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,
1917–18 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church 1917–18 Local Council of the Russian Orthodox Church The 1917–1918 Local Council of the Orthodox Church of Russia () was the first Local Council of the Russian Church since the end of the 17th century. It opened on 15 August 1917 (O.S.) in the Assumption Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Its most important decision was to restore the Patriarchy in the Russian Church, thereby ending a period of c. 300 years when the Russian Church was governed directly by the Emperor through the Most Holy Synod as a result of Peter the Great's ecclesiastical reforms. The Council′s sessions were held