What day was Tsar Nicolas killed?
Execution of the Romanov family
The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov, according to the conclusion of the investigator , were shot and bayoneted to death in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. According to the official state version in the USSR, former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with members of his family and retinue, was executed by firing squad, by order of the Ural Regional Soviet, due to the threat of the city being occupied by Whites (Czechoslovak Legion). By the assumption of a number of researchers, this was done according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Their bodies were then taken to the Koptyaki forest where they were stripped and mutilated. In 1919, White Army investigation (of Sokolov) failed to find the gravesite, concluding that the imperial family's remains had been cremated at the mineshaft called Ganina Yama, since evidence of fire was found.. In 1979 and 2007, the remains of the bodies were found in two unmarked graves in a field called Porosenkov Log.
Massacre of Novgorod
Ivan's terrible ‘vengeance’ left Novgorod severely wounded. The death toll of the massacre is uncertain. According to the "Third Novgorod Chronicle", the massacre lasted for five weeks. The "First Pskov Chronicle" gives the number of victims as 60,000. These numbers are debated, however, and are not from an impartial source. Western sources from the time give figures ranging from 2,700 to 27,000 killed. Modern researchers estimate the number of victims in a range from 2,500 up to 12,000. Ruslan Skrynnikov, reconstructing the sinodiki (prayer lists) of the Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery, found only 1,505 named victims of the massacre, although these were most likely elite citizens and lesser citizens were not listed. Based on these lists, Skrynnikov considers that the number of victims was 2,000 to 3,000. As the author of "Ivan the Terrible (Ivan Grozny)", R.G. Skrynnikov stated, "the sack of Novgorod is the most repulsive episode in the brutal history of the oprichnina. The cruel, senseless slaughter of innocent people made oprichnina synonymous with lawlessness and excess."
Nicholas II of Russia
On 1 March 1881, following the assassination of his grandfather, Tsar Alexander II, Nicholas became heir apparent upon his father's ascension as Alexander III. Nicholas and his other family members bore witness to Alexander II's death, having been present at the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, where he was brought after the attack. For security reasons, the new tsar and his family relocated their primary residence to the Gatchina Palace outside the city, only entering the capital for various ceremonial functions. On such occasions, Alexander III and his family occupied the nearby Anichkov Palace.
Mikhail Miloradovich
Between 12:20 and 12:30 Pyotr Kakhovsky shot Miloradovich point-blank in the back; "the bullet travelling up from below, from the back to the chest, tore the diaphragm, broke through all the parts and stopped beneath the right nipple". When Miloradovich slumped from his horse to the ground, Yevgeny Obolensky stabbed him with a bayonet. Miloradovich was taken to a nearby house, but by the time the surgeons arrived on the scene the marauders had stripped Miloradovich of his clothes, medals and jewellery. Medics removed the bullet (it was later delivered to Nicholas); Miloradovich remained conscious and dictated his last will in a letter to the tsar. There were three requests: to send His Majesty's regards to his relatives, to grant liberty to his serfs, and to "not forget the old Maikov". Miloradovich died around 3 a.m. on . After six days of lying in state, he was buried with honours at the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
The "Yurovsky Note", an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to his Bolshevik superiors following the killings, was found in 1989 and detailed in Edvard Radzinsky's 1992 book, "The Last Tsar". According to the note, on the night of the deaths the family was awakened and told to dress. They were told they were being moved to a new location to ensure their safety in anticipation of the violence that might ensue when the White Army reached Yekaterinburg. Once dressed, the family and the small circle of servants who had remained with them were herded into a small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexei sat in chairs provided by guards at the Empress's request. After several minutes, the guards entered the room, led by Yurovsky, who quickly informed the Tsar and his family that they were to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his family before he was killed by several bullets to the chest (not, as is commonly stated, to the head; his skull, recovered in 1991, bears no bullet wounds). The Tsarina and her daughter Olga tried to make the sign of the cross, but were killed in the initial volley of bullets fired by the executioners. The rest of the Imperial retinue were shot in short order, with the exception of Anna Demidova, Alexandra's maid. Demidova survived the initial onslaught, but was quickly stabbed to death against the back wall of the basement, while trying to defend herself with a small pillow she had carried into the sub-basement that was filled with precious gems and jewels.
Alexandru Nicolau
Arrested on August 14, 1937, during the Stalinist purges, Nicolau was sentenced to death on September 27, 1937 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on fabricated charges of "espionage and involvement in counter-revolutionary terrorist organisations". He was executed on the same day, and buried in the Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow.
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov (; 9 October 195927 February 2015) was a Russian physicist and liberal politician. Nemtsov was one of the most important figures in the introduction of capitalism into the Russian post-Soviet economy. He had a successful political career in the 1990s under President Boris Yeltsin. From 2000 until his death, he was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was assassinated on 27 February 2015, beside his Ukrainian partner Anna Duritskaya, on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, with four shots fired from the back.
Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky
For a time he was convinced that individual acts of political terrorism would convince tsar Alexander II to introduce democratic reforms. On August 4, 1878 O.S. he assassinated General Nikolai Mezentsov, the chief of the Gendarme corps and head of the country's secret police, with a dagger in the streets of St Petersburg.
Nihilism
The Russian Nihilist movement was a Russian trend in the 1860s that rejected all authority. After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the Nihilists gained a reputation throughout Europe as proponents of the use of violence for political change. The Nihilists expressed anger at what they described as the abusive nature of the Eastern Orthodox Church and of the tsarist monarchy, and at the domination of the Russian economy by the aristocracy. Although the term "Nihilism" was coined by the German theologian Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1818), its widespread usage began with the 1862 novel "Fathers and Sons" by the Russian author Ivan Turgenev. The main character of the novel, Yevgeny Bazarov, who describes himself as a Nihilist, wants to educate the people. The "go to the peoplebe the people" campaign reached its height in the 1870s, during which underground groups such as the Circle of Tchaikovsky, the People's Will, and Land and Liberty formed. It became known as the Narodnik movement, whose members believed that the newly freed serfs were merely being sold into wage slavery in the onset of the Industrial Revolution, and that the middle and upper classes had effectively replaced landowners. The Russian state attempted to suppress the nihilist movement. In actions described by the Nihilists as propaganda of the deed many government officials were assassinated. In 1881 Alexander II was killed on the very day he had approved a proposal to call a representative assembly to consider new reforms.
History of Saint Petersburg
Several revolutions, uprisings, assassinations of Tsars, and power takeovers in St. Peterburg had shaped the course of history in Russia and influenced the world. In 1801, after the assassination of the Emperor Paul I, his son became the Emperor Alexander I. Alexander I ruled Russia during the Napoleonic Wars and expanded his Empire by acquisitions of Finland and part of Poland. His mysterious death in 1825 was marked by the Decembrist revolt, which was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas I, who ordered execution of leaders and exiled hundreds of their followers to Siberia. Nicholas I then pushed for Russian nationalism by suppressing non-Russian nationalities and religions.
Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia
Felix still hoped that Nicholas and the Russian government would respond to Rasputin's death by taking steps to address the increasing political unrest. Felix refused to permit Irina to leave Rakitnoye to join her mother in Petrograd because he felt it was too dangerous. The Tsar abdicated on 2 March, OS, and he and his family were arrested by the Bolsheviks. They were eventually murdered at Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918. His decision to exile Felix and Dmitri meant that they were among the few members of the Romanov family to escape execution during the Bolshevik Revolution that followed.
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
Rasputin's perceived interference in political matters eventually led to his murder on 30 December 1916. Amongst the conspirators were the nobleman Prince Felix Yusupov, who was married to Nicholas II's niece, Princess Irina of Russia, and Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, a first cousin of Nicholas. Newspaper reporter Michael Smith wrote in his book that British Secret Intelligence Bureau head Mansfield Cumming ordered three of his agents in Russia to eliminate Rasputin in December 1916.
