobility

and the Orthodox Church was now confiscated by the state and was to be presently redistributed

amongst the peasantry in line with communist ideology. A debate would follow involving Lenin and others over what kind of agricultural policy

should be followed thereafter. Lenin favoured the establishment of large collective farms run by the state, but this

would not be resolved for some time. In the cities major industries and factories were also brought under state ownership and

the new ownership structure effectively handed control of them over to the soviets.

New rules were introduced to reform the labour laws as well. For instance, the working day was limited to eight hours a day, a highly liberal decision

given that workers across Europe in many countries like Britain and Germany had been agitating

for decades to have the working day gradually reduced from as much as fourteen or twelve

hours a day. In tandem with these economic and property reforms a wide array of legislation was passed

by LeninÔÇÖs government in late 1917 and 1918 to transform the social and legal landscape

of Russia. For instance, communist ideology rejected religion.

Accordingly in January 1918 the new government decreed the immediate separation of church

and state at a time when organised Christian churches across Europe still had a major influence

over education and other social matters. In tandem the new communist state stepped into the breach and began providing free education

to all. In a country like Russia where only a very small proportion of the population were in

receipt of a comprehensive education in the early twentieth century this was a major development

and a campaign to begin tackling widespread illiteracy was also initiated.

Other aspects of Russian life such as banking, transport, trade and communications were also

soon being brought under state ownership, while the old Tsarist legal system was quickly replaced by one presided over by PeopleÔÇÖs Courts.

This differed from most judicial systems across Europe and the common law courts of Britain in particular as they were presided over by a mix of a judge and two peopleÔÇÖs assessors.

The latter were like jurors in the common law system, but with greater powers which included the right of decision in cases in co-operation with the judge.

Of course beyond these economic and social reforms, there was still a war to be dealt

with. 1917 had been a terrible year for the Russian war effort on the Eastern Front.

In the course of it mass desertion and the unwillingness of many Russian military commanders

to fight first for the Tsarist regime and then for the provisional government following

the February Revolution had seen the German Empire advance along a wide front stretching

from the Baltic Sea south-east through Poland and Ukraine. LeninÔÇÖs government quickly accepted that it could not hope to extricate Russia from

the conflict without the loss of territory and so it entered into negotiations almost

immediately with Berlin with a view to terminating Russian involvement in what Lenin had always

lambasted as a capitalist, imperialist conflict. Accordingly, on the 3rd of March 1918, just four months after the October Revolution,

Russia and the Central Powers led by Germany signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Under the terms of the agreement Russia effectively renounced control over all its territories

in the Baltic States region, Poland and Ukraine. Germany annexed much of the Russian territory in Poland, while the Baltic States of Latvia,

Lithuania and Estonia were made into independent German vassal states.

A new Ukrainian state acquired its independence, as did Finland. Further to the south-east Russia also ceded some territory to GermanyÔÇÖs ally, the Ottoman

Empire. This was an incredibly punitive peace agreement, one which stripped Russia of a vast amount

of its prime agricultural land and industrial cities, as well as some of the most densely

populated areas of the Russian Empire. But in agreeing to it, the nascent communist state extricated itself from the war with

Germany in order to concentrate on consolidating its control over Russia.

LeninÔÇÖs government desperately needed peace with Germany and the other Central Powers in the spring of 1918, for the revolution which they had initiated in October 1917 had

not been accepted by a great many elements within Russia and civil war was developing

across the nation. The primary enemy of the new regime were known as the White Army in contrast to the Red Army

of the soviet regime, but in reality the ÔÇÿWhitesÔÇÖ were a very broad array of counter-revolutionaries

who were unwilling to accept the new regime. They included large segments of the old Russian aristocracy and the Orthodox Church, both

of which overnight had found themselves stripped of the great wealth and power which they had

enjoyed in Russia for centuries. Other elements amongst the Whites included fractious elements within the Russian army

and navy who were unwilling to accept the communist takeover, as well as other centrists

and leftists who gravitated towards the counter-revolution once it became clear that the Bolsheviks were

going to monopolise power and that there would be no form of democratic communism in LeninÔÇÖs

Russia. By the spring and summer of 1918 significant parts of Russia had fallen into the hands

of this unorthodox alliance of anti-Bolsheviks. The early stages of the Russian Civil War were difficult for LeninÔÇÖs government.

