It's like showing up in a thread about the horrors of the Holocaust and Generalplan Ost to complain about East Germany and accusing anyone who disagrees with you or thinks the rant is an irrelevant tangent of being a Cultural-Marxist Crypto Tankie.
Was Tsar Nicholas II a good ruler?
- Thread starter Irrisa
- Start date
"Soviet rule of 1920-50s or so was akin to internal surgery performed by a village veterinarian in an open field in a mid of winter by a broken spoon sharpened on a stone".
The fact that operation was performed in such conditions was a direct consequence of the Imperial rule as it allowed this disease to fester to a point when emergency surgery became a necessity.
The fact that operation was performed in such conditions was a direct consequence of the Imperial rule as it allowed this disease to fester to a point when emergency surgery became a necessity.
The emergency of outlawing Russian culture and religion, seizing peoples assets, dividing Europe up with Hitler, and killing the family of everyone who disagrees?
Other than ending WWI (which was nearly over and Lenin had no functional plan to end anyways), Russia was not in some kind of particularly dire situation. What did Kerensky‘s government do or Russian society writ large do that would justify such actions?
Last edited:
Ah, yes. When Nicholas and Lenin murdered communists and social democrats they did it ineffectively. What’s interesting about the Finish democratic myth isn’t that it conceals an anti revolutionary fascism: it’s that Poland and the Baltic states solved the failure of Imperial Russia identically but aren’t in the public imagination because they didn’t survive the second crisis.
In fairness, we know how poorly the Bolshevik/Marxist-Leninist approach worked out for the Balts and Poles, and how much worse it was for the people trapped in the Soviet Union from its foundation.
This does not mean that revolution was not justified, of course. Noting what some of the Whites wanted and how Russian Tsarism worked, I wonder just what an industrialized but politically deeply regressive Russia might have become. Something like fascism is imaginable.
If we are to take the evaluation of the ROC on face value, the most notable thing Nicholas did was to die in a massacre along with his family and their servants.
Let us turn things around. Say that Nicholas II and Alexandra and their children did get out, were exiled. How would they be seen? What would people think of their record? That the British and the French opted not to host them for fear of suffering negative political consequences says much about how they were seen by contemporaries.
Last edited:
What they did? Stalled a comprehensive land reform for more than a half a century for example. Of course it wasn't solely on Kerensky (or even on N2) but they contributed to it extensively. As the result Bolsheviks (and socialists in general) had quite easy time to explain to the peasantry why nobles and clergy should be all hanged from the nearest trees. In fact peasants arrived to that conclusion without much prodding from anyone.
To put it simply: Alexander II "abolishment of serfdom" created an institution within a Russian society that was a decent contender to the title of the vilest form of societal organization in history of mankind - late XIX century - early XX century Russian peasant commune. And afterwards Russian monarchy maintained it for more than a fifty years until a boiling point was reached and it exploded right into their faces. The thing that it was also built on top of few centuries of literal slavery added some spiciness to that explosion and its consequences.
This alone created the situation in which Bolsheviks had basically a carte blanche on doing anything to the Russian people because anything was better that what Russian people as a whole experienced in the past half of a century. Because yeah, a collective farm was better than that. Think about it.
Last edited:
Nicholas II, in short, created the preconditions for a wrenching social revolution, like that experienced by France after the 1780s and somewhat like what China would begin to experience just a few years before. Nicholas II did oversee a notable amount of economic and military growth, but did nothing to establish a durable political transition towards some regime.
I would note that European monarchies generally did a very poor job of transitioning to participatory mass politics, outside of the special cases of the long-constitutional monarchies of northern Europe. Monarchy generally seems fragile. Even so, the Russian monarchy seems especially fragile.
Did Nicholas II inherit this? Sure. This said, Nicholas II also had decades to try to make something better of it, and he also laid full claim to a right to complete autocracy. By his own lights, he would have to accept responsibility for the Empire's fall.
I would note that European monarchies generally did a very poor job of transitioning to participatory mass politics, outside of the special cases of the long-constitutional monarchies of northern Europe. Monarchy generally seems fragile. Even so, the Russian monarchy seems especially fragile.
Did Nicholas II inherit this? Sure. This said, Nicholas II also had decades to try to make something better of it, and he also laid full claim to a right to complete autocracy. By his own lights, he would have to accept responsibility for the Empire's fall.
...The fuck are you talking about? I'm not pro-Germany, nowhere close. Where'd you get that from?
Him being stupid or ill-prepared is not an excuse. His belief in his own divine rule made him shun away people who actually knew what they were doing.
Its slightly worse than that. The Bolsheviks were pushed into policy conditions based on their desire to maintain a revolutionary dictatorship over the heights of Russian social life, and possibly hold out long enough for the German proletariat to rescue them from their fantasy. This mandated the use of inarticulate tools like direct requisitioning, massacring organised bodies of peasants or workers who opposed their dictatorship, or the reintroduction of a peasant controlled grain market.
The problem is that peasants hadn't been integrated into a market and could withdraw productivity on the very rational basis that there wasn't anything worth buying. This tended to enrage a body of the population who relied on a market to eat, who were organised by the very act of work, who had a lingering revolutionary tradition, and who kept an eye on Bolshevik and other government figures. As a result the party and elite decided who would win fabulous prizes in order for the party to continue its social hegemony. What's unusual about the Ural-Siberian method is that the membership of the party won fabulous prizes along with the peasantry, the forcibly proletarianised new working class, and the old working class.
