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The Great Northern War
The Great Northern War lasted from 1700 to 1721. The Great Northern War was fought between Sweden's Charles XII and a coalition lead by Peter the Great. By the end of the war, Sweden had lost her supremacy as the leading power in the Baltic region and was replaced by Peter the Great's Russia. -
The Decembrist Revolt
In December of 1825 in St. Petersburg, Russia, a group of military officials staged a revolt against Tsar Nicholas I. These rebels were liberals who felt threatened by the new ruler's conservative views. They were defeated by the tsar's forces. As a result of this revolt, Nicholas I implemented a variety of new regulations to prevent the spread of the liberal movement in Russia. -
Czar Alexander II Emancipates the Serfs
In 1856, Tsar Alexander II spoke before the gentry of Moscow and asked them to consider emancipation of the serfs, adding that it would be better to begin to abolish serfdom from above rather than wait for a rising from below. -
The Assassination of Alexander II
After Alexander became emperor in 1855, he maintained a generally liberal course. Despite this, he was a target for numerous assassination attempts (1866, 1879, 1880). On 13 March 1881, members of the Narodnaya Volya party killed him with a bomb. The Emperor had earlier in the day signed the Loris-Melikov constitution which would have created two legislative commissions made up of indirectly elected representatives, had it not been repealed by his reactionary successor Alexander III. -
The Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was the first great war of the 20th century. Russians sought a warm water port on the Pacific Ocean, for their navy as well as for maritime trade. Negotiations between Russia and Japan had proved impractical. Japan chose war to gain dominance in Korea. The Japanese Navy attacked the Russian eastern fleet at Port Arthur, which led to war. The Russians were poorly organized and the Japanese defeated them in a series of battles on land and at sea. -
Revolution of 1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to the establishment of limited constitutional monarchy, the State Duma of the Russian Empire, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906. -
Bloody Sunday
On January 22, 1905, a group of workers led by the priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands. Soldiers opened fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Strikes and riots broke out throughout the country in outraged response to the massacre, to which Nicholas responded by promising the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform. -
World War I (Russian Involvement)
World War One was to have a devastating impact on Russia. When World War One started in August 1914, Russia responded by patriotically rallying around Nicholas II.Military disasters greatly weakened the Russian Army in the initial phases of the war. The war did a great deal to damage the royal family of the Romanov’s, and by the end of the spring of 1917, the Romanovs, who had ruled Russia for just over 300 years, were no longer in charge of Russia. -
The March Revolution
The March Revolution was a revolution focused around what is now St. Petersburg. In the chaos, members of the Imperial parliament or Duma assumed control of the country, forming the Russian Provisional Government. The army leadership felt they did not have the means to suppress the revolution and Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, abdicated. -
Czar Nicholas II abdicates the Russian throne
During the February Revolution, Czar Nicholas II, ruler of Russia since 1894, is forced to abdicate the throne on this day in 1917, after strikes and general revolts break out in Petrograd.