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). 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.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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