Nicholas II of Russia
Following the February Revolution of 1917, Nicholas abdicated on behalf of himself and his son and heir, the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. He and his family were imprisoned and transferred to Tobolsk in late summer 1917. On 30 April 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, and their daughter Maria were handed over to the local Ural Soviet council in Ekaterinburg (renamed Sverdlovsk during the Soviet era); the rest of the captives followed on 23 May. Nicholas and his family were executed by their Bolshevik guards on the night of 16/17 July 1918. The remains of the imperial family were later found, exhumed, identified and re-interred with elaborate State and Church ceremony in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998.
Nikolai Kulikovsky
As newspapers were banned and letters infrequent, the Romanovs under house arrest knew little of the fate of Tsar Nicholas and his family. Nicholas, his wife, and their children, were originally held at their official residence, the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, but the provisional government under Alexander Kerensky relocated them to Tobolsk, Siberia. Eventually, in July 1918, after being transferred to Yekaterinburg, Nicholas and his family were killed by their Bolshevik guards. In the Crimea, the Grand Duchess's family were condemned to death by the Yalta revolutionary council but the executions were stayed by the Sevastopol council, who refused to act without orders from Moscow. In March 1918, German forces advanced on the Crimea, and the revolutionary guards were replaced by German ones.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (Russian: Николай Николаевич Романов (младший – "the younger"); 18 November 1856 – 5 January 1929) was a Russian general in World War I (1914–1918). A grandson of Emperor Nicholas I of Russia, he was commander in chief of the Russian Imperial Army units on the main front in the first year of the war, and was later a successful commander-in-chief in the Caucasus region. He was briefly recognized as Tsar, Emperor of Russia in 1922 in areas controlled by the White Armies movement in the Russian Far East.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891)
Nicholas Nicolaievich was in Cannes with his two sons when his brother Alexander II was assassinated, returning immediately to Russia in March 1881. The ascension to the Russian throne of his nephew, Alexander III, marked the beginning of the Grand Duke's steady decline. Alexander III did not have any special sympathy for his uncle and Nicholas Nicholaievich was resolutely deprived of all his influence. His authority suffered even further when he was involved in fraudulent military requisitions. When the Grand Duke tried to explain his actions to the Nouvelle Revue of Paris 1880, he indiscreetly attacked government officials and military commanders and eventually was removed from his post. Alexander III also criticized his uncle's extramarital affairs.
Grigory Petrovich Nikulin
Grigory Nikulin is known for his participating in killing of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Nikulin was living in the House of Special Purpose ie Ipatiev House since his appointment as Assistant to the Commandant. He was also in charge of the house in absence of Yurovsky who lived in the "American Hotel". The Ural Regional Soviet agreed in a meeting on June 29th that the Romanov family should be executed. After getting the final approval from Central Executive Committee in Moscow Yurovsky organized a meeting in American Hotel. Participation in killing was voluntary and people who agreed to participate came to Yurovsky's room. It was agreed that to prevent unnecessary suffering executees were to be shot to the heart.
Mikhail Miloradovich
When news of the death of Alexander I reached Saint Petersburg, Miloradovich prevented the heir, future tsar Nicholas I, from acceding to the throne. From to , Miloradovich exercised de facto dictatorial authority, but he ultimately recognised Nicholas as his sovereign after the Romanovs sorted out the succession crisis. Miloradovich had sufficient evidence of the mounting Decembrist revolt, but did not take any action until the rebels took over the Senate Square on . He rode into the rows of rebel troops and tried to talk them into obedience, but was fatally shot by Pyotr Kakhovsky and stabbed by Yevgeny Obolensky.
Yakov Yurovsky
On the night of 16/17 July 1918, a squad of Bolshevik secret police (Cheka), led by Yurovsky, executed Russia's last Emperor, Nicholas II, along with his wife Alexandra, their four daughters–Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia–and son Alexei. Along with the family, four members of the imperial household (court physician Eugene Botkin, chambermaid Anna Demidova, cook Ivan Kharitonov and footman Alexei Trupp) were also killed. All were shot in a half-cellar room (measured to be 25 feet x 21 feet) of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains region, where they were being held prisoner. The firing squad comprised three local Bolsheviks and seven soldiers. It has been documented that the order to assassinate the Imperial family came from Yakov Sverdlov in Moscow and had been initiated by Lenin himself. It is also well documented that Yurovsky had visited the Bolshevik leadership in Moscow, and notably Sverdlov, only a few weeks before the killing took place.
Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia
In January 1905 a wave of strikes broke out in St. Petersburg. On January 9(O.S.)/22(N.S.) a peaceful procession of workers led by a priest, Father Georgy Gapon, marched towards the Winter Palace from different points in the city hoping to present request for reforms directly to Emperor Nicholas II. The Tsar, however, was not in the capital. General Fullon, St Petersburg Governor, tried to stop the march. When a large group of workers reached Winter Palace Square, troops acting on direct orders from Guards Commander Prince Vasilchikov opened fire upon the demonstrators. More than 100 marchers were killed and several hundred were wounded. Although Grand Duke Vladimir claimed no direct responsibility about that tragedy, since he was also away from the city, his reputation was tarnished. The massacre, known as Bloody Sunday, was followed by a series of strikes in other cities, peasant uprisings in the country, and mutinies in the armed forces, which seriously threatened the tsarist regime and became known as the Revolution of 1905. A month after Bloody Sunday, Vladimir's brother Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich was killed by a terrorist bomb in Moscow.
Nicholas II of Russia
The executioners drew handguns and began shooting; Nicholas was the first to die. Yurovsky took credit afterwards for firing the first shot that killed the Tsar, but his protege – Grigory Nikulin – said years later that Mikhail Medvedev had fired the shot that killed Nicholas. "He fired the first shot. He killed the Tsar," he said in 1964 in a tape-recorded statement for the radio. Nicholas was shot several times in the chest (sometimes incorrectly said to have been shot in his head, but his skull bore no bullet wounds when it was discovered in 1991). Anastasia, Tatiana, Olga, and Maria survived the first hail of bullets; the sisters were wearing over 1.3 kilograms of diamonds and precious gems sewn into their clothing, which provided some initial protection from the bullets and bayonets. First they were stabbed with bayonets and then shot at close range in their heads.
Gérard Encausse
Encausse visited Russia three times, in 1901, 1905, and 1906, serving Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra both as physician and occult consultant. In October 1905, he allegedly conjured up the spirit of Alexander III, the Tsar Nicholas's father, who prophesied that the Tsar would meet his downfall at the hands of revolutionaries. Encausse's followers allege that he informed the Tsar that he would be able to magically avert Alexander's prophesy so long as Encausse was alive; Nicholas kept his hold on the throne of Russia until 141 days after Papus's death.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
Grand Duke Nicholas was the first cousin once removed of Tsar Nicholas II. To distinguish between them the Grand Duke was often known within the Imperial family as "Nikolasha"; the Grand Duke was also known as "Nicholas the Tall" while the Tsar was "Nicholas the Short".
Khodynka Field
The negligence of the imperial authorities caused public indignation in Russia, and a number of minor officials were dismissed. However, the new Tsar did not cancel the coronation ball scheduled for later that day. Many mystic writers in Russia say that deed predestined the death of Nicholas in Soviet Russia.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
It is reported that, while visiting the garrison of Kostroma he met Said Nursi, a famous Muslim cleric who was a prisoner of war. Because of Nursi's disrespectful attitude, Grand Duke gave an order to execute him. But after seeing Nursi's submission and faith about the sake of science, he changed his mind. Nothing in the Grand Duke's record suggests that he would have even considered such a war crime. At the time he was urging the Tsar to set up colleges for training Muslim clerics so they would not have to study abroad.
Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
The day of the assassination, June 28 (June 15 in the Julian calendar), is the feast of St. Vitus. In Serbia, it is called Vidovdan and commemorates the 1389 Battle of Kosovo against the Ottomans, at which the Sultan was assassinated in his tent by a Serb.
Diocese of Novgorod
Like the rest of Russia, the archiepiscopal office suffered hardship during the reign of Ivan the Terrible and the subsequent Time of Troubles. Novgorod seems to have suffered more than most, as the Oprichnina massacred a number of the citizenry in the city in 1570 and looted the Cathedral of Holy Wisdom and other places in the city. At around the time of the massacre, Tsar Ivan the Terrible removed Archbishop Pimen from office and sent him to Aleksandrov where he was apparently tortured. Pimen died in 1572 under uncertain circumstances in the Monastery of St. Nicholas in Tula. His successor, Archbishop Leonid, was beheaded in Moscow on Cathedral Square in the Kremlin on the orders of the Tsar in October 1575. Leonid's successor, Aleksandr, was elevated to the metropolitan rank in 1589, becoming the "Metropolitan of Novgorod the Great and Velikie Luki". (Pskov became its own eparchy in 1589, hence Pskov could no longer be part of the Novgorodian archbishop's title.)
Rise of Joseph Stalin
On 1 December 1934, Sergei Kirov was murdered by Leonid Nikolaev. The death of this popular, high-profile politician shocked Russia, and Stalin used this murder to begin The Great Terror. Within hours of Kirov's death, Stalin declared Grigory Zinoviev and his supporters to be responsible for Kirov's murder. Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev were arrested and, to escape long prison sentences, confessed to political and moral responsibility for Kirov's murder. In January 1935, Zinoviev was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, and Kamenev was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. Stalin sanctioned the formation of troikas for the purpose of extrajudicial punishment. In April 1935, Kamenev's prison sentence was increased by another 5 years, to a total of 10 years imprisonment. Hundreds of oppositionists linked to Kamenev and Zinoviev were arrested and exiled to Siberia. In late 1935, Stalin reopened the case. Kamenev and Zinoviev were interrogated again, and the exiled Trotsky was now accused of being the leading mastermind in Kirov's murder. In July 1936, Stalin promised Kamenev and Zinoviev (through NKVD chief, Genrikh Yagoda) that there would be no executions or persecution of their families if they confessed to conspiring with Trotsky. Stalin's promise was soon broken. A few weeks later, after a show trial, Kamenev and Zinoviev were both executed on 25 August 1936.
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia
On 12 June 1918, the leader of the local secret police, Gavril Myasnikov, with the connivance of other local Bolsheviks, hatched a plan to murder Michael. Myasnikov assembled a team of four men who, like him, were all former prisoners of the Tsarist regime: Vasily Ivanchenko, Ivan Kolpashchikov, Andrei Markov and Nikolai Zhuzhgov. Using a forged order, the four men gained entry to Michael's hotel at 11.45 p.m. At first, Michael refused to accompany the men until he spoke with the local chairman of the secret police, Pavel Malkov, and then because he was ill. His protestations were futile and he got dressed. Johnson insisted on accompanying him and the four men plus their two prisoners climbed into two horse-drawn three-seater traps. They drove out of the town into the forest near Motovilikha. When Michael queried their destination, he was told they were going to a remote railway crossing to catch a train. By now it was the early hours of 13 June. They all alighted from the carriages in the middle of the wood, and both Michael and Johnson were fired upon, once each, but as the assassins were using home-made bullets, their guns jammed. Michael, whether wounded or not is unknown, moved towards the wounded Johnson with arms outstretched, when he was shot at point-blank range in the head. Both Zhuzhgov and Markov claimed to have fired the fatal shot. Johnson was shot dead by Ivanchenko. The bodies were stripped and buried. Anything of value was stolen and the clothes were taken back to Perm. After they were shown to Myasnikov as proof of the murders, the clothes were burned. The Ural Regional Soviet, headed by Alexander Beloborodov, approved the execution, either retrospectively or beforehand, as did Lenin. Michael was the first of the Romanovs to be executed by the Bolsheviks but he was not the last. Neither Michael's nor Johnson's remains have been found.
Nicholas of Tolentino
In the province of Nueva Ecija, St. Nicholas is being venerated as the titular of the historic Cabanatuan Cathedral where General Antonio Luna was assassinated. His first class relic is being exposed to the faithful from September 1 until September 10 every year.
Nicholas Alexandrovich, Tsesarevich of Russia
His health rapidly worsened, and he was sent to Southern France, but this move brought him no improvement. It was eventually determined that he was suffering from cerebro-spinal meningitis, and it was speculated that this illness of his was caused by a previous accident in a wrestling match, in which Nicholas participated and was thrown down. In the spring of 1865, Nicholas continued to decline, and he died on 24 April 1865, at the Villa Bermont in Nice, France.
Russian entry into World War I
When on 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo Tsar Nicholas vacillated as to Russia's course of action. A relatively new factor influencing Russian policy was the growth of the Pan-Slavism spirit that identified Russia's duty to all Slavic speaking peoples, especially those who practised Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The growth of this impulse shifted attention away from the Ottoman Empire, and toward the threat posed to the Slavic people by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Serbia identified itself as the champion of the Pan-Slavic ideal; Austria planned to destroy Serbia for that reason. Nicholas wanted to defend Serbia, but not to fight a war with Germany. In a series of letters exchanged with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (the so-called "Willy and Nicky correspondence") the two cousins proclaimed their desire for peace, and each attempted to get the other to back down. Nicholas desired that Russia's mobilization be only against the Austrian border, in the hopes of avoiding war with Germany. The Kaiser however had pledged to support Austria.
George V
When Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, George's first cousin, was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the British government offered political asylum to the Tsar and his family, but worsening conditions for the British people, and fears that revolution might come to the British Isles, led George to think that the presence of the Romanovs would be seen as inappropriate. Despite the later claims of Lord Mountbatten of Burma that Prime Minister Lloyd George was opposed to the rescue of the Russian imperial family, the letters of Lord Stamfordham suggest that it was George V who opposed the idea against the advice of the government. Advance planning for a rescue was undertaken by MI1, a branch of the British secret service, but because of the strengthening position of the Bolshevik revolutionaries and wider difficulties with the conduct of the war, the plan was never put into operation. The Tsar and his immediate family remained in Russia, where they were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. George wrote in his diary: "It was a foul murder. I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men and thorough gentleman: loved his country and people." The following year, Nicholas's mother Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark) and other members of the extended Russian imperial family were rescued from Crimea by a British warship.
Execution of the Romanov family
On Thursday, 26 August 2010, a Russian court ordered prosecutors to reopen an investigation into the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, although the Bolsheviks believed to have shot them in 1918 had died long before. The Russian Prosecutor General's main investigative unit said it had formally closed a criminal investigation into the killing of Nicholas because too much time had elapsed since the crime and because those responsible had died. However, Moscow's Basmanny Court ordered the re-opening of the case, saying that a Supreme Court ruling blaming the state for the killings made the deaths of the actual gunmen irrelevant, according to a lawyer for the Tsar's relatives and local news agencies.
