The Last of the Tsars the First World War, where he served in the Russian Army. When Tsar Nicholas abdicated in March 1917, he did so in favour of Grand Duke Michael, who himself abdicated some 48 hours later. So Michael was in fact 'the last of the Tsars.' The play was commissioned by the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario, Canada, in the spring of 1966, after another play on the same subject, "Nicholas Romanov" by William Kinsolving, had been tried out by the Stratford Festival Company at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in February, 1966, and found insufficiently dramatic. In spite of the shared general theme,
Background and causes of the Iranian Revolution Background and causes of the Iranian Revolution The Iranian Revolution was a populist, nationalist and Shi'a Islamic revolution that replaced a secular dictatorial monarchy with a theocracy based on "Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists" (or "velayat-e faqi.). Its causes – why the last Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi) was overthrown and why he was replaced by an Islamic Republic – are the subject of historical debate. The revolution was in part a conservative backlash against the westernization, modernization and secularization efforts of the Western-backed Shah, and a more popular reaction to social injustice and other shortcomings of the "ancien