Useful Notes / Tsar Tsar Autocrats

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While Russian Heads of State lists the Soviet Union's leaders and the Russian Federation's leaders since 1991, this article, a companion to Tsarist Russia, is a listing of all Russian monarchs from the early Moscovia period to the Revolution of 1917.

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Tropes as portrayed in fiction:

• Bald of Authority: Several of the tsars, such as Nicholas I and Alexander III, were bald or balding. A common political joke is noting that a bald leader would be succeeded by a hairy leader and vice versa, which would continue into the Soviet Union and The New Russia up until Vladimir Putin.
• Bookends: The Romanov dynasty began with one Michael Romanov reluctantly accepting the crown, and ended with another Michael Romanov rejecting it 300 years later.
• The Caligula: All of them treat their subjects and partners like crap, leading to various peasant revolts throughout Russian history and eventually the Russian Revolution.
• Evil Chancellor: A tsar will usually deal with nobles or barons who want absolute power themselves.
• The High Queen: Between the reign of Peter the Great and Paul I, every alternate monarch was a tsarina — Catherine I, Anna, Elizabeth, Catherine the Great. This ended with Paul I, who passed a succession law designating an order of succession to the eldest son. Fun fact: during the 76 years between the deaths of Peter I and Paul I, all four men who came to the throne (Peter II, Ivan VI, Peter III, and Paul I) did so legitimately, by rightful inheritance. Three of the four were deposed and killed, and the longest male reign lasted less than 5 years. All four women (Catherine I, Anna Ioannovna, Elizabeth, and Catherine II) came to the throne via a palace coup, with the aid of the privileged Guards' Regiments. They reigned, respectively, for 2, 10, 20, and 34 years. Draw your own conclusions, ladies and gentlebeings...
• Historical Villain Upgrade / Historical Hero Upgrade: Often depending on the origin of the work, Russian Czars would sometimes be depicted worse than they actually were while ignoring their accomplishments, while others were depicted greatly without mentioning their worst aspects.
• Hypocrite: Many such as Peter The Great and Catherine The Great will pursue enlightenment ideals and want to modernize Russia while being absolute rulers who want to maintain systems against the Enlightenment such as Feudalism.
• Irony: Russian czars would support the Enlightenment ideals while being absolute monarchs. Eventually Enlightenment ideals would influence the end of the Russian tsardom and the replacement of a liberal state and then a communist one.

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The Rurikids of Moscovia: Like in Kievan Rus, but Different

The Rurikid dynasty is as old as Kievan Rus itself. Princes descending from Rurik ruled various principalities of what would later become Russia, Ukraine and Belarus during the Dark Ages, the High Middle Ages and afterwards. However, Russia proper started to differentiate from the rest of the Mongol-dominated Eastern European feudal mess in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, with several major distinctly Russian principalities (Moscow, Novgorod, Pskov and Tver were the most important) gaining prominence. The principality of Moscow ended up the richest and the most influential, and it was its branch of the Rurikids that gave the start to the Rurikid Tsars. The numbering of the Moscow Rurikids starts from the age of the Mongol vassalage, so do not be surprised that it starts with a third Ivan. The first Ivan (Ivan the Moneybag) was a Quisling of the Mongol Horde, and his bag was full of money because he collected taxes on behalf of the Mongols and pocketed a small percentage.

The Rurikid era inheritance was male line only. There was only one female ruler during this era, and she was a Princess Regent for her son, the future Ivan the Terrible.

There were also many, many cadet branches of the House of Rurik. Most of them survived as noble but not royal princely families and laid the foundation to the ancient nobility of Russia.