Nicholas II of Russia
In celebration on 27 May 1896, a large festival with food, free beer and souvenir cups was held in Khodynka Field outside Moscow. Khodynka was chosen as the location as it was the only place near Moscow large enough to hold all of the Moscow citizens. Khodynka was primarily used as a military training ground and the field was uneven with trenches. Before the food and drink was handed out, rumours spread that there would not be enough for everyone. As a result, the crowd rushed to get their share and individuals were tripped and trampled upon, suffocating in the dirt of the field. Of the approximate 100,000 in attendance, it is estimated that 1,389 individuals died and roughly 1,300 were injured. The Khodynka Tragedy was seen as an ill omen and Nicholas found gaining popular trust difficult from the beginning of his reign. The French ambassador's gala was planned for that night. The Tsar wanted to stay in his chambers and pray for the lives lost, but his uncles believed that his absence at the ball would strain relations with France, particularly the 1894 Franco-Russian Alliance. Thus Nicholas attended the party; as a result the mourning populace saw Nicholas as frivolous and uncaring.
Prince George Alexandrovich Yuryevsky
Tsar Alexander II died on 13 March 1881, when after visiting his cousin Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna he was assassinated on the road leading back to the Winter Palace. His death stopped all plans for Catherine's coronation, which some considered fortunate, as they feared it would have caused lasting damage to the monarchy. In his Will, Alexander II left his widow the same amount he bequeathed to each of his sons from his first marriage. Despite his earlier opposition, the tsar's son, now Alexander III, made an official visit of condolence to Catherine and gave her an additional allowance as well as a small palace for her to live in after she left the Winter Palace. George and his family attended the tsar's funeral, but they were ignored as much as possible by the Imperial family, until Alexander III himself approached his father's widow and spoke to her. His wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna was nearby, but as she had been greatly opposed to the princess, she hesitated to acknowledge her. After being embraced by Catherine however, they both broke down crying, and George and his sisters kissed Maria's hand. The couple left, and the widow and children went to another private chapel for a separate mass, as she was not to be allowed to mingle with the Imperial family in the more public funeral planned for later.
Kondraty Ryleyev
For several long hours there was a standoff between the 3,000 rebels and the 9,000 troops loyal to Nicholas I stationed outside the Senate building, with some desultory shooting from the rebel side. Nearby stood a vast crowd of civilian on-lookers, who began fraternizing with the rebels, but whom the leaders of the revolt did not call upon to participate in the action. Eventually, the new Tsar appeared in person, at the square. He sent Count Mikhail Miloradovich, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars, who enjoyed great popularity with both officers and ordinary soldiers, to parley with the rebels. While delivering a speech encouraging the rebels to surrender, Miloradovich was shot dead by one of the rebels, Peter Kakhovsky. At the same time, a rebelling grenadier squad led by Lieutenant Nikolay Panov, entered the Winter Palace, but failed to seize it and retreated.
Bloody Sunday (1905)
The total number killed in the day's clashes is uncertain but the Tsar's officials recorded 96 dead and 333 injured; anti-government sources claimed more than 4,000 dead; moderate estimates still average around 1,000 killed or wounded, both from shots and trampled during the panic. Another source noted that the official estimate was 132 people killed. Leon Trotsky did not put forward a precise figure but claimed that hundreds were killed and that many casualties were secretly buried by the authorities.
Nikolai Rysakov
Nikolai Ivanovich Rysakov (; 1861– 3 April 1881) was a Russian revolutionary and a member of Narodnaya Volya. He personally took part in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, throwing a bomb that disabled the Tsar's carriage. A second bomb by an accomplice, Ignacy Hryniewiecki, killed the Tsar. Rysakov was promptly arrested, put on trial, and hanged, along with other accomplices.
Crimean War
The strain of directing the war had taken its toll on the health of Tsar Nicholas. The Tsar, full of remorse for the disasters he had caused, caught pneumonia and died on 2 March.
Russian Revolution
Tsar Nicholas was blamed for all of these crises, and what little support he had left began to crumble. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in November 1916, stating that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the country unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. Nicholas ignored these warnings and Russia's Tsarist regime collapsed a few months later during the February Revolution of 1917. One year later, the Tsar and his entire family were executed.
Nikola Vaptsarov
Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov (; 7 December 1909 – 23 July 1942) was a Bulgarian poet, communist and revolutionary. Working most of his life as a machinist, he only wrote in his spare time. Despite the fact that he only ever published one poetry book, he is considered one of the most important Bulgarian poets. Because of his underground communist activity against the government of Boris III and the German troops in Bulgaria, Vaptsarov was arrested, tried, sentenced and executed the same night by a firing squad.
Siege of Kromy
On April 13, 1605, Boris Godunov died and his son, Fedor, became Tsar. Many of the boyars began to look for ways to get rid of the elected Zemstvo dynasty. On May 7, most of the government army, following the agitation of the hero of the Novgorod-Seversk siege, Peter Basmanov (who took part in the conspiracy against the Godunovs), took the side of False Dmitry. Tsar Fedor II Godunov was killed by Pretender's agents on June 10, 1605 and False Dmitry I entered Moscow as new Tsar. His rule would last till May 17, 1606, when he would be killed and replaced by Vasili IV Shuiski.
Yakov Yurovsky
Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (; – 2 August 1938) was a Russian Old Bolshevik and a Soviet Revolutionary. He was best known as the chief executioner of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family, and four retainers on the night of 16 July 1918.
Narodnaya Volya
The assassination of Tsar Alexander II on March 1 (13), 1881, marked the high-water mark of "Narodnaya Volya" as a factor in Russian politics. While the assassination did not end the Tsarist regime, the government ran scared in the aftermath of the bomb that killed him, with the formal coronation ceremony of Tsar Alexander III postponed for more than two years due to security concerns.
Nicholas II of Russia
In Russia, Nicholas II faced widespread criticism after the victory of the Revolution. Pavel Bykov, who in Russia wrote the first full account about the downfall of the Tsar, denounced Nicholas as a "tyrant, who paid with his life for the age-old repression and arbitrary rule of his ancestors over the Russian people, over the impoverished and blood-soaked country". Soviet-era historians noted that Nicholas II was not fit to be a statesman. It has been argued that he had a weak will and was manipulated by adventurist forces. His regime was condemned for extensive use of the army, police, and courts to destroy the revolutionary movement. He was criticised for fanning nationalism and chauvinism. With the punitive expeditions and courts-martial during the 1905 Revolution, the monarch became known as "Nicholas the Bloody". Nicholas's reign was seen as a time of suffering for Russians.
Natalia Pushkina
Much was made of Natalia's relationship with Nicholas I after Pushkin's death; it was even rumoured that she became his mistress. In 1843, she met Petr Petrovich Lanskoy (1799-1877), who served at the same regiment as her brother. After having been blessed by the tsar, their wedding was held in Strelna on 16 July 1844. Lanskoy was in favour with the tsar, and he had had a remarkable career before his marriage. Following the marriage, Natalia gave birth to three daughters: Alexandra (b. 1845), Elizaveta (b. 1846) and Sophia (b. 1848). Natalia died on 26 November 1863 and her ashes were laid in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church
Very little of the church's content was recovered. Among the church's most valuable physical possessions were some of the relics of St Nicholas, St Catherine, and St Sava, which had been donated to the church by Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia. These relics were removed from their safe on holy days for veneration; they were never recovered after the attack. To Archbishop Demetrios, the notion that the saints' relics were intermingled in the dust with the remains of the attack victims only serves to sanctify the site further. It was originally an old calendar church but during the 1980s had Wednesday services according to the new calendar.
Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia
Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, and was the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia. She was murdered with her family by members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
Nicholas was a hunter. Ownership of borzoi hounds was restricted to members of the highest nobility, and Nicholas's packs were well-known. As the Russian dogs perished in the Revolution of 1917–18, the borzoi of today are descended from gifts he made to European friends before World War I. In his lifetime, Nicholas and his dogs caught hundreds of wolves. A pair of borzoi were used, which caught the wolf, one on each side, while Nicholas dismounted and cut the wolf's throat with a knife. Hunting was his major recreation, and he traveled in his private train across Russia with his horses and dogs, hunting while on his rounds of inspection.
