His blunders were many, some not his fault. His biggest blunder was not being like his father. Alexander III was the perfect image of a tsar in the eyes of a Russian. The size of a bear, hard hitting foreign policy and strong orthodox believer, Nicholas had a lot to live up to and was never going to reach those heights. He was quite mild mannered and was known to be more interested in spending time in his palaces out of the city with his family. In the politically charged climate of early 20th century Russia, this was an easy target for any dissenters to build on. Another blunder came later on in ww1. After tannenburg and other defeats, Nicholas decided to lead the Russian army personally at the front, this caused problems twofold. Firstly, communists started to twist the story that he was in fact the reason for the losses against the Germans. Secondly, while it is argued how important Rasputin was, the rumours went out that he had left Russia under the control of his german wife and an evil priest which didn't go down well. Nicholas though was not innocent of fault. Nicholas was generally a very weak leader and for the first time in Russia under the romanovs, the Russian peasant class realised that maybe their 'little father' didn't care about them as much as they thought he did. There are many more mistakes he made but those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head