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,
Russian Army (1917) Russian Army (1917) In 1917, the Russian Army formally ceased to be the Army of the Russian Empire when the power in Russia was transferred to the Russian Provisional Government. After the February Revolution of 1917 the systems of command and of supply of the Army were disrupted. The army became tired of World War I. The revolutionary wave influenced the Army, and it was swept with the processes of democratization and the single line of command was questioned. The Order No. 1 issued by the Petrograd Soviet instructed soldiers and sailors to obey their officers and the Provisional Government