The law on dynastic succession was revised by the Emperor Paul I (ruled 1796-1801) after he was denied his rightful succession by his mother, Catherine II (“the Great,” ruled 1762-1796). Catherine, born Sophia of Anhalt- Zerbst, had married Karl-Peter (the future Peter III) in 1745. After instigating a palace coup that ousted Peter (and later consenting to his murder), Catherine assumed the throne herself. When Paul ascended the throne on her death, he promulgated a law of succession in 1796 that established succession by male primogeniture and female succession only by substitution (that is, only in the absence of male Romanovs). This law endured until the end of the empire and continues today as the regulating statute for expatriate members of the Romanov family living abroad.
Romanov rulers in the nineteenth century were best known for their defense of the autocratic system and resistance to liberal constitutionalism and other social reforms. Paul’s sons Alexander I (ruled 1801-1825), the principal victor over Napoleon Bonaparte, and Nicholas I (ruled 1825-1855) each resisted substantive reform and established censorship and other limitations on Russian society aimed at stemming the rise of the radical intelligentsia. Nicholas I’s son, Alexander II (the “Tsar-Liberator,” ruled 1855-1881) inherited the consequences of the Russian defeat in the Crimean War and instituted the Great Reforms, the centerpiece of which was the emancipation of Russia’s serfs. Alexander II was assassinated in March 1881, and his successors on the throne, Alexander III (ruled 1881-1894) and Nicholas II (ruled 1894-1917), adopted many reactionary policies against revolutionaries and sought to defend and extend the autocratic form of monarchy unique to Russia at the time.
The anachronism of autocracy, the mystical-religious leanings of Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra Feodorovna, and, perhaps most important, the string of defeats in World War I, forced Nicholas II to abdicate in February 1917. Having first abdicated in favor of his son Alexei, Nicholas II edited his abdication decree so as to pass the throne instead on to his younger brother, Mikhail-an action that in point of fact lay beyond a tsar’s power according to the Pauline Law of Succession of 1796. In any event, Mikhail turned down the throne, ending more than three hundred years of Romanov rule in Russia. Nicholas and his family were immediately placed under house arrest in their palace at Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg, but in July they were sent into exile to Tobolsk. With the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, Nicholas and his family were sent to Ekaterinburg, where Bolshevik control was firmer and where, under the threat of a White Army advance, they were executed on the night of July 17, 1918. On days surrounding this, executions of other Romanovs and their relatives (including morganatic spouses) were carried out. In 1981, Nicholas II, his wife and children, and all the other Romanovs who were executed by the Bolsheviks were glorified as saints (or more properly, royal martyrs) by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.
After the abdication of Nicholas and the Bolshevik coup, many Romanovs fled Russia and established themselves in Western Europe and America. Kirill Vladimirovich, Nicholas II’s first cousin, proclaimed himself to be “Emperor of All the Russias” in 1924; nearly all surviving grand dukes recognized his claim to the succession, as did that part of the Russian Orthodox Church that had
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fled revolutionary Russia and had set itself up first in Yugoslavia, then in Germany, and finally in the United States. Kirill’s son Vladimir assumed the headship of the dynasty (but not the title “emperor”) on his father’s death in 1938, though his claim was less universally accepted. Today the Romanov dynasty properly consists only of Leonida Georgievna, Vladimir’s widow; his daughter Maria; and her son Georgy, and Princess Ekaterina Ioan-novna. The question of the identity of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia Nikolayevna, the youngest daughter of Nicholas II, was finally and definitively put to rest with the results of a DNA comparison of Anderson with surviving Romanov relatives. Other lines of descent in the Romanov family exist as well, but are disqualified from the succession due to the prevalence of morganatic marriages in these lines, something that is prohibited by the Pauline Law of Succession. The question of who the rightful tsar would be in the event of a restoration remains hotly contested in monarchist circles in emigration and in Russia. See also: ALEXANDER I; ALEXANDER II; ALEXANDER III; ALEXEI MIKHAILOVICH; ANNA IVANOVNA; CATHERINE I; CATHERINE II; ELIZABETH; FILARET ROMANOV, PATRIARCH; IVAN V; IVAN VI; NICHOLAS I; NICHOLAS II; PAUL I; PETER I; PETER II; PETER III; ROMANOV, MIKHAIL FYODOROVICH; SOPHIA; TIME OF TROUBLES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunning, Chester S. L. (2001). Russia’s First Civil War: The Time of Troubles and the Founding of the Romanov Dynasty. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Klyuchevsky, Vasilii O. (1970). The Rise of the Romanovs, tr. Liliana Archibald. London: Macmillan. Lincoln, W. Bruce. (1981). The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias. New York: The Dial Press. Nazarov, V. D. (1993). “The Genealogy of the Koshkins-Zakharyns- Romanovs and the Legend about the Foundation of the Georgievskiy Monastery.” Historical Genealogy 1:22-31. Orchard, G. Edward. (1989). “The Election of Michael Romanov.” The Slavonic and East European Review 67:378- 402.
