Alexander II lives until 1899--Who succeeds him?

[robertp6165]

I tried posting this in the Help Forum, but nobody responded. Maybe if I post it here I will have more luck.

In an ATL where Tsar Alexander II is not assassinated in 1881, and lives until 1899, who would succeed him upon his death?

His eldest surviving son at the time would have been Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich.

But there are surviving children of the Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich (the OTL Tsar Alexander III, who died in 1894), including, of course, his eldest son, the Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich (the OTL Tsar Nicholas II).

So does Vladimir get the throne, as the eldest surviving son of Alexander II, or does Nicholas get it, as the heir of a line which is senior to that of Vladimir, even though Alexander III never ruled in the ATL?

 

[Germaniac]

Who is to say Alexander III would not be on that train and would not die of nephritis. Alexander III was disliked by his father and if he would have died Nicholas still would be the heir to the thrown. Nicholas would take over in the wake of his grandfathers death. He might be a little less reactionary then he was in OTL but still will be his fathers son.

 

[Atreus]

Odds are that OTL's Alexander III is still alive (butterflies are probably at least capable of rearanging a train schedule, and he was pretty healthy anyways). So unless he is dead, he takes the throne. if, OTOH, he is conveniently removed, my money would be on Nicholas, although russian succession law is sufficiently hazy that Vladimir might manage to become Tsar.

 

[mcdnab]

Point One Russian succession law was not hazy - Petrine law (ie Peter the Great) was that the Emperor name his heir yet neither Peter I or any of his successor managed to do so succesfully. Paul I issued his new succession rule which a required future Emperors to uphold it and was explicit in establishing primogeniture - and it was followed to the letter by his heirs with the exception of the succession of Nicholas I instead of his brother Constantine who had renounced before accession.

In the event of Alexander II living until the 1890's which would have made him one of the longest living Romanov's in history - his heir was a his son Alexander Alexandrovitch (unless he had died as in our timeling) or his grandson Nicholas Alexandrovitch

To remove Alexander III you have two options allow his eldest brother Nicholas to live or allow him as he initially tried to renounce the throne and marry the woman he was still infatuated with when he his older brother died. In which case its highly likely that Grand Duke Vladimir would have been the one who married Marie of Denmark.

If though everything went to plan then on his death Alexander II was succeeded by his son Alexander III. Its highly likely that Alexander III would be more reactionary than his father and may have rescinded some of his fathers liberal moves, its possible though that those moves may have gone so far as to be irreversible by the new autocrat. But you still have an Emperor who is married to a woman who is strongly anti german which would have lead to Russia still looking to France and England rather than to her traditional German ally.

The two Alexander's relationship was not as bad as is often portrayed and his father assasination only helped to convince Alexander III that liberalism was the wrong direction

 

[robertp6165]

Point One Russian succession law was not hazy - Petrine law (ie Peter the Great) was that the Emperor name his heir yet neither Peter I or any of his successor managed to do so succesfully. Paul I issued his new succession rule which a required future Emperors to uphold it and was explicit in establishing primogeniture - and it was followed to the letter by his heirs with the exception of the succession of Nicholas I instead of his brother Constantine who had renounced before accession.

In the event of Alexander II living until the 1890's which would have made him one of the longest living Romanov's in history - his heir was a his son Alexander Alexandrovitch (unless he had died as in our timeling) or his grandson Nicholas Alexandrovitch

Okay, so if Alexander II lives until 1899, and assuming the OTL Alexander III dies in 1894 on schedule, then Nicholas II succeeds when Alexander II dies. That's what I needed to know. Thanks.

 

[Matthais Corvinus]

What would a further 18 years of Alexander II do to Russia? Although he had pursued liberal reforms, one could argue that these reforms were more along the lines of survival reforms that were necessary to head off a revolution. Virtually none of the European monarchs willingly gave up power to elected bodies in OTL, and I don't think Russia would be any different. So how much more could Alexander II do considering that at base the reforms he is pursuing are being enacted in order to uphold the Czar's Autocracy?

 

[robertp6165]

What would a further 18 years of Alexander II do to Russia? Although he had pursued liberal reforms, one could argue that these reforms were more along the lines of survival reforms that were necessary to head off a revolution. Virtually none of the European monarchs willingly gave up power to elected bodies in OTL, and I don't think Russia would be any different. So how much more could Alexander II do considering that at base the reforms he is pursuing are being enacted in order to uphold the Czar's Autocracy?

Well, considering that, at the time of his death, Russia was not under imminent threat of revolution, yet he was willing to create an elective national Duma (and indeed, intended to issue such a Proclamation the very next day, apparently), he seems to have been more far-sighted than his successors were, and more willing to risk change. He had also created a system of local self government through elective assemblies, and gave a form of autonomy to Finland (although, admittedly, he crushed such aspirations in Poland). I am quite sure you are right that his ultimate goal was to preserve the hold of the Romanov Dynasty on power. But he does seem to have been willing to make concessions that traded some of that power in order to create loyalty to the throne.

So, given another 18 years, who knows what might have happened. I doubt that it would have been a liberal constitutional monarchy by the time of his death, but I think it could have been well along the road to such a thing.

