Nicholas II

Nicholas II, pope

Nicholas II (c.1010–61), pope (1058–61), a Roman named Gerard, b. Lorraine, France; successor to Pope Stephen IX. A strong proponent of papal reform, he issued (1059) the Papal Election Decree in an effort to minimize political interference in papal elections. He favored the elimination of simony, clerical marriage, and lay influence in the church. Nicholas II also attempted to restore a common life for cathedral clergy and to eliminate the abuse and alienation of ecclesiastical property.

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Nicholas II, czar of Russia

Nicholas II, 1868–1918, last czar of Russia (1894–1917), son of Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna.

Road to Revolution

Nicholas was educated by private tutors and the reactionary Pobyedonostzev. Alexander III gave his son little training in affairs of state, and Nicholas proved to be a charming but ineffective and easily influenced ruler. In 1894 he married Princess Alix of Hesse (Alexandra Feodorovna).

Soon after his accession Nicholas stated that he intended to maintain the autocratic system. He continued the suppression of opposition, the persecution of religious minorities, and the Russification of the borderlands. Revolutionary movements were growing rapidly. The Social Democratic Labor party (later split into Bolshevism and Menshevism) was founded in 1898; the Socialist Revolutionary party was formed in 1901; the liberals pressed for constitutional government. In foreign affairs, Nicholas initiated the first of the Hague Conferences and supported an aggressive policy in E Asia.

The humiliating outcome of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) resulted in the peasant revolts, industrial strikes, and violent outbreaks known as the Revolution of 1905. In Jan., 1905, a crowd of workers who had come peaceably to petition the czar were fired upon in front of the Winter Palace; the government's action on that "Bloody Sunday" proved fateful. After the general strike of Oct., 1905, Count Witte, who soon became premier, induced Nicholas to sign a manifesto promising representative government and basic civil liberties. An elected duma and an upper chamber were set up, but neither the extreme revolutionaries nor the czar were disposed to support the parliament.

Nicholas soon curtailed the Duma and dismissed Witte in 1906, replacing him with I. A. Goremykin and then with P. A. Stolypin. The outbreak in 1914 of World War I briefly swept aside internal conflicts. In 1915, Nicholas took over the command of the army from Grand Duke Nicholas, leaving the czarina in virtual control at home. This act led to a constant stream of resignations from the ministers; their posts were filled by the sycophants of Alexandra, who was completely dominated by Rasputin until his murder in 1916.

Abdication and Death

Discontent at home grew, the army tired of war, the food situation deteriorated, the government tottered, and in Mar., 1917, Nicholas was forced to abdicate (see Russian Revolution

Causes

The revolution was the culmination of a long period of repression and unrest.
..... ). He was held first in the Czarskoye Selo palace, then near Tobolsk. The advance, in July, 1918, of counterrevolutionary forces caused the soviet of Yekaterinburg to fear that Nicholas might be liberated; after a secret meeting a death sentence was passed on the czar and his family, who were shot along with their remaining servants in a cellar at Yekaterinburg on the night of July 16. Their bodies were buried or burned in a nearby forest.

Discovered in 1979, the remains of the czar and the others who had been buried were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in St. Petersburg in 1998. In 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church canonized the czar and the members of his immediate family. Nicholas's vague mysticism, limited intelligence, and submission to sinister influences made him particularly unfit to cope with the events that led to his tragic end.

Bibliography

See E. J. Bing, ed., The Secret Letters of the Last Tsar (tr. 1938); C. E. Vulliamy, ed., The Letters of the Tsar to the Tsaritsa (tr. 1976); R. K. Massie, Nicholas and Alexandra (1985); P. Bulygin and A. Kerensky, The Murder of the Romanovs (1986); G. Vogt, Nicholas II (1987); E. S. Radzinsky, The Life and Death of Nicholas II (1992).

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Nicholas II

 orig. Gerard of Burgundy

(born Lorraine—died July 19/26, 1061, Florence) Pope (1058–61). Known as an advocate of reform, he was bishop of Florence before being elected pope in opposition to the antipope Benedict X. At the Lateran Council of 1059 he reformed the process of papal election, placing it in the hands of the cardinals and limiting the emperor's role. The German bishops voided his decree (1061), revealing growing tensions between empire and papacy. Nicholas brought about a diplomatic revolution, which worsened relations with Germany and its weak regent, when he sought an alliance with the Normans in southern Italy and invested Robert Guiscard as duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily (1059). His legislation against clerical marriage and simony was an important part of the Gregorian reform movement.

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Nicholas II

 Russian Nikolay Aleksandrovich

(born May 18, 1868, Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg, Russia—died July 16/17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) Tsar of Russia (1894–1917). Son of Alexander III, he received a military education and succeeded his father as tsar in 1894. He was an autocratic but indecisive ruler and was devoted to his wife, Alexandra, who strongly influenced his rule. His interest in Asia led to construction of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and also helped cause the disastrous Russo-Japanese War (1904–05). After the Russian Revolution of 1905, he agreed reluctantly to a representative Duma but restricted its powers and made only token efforts to enact its measures. His prime minister, Pyotr Stolypin, attempted reforms, but Nicholas, increasingly influenced by Alexandra and Grigory Rasputin, opposed him. After Russia suffered setbacks in World War I, Nicholas ousted the popular grand duke Nicholas as commander in chief of Russian forces and assumed command himself, at the bidding of Alexandra and Rasputin. His absence from Moscow and Alexandra's mismanagement of the government caused increasing unrest and culminated in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nicholas abdicated in March 1917 and was detained with his family by Georgy Y. Lvov's provisional government. Plans for the royal family to be sent to England were overruled by the local Bolsheviks. Instead the family was sent to the city of Yekaterinburg, where they were executed in July 1918.