The Tsar

(b. 1868, d. 17th July, 1918)

Strengths

• Good at heart - genuinely tried to improve living conditions for his people
• Family man 

Weaknesses

• Despised opposition
• Despised democracy; believed it would lead to the fall of Russia
• Was in support of death penalty and capital punishment
• Unpopular, because he didn't really do much
• Violent
• Anti-Jew: established pogroms, which were religious purges against them

Personality+Family

• Very religious
• Short
• Put family before governance
• Having never come from an underprivileged background, he didn't know what it was like to be poor. Therefore, he was only informed of Russia's problems through people a step lower who were all too keen on shielding him from what lay outside. 
• Wife is a German - people then thought that he was a traitor, given that they were fighting against Germany
• Son Alexei had hemophilia - only heir, since he had three daughters.
• Assassinated in Ekaterinburg, the Ipatiev house, while the civil war raged on and the whites were losing. 

WWI - WHEN THE TSAR…