Ōtsu
The Ōtsu incident, a failed assassination attempt on Tsarevich Nicholas Alexandrovich of Russia (1868 – 1918, later Tsar Nicholas II), occurred on 11 May 1891. Nicholas, returning to Kyoto after a day trip to Lake Biwa, was attacked with a saber by Tsuda Sanzō (1855 – 1891), an escort policeman. Nicholas survived the assassination attempt, but the incident caused national outcry against Tsuda and was seen as a crisis in Japanese-Russian relations.
Alexander Beloborodov
In June 1918, Beloborodov approved an initiative by the regional Cheka led by Gavril Myasnikov to murder Grand Duke Michael, either in advance, or after the fact. Along with Pyotr Voykov, Beloborodov directed the smuggling of letters written in French to the imprisoned Romanov Family at the Ipatiev House, claiming to be a monarchist officer seeking to rescue them, composed at the behest of the Cheka. These fabricated letters, along with the Romanov responses to them, written either on blank spaces or on the envelope, were ultimately used by the Ural Soviet, and likely the Central Executive Committee in Moscow, to justify murdering the Imperial Family amidst the rapid gains made by the White Army in the region. In July 1918, when Yekaterinburg appeared to be at risk of being captured by the White Army, Beloborodov signed the decision of the Soviet ordering the execution of the former Tsar Nicholas II and his wife and children. Following the killings, which took place during the early morning hours of July 17, he sent a coded telegram to Lenin's secretary, Nikolai Gorbunov, which read: "Inform Sverdlov the whole family have shared the same fate as the head. Officially, the family will die at the evacuation." Beloborodov and Yurovsky's deputy Nikulin later oversaw the ransacking of the Romanov quarters, seizing all the family's personal items, the most valuable piled up in Yurovsky's office, whilst things considered inconsequential and of no value were stuffed into the stoves and burned. Beloborodov also ordered the execution of the Tsarina's sister, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine, and five other men from the House of Romanov on July 18, only a day after the killing of Nicholas and his family. On 25 July, Yekaterinburg was taken by White Army soldiers of Colonel Voitsekhovsky, and Beloborodov and the Ural Soviet were evacuated first to Perm, then to Vyatka.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia
The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were murdered.
Felix Yusupov
Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston (; – 27 September 1967) was a Russian aristocrat, prince and count from the Yusupov family. He is best known for participating in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin and marrying the niece of Tsar Nicholas II.
Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
The marriage with Nicholas was not delayed. Alexandra and Nicholas were wed in the Grand Church of the Winter Palace of St Petersburg on 26 November 1894, the birthday of Nicholas's mother, now Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, when court mourning could be somewhat relaxed. The marriage that began that night remained exceptionally close until the pair was assassinated simultaneously in 1918. The marriage was outwardly serene and proper, but based on intensely passionate physical love.
Ilya Leonidovich Tatischev
Count Ilya Leonidovich Tatischev (Russian: Илья Леонидович Татищев) (11 December 1859, Saint-Petersburg — July 1918, Yekaterinburg) was a Russian nobleman, Adjutant General to Tsar Nicholas II, executed by the Bolsheviks and canonized in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia as a new martyr.
Tsarevich Ivan Dmitriyevich
When Tsar Michael I of Russia was elected, the citizens of Astrakhan wanted the pretender and his family to leave the town. In 1614 an uprising of townspeople was aimed solely at capturing the family. They fled into the steppes to escape. A month later, in May 1614, after failing to gather support for a Cossack uprising, they were captured by the Cossacks near the Yaik River and handed over to the government. Marina was imprisoned in the Kolomna Kremlin tower and Ivan and Zarutsky were brought to Moscow. Zarutsky was impaled. Three-year-old Ivan was publicly hanged on in Moscow, near the "Serpukhov Gate". According to one account, he was too light for the drop to break his neck and died slowly of strangulation. Just five months after the deaths of her son and husband, Marina died in prison on Christmas Eve, 24 December 1614.
Walerian Łukasiński
After November Uprising Tsar Nicholas I of Russia became convinced that even imprisoned he must be one of the main activists of the Polish underground (when in fact he had no communications with the outside world and was not involved in any such activities) and moved to a secure facility in Warsaw. During the November Uprising (1830–1831) he was taken with the Russian troops retreating from Warsaw and put in one of the most secure prisons in Russia, the Shlisselburg. The tsar had given orders that he should not be allowed to speak to any other prisoners or guards; that he was to be kept there even after his sentence expired; and that his family was to remain unaware of his fate. Further, most of the commanders of the Shlisselburg prison were to be unaware of the exact identity of the prisoner. One of the few people who, at that time, managed to exchange - literally - a few sentences with Łukasiński, was Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, who was also imprisoned in Shlisselburg for several years. It was only a few years before his death, after the death of Tsar Nicholas, that a new commander of the prison successfully petitioned the more liberal Tsar Alexander II of Russia about improving his condition; Łukasiński was moved from a damp underground cell to a more comfortable cell above ground, where he was given new clothing and furniture and allowed to inquire about events outside and even keep a diary.
Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia
In March 1918, all male members of the Romanov family, including Paul's son, Vladimir, were ordered to register at Cheka headquarters and shortly after they were sent away into internal Russian exile. They never saw Vladimir again. He was murdered by the Bolsheviks, along with several other Romanov relatives, on 18 July 1918 in a mine shaft near Alapayevsk, one day after the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family at Yekaterinburg. Grand Duke Paul, who was too ill to travel, initially escaped the fate of his son. Although under constant harassment, Grand Duke Paul continued living a simple life with his wife and their two daughters at Grand Duke Boris's dacha. It was difficult to find provisions, but as the Grand Duke suffered from a stomach ulcer, he was kept on a strict diet.
Sergey Kirov
On the afternoon of Saturday, 1 December 1934, Nikolayev arrived at the Smolny Institute offices. Unopposed, he made his way to the third floor, where he waited in a hallway until Kirov and Borisov stepped into the corridor. Borisov appears to have stayed some 20 to 40 paces behind Kirov, (some sources allege Borisov parted company with Kirov in order to prepare his lunch). As Kirov turned a corner, passing Nikolayev, the latter drew his revolver and shot Kirov in the back of the neck.
The "Sergei Kirov Museum" maintains that the circumstances of Kirov's death "remain unknown to this day." There are no doubts on the aftermath, however: "the bloodiest round of Stalin's terror and repression."
History of Nizhny Novgorod
In September 1505, under the walls of the unfinished Kremlin, the attack of the Nogais and the Kazan Tatars under the leadership of the Kazan Khan Muhammad-Amin was repulsed. The attacking army included 40,000 Kazans and 20,000 Nogais. The leader of the Nogai, the brother-in-law of Mohammed-Amin, was killed by the cannonball that was released by Fedor Litvich. After that, there was a massacre between the Nogais and the Tatars and the khan was forced to relieve the siege.
Canonization of the Romanovs
The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years after they were murdered. The bodies of Alexei and one of his sisters were at the time missing. On 23 August 2007, a Russian archaeologist announced the discovery of two burned, partial skeletons at a bonfire site at Ganina Yama near Yekaterinburg that appeared to match the site described in assassin Yakov Yurovsky's memoirs. The archaeologists said the bones are from a boy who was roughly between the ages of ten and thirteen years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was roughly between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three years old. Anastasia was seventeen years, one month old at the time of the assassination, while her sister Maria was nineteen years, one month old and her brother Alexei was two weeks shy of his fourteenth birthday. Anastasia's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were twenty-two and twenty-one years old at the time of the assassination. Along with the remains of the two bodies, archaeologists found "shards of a container of sulfuric acid, nails, metal strips from a wooden box, and bullets of various caliber.".
