ABSTRACT
The last of the eighteen Romanov autocrats who had ruled Russia since the Time of Troubles was practically unique in the Western world of the 20th century. Industrialism was beyond his understanding, revolutionaries were to him simply manifestations of evil to be crushed at any cost, good government not an ideal to be sought but an irrelevance compared to the fulfilment of the commands of his ancestors and the maintenance of the loyalty of the Russian people to his own person. Nicholas II hated revolutionaries, but despised liberals. He did not understand the argument that reforms might avoid revolution, for this was a political argument. He did not listen to the pleas of liberals to alter his governmental system because they had no right to speak on such matters. When the government issued restrictive 'temporary rules' for the universities, one student, acting alone, retaliated by killing the minister of education in February 1901.