• Ivan III the Great (1462-1505) was the founder of Russia itself, as differentiated from Kievan Rus, which was not exactly Russia and not exactly Ukraine. He was the one who openly defied the Mongols and created Russia as an independent realm. No wonder historians call him the Great. This was done by slowly accumulating power, a lot of political jockeying and no real battles, something that would look good in a series like A Song of Ice and Fire but wasn't exactly the stuff of epic legends at the time. A legacy of Ivan the Great was the Muscovite "Idea of the Third Rome"; according to it, when the Byzantine Empire fell to the Turks, Russia succeeded it as the leader of the true (Orthodox) Christendom. Because of that, Russia between the two Greats (Ivan and Peter) did everything to imitate the Byzantine Empire. The still-existing Russian Coat of Arms is a Byzantine two-headed eagle.
  • Another thing should be said about Ivan III's title. He did not object to be called tsar (which was, at the time, an equivalent of emperor rather than king), but it was not his coronation title; he retained the old feudal title of grand prince.
• Vasily III (1505-1533). He continued basically everything his father started. He caused quite a scandal when he annulled his first marriage due to his wife's infertility and married a girl young enough to be his daughter. The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem issued a chilling prophecy in response to this: "You will have a wicked son. Your states will be prey to terror and tears. Rivers of blood will flow. Your cities will be devoured in flames." He was right.
• Grand Princess Elena Glinskaya (1533-1547, regent for her son Ivan IV). The aforementioned second wife. Rumored to have been poisoned by the boyars.

• Ivan IV "The Terrible" (1533-1584). Of this guy, legends abound, but let's start with hard facts. First, he was the first ruler of Russia who used "Tsar" as his coronation title, claiming imperial status. Second, his cognomen (Russian: Grozny) does not mean "very bad": in Old Russian, it meant "awesome", as in, "worthy of awe". Or "Very badass", if you wish. Though "terrifying" would also apply. Third, he wasn't an epitome of sadism and bloodthirstiness; it's true that he started the proud Russian tradition of having a State Sec, but his body count isn't much different from that of his European contemporaries. It just wasn't a good time to be a believer in sanctity of human life. Fourth, he created what we now consider the Russian nation. The other Rus' principalities had either collapsed, been absorbed by Moscow or in the case of Kiev itself by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, so with Moscow being the last principality standing, Ivan elevated it to the rank of Tsardom (Empire) and declared it the nation of all Rus', hence the name Russia.

• Beyond that, basically, Ivan Grozny was a legendary Tsar: his exploits featured a lot of cannonfire, a lot of blood, a lot of epicness and a lot of conquests. Under him, the remnants of the Mongol Horde, the Tatar khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia, were conquered by Russians. More wars were fought to gain sea ports for Russia, but these were somewhat less successful. He also created the first Russian secret police force, the Oprichnina (literally, "The Stand-Alone Organization"), which destroyed the political power of the scheming Boyar aristocracy who were still dreaming of regaining independence of Novgorod, Pskov and Tver and restoring the feudal patchwork.
• However, in his last years Ivan IV became exactly as violent as the popular perception paints him to be. He murdered his son and heir Ivan Ivanovich in a fit of rage, leaving his weak-minded second son Feodor as the successor. And this laid the foundation for a major political crisis.

• Feodor I the Blissful (1584-1598). They say that ignorance is bliss, and this Tsar was as ignorant as they come. Religious, weak-willed and generally an unremarkable ruler, he relied on his brother-in-law, the boyar Boris Godunov in every matter of state. The Godunovs were an important noble house, one of the most important of the non-Rurikids, and a relation by marriage to the ruling Rurikids made their position even more secure.

The Godunovs: Ambitious but Unlucky

• Boris (1598-1605). When Feodor died with no heir, and Ivan IV's third son Dmitri (Demetrius) died in a mysterious accident involving a game with knives (a whole forest of Epileptic Trees grew out of this, and three pretenders emerged from that forest later), the Godunovs, nobles descending from a Russified Tatar clan, ended up the most influential family, and the head of the house, Boris Godunov, crowned himself the new Tsar. Had this happened in a less troubled time, he might have become a good ruler; he was intelligent, sane and kind. However, years spent as Feodor's closest advisor gave him a reputation of a schemer, and famines of the worst kind happened during his reign. The people saw this as an ill omen and started to whisper about Boris being an usurper. They did not openly rise against him, but when he died...
• Feodor II (1605). Boris Godunov's son and heir didn't rule for even one year. A pretender emerged, who claimed to be the miraculously survived prince Dmitri, and the people weren't afraid to riot against a child Tsar.

Non-dynastic tsars and pretenders of the Time of Troubles: Now that's a game of thrones!