Eugene Nicolaievich Ivanoff
Eugene Nicolaievich Ivanoff of Poland, who claimed to be Tsarevich Alexei Romanov in the mid-1920s, was one of the first in a long line of Romanov impostors to emerge from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918. He was both one of the first Alexei claimants, and one of the first Romanov claimants to generate any sort of serious publicity in the European and American press.
Nothing Sacred (Akunin)
The chief of German intelligence rejects Sepp's plan, and offers his own — the assassination of Nicholas II, expecting that the emperor's death would cause confusion and a struggle for power that would drive Russia out of the war. Wilhelm II, who is Nikolai's cousin, would never allow such an operation, and so Theofels must kill the Tsar by making it look like an accident, deciding to engineer a rail accident. Sepp assembles a group of militant nationalists who hate Nicholas II. At the same time, Duke Kozlovsky the Russian chief of counterintelligence sends his best agent, Aleksei Romanov, to the front to examine how well the security of "train number 1", in which the Emperor Nicholas II travels along the front, is organized. Romanov discovers that the retinue of Nicholas includes a traitor who informs German intelligence of all the movements of the royal train. Aleksei discerns a possible assassination attempt and begins to act, seeking to prevent the murder of the Tsar...now read on
Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia
The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998, eighty years to the day after they were murdered.
The Assassin of the Tsar
A good portion of the film depicts the last days of the Russian Imperial Family in Yekaterinburg, largely narrated by Timofyev's voice-over from the perspective of Yakov Yurovsky, the chief guard and ultimately executioner of the family. In the scenes, Yurovsky is impersonated by Timofyev (McDowell) and Tsar Nicholas II by Dr. Smirnov (Yankovsky). Other members of the family function merely as background, with few or no lines.
Patriarch Nikon of Moscow
Nikon survived Tsar Alexis with whom something of the old intimacy had been resumed in 1671. In 1681 the new tsar Fedor (Alexius's son), on hearing that Nikon was dying, allowed him to return to Moscow and, under a partial pardon, take up residence in his former Moscow home, the New Jerusalem Monastery. At Yaroslavl on his way there, after crossing the Kotorosl River, he died in Tropino on 17 August 1681. The monastery remained unfinished, however, but the royal family paid particular attention to ensuring its completion. Nikon's cleric later recorded that, for the church's consecration in 1685, Tserevna Tatyana prepared gold and silver, arranged for icons to be made, and personally embroidered veils to cover paraphernalia for the eucharist.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1831–1891)
Grand Duke Nicholas Nicolaievich, unable to get a divorce, hoped to survive his wife and then marry his mistress, but it was Catherine Chislova who died unexpectedly in Crimea while Grand Duchess Alexandra Petrovna would survive him by nine years. Shortly after his mistress' death, Nicholas went mad; he had oral cancer that spread to his brain. Suffering from delusion, he was convinced that all women were in love with him. During one ballet performance, the Grand Duke even attacked a young male dancer that he took to be a woman. In 1890, Nicholas Nicolaievich was declared insane and kept locked indoors in Crimea. He died in Alupka, Crimea on 25 April 1891. The Grand Duke's reputation at the imperial court was low and his death was not deeply felt. He had squandered all his tremendous wealth and his palace was immediately sold to cancel his massive debts.
Nicholas II of Russia
By that autumn, Alexander III lay dying. Upon learning that he would live only a fortnight, the Tsar had Nicholas summon Alix to the imperial palace at Livadia. Alix arrived on 22 October; the Tsar insisted on receiving her in full uniform. From his deathbed, he told his son to heed the advice of Witte, his most capable minister. Ten days later, Alexander III died at the age of forty-nine, leaving twenty-six-year-old Nicholas as Emperor of Russia. That evening, Nicholas was consecrated by his father's priest as Tsar Nicholas II and, the following day, Alix was received into the Russian Orthodox Church, taking the name Alexandra Feodorovna with the title of Grand Duchess and the style of "Imperial Highness".
Tsar Boris (drama)
Tsar Boris () is a 1870 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868-1869 and first published in the No.3, March 1870 issue of the "Vestnik Evropy" magazine. It became the third and the final part of Tolstoy’s acclaimed historical drama trilogy started by "The Death of Ivan the Terrible" (1864) and continued by "Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich" (1868).
Grigory Petrovich Nikulin
Grigory Petrovich Nikulin (Russian: Григо́рий Петро́вич Нику́лин; 10 January 1895 [O.S. 27 December 1894] - 22 September 1965) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary best known for taking part in killing of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, his family and four others on the night of 16 July 1918.
Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia (1899–1918)
It was whispered in society that Rasputin had seduced not only the Tsarina but also the four grand duchesses. Rasputin had released ardent letters written to him by the Tsarina and the four grand duchesses. The letters circulated throughout society, fueling the rumors. Pornographic cartoons also circulated that depicted Rasputin having sexual relations with the empress, with her four daughters and Anna Vyrubova nude in the background. Nicholas ordered Rasputin to leave St. Petersburg for a time, much to Alexandra's displeasure, and Rasputin went on a pilgrimage to Palestine. Despite the scandal, the imperial family's association with Rasputin continued until Rasputin was murdered on 17 December 1916. "Our Friend is so contented with our girlies, says they have gone through heavy 'courses' for their age and their souls have much developed," Alexandra wrote to Nicholas on 6 December 1916. In his memoirs, A. A. Mordvinov reported that the four grand duchesses appeared "cold and visibly terribly upset" by Rasputin's death and sat "huddled up closely together" on a sofa in one of their bedrooms on the night they received the news. Mordvinov reported that the young women were in a gloomy mood and seemed to sense the political upheaval that was about to be unleashed. Rasputin was buried with an icon signed on its reverse side by Maria, her sisters, and mother. Maria attended Rasputin's funeral on 21 December 1916 and her family planned to build a church over his grave site.
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
He became the symbolic figurehead of an anti-Soviet Russian monarchist movement, after assuming on 16 November 1924 the supreme command of all Russian forces in exile and thus of the Russian All-Military Union, which had been founded in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes by Gen Pyotr Wrangel two months prior. The monarchists made plans to send agents into Russia. Conversely a top priority of the Soviet secret police was to penetrate this monarchist organization and to kidnap Nicholas. They were successful in the former, infiltrating the group with spies. (OGPU later lured the anti-Bolshevik British master spy Sidney Reilly back to the Soviet Union (1925) where he was killed.) They did not succeed however, in kidnapping Nicholas. As late as June 1927, the monarchists were able to set off a bomb at the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.
Nicholas II of Russia
After the DNA testing of 1998, the remains of the Emperor and his immediate family were interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, on 17 July 1998, on the eightieth anniversary of their executions. The ceremony was attended by Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who said, "Today is a historic day for Russia. For many years, we kept quiet about this monstrous crime, but the truth has to be spoken."
Assassination of Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov was an organizer of the anti-crisis and anti-war march "Vesna" ("Spring") planned on 1 March 2015. After the murder, the organizers transformed the planned march into a memorial for Nemtsov. The participants marched from Kitay-gorod to Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge where Nemtsov was murdered. According to the organizers more than 50,000 people took part in the march, while Moscow police counted 21,000 participants. Around 50 people were arrested for disobedience to police including Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleksiy Honcharenko. According to Honcharenko, he was beaten and deprived of medical and legal help while in detention. Honcharenko was released from prison the next day, but he promised to sue Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.
