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There was a brief period from 1610 until 1613 when Russia had no tsar.
Prior to this, the country was in chaos with rulers such as Ivan the Terrible, subsequent imposters, and his two nephews Feodor I and II. It was a period referred to as “The Times of Trouble”. Russia had been in shambles when a delegation of nobles persuaded the son of Philaret Romanov to become the next Tsar. This was the start of the Romanov’s Dynasty.


 
Mikhail Romanov was sixteen years old when he took on the task of ruling this immense nation, the largest in the world. He was assisted by several counselors, including his father and various able administrators. Peace agreements with Poland and Sweden brought relative calm, and Russia recovered from the earlier perilous times. Mikhail had ten children by his second wife and upon his death in 1645, the only living son Alexei became the Tsar.
  

 
Alexei also married twice and had several children by his first wife, Maria. His second wife, Natalia, was the mother of Peter I, the future Tsar who would be known better as Peter the Great. However, as was the rule, the first son Feodore III became the Tsar when Alexei died in 1676.
 

 
After Feodore III passed away, a bit of Russian intrigue resulted in the crowning of two tsars: Ivan V, the brother of Feodore, and Peter I. The sister of Ivan V, Sophia, was appointed regent and for four years she was essentially the prime ruler. Then in 1689 she tried to oust Peter I. Her plot backfired when Ivan took sides with Peter.  However, Ivan had no interest in ruling the country and Peter was the real Tsar as of that time.
  

There is no need here to explain who Peter the Great was and what he did in detail. Suffice it to say that if had not been for his leadership and willpower there would be no St. Petersburg and Russia would not have easily pulled itself out of its isolationism and backwards look. With his travels throughout Western Europe, he provided an introduction to the ‘modern’ outlook. He masterminded many of the St. Petersburg design and character; yet, he was barbaric enough to cause the death of his only son, Alexis, by torture in the Peter and Paul Fortress.
When Peter died in 1725 he had no male heirs to follow him. For almost forty years there would be no comparable ruler in Russia until Catherine II. Sometime during Peter’s reign, he had abolished the law of succession. The Supreme Council was given the right to choose Peter’s heir to the throne; hence the political battles and confusion during the following years until we meet Catherine the Great.
At this stage we encounter several names and associations of lesser known rulers, people your guide may refer to. In a nutshell, here is what happened in the interim (1725 – 1769):

 

Peter the Great had been married twice and his second wife Catherine I now became Empress, the first one for Russia. She ruled for four years.
When she died in 1727 a nephew, actually the son of Alexis (the one who died a tortures death) Peter II, became the emperor; he lasted three years.

 

 

Then some intrigue within in the nobility resulted in several strange ‘appointments to the throne’.  Ivan V (he previously ruled along with Peter the Great for a while), had a daughter Anna, who became the Empress for the next ten years (1730 – 1740). Anna was instrumental in having her nephew Ivan VI be elected to follow her. After all, this was still a following of the Romanov family line.

 

 

However, Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great (using some more inside ‘rearranging’) was able to dethrone Ivan VI and become the Empress for the next 21 years. Although she was a beautiful woman, Elizabeth had no children; so her successor elect was her nephew Peter III who in February 1762 became the Tsar. This Peter was married to Catherine, a German princess (of the House of Anhalt-Zerbst).

 

 

Peter III was killed in 1762 and his wife Catherine II (or Catherine the Great) became Empress of Russia. Catherine ruled for thirty-four years and, although she was not of Russian descent, she greatly contributed to the stability in the government. During her rein many grand palaces and historic buildings were constructed or finished in and around St. Petersburg., including the Hermitage and Catherine’s Palace in Pushkin (Tsar’s Village). You will encounter her name and contributions all around St. Petersburg. She had one son Paul I, who became the emperor in 1796.

  

 

Paul was one of the first emperors to take up the plight of the peasants of Russia. A very small minority of aristocratic families essentially owned the poor laborers and any reforms were violently oppressed. As a result, Paul was assassinated not by the lower class, but by some officers who were opposed to Paul's new thinking. After only four years on the throne, Paul I (who had five daughters and two sons) was succeeded by his oldest son Alexander I, followed by the second son Nicolas I.

 

 

Alexander II, the son of Nicolas I, became emperor in 1856. He also took up the question of serfdom and made several revisions without a total ban on this practice of slavery. There were several attempts on his life and on March 13, 1881 he was assassinated when a bomb was thrown at his carriage. A second bomb killed him. To commemorate this event, a large church was built on the same spot. It is the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood.

 

 

The last two tsars were Alexander II, and his son Nicolas II.

The ruling family of the Romanovs came to an end with the revolution of 1917. Another series of bloody murders took place and all of the royal family was brutally assassinated.

 

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