Russian Empire

The Russian Empire dates its formal founding to 2 November 1721 (22 October, Old Style), when the Russian Senate conferred the title of All-Russian Emperor on Tsar Peter I following Russia's victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War, formalized by the Treaty of Nystad. Ruled by the House of Romanov, which had held the Russian throne since 1613, the Empire was an absolute autocracy under its last Tsar, Nicholas II, who succeeded his father in 1894. A major Allied belligerent in the First World War from its outset, the Empire suffered enormous casualties and mounting internal strain that produced the February Revolution of 1917: rioting in Petrograd in early March forced Nicholas II to abdicate at Pskov on 15 March 1917 (2 March, Old Style), first intending to pass the throne to his son Alexei and then, reconsidering, to his brother Michael, who declined to accept it, ending both the Romanov dynasty's rule and the Russian Empire itself. Nicholas and his immediate family were murdered by Bolshevik forces on 17 July 1918.