Nicholas II

(1868 - 1918)

Nicholas II believed his throne derived autocratic authority from God—and that he therefore held a sacred duty to maintain the tsar’s absolute power. Though he was forced to create an elected legislature after his mishandling of the fatal 1905 protest in St. Petersburg later known as Bloody Sunday, he continued to respond to popular unrest in Russia with police repression and made only token efforts to enact the legislature’s measures. The country’s losses in World War I caused the people, the legislature, and the military to turn on him. The last Russian tsar was executed along with his wife and five children four months after the October Revolution had led him to abdicate the throne.