• Pseudo-Demetrius I (1605-1606). Historians still argue who he really was; the most well-known version of his identity was that of Grigory Otrepiev, an ex-monk. But the one hard fact was that he was backed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, a bitter rival of Russia, locked in a cold war for domination in Eastern Europe. The Poles were happy to have a pocket Russian Tsar, and supported Pseudo-Demetrius' movement against Feodor II Godunov. The pretender won, was accepted as a real long-lost heir of the House of Rurik and crowned Tsar. He was definitely badass: one of his favourite pastimes was hunting bears with a spear. But his fondness for all things Polish, and his marriage to the Polish noblewoman Marina Mniszech, was what led to his downfall. The Boyars rose against him, exposed him as a fraud, executed him, cremated the remains and shot them from a cannon westward, where Poland was located.
• Vasily IV Shuisky (1606-1610). With Pseudo-Demetrius safely dead, the Shuiskys (a cadet branch of the House of Rurik) had the best claim on the throne. Their Tsar, Vasily IV, was a pretty unremarkable ruler that did nothing to stabilize the violent mess Russia became. Old, frail, weak-willed and entirely dependent on the Boyars that crowned him, he was a non-entity.
• Pseudo-Demetrius II (pretender, 1607-1609). You thought Pseudo-Demetrius was safely dead? Close but no cigar. Soon afterwards, another pretender appeared, who claimed to be both the original Dmitri and the Dmitri whom they cremated and shot from a cannon. Apparently, the early XVII century Russians believed in miracles, but there were people who believed him. Including Marina Mniszech, who pretended to recognize this pretender as her husband. This fraud notably failed to conquer Moscow, but he set up shop in a close-by village of Tushino (today it's a borough of Moscow), giving the second Pseudo-Demetrius a nickname of "the Felon of Tushino" from Vasily's loyalists.
• Wladyslaw Waza (pretender, 1610-1613). When Vasily IV died without an heir, the Russians were totally puzzled who their next Tsar might be. The Poles exploited that weakness and directed an invasion force into Russia, to put their prince, the future King of Poland Wladyslaw IV Waza, as Russia's next Tsar. A group of high-born Boyars, the Semiboyarschina (The Rule of Seven Boyars) accepted that claim and let Wladyslaw march into Moscow. The Semiboyarschina were disliked in the rest of Russia, and later became a Russian byword for "false authority pandering to foreign conquerors" (to the point that the much latter community of 1990s oligarchs received the unflattering nickname of "Semibankirschina" [the rule of seven bankers] on account of their pandering to the USA).
• Pseudo-Demetrius III (pretender, 1611-1612). This pretender was fairly unremarkable as far as the Pseudo-Demetrii go, except for the fact that he was backed by the Swedes rather than the Polish. After his death the Russian Orthodox Church got a bit tired of people claiming to be miraculously restored dead princes: They canonized the original Prince Dmitri^note Being a saint by definition meant that Prince Dmitri was in heaven, and thus any living person claiming to be him was automatically lying. and declared that any further impostors would be excommunicated.

The Romanovs: We're here to stay until the bitter end

• Michael (1613-1645). This Tsar, the founder of the Romanov Dynasty, was backed by a people's movement lead by Prince Dmitri Pozharsky and Kozma Minin, a burgher. More precisely, Minin and Pozharsky's movement fought for kicking the Poles out and assembling the Zemsky Sobor (the Council of the Land, the estate-representative organ analogous to the French Etats Generales or the earliest English Parliaments) to elect the new dynasty. The Romanov family were boyars and relatives of one of Ivan the Terrible's wives; they were chosen as the quietest, least scandalous of Russia's noble houses. What Russia wanted most was stability, and that was what it received in full: Michael Romanov was a quiet, ambitionless Tsar. For a large part of his reign, his father, Philaretus, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, was the real regent. During his rule, Russia was almost a parliamentary monarchy: the Zemsky Sobors assembled regularly and influenced the decisions of the Tsar.
• Alexis Mikhailovich the Most Serene (1645-1676). Now this Tsar was important. He was very similar to Ivan III: adept at political jockeying and getting what he wanted without bloodshed. His age was remembered by historians as the "The Age of Rebellions" (Russian: Buntashny Vek), but he managed to deal with all those rebellions without compromising the stability of the realm. The Church went into a bloody schism in his age, but he managed to keep a straight face and lead his country right through it. The taxation reforms caused riots, but his Streltsy (Musketmen) quelled them. However, the greatest threat to his rule was the rebellion of Stepan Razin, an anarchist Cossack pirate leader who is still a folk hero among Russians. Alexis was jovial, fat, cat-loving and absolutely unflappable in his attempts to preserve the conservative, Byzantine Russian state against the tides of the coming Age of Enlightenment. That being said, he welcomed foreigners (especially military experts) who set up a separate, quasi-European (mainly Dutch, German, and Scottish) town on the outskirts of Moscow, and quietly prepared the way for many of the reforms which his younger son Peter later accomplished with monstrous violence and excesses.
• Feodor III (1676-1682). A pale shadow of his father, Feodor Alexeievich was willing to preserve what Alexis tried to keep. He was an intelligent man, religious and fond of music, but not a particularly strong ruler. At least, he did not live long enough to become one.
• Ivan V (1682-1696, co-regent with Peter the Great). Feodor's much simpler brother, Ivan was happy to let his younger brother Peter and his older sister Sophia have their way.