February Revolution
In an attempt to boost morale and repair his reputation as a leader, Nicholas announced in the summer of 1915 that he would take personal command of the army, in defiance of almost universal advice to the contrary. The result was disastrous on three grounds. Firstly, it associated the monarchy with the unpopular war; secondly, Nicholas proved to be a poor leader of men on the front, often irritating his own commanders with his interference; and thirdly, being at the front made him unavailable to govern. This left the reins of power to his wife, the German Tsarina Alexandra, who was unpopular and accused of being a spy and under the thumb of her confidant, Grigori Rasputin, himself so unpopular that he was assassinated by members of the nobility in December 1916. The Tsarina proved an ineffective ruler in a time of war, announcing a rapid succession of different Prime Ministers and angering the Duma. The lack of strong leadership is illustrated by a telegram from Octobrist politician Mikhail Rodzianko to the Tsar on 26 February O.S. (11 March N.S), 1917, in which Rodzianko begged for a minister with the "confidence of the country" be instated immediately. Delay, he wrote, would be "tantamount to death".
Grand Duke Nicholas Mikhailovich of Russia
He fell from favour during the last part of the reign of Nicholas II, as Empress Alexandra disliked him for his liberal views. As the political situation in Russia worsened, he urged the Tsar to implement reforms, and he even participated in discussions of a palace coup. After the fall of the monarchy, he was exiled to Vologda. He was later imprisoned by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and shot outside the St Peter and St Paul Fortress along with his brother Grand Duke George Mikhailovich and his cousins Grand Duke Dimitri Konstantinovich and Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich.
Nicholas II of Russia
From his hiding place Gapon issued a letter, stating "Nicholas Romanov, formerly Tsar and at present soul-murderer of the Russian empire. The innocent blood of workers, their wives and children lies forever between you and the Russian people ... May all the blood which must be spilled fall upon you, you Hangman. I call upon all the socialist parties of Russia to come to an immediate agreement among themselves and bring an armed uprising against Tsarism."
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
Nicholas tried to have a railway built from Russian Georgia to the conquered territories with a view to bringing up more supplies for a new offensive in 1917. But, in March 1917, the Tsar was overthrown and the Russian army began slowly to fall apart.
Nicholas II of Russia
By the time of Stolypin's assassination by Dmitry Bogrov, a student (and police informant) in a theatre in Kiev on 18 September 1911, Stolypin had grown weary of the burdens of office. For a man who preferred clear decisive action, working with a sovereign who believed in fatalism and mysticism was frustrating. As an example, Nicholas once returned a document unsigned with the note:
Nicholas and Alexandra
Alexei, youngest child of Tsar Nicholas, is born in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War. Nicholas is warned by his cousin Grand Duke Nicholas and the Prime Minister Count Witte that the war is futile and costing too many lives. They tell him the Russian people want representative government, health care, voting and workers' rights, but Nicholas wants to maintain the autocracy. Meanwhile, underground political parties led by Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky have formed.
Nicholas II of Russia
On 28 June 1914 Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated by a Bosnian Serb in Sarajevo. Nicholas vacillated as to Russia's course of action. The outbreak of war was not inevitable, but leaders, diplomats and nineteenth-century alliances created a climate for large-scale conflict. The concept of Pan-Slavism and shared ethnicity and religion created strong public sympathy between Russia and Serbia. Territorial conflict created rivalries between Germany and France and between Austria and Serbia, and as a consequence alliance networks developed across Europe. The Triple Entente and Triple Alliance networks were set before the war. Nicholas wanted neither to abandon Serbia to the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary, nor to provoke a general war. In a series of letters exchanged with Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany (the "Willy and Nicky correspondence") the two proclaimed their desire for peace, and each attempted to get the other to back down. Nicholas desired that Russia's mobilization be only against the Austrian border, in the hopes of preventing war with the German Empire.
Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia
In 2000, Alexei and his family were canonized as passion bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church. The family had previously been canonized in 1981 by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad as holy martyrs. The bodies of Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra, and three of their daughters were finally interred at St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on 17 July 1998—eighty years after they were executed.
Nicholas II of Russia
Gradually a war of attrition set in on the vast Eastern Front, where the Russians were facing the combined forces of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and they suffered staggering losses. General Denikin, retreating from Galicia wrote, "The German heavy artillery swept away whole lines of trenches, and their defenders with them. We hardly replied. There was nothing with which we could reply. Our regiments, although completely exhausted, were beating off one attack after another by bayonet ... Blood flowed unendingly, the ranks became thinner and thinner and thinner. The number of graves multiplied." On 5 August, with the Russian army in retreat, Warsaw fell. Defeat at the front bred disorder at home. At first, the targets were German, and for three days in June shops, bakeries, factories, private houses and country estates belonging to people with German names were looted and burned.. The inflamed mobs then turned on the government, declaring the Empress should be shut up in a convent, the Tsar deposed and Rasputin hanged. Nicholas was by no means deaf to these discontents. An emergency session of the Duma was summoned and a Special Defense Council established, its members drawn from the Duma and the Tsar's ministers.
Massacre of Novgorod
The Massacre of Novgorod was an attack launched by Tsar Ivan IV (The Terrible)'s "oprichniki" on the city of Novgorod, Russia in 1570. The sheer number of casualties combined with the extreme level of violent cruelty makes this campaign possibly the most vicious in the brutal legacy of the "oprichnina".
Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich of Russia (1856–1929)
Grand Duke Nicholas played a crucial role during the Revolution of 1905. With anarchy spreading and the future of the dynasty at stake, the Tsar had a choice of instituting the reforms suggested by Count Sergei Witte or imposing a military dictatorship. The only man with the prestige to keep the allegiance of the army in such a coup was the Grand Duke. The Tsar asked him to assume the role of a military dictator. In an emotional scene at the palace, Nicholas refused, drew his pistol and threatened to shoot himself on the spot if the Tsar did not endorse Witte's plan. This act was decisive in forcing Nicholas II to agree to the reforms.
Protocol of St. Petersburg
On 1 December 1825, Alexander died without legitimate children and was succeeded by his youngest brother Grand Duke Nicholas who become the Emperor Nicholas I. The man who was supposed to succeed to the Russian throne was the Grand Duke Constantine, the Russian governor of Poland who renounced his rights to the throne so he could continue to live with his Polish mistress in Warsaw without informing the Grand Duke Nicholas, who was surprised to be informed that he was now the Tsar. Nicholas was greatly shaken by the Decembrist revolt of December 1825, when a group of liberal-minded army officers tried to take advantage of the confusion over who was Emperor by launching a coup d’etat, which reinforced Nicholas’s hatred of all rebels against authority. Nicholas was very much an unknown quality in Britain, and Canning was deeply uncertain if Nicholas planned to follow Alexander’s foreign policy or not. Nicholas was an ultra-conservative, well known for his opposition to revolution and Lord Strangford, the British ambassador in St. Petersburg reported to London “the young Emperor Nick does not care a straw for the virtuous and suffering Greeks. He considers armed intervention or indeed any intervention at all as little better than an invitation to his own subjects to rebel” . To resolve the mystery of the new Emperor’s plans, the British cabinet decided to send the Duke of Wellington to St. Petersburg, ostensibly to congratulate Nicholas on succeeding to the throne, but in reality to see if he was willing to continue his brother’s plans for Anglo-Russian mediation of the Greek war of independence.
A Life for the Tsar
The original Russian libretto, based on historical events, was written by Nestor Kukolnik, Egor Fyodorovich (von) Rozen, Vladimir Sollogub and Vasily Zhukovsky. It premiered on 27 November 1836 OS (9 December NS) at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in St. Petersburg. The historical basis of the plot involves Ivan Susanin, a patriotic hero of the early 17th century who gave his life in the expulsion of the invading Polish army for the newly elected Tsar Mikhail, the first of the Romanov dynasty, elected in 1613.
