BBC - Empire of the Tsars Romanov Russia (2016) Part 3 The Road to Revolution

Lucy Worsley travels to Russia to tell the extraordinary story of the dynasty that ruled the country for more than three centuries - the Romanovs.

Part 3 The Road to Revolution

Lucy Worsley concludes her history of the Romanov dynasty, investigating how the family's grip on Russia unravelled in their final century. She shows how the years 1825-1918 were bloody and traumatic, as four tsars tried and failed to deal with pressure for constitutional reform and revolution. Lucy finds out how the Romanovs tried to change the system themselves - in 1861, millions of enslaved serfs were freed by the Tsar-Liberator, Alexander II. But Alexander paid the price for opening the Pandora's box of reform when he was blown up by terrorists. Elsewhere, there was repression, denial, war and - in the case of the last tsar, Nicholas II - a fatalistic belief in the power of God, with Nicholas's faith in the holy man Rasputin being a major part in his undoing. Lucy traces the growth of the intelligentsia, writers and thinkers who sought to have a voice about Russia. Anger against the Romanov regime created a generation of radicals committed to overturning the status quo.

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