The Last of the Tsars The Last of the Tsars The Last of the Tsars is a play by Michael Bawtree. The action takes place in Russia between 1912 and 1919, and follows the fortunes of the Romanov family and of Russia in the tumultuous years leading up to the Revolution of 1917, and beyond, to the assassination of the Romanov family by the Bolsheviks. The story is told through the eyes of Tsar Nicholas's brother Grand Duke Michael, who had been exiled from Russia by the Tsar in 1912 when he married a divorcee. Michael was called back to Russia at the outbreak of
Joseph Stalin in the Russian Revolution, Russian Civil War, and Polish–Soviet War Ekaterina Svanidze, with whom he had a son Yakov, Stalin temporarily resigned from the party over its ban on bank robberies. Embarking on an effort to organize Muslim Azeri and Persian partisans in the Caucasus, Stalin conducted protection rackets, ransom kidnappings, counterfeiting operations and robberies, until arrest and exile in 1908. Between 1908 and 1917, Stalin was arrested seven times and escaped five times, enjoying less than two years of liberty in the nine-year period. In the wake of the February Revolution of 1917 (the first phase of the Russian Revolution of 1917), Stalin was released from exile. On March