Marga Boodts
Marga Boodts (February 18, 1895 – October 13, 1976) was a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia. She was one of a considerable number of Romanov pretenders who emerged from various parts of the world following the execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family at Yekaterinberg on July 18, 1918. She stands out, however, as one of very few who claimed to have been Grand Duchess Olga, the Tsar's oldest daughter. She was also known as Maria Bottcher.
Vera; or, The Nihilists
At a council meeting, Tsar Ivan and his cruel epigrammatic minister Prince Paul Maraloffski criticise Tsarovitch Alexis's democratic leanings, but the Tsar is assassinated by Michael after the Tsarovitch opens the window.
Nicholas I of Russia
With two older brothers, it initially seemed unlikely Nicholas would ever become Tsar. However, as Alexander and Constantine both failed to produce sons, Nicholas remained likely to rule one day. In 1825, when Alexander I died suddenly of typhus, Nicholas was caught between swearing allegiance to Constantine and accepting the throne for himself. The interregnum lasted until Constantine, who was in Warsaw at that time, confirmed his refusal. Additionally, on 25 (13 Old Style) December, Nicholas issued the manifesto proclaiming his accession to the throne. That manifesto retroactively named 1 December (19 November Old Style), the date of Alexander I's death, as the beginning of his reign. During this confusion, a plot was hatched by some members of the military to overthrow Nicholas and to seize power. This led to the Decembrist Revolt on 26 (14 Old Style) December 1825, an uprising Nicholas was successful in quickly suppressing.
Leonid Nikolaev
After Kirov's death, Stalin called for swift punishment of the traitors and those found negligent in Kirov's death. Borisev, one of the first to come upon the scene, was immediately arrested; he died the day after Kirov's assassination, allegedly as the result of a fall from a truck in which he was being transported by the NKVD. On December 28 and 29 1934, Nikolaev and 13 other people as members of the "counterrevolutionary group" were tried by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR under Vasili Ulrikh's chairmanship. At 5:45 AM, December 29, all of them were sentenced to death and executed by shooting an hour later.
Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia
Olga experienced her first brush with violence at age fifteen, when she witnessed the assassination of the government minister Pyotr Stolypin during a performance at the Kiev Opera House. "Olga and Tatiana had followed me back to the box and saw everything that happened", Tsar Nicholas II wrote to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria, on 10 September 1911. "…It had made a great impression on Tatiana, who cried a lot, and they both slept badly." Three years later, she saw gunshot wounds close up when she trained to become a Red Cross nurse. Olga, her sister Tatiana, and her mother Tsarina Alexandra treated wounded soldiers at a hospital on the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo.
Nicholas II of Russia
It never got that far. On 18 September 1911, in a procession where Stolypin's car was unprotected, Rasputin had coincidentally returned from his exile. As Stolypin's car passed him, Rasputin cried out in a loud voice, "Death is after him! Death is driving behind him!" Bogrov would later assassinate Stolypin in the Kiev theatre that night.
Sava Grujić
During this difficult political time for the Radicals Sava Grujić is sent as the Serbian envoy to St. Petersburg to represent Serbia as Tsar Nicholas II of Russia begins his reign.
In Serbia, on 21 June 1899 an abortive attempt on the ex-King Milan’s life, event known as the "St John's Day's Attempt", made by a young man from Bosnia is used by the government as a pretext to arrest the Party’s most outspoken leaders and place them before a Court-Martial.
Milan insisted on the death penalty for Pašić and Taušanović in retaliation for all past and present conflicts and clashes. 
Pašić agreed to accuse some of his Party comrades (Protić and Živković) of anti- dynastic attitudes and possible inspiration for the attempted assassination and, in return, his and Taušanović’s lives were spared.
In the end, the accused Radicals were sentenced to twenty years of hard labour, Taušanović to 10 years and Pašić to only five years in prison. These measures were accompanied by organized attacks on the Radicals. They were being fired, persecuted, and purged throughout Serbia. 
One more time Sava Grujić is sent as the Serbian envoy to Constantinople as top diplomat.
In 1901, the Radical movement re-emerged in Serbian politics with the death of their arch-enemy, ex-King Milan Obrenović, once again, as many times before, the Radicals insist on constitutional reform.
Alexander Avdonin
The imperial Romanov family (former Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, their children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei, and their loyal retainers Dr. Evgeny Botkin, Anna Demidova, Ivan Kharitonov and Alexei Trupp) were executed en masse in a ground-floor room of their final place of imprisonment, Yekaterinburg’s Ipatiev House, by Bolshevik gunfire, bayonets, and blows in July 1918, and their bodies allegedly buried in the Siberian Koptyaki forest, a few miles from Yekaterinburg, near a spot historically known as the Four Brothers, that night. This was the legend, known to many local residents, including the young Avdonin, who has vivid childhood memories of one of the assassins, Pyotr Ermakov, roaming the environs of his hometown and bragging of the deed. Ermakov was famous both for his drinking and for his stirring addresses at schools and Pioneer gatherings about how he and his Bolshevik comrades had so bravely struck down the Tsar whom the revolutionaries had named "Nicholas the Bloody". Various members (Yurovsky, Ermakov, Medvedev) of the squad of assassins—who by one account outnumbered the eleven victims—vied for years for the honor of having personally shot the Tsar; documents, filmed interviews, and some of the murder weapons themselves, complete with signed statements, were proudly donated to state museums and archives. Gradually, however, as the Joseph Stalin regime systematically persecuted and killed so many of the original revolutionaries that this sort of discourse became unthinkable. Sverdlovsk itself was essentially closed to foreigners.
Napoleonic Wars
The main Russian army retreated for almost three months. This constant retreat led to the unpopularity of Field Marshal Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly and a veteran, Prince Mikhail Kutuzov, was made the new Commander-in-Chief by Tsar Alexander I. Finally, the two armies engaged in the Battle of Borodino on 7 September, in the vicinity of Moscow. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars, involving more than 250,000 men and resulting in at least 70,000 casualties. It was indecisive; the French captured the main positions on the battlefield, but failed to destroy the Russian army. Logistical difficulties meant that French casualties could not be replaced, unlike Russian ones.
Grand Crimean Central Railway
Sevastopol lay in ruins after the end of the siege. Tsar Nicholas I died on 2 March 1855, and peace negotiations were opened by the new Tsar, Alexander II. Hostilities ended between the Allies and the Russians on 29 February 1856 and the Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 March 1856. The Russians sold the track to the Turks soon after the war ended. The rails had already been uprooted and taken away, and the railway ceased to exist
Battle of Borodino
The fighting involved around 250,000 troops and left at least 70,000 casualties, making Borodino the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon's " launched an attack against the Russian army, driving it back from its initial positions but failing to gain a decisive victory. Both armies were exhausted after the battle and the Russians withdrew from the field the following day. Borodino represented the last Russian effort at stopping the French advance on Moscow, which fell a week later. However, the French had no clear way of forcing Tsar Alexander to capitulate because the Russian army was not decisively defeated, resulting in the ultimate defeat of the French invasion following the retreat from Moscow in October.
Bloody Sunday (1905)
Bloody Sunday or Red Sunday () is the name given to the events of Sunday, in St Petersburg, Russia, when unarmed demonstrators led by Father Georgy Gapon were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard as they marched towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.
Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny
In 1917, with Russia on the verge of collapse due to the war, Nicholas is forced to abdicate as Tsar and is sent into exile with his family. The Imperial Family is executed in Yekaterinburg on July 17, 1918.