This was owing to events elsewhere. By the late autumn of 1918 the First World War was winding down as Germany and the Austro-Hungarian

Empire began to collapse internally. The war eventually came to an end on the 11th of November 1918 when Germany surrendered,

the Kaiser Wilhelm II already having abdicated his throne by that time.

With the wider global conflict over, the victorious powers, particularly Britain, but also France,

the United States and Japan, determined to ensure the overthrow of the new communist

state in Russia. The great powers in London and Paris were determined that a radical socialist government

would not come to control one of the most powerful states in Europe and so from late

1918 Britain and others began supplying enormous resources to the White Army.

Expeditionary forces were also dispatched to Russia by Britain and others, while the newly created state of Poland which was formed following GermanyÔÇÖs defeat went to war with

Russia with western aid. As this occurred, the early stages of the civil war in 1918 and 1919 were very difficult

for LeninÔÇÖs government and it seemed for some time that the new regime might not survive

long. The immense emergency which confronted the fledgling Soviet state in 1918 and 1919 must

be borne in mind when assessing the early development of that same state.

Faced with multiple threats to its very existence Lenin and his closest associates such as Trotsky

and Stalin began unleashing state terror to retain control of the territory which remained

in Soviet hands. This was occurring as early as December 1917 when Lenin ordered the creation of the Emergency

Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. It is better known as the Cheka and the first of the extremely powerful secret police services

established by the Soviet state over its 74 year history. The Cheka was tasked with rooting out anyone deemed to be a counter-revolutionary or enemy

of the state. Its leader, Felix Dzerzhinsky, was given wide-ranging powers to undertake this mission.

Within weeks hundreds and then thousands of perceived enemies of the state were being arrested and executed without trial.

A great many others were detained and sent to labour camps which were being established

in the remote inhospitable climes of Siberia. Lenin tried to distance himself from what became known as the Red Terror, but there

is no denying that he was the head of the Soviet state during a time when the worst

elements of the Tsarist regime were revived in order to create the architecture of a security

state which would broadly define Soviet Russia for the next seven decades.

The Red Terror was but one element in the brutal policies adopted by the nascent Soviet

state in order to fight the civil war and secure the regime. Another was the use of blocking units in the war effort.

The idea for these had come from Leon Trotsky and essentially involved using units of Red

Army soldiers who stood behind the Soviet front lines and gunned down any Soviet soldiers

who attempted to retreat. Brutal as these methods were, they soon proved effective.

The war effort reached a low ebb in the summer and autumn of 1918, as a British and French

expeditionary force landed at Arkhangelsk on the White Sea before the war against Germany

had even been concluded, a legion of Czech and Slovak soldiers which had penetrated deep

into Russia seized the city of Kazan and Vladivostok, the main port in the east, was attacked by

the Japanese. Thereafter Trotsky mobilized the Red Army in an effective manner.

Kazan was retaken in September 1918 and Samara followed in October.

However, these efforts were offset when newly independent Poland declared war in November.

Yet the initial onslaught of 1918 by the western powers and their proxies had failed to crush

the communist state and the end of the First World War brought distractions for the Entente

powers as wars broke out in Ireland, Turkey and other regions.

In 1919 the Red Army went on the offensive. In early February Kiev fell as the communists began reasserting the control over Ukraine

which they had lost with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. By April the British, French and American troops in Ukraine were forced to pull out

of the region as the port of Odessa fell to the Russians and communist control of Ukraine

was established. In August the British and French expeditionary forces around Arkhangelsk and Murmansk in

the north by the White Sea were evacuated. Thereafter the western powers were largely reduced to fighting the Soviets indirectly

through their proxies in the White Army, Poland and some of RussiaÔÇÖs other neighbours, though a token American and Japanese presence was maintained in the far east of the country.

Meanwhile the war in the west now concentrated largely on RussiaÔÇÖs clash with Poland.

At first the Poles made major advances, seizing Kiev early in 1920, but after a Soviet counter-offensive

threatened Warsaw an armistice was agreed in the autumn. Thus, by the end of 1920 the Russian Civil War had largely been won by LeninÔÇÖs regime,

though mopping up operations continued in many locations until the recapture of the

port of Vladivostok in October 1922 brought the war to an end.

