The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs
By Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
Basic Books
ISBN: 978-154160616-6
560pp.

Russia has the largest landmass in the world. In 1613, the Romanovs took over its governance. Three centuries later, their imperial rule ended in ignominy. While the Great War — the first World War — was still raging across Europe, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne on March 15, 1917. This was in response to a public uprising, the February Revolution.

Was the end of the Romanov dynasty preordained? Throughout world history, empires vary in length. Some last millennia, others last for a few centuries. The median seems to be 250 years. It’s tempting to say that the Romanov dynasty had run its course. But there were many contributing factors. As with many European countries, Russia was in tumult, experiencing the forces unleashed by the end of serfdom and the onset of industrialisation. Labour unions were being formed. The people of Russia were yearning for freedom and demanding their civil rights.

Additionally, Russia had fought and lost a war with Japan, a tiny country by comparison, on Nicholas II’s watch. The defeat inflicted opprobrium on the emperor and triggered the 1905 Revolution. While it eventually petered out, it laid the seeds of the February revolution.

In the opinion of Professor Tsuyoshi Hasegawa of the University of California, Santa Cruz, in his book The Last Tsar: The Abdication of Nicholas II and the Fall of the Romanovs, much of the blame for the dynasty’s demise should be laid at the door of the last tsar. He had a naïve, non-inquisitive and diminutive personality. Nicholas II felt he was required by God to govern Russia. He would not take kindly to criticism, especially if it came from members of the Duma, the first elected body in Russian history. He refused to entertain, let alone concede to, the notion of transforming Russia into a constitutional monarchy.

A book looks at the last Russian tsar and how his own shortcomings led to his Romanov monarchy being completely destroyed in 1917

To make matters worse, Alexandra, the empress, who was equally illiterate in political matters, dominated him. Complicating matters, years later, she fell under the spell of Rasputin, a faith healer and a mystic who was born into a peasant family in Siberia. Rasputin’s shadow also fell on Nicholas II. Rasputin was disliked by the other royals for his uncouth mannerisms. They eventually killed the charlatan.

The granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, Alexandra was born and raised in Germany. Nicholas II met her at a couple of weddings and fell in love. Just a few months after they married, Nicholas II’s father died at the young age of 49. Nicholas ascended the throne in 1894, aged 26, with no experience in governance. Had his father lived longer, Nicholas II might have acquired the wisdom to govern.

Soon after the Great War began in 1914, Russia was hit by shortages of food and ammunition. Nicholas II was at a loss about what to do. He confided with an aide that he had never been a merchant and did not know how to solve shortages. Despite being a student of history, his knowledge of military strategy was also very limited. His knowledge of military tactics was virtually nonexistent.

He failed to understand the forces that led to the French Revolution in 1789 that brought about the end of the Bourbon Dynasty in 1794. Social and economic tensions had been simmering in Russia even before he became the emperor. He should have taken steps to dilute them by empowering the Duma and transitioning Russia to a constitutional monarchy. But he didn’t.

He also failed to grasp that his wife’s German origins were leading many Russians to think of her as a traitor, since Russia’s main enemy in the war was Germany. That, of course, overlooked the fact that Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II were third cousins. Nevertheless, the name of the capital, St Petersburg, was changed to Petrograd.

The Last Tsar is based on a multi-year review of primary and secondary source materials, many of which had to be dug out from the archives. The diligence comes through in the text, which is thoroughly documented with 104 pages of references, footnotes and an index. The book will undoubtedly interest academics. But it deserves to be read more widely. It is full of lessons since, as the author notes, autocratic regimes have begun to reappear today under a democratic facade.

Those who admire Barbara Tuchman’s classic narration, The Guns of August, may be disappointed with this book’s turgid narration. Some readers may end up skipping several pages that recount in minute detail how the last year of Nicholas II’s life was spent. The book could have also benefitted from some pictures, a timeline of major events, and a few maps.

When the end came for Nicholas II and his family in Yekaterinburg, a city that lies nearly 1,500 miles east of the capital, it was gruesome. They were shot and bayonetted in the basement of the house they were being held in. Yet that gets scarcely a page in the book. The book quotes what Brutus said in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar: “If among this assembly there is any dear friend of Caesar’s, I say to him that my love for Caesar is no less than his own. If that friend then demands why I rose up against Caesar, this is my answer: it is not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”

Ironically, in his last days, Nicholas II was reading a book about Julius Caesar. The word tsar, sometimes spelled czar, is derived from the word Caesar. Even Romanov hearkens back to Rome. But there is a big difference between the deaths of the two men. The Roman Empire, one might say, was created when Caesar was murdered in the Senate. The Romanov dynasty died with Nicholas II.

The book should have included a discussion of how the Bolsheviks converted Russia and its subordinate republics into the USSR in 1922. While claiming to represent the people, Lenin and Stalin ended up killing millions. The USSR collapsed in 1991. Things came full circle in 2000, when Nicholas II and his family were canonised as saints and a church was later built on the site where they were executed.

The reviewer is the author of Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan: The Price of Strategic Myopia. X: @ahmadfaruqui

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 20th, 2025