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,
Union of the Russian People supported the Russian Revolution of 1905. The Union was dissolved in 1917 in the wake of the Revolution, and its leader, Alexander Dubrovin placed under arrest. Some modern academic researchers view the Union of Russian People as an early example of fascism. The Union was the leading exponent of antisemitism in the wake of the 1905 Revolution. It has been described as 'an early Russian version of the Fascist movement', as it was anti-socialist, anti-liberal, and 'above all anti-Semitic'. The Union of the Russian People called for the 'restoration of the popular autocracy', a concept they believed had existed before