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,
Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation that more than 90% of Russians supported unification with the Crimean Republic. On 4 March, at press conference in Novo-Ogaryovo President Putin expressed his view on the situation that if a revolution took place in Ukraine, it is a new country with which Russia did not conclude any treaties. He brought up an analogy with events of 1917 in Russia, when as a result of the revolution the Russian Empire fell apart and a new state was created. However, he stated Ukraine would still have to honour its debts. Russian politicians have speculated that there are already 143,000 Ukrainian refugees