The First World War had already been going on for almost three years, Russia's economy was at its breaking point. All this reflected, first of all, on ordinary people: workers and peasants.
The higher strata of society were of the opinion that the removal of the unpopular Empress from power would strengthen the authority of the dynasty. The wife of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, was rumored to be a German spy, although the granddaughter of Queen Victoria was raised English, not German.
German propaganda also did its share: German planes scattered over Russian positions leaflets showing the royal couple with the icon of St. George and Grigory Rasputin, accompanied by the caption: "The Tsar with Egorius, the Tsarina with Grigory. Hinting at a love affair between the Empress and the "old man.
Even before the events of February among the oppositionists there was a plan to imprison the Empress, who was actively interfering in government, in a monastery, and send Nicholas II to the Crimea. The heir to the throne, Alexei, was to be proclaimed emperor under the regency of the tsar's younger brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich.
The main problem of the last tsar was the lack of operative and accurate information about the events in Petrograd. Being at the Supreme Command headquarters in Mogilev, he received news from various contradictory sources and with a delay. If the Empress from the quiet Tsarskoye Selo told Nicholas that nothing much terrible was happening, then from the head of the government, the military authorities, from the chairman of the State Duma, Mikhail Rodzianko, came the message that the city was covered by revolt and drastic measures were needed.
"There is anarchy in the capital. The government is paralyzed. General discontent is growing. "Units of troops are shooting at each other... Any delay is like death," he writes to the Emperor on February 26. To which the latter does not react, calling the message "nonsense.
It could not go on like this, the patience of the people had reached its critical limit. On March 8 (February 23, O.S.) 1917, workers in Petrograd began strikes and demonstrations due to a shortage of bread. On March 9 the number of strikers increased to 200,000. The Emperor did not learn of the strikes until March 10, two days later, but did not take this information seriously and ordered the suppression of the disturbances as "inadmissible at this difficult time of war with Germany and Austria.
Not knowing how to stop the disorders, the government ordered shooting at the demonstrators, many of them were wounded or killed and about 150 people were arrested, but this had no effect on the strikers.
The emperor sent the St. George Battalion, headed by General N. I. Ivanov, to Petrograd to subdue the rebels, but it did not reach Petrograd.
The members of the Duma demanded that Nicholas II make concessions and immediately proclaim a manifesto on the change of government, but he postponed the decision until his personal arrival at Tsarskoye Selo. But the revolt of the railroad workers thwarted his plans, the road to Tsarskoye Selo was blocked, and Nicholas II went to Pskov, where the headquarters of the Northern Front was stationed. Once in Pskov on March 1, 1917, where Nicholas was stuck on his way to Tsarskoye Selo, he began to receive a rapidly increasing flow of information about events in the capital and ever new demands from the Provisional Committee. The final blow was the proposal made by Rodzianko to abdicate the throne in favor of his young son Alexei, under the regency of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, because "hatred for the dynasty had reached extreme limits."
The proposal for abdication was handed to the monarch by the commander of the Northern Front, General Nikolai Ruzsky. At first, Nicholas, under various pretexts, tried to delay deciding the issue and refuse to abdicate, but after receiving the news that he was asked to do so by all the high command of the country, including the generals of the Northern Front headquarters, was forced to agree. Hence the "treason, cowardice and deceit" - the famous phrase of Nicholas II, written in his diary on the day of abdication.
On the night of March 15, the members of the State Duma, Octobrist leader A.I. Guchkov and nationalist leader V.V. Shulgin came to Pskov. Shulgin with a draft of the manifesto on abdication, and on the afternoon of March 15, the Emperor Nikolai II signed the manifesto on his abdication in favor of his brother Michael.
Mikhail Alexandrovich also did not risk accepting the crown, realizing the scale of the revolutionary movement in the country. On March 16, Mikhail Alexandrovich made a statement that he was giving up power, since he could accept it only by the will of the people, expressed by the Constituent Assembly, after a direct general vote.
Russia was left without an emperor. The 300-year-old Romanov dynasty had fallen.
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