So while the collective farm may still be a more desirable place than a late imperial commune; there was a brief intervening period where peasants generally preferred the organisation of society and were willing to beggar their neighbour as they lacked the social tools to recognise that *continuously* pissing off the industrial working class would be fucking stupid.
Compare this "economic" ignorance or inability to socially conceive of their actions as policy by the peasantry to Nicholas' (or Lenin's) claims that an elite could consciously order society.
Well, yes, the sin qua non of certain definitions of fascism are a failed revolution where an extra-legal right is required to put down working class revolution. How fortunate then that no extra-legal right was required to achieve that end.
It wouldn't be industrialised though. French capital would be even more vicious than historically in demanding repayment.*1 This would tilt the Russian economy towards servicing the needs of French capital: an extraction economy like Australia (another semi-peripheral semi-colony), rather than an industrial economy like the Soviet Union's elite desired for itself. Bizarre hystersis in the Soviet economy like the requirement for a Ural-Siberian method for urban workers to achieve food aren't likely. But nor is the uniquely local nature of the NEPmen: Credit Lyonnais would be more directly intervening into the Russian fascist rural economy. So instead of a heavy industry autarchy, there'd be an attempt to slot low labour cost industries into French capitalisation structures; alongside heavy extractive industry. Capital goods production, an area where France would have comparative advantage, would be imported into the Russian fascist economy; probably at non-competitive terms leveraged over French bond markets. As far as social outcomes go you're looking at a major strikewave in the late 1920s which results in paramilitary massacre; and, periodic rural uprisings based out of a high population, low mechanisation situation where French capital can leverage the market and paramilitary state against local upsurges in peasantry. Famines will be self-ameliorating as French capital has no interest in enclosure, modernisation or the production of a starving industrial proletariat forced into growing cities: French capital is quite happy to buy; and the paramilitary government is quite happy to force production through pre-modern motivational techniques. This means that the extraction of grain is done for sale-at-price; not as capital seizure / forced proletarianisation; so there's no motivation to take up until the last cow. If 4 out of 5 family members in a number of demonstrative villages are killed or raped to ensure good government, then there's an excess of bodies on the land anyway. This does, however, mean that the Russian urban and extractive proletariat's food security is far worse, leading into running bloody strikes that continue up until some modern state in central europe goes on a genocidal rampage. Maybe this time it could be France.
yours,
Sam R.
*1 https://againstthecurrent.org/atc195/rr-tzarist-debt/ as an example. French capital in Russian and Soviet economies is fascinating.
There does seem to be an awful lot of straw being thrown around in this thread.
It also tied Russia into the European capital system, leaving it vulnerable to the economic cycles. Russia was this more vulnerable to external economic factors, as demonstrated by the European mini-recession of 1899–1900, which effected Russia worse than other countries and persisted far longer there.
If we are defining good solely on the basis of achievements, Nicholas II was terrible. Many who cite the supposed economic development that occurred during his reign fail to account for the fact that these achievements tended to have incremental change or that they were short term solutions that failed to truly modernize the Russian economy. Politically inept, his ultra-conservatism doomed his own regime, his unwillingness to concede in any meaningful way to opposition was deeply counter-intuitive, culminating in his demise.
On the other hand, if good is defined by moral character, Nicholas was an autocrat who actively suppressed peaceful opposition and facilitated support to anti-Semitic brutes, as well as targeting other minorities. I am surprised by the degree of resistance too accepting that a man can still be morally reprehensible, even if his successors were worse.
On the other hand, if good is defined by moral character, Nicholas was an autocrat who actively suppressed peaceful opposition and facilitated support to anti-Semitic brutes, as well as targeting other minorities. I am surprised by the degree of resistance too accepting that a man can still be morally reprehensible, even if his successors were worse.
That‘s the pains of becoming a modern country. Without French capital, Russia probably wouldn’t even be able to industrialize to the extent it did by 1914.
I'm not really sure you can say this without offering an alternative solution. The Franco-Russian alliance was a fairly natural arrangement after the Reinsurance Treaty was jettisoned. Russia facing an increasingly aggressive Germany and Austria by itself isn't a recipe for success in any of its spheres of influence.
Anglo-Russian Convention wasn't an alliance and was almost completely dead by 1914 anyway (mainly because Russia kept breaking it). I wouldn't really describe it as entangling, it ended the Great Game when Russia was as its lowest, and it clearly meant jack shit to most of the diplomatic geniuses (sarcasm) in St Petersburg.
If it could have been arranged, definitely. But the problem was more on Berlin's end IMO. They had increasingly been tying themselves to Vienna even before the Reinsurance Treaty lapsed (probably rightly as Russia was harder to control and more unreliable). The double dealing couldn't have gone on permanently whilst Austria and Russia competed in the Balkans.
Admittedly though, I do blame Russia for much of the destablisation of the region prior to the July Crisis.
I consider this dangerously close to apologia for anti-Semitism. It's like coming into a discussion on Hitler and saying, "Oh, we can't say he was a bastard because that relies on subjective definitions of bastardry."