18th May—Tsar Nicholas II marks his coronation with the distribution of presents to his subjects on the Khodynka Field near Moscow. 1,300 people crushed to death in what becomes known as the “Khodynka catastrophe”. The 1890s see an unprecedented rapid growth (supported by foreign capital) of mining, metallurgical and manufacturing industries, railways and oilfields, with a corresponding growth in the working class. May to June—a huge wave of textile workers’ strikes in St Petersburg (spreading to other places in Russia) against the fifteen-hour working day. Some 260 factories hit; hundreds of strikes and revolutionaries arrested. November—large demonstration to mourn the Khodynka victims, in which over 700 people are arrested. Pobedonostsev, the Tsar’s chief adviser, exhorts him to imprison Tolstoy.
Tolstoy working on Hadji Murat. 15th May—Lyova Tolstoy marries Dora Westerlund in Sweden. The composer Sergei Taneev spends the summer at Yasnaya; his friendship with Sofia provokes Tolstoy’s jealous rage.