• Peter I the Great (1682-1725, the first Emperor of Russia). THE Emperor of Russia, enough said. He was obsessed with the idea of making Russia a proper European power and didn't stop at the costs. After winning a battle for political dominance with his half-sister Sophia, he triumphed as the undisputed leader of Russia and immediately left for an embassy to Europe, to learn the ways of the West. After returning, he forced the Western ways on all Russia, dismissed the Boyar class, created an absolutist regime, and proclaimed Russia a formal Empire. Peter also had his son Alexei Petrovich tortured to death, and replaced primogeniture with the monarch's right to select his successor. Ironically, he himself died before selecting one, leaving behind a grand total of 6 heirs (his second wife Catherine, her two daughters Anna and Elizabeth, his grandson from his first marriage Peter, and two nieces, Anna and Catherine, the daughters of Ivan V) none of whom had a clear and absolute claim, thus setting up a century during which the privileged Guards regiments interfered in every succession to put their preferred candidate on the throne.

• Catherine I (1725-1727). No matter how ridiculous it sounds, Catherine I wasn't Romanov at all. She was a Swedish camp follower picked up by Peter the Great as a mistress and later wife. Because Peter left a trollish succession law that established whoever designated by the previous Emperor as a successor but never managed to designate one, she succeeded him. She was a grieving widow and an alcoholic, but nothing significant as a statesperson.
• Peter II (1727-1730). The next Emperor wanted a return to the Muscovite ways, but smallpox killed him before he could do much. By and large, this is just as well. In terms of personality, he was a Russian equivalent of Joffrey Baratheon, and without even the excuse of incestuous parents. That being said, he was very close to his older sister Natalia, who tried to keep his courtiers from controlling him. Her death deeply upset him, to the point of where his last words were "I want to go and see my sister."
• Anna Ioannovna (1730-1740). A particularly infamous Empress and daughter of the aforementioned Ivan V, she was invited by the High Privy Council, a group of aristocrats formed after Peter II's death, as a figurehead ruler of Russia. She deceived the Council, tore the Conditions by which she was meant to rule, and took the supreme power. During her reign, German favorites such as Duke Ernst Biren held all the reins of power in Russia. Fun-loving, a spendthrift, cruel, careless, and lazy. An excellent friend and a terrible enemy, the kindest thing ever said of her was that she never left a kindness unrewarded, or an injury unavenged. While the country starved, she enjoyed the most flamboyantly expensive court in Europe, and died of nephritis (kidney failure), having time for one last, disastrous decision. She made her infant great-grandnephew her heir, while bypassing his mother Anna Leopoldovna, her niece, and making Biren the regent. The regent was overthrown by the new emperor's mother within a few months, and she was overthrown by Elizabeth in less than a year.
• Ivan VI (1740-1741, infant, with Princess Anna Leopoldovna as regent). This Emperor of Russia was ill-fated. At age one, he was deposed by Peter the Great's daughter Elizabeth and put into prison. He grew up in prison and later was killed by an officer of Catherine the Great.
• Elizabeth (1741-1761). Better known as the precursor to Catherine the Great, she was just as welcoming to lovers but much less talented in politics, though she was very beautiful and just as intelligent as her father Peter I. Outside of the merriment and sex-fest that happened in her luxurious court, Elizabeth was famous for her great success in the Seven Years' War against Prussia and for never executing anyone during her 20-year reign, combined with a high intelligence that compensated her lack of knowledge of the affairs of state when she took the throne, so she's overall considered a worthy successor to her father and one of the most popular tzars. She was unmarried and childless, meaning that the male line of the Romanovs became extinct, but her only surviving sister Anna had married a prince of the German house of Holstein-Gottorp, a duchy of the Holy Roman Empire in Prussia that was located on the border with Denmark, so she chose the resulting nephew as her heir; because of that, the Romanovs after her should be more properly described as House Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov. The first of them was the aforementioned nephew...
• Peter III (1761-1762). A strange man, a fan of tabletop war games, a fanboy of Frederick The Great and his native Prussia who hated the country he had to rule, which resulted in him completely throwing away all the results of the victories under his aunt, causing Prussia to recover from total collapse, and instead attacked Denmark just to re-obtain some lost claim of his native Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp, which was completely off the interests of Russia, and everyone, especially the army and the nobility, was outraged. This tsar was named a madman, an eccentric, a misunderstood reformer by various historians. Right now we realize he was just a typical geek, brilliant yet socially awkward. Oh, and he is also the source of inspiration for the famous The Elder Scrolls Mad Emperor, Pelagius. Only six months later, he was soon overthrown by his wife...

