1905 Death of Nicholas II who is the best ruler Russia could hope for?

As the tin says. If Nicholas II of Russia was killed during the 1905 revolution who would be the nextish in line to succeed him who could accomplish something good?
 
Well, Alexei is just a child, and a sick one at that. The best he could accomplish is to be a useful symbol under a competent regent. Unfortunately the regency would go to the Empress unless she dies as well, and her rule would have likely been a trainwreck.

After Alexei, Grand Duke Michael is the next in line of succession. He was a fairly good leader, honorable, hard-working and more politically sensitive than Nicholas II. He looks like he would have made a decent Emperor. Maybe not a great one, but decent.

And after him, next in line is Grand Duke Vladimir. He was the stereotypical upper-class twit: ambitious, arrogant, a hedonistic wastrel, and also politically conservative and anti-British. Would have definitely been a bad ruler, maybe even worse than Nicholas.
 

AdamFisher

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Well, Alexei is just a child, and a sick one at that. The best he could accomplish is to be a useful symbol under a competent regent. Unfortunately the regency would go to the Empress unless she dies as well, and her rule would have likely been a trainwreck.

After Alexei, Grand Duke Michael is the next in line of succession. He was a fairly good leader, honorable, hard-working and more politically sensitive than Nicholas II. He looks like he would have made a decent Emperor. Maybe not a great one, but decent.

And after him, next in line is Grand Duke Vladimir. He was the stereotypical upper-class twit: ambitious, arrogant, a hedonistic wastrel, and also politically conservative and anti-British. Would have definitely been a bad ruler, maybe even worse than Nicholas.

So then it would seem that the best option for the empire would be for say Nicholas Alix and Vlad to be having dinner when the revolutionaries kill the whole rotten lot.
This leaves Alexei to take the throne with Michael as regent and since the new emperor is sickly he very well could die before say 1910 which would leave someone who might do something positive for the empire and enact policies for real change such as a lasting Duma with real power and less class issues.
What would Michaels rule be like ITTL?
 
What is the context of his death? The time when it happens and how he dies really effects how it goes. It could either serve as the beginning of an even more thorough revolution that establishes a republic, or it could serve as the beginning of harsh reaction that puts in place a regency council of hardline reactionaries. Which would likely in itself harsher the revolution and increase the chances of the monarchy being overthrown.
 
So then it would seem that the best option for the empire would be for say Nicholas Alix and Vlad to be having dinner when the revolutionaries kill the whole rotten lot.

Yeah, that sounds promising. Though I believe it would be useful for the Empire's stability to have Alexei live as long as possible.
 
On paper: Grand Duke Michael. Not particularly because of any greatness or impressiveness on his part, but because, unlike Nicholas, he was a reasonably moderate, secure, not so ambitious individual who was not beholden to the idea of being an autocratic monarch. Quite the opposite, he was an Anglophile who had a positive opinion about constitutional monarchy.

He would've been much more likely than Nicholas to sign the papers for the constitution, recognize the Duma, and share power with a legislation.

Whether or not he would do so in the context of the personal tragedy of losing his brother to the revolution is a matter of speculation.
 
Honestly. I don't think a tsar is the best ruler Russia could hope for. I think a RSDWP-Cadet-SR coalition over a newborn republic is the only obvious option as "best hope for Russia". I joked about Trotsky as president. But in all likelihood he's too Jewish to ever be president but it would be easy enough to leave him with the job h basically had in the Saint Petersburg Soviet, which was the equivalent of first selectman of the town. But a government made up of revolutionaries is infinitely better than the government on the back of the secret police and military that would be required to hold power after an even more earth shattering 1905. There will be no reform of the political process, and land reform is going to become even more tainted by another dead Tsar to symbolize how the aristocracy was one and the same with the monarchy.

Also, at this point a 1905 revolution succeeding in forming a democratic Russia would likely mean reunification of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks, both of them would probably say their approach was right and the reason for their victory. The Mensheviks and Bolsheviks had not diverged much beyond questions of how a democratic revolution would happen. And in a way they were both right. (Capitalists in Russia wouldn't have the balls to set up a republic on their own, thus proving Lenins point that the working class would need to lead the revolution, but the Mensheviks would have their own claims that the Cadets where a necessary ally and without them the revolution would have been much bloodier).
 
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1905 was really the only time where stable democratic Russia was a conceivable outcome of the whole thing. And so id say that would obviously be the only good option.
 
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia is 27 years old and unmarried, he will be wanted to wedded off and create a son. And Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich is not even a year old.

As if Michael dies without an heir the throne would go to Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, who is 5 years old.
 
Could I ask why? It would seem to me that having Michael as Tsar as soon as possible would be the best to hope for.

The way I see it, it boils down to this:
-Michael should be able to do as much good as a regent, or almost as much. He'd have the same powers, after all.
-If Alexei dies before the public known anything about his health, someone might decide to blame Michael. That could be a minor annoyance or a huge complication - in any case, the last thing Michael would need is to have such rumors undermining his legitimacy.


As for the interesting idea of a republican government...true, it might develop into a stable democracy, way better than any Imperial regime. But in 1905 Russia bordered three hostile "great powers", all three monarchies and all three conservative and authoritarian to various degrees. If Russia undergoes a successful revolution, they might very well decide to smother the new republic and/or tear away large chunks of its territory.
 
As for the interesting idea of a republican government...true, it might develop into a stable democracy, way better than any Imperial regime. But in 1905 Russia bordered three hostile "great powers", all three monarchies and all three conservative and authoritarian to various degrees. If Russia undergoes a successful revolution, they might very well decide to smother the new republic and/or tear away large chunks of its territory.

Eh, my personal expectation would be that the Germans and Austrians would only be interested if Russian Poland declares independence. In which case they might lose that. But keeping ahold of Poland would be difficult anyway. It would also be awkward for Germany in particular because intervening in the Russian revolution is likely to make the German political situation itself awkward. The SPD would be likely to mobilize against the war, and at that point the Germans have to deal with the fact they'd be undertaking an open ended war against Russia, even though this likely keeps Russia out of wider European politics for awhile. Thus benefiting Germany against France.
 
Eh, my personal expectation would be that the Germans and Austrians would only be interested if Russian Poland declares independence. In which case they might lose that. But keeping ahold of Poland would be difficult anyway. It would also be awkward for Germany in particular because intervening in the Russian revolution is likely to make the German political situation itself awkward. The SPD would be likely to mobilize against the war, and at that point the Germans have to deal with the fact they'd be undertaking an open ended war against Russia, even though this likely keeps Russia out of wider European politics for awhile. Thus benefiting Germany against France.

As far as I know, a large faction within the SPD continued supporting OTL's war effort even after the February Revolution, and exhibiting a relatively low level of international solidarity. While the rest broke off into their own party. Would 1905 be different enough to prevent that kind of a split? Overall, I'm not sure the German government couldn't launch a war in spite of their opposition.

The detachment of (some) territories from the former Russian Empire wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, self-determination and all that. But it would be a bad thing if carried out by Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary or the Ottomans; and it could damage the new government's stability.
 
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