Nicholas II The Tsar Who Failed His People

Nicholas the 2nd is the last Tsar of the Russian Empire. He is arguable, one of the worst leaders to ever sit on the throne for many reasons. He is well known for failing miserably in adapting to the modern era (in an 18th to 19th-century perspective) and stubbornly remained stuck in a feudal society. Everything that Nicholas tried to achieve was a failure. The Russo-Japanese war? Big loss. World War I? Russia downsized by half of its industrial lands. Maintaining an autocratic regime? Miserably failed. Nicholas II even failed at easy tasks like distributing free food to a crowd of starving people.

On May 27th, 1896, at the Khodynka Field, he organized a (free) food festival. A few thousand people gathered on the said day, but due to a lack of organization, thousands of people were either wounded or killed. This incident stained his already mediocre reputation, but Nicholas' blindness and incompetence aggravated his case. Instead of mourning the victims, he went to France to attend a party held by the French government under his uncle’s guidance. Of course, this trip abroad caused the general public to believe that the Tsar didn't care about their wellbeing at all, and they weren’t entirely wrong, don’t you think?