• Catherine II the Great (1762-1796). In the West, she's famous for banging a horse. The Bolsheviks, happy to support any libel against Tsarism, gladly propagated that rumor. But no credible modern historian believes that myth. She, a German princess, a Romanov by marriage, a Lutheran by birth, and a Russian Orthodox by conversion, is one of the most famous Russian rulers. It's true that she had a lot of lovers, but this did not hamper her talent as a statesperson. She was mildly liberal, willing to promote the ideals of the Enlightenment if it didn't disrupt the society.

• Paul I (1796-1801). Another crowned fanboy, Paul was the son of Peter III and Catherine the Great. He was a fan of medieval knightly romances, built castles all over Russia, and challenged the other European monarchs to duels. His ideas of forcing the nobility to adopt a code of chivalry and granting of greater rights to the peasantry were too much for certain nobles, who concocted a plot and killed Paul in his own castle, and his mother's sympathizers also had a role in the assassination. He also made some of the same mistakes as his father, sympathizing with Prussia and using its reforms with his army, which was a bad idea, as the freezing Russian cold meant that these army reforms only weakened said army. Allegedly, Paul tried to hide behind drapes, but was easily discovered and forced to sign his own abdication, and was killed when he refused. One important legacy of Paul I was his succession law, which was semi-Salic and virtually removed any woman's chance to inherit the Russian throne, mostly out of hatred towards his mother for the role in the coup against his father, who he idolized. As such, when the assassins deposed of Paul, they found his 23-year-old son Alexander and demanded that he take up his father's crown. Unusually for a succeeding monarch, Alexander never punished his father's assassins and Paul's official death certificate claimed apoplexy.
• Alexander I the Blessed (1801-1825). A day before the assassination of his father Paul, he said: "My reign will be the same as my grandma's". And he kept true to his word: his reign was also mildly liberal but not threatening to the remnants of Russian feudalism. One important thing he did was to allow land-owners to give their serfs freedom. His other notable achievement was presiding over the army that defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. He was known to be eccentric and mercurial, especially towards the end of his life (with some even speculating he was possibly schizophrenic), holding contradictory opinions and random narratives about himself that randomly switched depending on his mood or other factors, greatly complicating his domestic rule and foreign diplomacy. To note, he rolled back almost as many of his reforms as he had passed, switched his and Russia's position with France among neutrality, opposition, and alliance no fewer than four times during the Napoleonic Wars between 1804 and 1812, threw out the Allies' war plans in 1814 to march on Paris with his army as a matter of 'personal honor', and even embarrassed and outraged all the other allied monarchs and diplomats by acknowledging Napoleon as a fellow monarch and accepting his surrender as an equal where the other members of the Sixth Coalition — especially Britain — had refused to as a matter of principle.
• Nicholas I (1825-1855). Known in Russia under the unflattering moniker of "Nicholas Sticks" (Nikolay Palkin), after his fondness for military corporeal punishments. Coming of age in the blood-stained chaos of the Napoleonic wars, this Tsar was a conservative, changing the pro-Enlightenment political landscape typical of his predecessor to a reactionary one, and typically relying on his beloved military to handles as much of Russian government as possible. He perceived the Russian army's loss during the Crimean War as a personal defeat, which drove him through a Morale Event Horizon and led to his death. His reign saw the Golden Age of Russian literature (Pushkin, Lermontov, Griboyedov, etc), an enormous flowering of the arts (especially by Russian as opposed to