Grigory Romanov was born on February 9, 1923, to Russian working-class parents. He served in the Red Army during World War II. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1944, and received a night-school diploma in ship building in 1953. Romanov almost immediately went to work within the Leningrad party apparatus, climbing through the ranks from factory, to ward, to city, and ultimately to oblast-level positions. He served as first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Party Committee from 1970 to 1983, and was known for encouraging production and scientific associations, as well as the forging of links between such groups to implement new technologies. As a result, Leningrad achieved enviable production levels under Romanov. He was named a candidate member of the Politburo in 1973, and was promoted to full membership in 1976. Romanov advanced to the CPSU Central Committee Secretariat in June 1983, with responsibility for the defense industry. Though mentioned as a candidate for the office of general secretary, his many years spent outside the Moscow left Romanov unable to build allies in the Politburo.
Once Gorbachev had claimed the general secretary post in March 1985, he began purging his rivals from the top leadership, and Romanov was among them. Despite his innovations in Leningrad, Romanov was a conservative, not inclined to alter the complacency-and corruption-of the Brezhnev era. Romanov was formally relieved of his duties on July 1, 1986. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION; POLITBURO
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Medish, Vadim. (1983). “A Romanov in the Kremlin?” Problems of Communism 32(6): 65-66. Mitchell, R. Judson. (1990). Getting to the Top in the USSR. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Ruble, Blair A. (1983). “Romanov’s Leningrad.” Problems of Communism 32(6): 36-48.
(b. 1923), first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Party Committee during the Brezhnev years.
(1596-1645), tsar of Russia from 1613 to 1645 and first ruler of the Romanov Dynasty.
Born in 1596, Mikhail Fedorovich Romanov was the son of Fyodor Nikitich Romanov and his wife
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Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov, the first Romanov tsar. © HULTON ARCHIVE Ksenia Ivanovna Shestova. His family had long served as boyars in the court of the Muscovite rulers. The Romanovs, while still known as the Yurievs, were thrust into the center of power and politics in 1547, when Anastasia Romanovna Yurieva, Mikhail’s great aunt, married Tsar Ivan IV (“the Terrible”). This union produced Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich, the last of the old Riurikovich rulers of Russia, who died in 1598 without heirs. The extinction of the tsarist line left the succession in question, but the throne finally went to Boris Godunov, a prominent figure in Tsar Fyodor Ivanovich’s court.
The reign of Boris Godunov was a difficult time for the Romanov clan. Many members were exiled and forcibly tonsured (required to become monks or nuns) by the new tsar, including Mikhail’s father and mother, who took the monastic names Filaret and Marfa, respectively. The young Mikhail, then only nine years old, similarly was exiled, at first in rather harsh conditions at Beloozero, then in somewhat better circumstances on the family’s own estates, in
