Romanovs, Reconsidered --- The sudden end of Nicholas II's reign in Russia was one of the turning points of the early 20th century. Could the stubborn ruler have done anything to avoid his downfall

"The Last Tsar

By Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Basic, 560 pages, $35

More than a century after the Russian Revolution, the downfall of the Romanov dynasty continues to fascinate and enthrall. The story itself, broadly familiar from popular treatments over the years, is well told by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa in "The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs." But Mr. Hasegawa is no ordinary chronicler. He is an esteemed historian -- now a professor emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara -- who is known chiefly for "The February Revolution" (1981), his groundbreaking study of the 1917 uprising that caused the czar to abdicate months ahead of the Bolsheviks' decisive October coup. "The Last Tsar" is filled with revelations and fresh insights.

Nicholas II was, as Mr. Hasegawa puts it, the most "inadequate ruler in all of Europe," but he still saw it as his duty to uphold "the sanctity of autocracy." Rejecting constitutionalism, he viewed even his own appointed ministers as "irritating intruders who came between [him] and his people." His wife, Alexandra, was a "domineering coach on the sidelines." She was notoriously advised by Grigori Rasputin, the peasant faith healer first invited to court in 1905 to tend to the royal family's only son, the hemophiliac heir Alexei. Alexandra would chastise her weak-willed husband "to be strong and firm and to act like a true autocrat," not that such urging seemed to have much effect.

All this would suggest that the czar's lack of competence and will doomed the Romanov dynasty, despite Nicholas II having survived Russia's 1905 revolution, which had forced him to accept a parliament, or Duma. In the view of many historians, the czar's decision to mobilize Russia's troops in July 1914, and to enter World War I in alliance with France and Britain, was the last straw, a fatal move that drove the country into a conflict for which it was not prepared. In a moment of prophecy, Rasputin had warned that "with the war will come the end of Russia and yourselves."

But Mr. Hasegawa won't allow himself to fall prey to the fallacy that things had to turn out the way they did. His narrative is rich with observations about paths not taken and about the unintended consequences of the paths that were indeed taken, not least the baroque assassination of Rasputin in 1916. The murder, absurdly botched before a final coup de grace, was principally the work of aristocrats hoping to improve the czar's position and authority by removing a malign influence -- a "desperate attempt by the monarchists to save the dying monarchy," as Mr. Hasegawa writes. Instead, by driving a deeper wedge between the czar and Petrograd society, Rasputin's murder weakened the monarchy. Alexandra, too, was the target of assassination plots, launched "not by bomb-throwing terrorists but by relatives of her husband."

Mr. Hasegawa notes that Nicholas II wasn't always weak-willed. He stubbornly refused wartime demands to establish a Ministry of Confidence (as it was called); though still answering to the czar, it would have included liberal representatives acceptable to Parliament. At times he decisively embraced his autocratic responsibilities, such as when he took over supreme command of the army in 1916.

More important was the czar's decision, on Feb. 27, 1917, to send a battalion of loyal front-line troops -- commanded by Gen. Nikolai Ivanov -- to Petrograd to suppress the soldier mutinies there that had spread through the capital over the previous four days in what we now call the February Revolution. The czarina had wavered, and most of the czar's cousins and ministers had advised him to back down. "It was Nicholas who opted for firmness," Mr. Hasegawa writes. Nor did the czar rescind his decision to use force against the mutineers. Mr. Hasegawa reminds us that it was insubordinate commanders who did so, without his permission or knowledge.

Even this fateful insubordination may not have occurred, Mr. Hasegawa shows, had things not broken just so. A radical Duma deputy, Alexander Bublikov, had taken over the Transport Ministry building and used his control of the telegraph wires there to play tricks. Among much else, he rerouted the train in which the czar was traveling (from military headquarters in the field) so that it would never reach his palace near Petrograd, where the czarina was waiting, sure to put steel into him. Meanwhile, the Duma's chairman, Mikhail Rodzianko, fed the czar's generals misleading reports, suggesting that he had the situation in Petrograd under control on the czar's behalf when in fact he was being increasingly sidelined by more radical politicians.

Too politically naive to read through Rodzianko's spin, the Russian army's chief of staff and the commander of its northern front -- Mikhail Alekseev and Gen. Nikolai Ruzsky -- called off Ivanov's punitive battalion and together convinced Nicholas II to surrender the throne, only to learn within hours that they had been "duped" by Rodzianko.

Mr. Hasegawa's masterly narrative shows that it was the actions and manipulations of Russian elites pursuing their own interests that, in a "dazzling sequence of toppling dominoes," ended the Romanov dynasty -- not inherent flaws in the czar's character, or structural problems with the monarchy, or popular pressure from below, as historians have variously argued. Alexander Kerensky, the plotter who outmaneuvered all others to assume leadership after the February Revolution, later said that "one well-disciplined regiment equipped with machine guns" could have easily crushed the mutineers and arrested the rebellious politicians who had taken over Petrograd.

Though unsparing in his judgment of Rodzianko and the others who ushered the Romanovs into oblivion, Mr. Hasegawa reserves his harshest criticism for Nicholas II himself. The czar could not have done "a worse job as steward of the monarchy," from his refusal to listen to those advising him to purge the "cancerous influence of Alexandra and Rasputin" to his final, illegal abdication to his brother Mikhail rather than to the rightful heir, 12-year-old Alexei, with Mikhail serving as regent until Alexei came of age. The decision, although made out of paternal love, pulled the rug out from under what remained of the monarchist faction in Petrograd and the high command.

But it is also clear from Mr. Hasegawa's narrative that the cousins, advisers and politicians who advised Nicholas II to share power with the Duma showed terrible judgment themselves. They spread poisonous smears about Alexandra and Rasputin that gravely undermined Romanov prestige. And they urged the czar to mobilize on behalf of Serbia in 1914, leading to a full-out war that produced the "monstrous slaughter" that the czar had wanted to avoid.

Once the plotters forced Nicholas II out of power in March 1917, they botched the job of governing far worse than the czar had done, paving the way for Lenin's Bolsheviks. Is it really fair to blame Nicholas for unleashing the horrors of Bolshevism when it was the men who overthrew him whose still greater ineptitude allowed Lenin to seize power? 

One could just as easily conclude from Mr. Hasegawa's account that, for all their stubbornness, superstition and blundering, it was Nicholas, Alexandra and Rasputin -- and not the cousins, generals and politicians plotting against them -- who better understood Russia and the imperatives of its governance: namely, that to rule such a vast and fragile empire, especially in wartime, even a flawed autocracy was preferable to anarchy.

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Mr. McMeekin, a professor of history at Bard College, is the author of "To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism."" [1]

1. REVIEW --- Books: Romanovs, Reconsidered --- The sudden end of Nicholas II's reign in Russia was one of the turning points of the early 20th century. Could the stubborn ruler have done anything to avoid his downfall? McMeekin, Sean.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 11 Jan 2025: C7.