foreign craftsmen), the beautification of central St. Petersburg with the buildings of Carlo Rossi, the opening of the first Russian railroad, a significant decrease in serfdom (the evils of which he fully understood and tried to mitigate) and, most importantly, the codification of Russian law after nearly 200 years of absolutist rule by decree (the last law code had been written back in 1649). Ironically, his reign can, in some ways, be considered a remarkably progressive time, and Nicholas particularly stands out as the first Russian ruler who considered himself bound by the Law, instead of standing above it. Incidentally, a loving husband and a good family man, the first Russian ruler who took the trouble to have his eldest son specifically raised to be an heir to the throne. Known for his absolute and inflexible sense of Duty which dictated all his actions. Famous for his admiration of engineers (he was a military engineer himself, and quite a good one), he did a lot to see that profession rise in common esteem. He was also the founder of the world-famous Hermitage Museum, being the first to build a new building for a significant part of the Imperial art collection especially in order to open it to the public. In nearly 30 years on the throne, he set the example for the Professional Autocrat even more than his grandmother had done, working 16-hour workdays, and literally working himself to the grave, as by the end of his reign, his mighty and athletic organism was no longer capable of bearing up against a common cold.
• Alexander II the Liberator (1855-1881). The liberal Tsar who abolished serfdom (essentially slavery at the time)^note While he was fairly liberal in Russia proper and in Finland, he was a lot worse in his other holdings, ranging from brutally suppressing uprisings to outlawing even speaking Polish anywhere in the Russian Empire outside of Poland (where it was only allowed in private conversation) to genocide. He was a contemporary of Abraham Lincoln and justifiably felt a kindred spirit in him, which led to him supporting the Northern war effort in the USA. However, his reforms weren't radical enough for "People's Will" (Narodnaya Volya), a group of anti-capitalist revolutionaries who sent an assassin to kill him. Repeatedly. The sixth attempt was successful. (This successful attempt is responsible for the trope of the Bomb Throwing Anarchist, since (1) they killed him with bombs, and (2) People's Will's ideology was mostly anarcho-collectivist, following Mikhail Bakunin.) His last, never-implemented reform was meant to be transforming Russia into a constitutional monarchy, with the intention of ending autocracy in Russia forever. 140 years later, the monarchy is long gone from Russia but autocracy is still going strong.
• Alexander III the Peacemaker (1881-1894). Another clone of Alexis the Serene and Ivan the Great. This Tsar was very conservative; if only he had the chance to support the CSA, he would do so. But he was merely the tsesarevich (crown prince) at the time. He was another one of the "proceed slowly, with a straight face" tsars, and also a raging alcoholic. His age is remembered as the last stable age of Imperial Russia. Also known for being a giant of a man with the strength to match; when the royal train derailed, he held the collapsed roof of the dining car on his shoulders so that his children could escape. He seemingly came out unscathed but died of kidney failure six years later, with the blunt force trauma of a train car falling on him being a major contributor to this premature death.

• Nicholas II (or the Bloody, or the Martyr, or the Spineless, depending on who you ask) (1894-1917). The guy about whom opinions differ. Ask communists, and you will hear a lot of ramblings of how bloody and reactionary he was. Ask monarchists, and you will hear a lot of ramblings on how perfect he was. What remains a hard fact is that he was weak-willed (at least in matters that a ruler should be strong-willed in, he could be very stubborn at other times) and not very smart, which led to the Russian Revolutions.

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