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,
1905 Russian Revolution failed to do so. While the Tsar managed to keep his rule, the events foreshadowed those of the Russian revolution twelve years later - after the Russian defeat in World War I - which would result in his overthrow and the creation of the Soviet Union by the Bolsheviks. The 1905 revolution is said by some historians to have set the stage for the 1917 Russian Revolutions, and allowed for Bolshevism to emerge as a distinct political movement in Russia, although still being a minority. Lenin, as head of the USSR later on, called it "The Great Dress rehearsal" without