Abstract

The article examines Nicholas II’s participation in Russian government during suppression of the Moscow armed uprising in 1905 and his contribution to this process. In historiography, this topic, despite the eff orts of a number of scholars, has not been comprehensively studied. For the first time, on the basis of clerical documents (staff reports) and personal sources (diaries, memoirs, letters), the author attempts at determining the degree of the emperor’s awareness of the events in Moscow and the factors on which it depended. Nicholas II’s major contribution to the defeat of the uprising was the decision to send reinforcements to Moscow on 13 (26) December 1905. The author concludes that the information regarding the progress of the armed uprising, which the emperor received, was of a specific nature. While being well informed about the main events of the “revolt”, the emperor had an exaggerated idea of the number of police officers and soldiers in the first capital and the number of revolutionaries opposing them. This was due to the crisis of administrative and military power in Moscow, which often resulted in getting unreliable information by the city’s government. It was also determined by the desire of this government to present the situation in Moscow to St. Petersburg authorities in a favorable light for themselves and by the relocation of the armed forces (the sending of combatready soldiers to the Far East due to the lack of trained reserves, etc.). Perhaps court intrigues also played a role. The decision making was also affected by such a feature of Nicholas II’s administrative style, as entrusting specific tasks to those in charge and retaining the overall control of the process for himself. As a result, the emperor did not send the troops to Moscow during the insurrection in the Rostov regiment on 2–4 (15–17) December, which might prevent the uprising, and decided to employ the Semenovsky regiment when its peak had passed and many Muscovites had been dead.