The Presidential Library portrays Nicholas II

May 18, 2023 marks the 155th anniversary of the birth of Emperor Nicholas II - a man about whom historians still argue and who Orthodox Christians pray to. He himself seemed to have a premonition of a tragic fate and never for a moment left the superstitious fear that if he was destined to be born on the day of St. Job the Long-suffering, then his family was destined to suffer.

One can learn about the fate of the last Emperor of Russia from the electronic collection of the Presidential Library dedicated to the House of Romanov. It includes about a thousand digitized documents, most of which were previously unknown to a wide audience. Among the most famous materials in the Presidential Library's collections are the Diary of Nicholas II (according to the tradition of being brought up in the House of Romanov, he kept a personal diary from the age of 9) and albums with amateur photographs of happy moments from the life of his family. Many materials also spotlighted the internal contradictions that tormented the last emperor and, possibly, led the country to revolutionary events.

The preface to the publication of the diary states that Nicholas's father, Alexander III, deliberately did not allow the crown prince to join state affairs. When Count Witte in 1892 proposed appointing an heir as chairman of the committee for the construction of the Great Siberian Route, the emperor was very surprised, declaring that the crown prince was “quite a boy” and that “he has childish judgments”. And two years later, this “boy”, as a result of the unexpected death of Alexander, was to take control of a huge state in his own hands.

Nicholas II was accompanied by state and personal difficulties. For a very long time, the future emperor waited for permission to marry his chosen one - Princess Alice of Hesse, the granddaughter of the English Queen Victoria, and here he showed real strength of character. Alexander III had plans to marry the heir to the princess of the House of Orleans in order to strengthen the alliance between Russia and France. It was said that the closed and sickly Alice did not like Nikolai's mother, Empress Maria Feodorovna. For many years, lovers were connected by secret correspondence – Nicholas could not argue with his father. In order to distract the future heir, in the autumn of 1890 he was even sent on a trip around the world. However, love for Alix, as Nikolai called her, did not go away.

At the beginning of 1894, the health of Alexander III deteriorated sharply, and the tsar finally succumbed to his son. For marriage, the princess of Hesse was forced to abandon Lutheranism and accept Orthodoxy. In baptism, she received the name Alexandra Feodorovna. The future emperor called April 8, 1894 "the wonderful day of betrothal to the precious beloved Alix". But their happiness was overshadowed: on October 20, 1894, before reaching the age of 50, Alexander III died in the Livadia Palace in Crimea. and a week later their sad wedding took place in the church of the Winter Palace. The empress would later say about these days: “Our wedding was, as it were, a continuation of the funeral. They just put me in a white dress". The entire first year of their marriage was a year of mourning in the country and, first of all, in the family. Palace life froze, and the newlyweds were completely absorbed in each other.

The need to deal with state affairs weighed on Nicholas. “Prayers and audiences without end. I saw Alix for only one hour. It's sad that the work takes so much time that I would like to spend exclusively with Alix. I am so indescribably happy with her”, - Nicholas writes in his diaries. In his notes, he often complains that because of business, for example, he had to interrupt his walk.

The August the couple lived for months in Tsarskoye Selo, Peterhof or Livadia - far from the capital. The history of this strong and loving family is kept in their photo albums, newsreels show how the Tsar and Tsarina play tennis, how Nicholas II takes pictures of his family or carelessly bathes in a pond...

In the meantime, many of his entourage took his attachment to the family for weakness of character, and sad events took place outside the royal residences. The magnificent celebration of the coronation was marred by a terrible tragedy on the Khodynka field on May 18, 1896. According to tradition, the people came there for gifts from the new emperor, a stampede formed, in which, according to official data, more than 1,300 people died, and even more were injured. According to historians, the emperor was not to blame for what happened, but the people did not forget this event.

The results of the Russo-Japanese War were disappointing, and on January 9, 1905, the troops and police of St. Petersburg used weapons to disperse a peaceful procession of workers heading with a petition to the tsar...

Interestingly, under Nicholas II, Russia was in fifth place in terms of industrial development among the largest powers and economies of the world. Medical care improved, life expectancy increased. Since 1908, thanks to an increase in loans for public education, the gradual introduction of universal compulsory free primary education began. The length of the working day was reduced, and the incomes of the population increased. It was under Nicholas II that Stolypin carried out the famous agrarian reform. Judicial reform was successfully implemented. On October 17, 1905, the Manifesto for the improvement of the state order was issued. By a manifesto of August 6, 1905, the emperor established the State Duma as "a special legislative institution, which is given the preliminary development and discussion of legislative proposals and consideration of the list of state revenues and expenditures".

In parallel with this, the emperor's family is increasingly closed in their problems. The long-awaited heir to the throne, Tsarevich Alexei, whom his parents called "our treasure", turned out to be sick with an incurable disease - hemophilia. The slightest scratch or bruise led to excruciating pain that could last for months (as, for example, after a bruise on the edge of the bath in the Livadia Palace) and lead to the death of the child. The doctors were not able to help. And then the elder Grigory Rasputin from the Tobolsk province appeared at the court. He succeeded in alleviating the suffering of the child. The queen believed that Rasputin was sent by God, she fought for the future of her son as best she could. Rasputin managed to ingratiate himself with the imperial family and, as many believed, got the opportunity to influence the political processes in the country. For Nicholas and Alexandra, he was the embodiment of the image of a Russian elder - a holy man. After the outbreak of the First World War, disturbing rumors spread throughout the country that Rasputin, an accomplice of the Empress, a German agent and a libertine, ruled the country. They tried to reason with the emperor. The Presidential Library’s portal published a record of interviewing witnesses about Rasputin's behavior on the Tovarpar steamer, sailing from Tyumen to Tobolsk, in August 1915. The emperor was familiar with this information, but he could not argue with his beloved wife. To all the accusations against Rasputin, Nicholas and Alexandra replied: "Saints are always slandered".

Failures on the fronts of the First World War, which Russia entered in 1914, the growth of anti-war sentiment led to mass protests against the government and the dynasty. The wife convinced Nicholas II to take command of the Russian army in the First World War, replacing Grand Prince Nikolai Nikolaevich in this post. The emperor agreed, not listening to either his mother or the ministers, who understood that if he became commander in chief, all the failures at the front would be associated with his name. The emperor lived for a long time at Headquarters in Mogilev. As a result, when the revolution began in Petrograd, he could not even return to the capital.

On March 2, Nicholas II signed the Act of Abdication (the document is publicly available on the Presidential Library’s portal). After that, his entire family was arrested. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, the former emperor, his wife and their five children were shot by the Bolsheviks in the basement of the Ipatiev mansion. Together with them, the doctor of the Botkin family, the maid Demidova, the cook Kharitonov, and the footman Trupp, who were faithful to the end, were shot.

In 2000, the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church as holy martyrs.