W ha t’s so bad about having a mentally deficient ruler? Surely the ruler’s advisors can make wise decisions and tell him what to say? When I hear such reasoning, I think of Tsar Nicholas II, his sad ...

An expert on modern Russian/Soviet history, Hasegawa provides a detailed account of how Nicholas II’s poor leadership and attachment to archaic notions of autocracy led to the end of the Romanov ...

In his newly released book, “The Last Tsar: the Abdication of Nicholas II and the End of the Romanovs” (Basic Books), author Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, an emeritus professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, ...