Lenin had left the leadership of the Red Army during the civil war to others, most notably

Trotsky. Instead he had spent the late 1910s formulating a new approach to international socialism

and communism. This was in response to calls by the British Labour Party in 1918 for a new international

conference of socialist parties to be called the Labour and Socialist International.

But the Russian leader had become disillusioned with the more moderate socialist movements

which prevailed in Western Europe during his years in exile and was committed to establishing

a new international socialist movement which would be led by Soviet Russia.

Accordingly in March 1919 the First Congress of the Communist International was held in

Moscow, better known as the Comintern. There was much optimism at this about the possibility of a world revolution of socialism,

given that communist revolutions had occurred in Germany and Hungary in the weeks preceding

the First Comintern. But these were soon suppressed and in his later years Lenin must have been aware that

no immediate overthrow of the international capitalist system would occur.

Nevertheless the establishment of the Comintern was extremely significant as in years to come

it would serve as a major instrument of international communism led by the Soviet Union.

One final policy of the Soviet regime under Lenin warrants attention. In the spring of 1921 as the civil war was winding down the Soviet leader promulgated

the New Economic Policy. This represented something of a change of course for Lenin, who was always a staunch

ideological Marxist. It may have surprised many then when he outlined plans for a new economic system which would

allow the capitalist free market to continue operating on a limited basis in Russia for

the foreseeable future. It was declared that Russians could also own small amounts of land and businesses, though

major industry and large agricultural estates remained under state ownership.

The purpose of the New Economic Policy was to stabilise the Russian economy in the aftermath

of the war and introduce some growth into the system at a time when the worst famine

since that of 1891 and 1892 had spread across the country.

Ultimately the New Economic Policy resulted in a major boost to the Russian economy as it exited the war and pointed towards the benefits of at least allowing a limited amount

of private ownership and free trade to continue. Yet the New Economic Policy would be gradually abandoned in the course of the 1920s as the

process of state management of industry and farm collectivization intensified.

The about-face in the early 1920s to adopt the New Economic Policy of course raises questions

as to how we should perceive LeninÔÇÖs political thought overall.

After all this was something of a new departure from classical Marxism. But then Lenin had been willing to depart from the nineteenth-century German political

theoristÔÇÖs writings for some time, to the extent that Leninism became its own brand

of communist thought by the 1920s, one which continued to influence communist regimes globally

throughout the remainder of the twentieth century. Essentially LeninismÔÇÖs core idea was that a socialist revolution need not be preceded

by the development of a bourgeois democracy and capitalist system, one which created a

large urban proletariat which would implement the socialist revolution and then create a

communist state in due course. Instead Lenin espoused the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat, no matter how small it

might be in a given state and that this vanguard party of the proletariat would then lead the

rest of society towards socialism and communism. This was an important development.

Marx would have scoffed at the idea of communism developing in countries like China, Mongolia

or Angola where there was little industrialisation let alone a large urban proletariat, but Leninism,

with its message of a small vanguard of the proletariat leading any nation to communism

would have a profound impact on the twentieth century. Lenin, though, would not live to see any of this.

His health had been steadily declining throughout the 1910s, though the exact cause of his ailment

has never been definitively established. It deteriorated sharply following the multiple assassination attempts in 1918, in particular

when he was shot twice and badly wounded that autumn. Thereafter his physicians, of which there were dozens called in during the late 1910s

and early 1920s to try to resolve his problems, concluded that he might be suffering from

blood poisoning brought on by the fact that the bullets from this most serious assassination

attempt had never been removed from his body. Eventually in April 1922 he underwent an operation to have them surgically removed, but it did

not bring about any improvement. Instead throughout the early 1920s he was increasingly restricted to Moscow as he suffered

from an unusual combination of symptoms including insomnia, a sensitivity to sound and other

stimuli, headaches, nausea and general fatigue. All of this eventually culminated in the summer of 1922 in the first of several strokes which

he suffered in the space of just a few months. These left him partially paralyzed and increasingly restricted to a wheelchair.

