❄️ February 1917, Winter Palace, Petrograd What are we seeing? Palace Square outside the Winter Palace, the former imperial residence and public face of Romanov power. Snow, banners, and smoke as crowds surge, Petrograd garrison units hesitate, some mutiny, guard lines open, imperial authority is breaking at the empire’s symbolic core. Who was Nicholas II? Russia’s last Romanov tsar (emperor), reigned 1894–1917. After 1905 he allowed a parliament but kept decisive control, ministerial chaos and the Rasputin scandal eroded legitimacy, in 1915 he took personal command of the army and left domestic rule to Empress Alexandra’s circle. Why did the February Revolution erupt? The Russian Empire had deep, long-running problems. Autocracy, weak reforms, a sidelined State Duma, peasant land hunger, harsh factory conditions, and a court hurt by ministerial turnover and the Rasputin scandal. The First World War intensified these pressures with defeats, casualties, rail failures, inflation, and ...