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A dark
shadow over Nicholas’ reign was also cast by the tragic event that
marred his coronation celebrations in the spring of 1896. The
festivities, which were to be accompanied by the distribution of
commemorative gift packages and a program of popular
entertainment, brought huge masses of people to
Khodynka Field in Moscow.
The field had not been properly leveled out for the occasion, and
the kiosks with gifts were put too close to one another. According
to one witness: |
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... a mass of people half-a-million strong, pressed together as tightly as
possible, staggered with all its unimaginable weight in the direction of the
kiosks. People by the thousand fell into a ditch and ended standing
literally on their hands at the bottom. Other fell straight after them, and
more, and more, until the ditch was filled to the brim with bodies. And
people walked on them. They could not help walking on them, they were unable to
stop...
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According to the official statistics, 2,690 people suffered in the
crush, 1,389 of whom died. The incident produced an unpleasant
impression on the tsar, but the festivities continued as planned. On
the night of that very day Nicholas and his wife Alexandra attended
a ball in the Kremlin and danced. Next day they went to dinner at
the German ambassador’s.
Nicholas and his government would never be able to erase a negative
impression that the Moscow festivities made on the public opinion.
One of the émigré pamphlets published in Geneva the same year
accused the Tsar of being incapable of observing even the outward
forms of decency. From this time on, in wide sections of the
populace Nicholas II came to be known as ‘the Bloody’.
The Khodynka incident had clearly revealed, at the very outset of
Nicholas’s reign, his inability to react adequately and sensitively
to changes in the situation and to make suitable adjustments in
response to popular feelings and public opinion. As one writer
notes: ‘In all probability he simply had not been endowed with the
proper capacity to respond to the living, changing course of public
life. But, if this is of little significance in the fate of a
private individual, for the head of such an authoritarian state as
the Russian Empire, it was a shortcoming fraught with the most
serious consequences’. Some analysts attribute a truly
symbolical significance to the tragic episode during the coronation
festivities, seeing it as a projection in concentrated form of
Nicholas II’s entire reign.
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Tsarist Russia |
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