As LeninÔÇÖs health declined precipitously in the early 1920s thoughts inevitably turned

to the succession and what arrangement might be put in place if he died or was rendered

completely unable to lead the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR as it

had been newly christened in 1922. Lenin had never established himself as a dictator in an absolute sense, but he had become the

pre-eminent figure within the Soviet state based on his many years at its forefront in

exile and his intellectual leadership. Therefore it was conceivable that nobody would succeed him, but rather the Politburo would

rule the Soviet Union collectively as a body. Yet even Lenin doubted that such an arrangement could work and believed that a pre-eminent

figure would succeed him. To that end in the midst of his illness in the winter of 1922 he dictated his last testament.

Here he discussed the respective qualities of the viable candidates. Foremost amongst them was Joseph Stalin, who had risen by then to become the General Secretary

of the Communist Party. But Lenin had become wary of the Georgian he had first met 17 years earlier at the time

of the Revolution of 1905, claiming he was overly ambitious and poorly equipped from

an intellectual standpoint. Instead Lenin gave his approval for Leon Trotsky to succeed him.

The dictation of the testament was one of his last lucid major acts.

In March 1923 Lenin suffered another stroke, as a result of which he lost the ability to

speak. Thereafter he continued to decline before falling into a coma in the first weeks of

1924. He died on the 21st of January.

The political machinations to succeed Lenin began immediately. Trotsky was convalescing from an illness in the warmer weather of the Caucasus region

when Lenin died and Stalin sent him incorrect details of the funeral arrangements so that

he missed the state funeral which was held in Moscow on the 27th of January.

LeninÔÇÖs body was subsequently embalmed and placed on public display in a Mausoleum in

Red Square in central Moscow, where it is still viewable a century later.

Despite LeninÔÇÖs warnings, many of the other senior members of the Soviet regime and the Politburo favoured Stalin in the aftermath of LeninÔÇÖs death.

Stalin entered a political alliance with two of the senior members of the Politburo, Grigory

Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev, one which he used to undermine Trotsky in the years that followed.

He eventually drove him into exile and then turned on his former allies. By 1929 Stalin had monopolised power completely in his own hands and established himself as

a dictator in a manner which Lenin never had. For the next quarter of a century he ruled the Soviet Union in a totalitarian fashion,

murdering millions in his quest to retain absolute power.

The man who was born as Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and became known to the world as Lenin, the

pen-name he adopted in the early 1900s, was one of the most influential figures of the

twentieth century. He hailed from an upper middle class bourgeois background and then reacted violently against

that same background from a very young age, a development brought about in part by the

execution of his brother by the authoritarian Tsarist regime in the late 1880s.

Over the next quarter of a century he emerged as the leading intellectual figure within the Bolshevik movement, theorising about how communism could function in Russia and moving

beyond MarxÔÇÖs thought in the process. As a result, when the First World War created a propitious environment for a communist state

to emerge in Russia in 1917 he became the leader of it, with his message that the Russian

proletariat and the communists, as small in number as they might be compared to the population

of the Russian Empire as a whole, would act as a vanguard for the development of communism

in Russia and then the world. The Russian Revolution was born of idealism and the =goal of overthrowing the autocratic

imperial regime which had ruled Russia for centuries. But nation states can rarely escape their past entirely and that proved to be all too

true of Soviet Russia. Within weeks of the Bolsheviks seizing power they had begun to create a communist state

which in many ways mirrored the Tsarist regime which preceded it. The Cheka was created as a secret police which effectively succeeded the Okhrana, the secret

police under the Tsars. Political dissidents were soon being sent off to labour camps and exile in Siberia,

much as they had been in imperial times. And the possibility of a democratic legislative assembly being established within a new communist

state was quickly dashed as a dictatorship of the soviets and the Politburo was created,

with Lenin at its summit. This soon drew withering criticism from other communist leaders elsewhere in Europe and

Russia, notably Rosa Luxembourg, the leader of the German Revolution, and Peter Kropotkin,

the intellectual forefather of Bolshevism. In saying this it should be noted that Lenin was not Joseph Stalin.

But the state which he more than anybody else brought into being in the late 1910s and early

1920s was a highly totalitarian one which allowed for StalinÔÇÖs rise.

What do you think of Lenin? If he had lived long enough would a more benign Soviet Union have emerged or might he ultimately

have become as oppressive and totalitarian as Stalin subsequently became?

Please let us know in the comment section, and in the meantime, thank you very much for

watching.