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,
The Vyborg Side battle losses and famine in the city. Not surprisingly factory workers supported in 1917 the February revolution that overthrew monarchy and the October Revolution that promised to end private ownership of factories and actually of workers' lives. People's militia was formed on the Vyborg Side to counteract any attempts of counter revolution and maintain public order. These detachments were called Red Guards. Vladimir Lenin before the October Revolution returned from hiding in semi-autonomous Finland to a safe house on the Vyborg Side, from whence on the eve of the revolution he was conducted to the revolutionary headquarters in Smolny by