In the plot of Animal Farm, Mr. Jones represents Czar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs. The Romanovs were one of the most powerful and successful dynasties in history, lasting for 370 years from Ivan the Terrible (proclaimed Czar of all the Russias in 1547) to Nicholas II (abdicated 1917). As Nicholas and his family were preparing for bed in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia, the new day was breaking on the Russian Empire in the east. Even today the Russians have eleven time zones.The Russia that Nicholas ruled was one-sixth of the land surface of the entire earth.
Nicholas II ruled 130 million people, three-fourths of whom were still peasants. Notably, at the time of this writing (2024), Russia’s population has not grown much in the century since Nicholas II was ousted as the Emperor of Russia. Today, there are only 135 million people living in the world’s biggest country, and every year the population declines by .38 of one percent.
An Empire of Power and Privilege
Nicholas II was born to unbelievable riches and privilege. In a conservative estimate, and adjusting for inflation and the fluctuating value of the Russian ruble, Nicholas’s personal worth today would be nearly 300 billion dollars, making him worth more than Elon Musk or King Charles of England. He was born to be a totalitarian autocrat and was expected to rule like one.
Nicholas owned 65 million hectares of land in Siberia. Prisoners exiled to hard labor in Siberia worked Nicholas’s mines, and their slave labor produced for Nicholas six to seven million rubles every year. (The ruble in 1900 was worth about 80 cents on the American dollar.) Nicholas never had enough money. He spent his millions, the millions that prisoners in Siberia had slaved to produce, like a drunken sailor. By October of every year, he was taking money from the Russian Treasury. His wife Alexandra spent 40,000 rubles a year on clothes. Nicholas spent many thousands of rubles every year on hunting trips.
Cracks in the Crown: Military Defeats, Bloody Sunday, and Rasputin
There was a series of disasters that finally brought the Romanov dynasty down.
- In 1904 through 1905, Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War to tiny Japan. After sailing halfway around the world, the Russians lost five battleships and the war at the Battle of Tsushima (1905).
- 1905 Bloody Sunday- Hungry Russian people went to “Father Nicholas” to beg him for food. They were met with withering fire from Cossack guards firing machine guns. Nicholas was not aware of the massacre until after it occurred, but nevertheless, the Russian people blamed him, and the nickname “Bloody Nicholas” stuck.
- 1906- Nicholas and Alexandra had a son named Alexi who suffered from the genetic disease hemophilia. Alexandra and much of the Russian royal court fell under the spell of a “holy man” named Rasputin who claimed he could stop Alexi from bleeding. Rasputin spread his evil influence throughout the Romanov court. He seduced many Russian noblewomen, and the Empress Alexandra’s reputation was tarnished beyond repair.
- Russia entered World War I, and was unprepared militarily and economically for the conflict. Russia lost the war, sued for peace with the Germans, and Nicholas II abdicated the Russian throne.
The End of Nicholas II and the Romanov Dynasty
When the communist Bolsheviks took over Russia, they arrested Nicholas II and his family and moved them to the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. In 1918 the Bolsheviks murdered the Romanovs- the entire family was shot in cold blood and their bodies callously thrown into an empty well. So ended the Romanov dynasty.