I decide to make my next stop the Alexander Palace, the last home of  the last czar, Nicholas II and his family, to better understand some of the problems surrounding the February and October revolutions of 1917. I decided to get on a plane from Zindan to Saint Petersburg. While waiting for my connecting flight, I watched Anastasia to get more context, because the movie takes place in 1916, however, it was not much of a help since the only relevant part to the movie was the first five minuets when the royal family is celebrating and Rasputin enters the palace to kill Nicholas II and his family.

While on my flight to the Palace, I did some research on the royal family, mainly the Czar. Nicholas II was the last czar to live at the Palace and made several bad choices during his reign. He decided to fight in the Russo-Japanese war, and lost, causing the people to turn against him and give the Bolsheviks reason to advocate him leaving the throne. On top of that, when Russia was fighting in World War I, they were losing. The wealthier classes wanted to continue to fight while the peasant, working and lower ranking soldiers did not. Because of his military training and the push to show how great Russia was, Nicholas II left Saint Petersburg to join his soldiers, and command them on the battle field. After the soldiers marched on the Palace, he then advocated the throne to his sickly son, Alexi, allowing the Duma to set up a provisional government. It was the provisional governments job to decide to stay in the war, and feed the peasants. Opinions of the war did not change, instead each side became more ingrained in their side. Nobles still wanted to fight to show how strong Russia was, a very nationalistic point of view, while the peasants and lower ranking soldiers wanted the war to end because they were dying in large numbers from the war and food shortages.To me, that is when things ultimately fell apart. The government was not strong, the military would only fight if they wanted to, and the Bolsheviks were split,  In October, the Bolsheviks overthrew the provisional government, which lead to a civil war.

By the time I reached the Palace it was closed, making this trip unsuccessful. I was hoping to be able to see the room that Anastasia had grown up in, or paintings of the royal families, or the wealth of the country. Hopefully, it will open before I have to leave the city for another stop.

Citations

Anastasia (film) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOOeLOEa5CI

Nicholas II https://www.biography.com/people/nicholas-ii-21032713

Alexi (Czar son) https://www.biography.com/people/alexei-nikolaevich- 37485 http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nicholas_ii.shtml

http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod03_1917/context.html