Of course, the big question is, what does Nicholas II do with it once he comes to power. Does the fact that Alexander is not assassinated have any impact on Nicholas's conservative views? Or does he do as his father did in OTL, and undo his grandfather's work?

 

[mcdnab]

Its the great unknown isn't it - we don't know how far Alexander II would have gone - the reality though is that he was a committed autocrat - his reforms were largely aimed at making Russia and its Empire easier to govern by the autocrat - we're not discussing an Emperor who was willing to trade his crown into a constitutional monarchy on western european lines.
However I think its fair to assume that by his death he might have created a Duma even if it had no teeth and that it was merely an advisory body and that the crown and ministers appointed by the crown actually governed. He's likely to have preserved some form of alliance with Germany until his death.
As to his relationship with his heir and his heirs son - that depends on two things - his grandchildren were raised to respect their father and grandfather but his son probably continued to be sceptical of his father's libralism and probably still raised his children in a home dominated by the idea of autocracy and orthodoxy.
Instead of the dynasty being held together by the personality and authority of Alexander III its been divided by Alexander II's second marriage which grossly offended his heir but was tolerated more by his younger sons - Vladimir, Sergei and Paul - if he's raised his second wife to the status of Empress then his heir is going to be even more offended as will his heirs wife. If Nicholas succeeds his grandfather rather than his father then the situation would still be similar - an Emperor inexperienced in the ways of government having being largely excluded for much of his education - one key difference is that his wife's precedence will be assured because his mother was never Empress Consort it's also likely that his wife will have had a couple of years in Russia before their accession which might have made things a little easier for her - however they are still essentially the same people and Nicholas is still likely to face some of the similar problems.

 

[TMOT1955]

Alexander II is not assassinated. His reforms are put in place. Mild by our standards, they were very liberal by the standards of Imperial Russia in the 1880's. If there is no assassination attempt he may with time expand those reforms. By the time of his death in 1899 in TTL, Russia could have been on its way to some form of constitutional monarchy. Those reforms might have been enough to butterfly away The Russian Revolution of 1917.

With no further assasination attempts, the incident that may have caused Alexander III's nephritis and eventual death is butterflyed away. So my guess is Alexander III succeeds his father as Tsar. By the way, that means Alexander III could easily have been Tsar during World War I. At that time he would have been in his 60's. His way of handling WWI would have been very different from how his son Nicholas II handled it. His way of handling things like The Russian Revolution of 1917 would have been different too had such a revolution come in TTL.

Yes Alexander III was stubborn and single minded. Both he and Nicholas II were reactionary and stubbornly committed to Autocracy. But had there been no assassination attempt on either Alexander II or Alexander III, those attitudes by Alexander III and Nicholas II would have been much softer. They might have been more accepting of constitutional monarchy and moves in that direction. Under Alexander II they would have lived for some time with Russia moving in that direction.

At any rate, even if his reforms had been totally pragmatic only to save or preserve The Monarchy, if there had been no assassination attempt on Alexander II, had he lived until 1899 as in TTL continuing to make reforms as he went along, then we would have seen a very different history for Russia in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, probably one in which The Monarchy survives in some form.

 

[sahaidak]

Of course, the big question is, what does Nicholas II do with it once he comes to power. Does the fact that Alexander is not assassinated have any impact on Nicholas's conservative views? Or does he do as his father did in OTL, and undo his grandfather's work?

There is a legend saying that 12-year-old Nicholas was present at the deathbed of his grandfather, the Emperor Alexander II, and young prince became reactionary at that very day - seeing agony of liberal ruler killed by "ungrateful" revolutionaries.

 

[Snake Featherston]

I tried posting this in the Help Forum, but nobody responded. Maybe if I post it here I will have more luck.

In an ATL where Tsar Alexander II is not assassinated in 1881, and lives until 1899, who would succeed him upon his death?

His eldest surviving son at the time would have been Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich.

But there are surviving children of the Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich (the OTL Tsar Alexander III, who died in 1894), including, of course, his eldest son, the Grand Duke Nicholas Alexandrovich (the OTL Tsar Nicholas II).

So does Vladimir get the throne, as the eldest surviving son of Alexander II, or does Nicholas get it, as the heir of a line which is senior to that of Vladimir, even though Alexander III never ruled in the ATL?

Nikolai does. The question would be whether or not Alexander II would be able to handle the People's Will better than his son did, and how Nikolai would go about doing that. The Marquis de Custine was only off by a decade on when the first Russian revolution would be, which makes me curious if some such confrontation isn't in some ways inevitable...

 

[mcdnab]

The problem and it is a big one is that Alexander II was nowhere near moving his country towards a constitutional monarchy - he was moving very very slowly towards some liberalisation but it was so slow as to be almost invisible which is why he was still a target for assasination. Assuming in 1882 an attempt to assasinate him fails then even the attempt may well stall matters and the pressure on him to halt any reform is going to grow. By 1882 his heir had already fallen under the spell of those opposed to reform.
Anyway assuming by 1899 Alexander II has moved a little further down the road - creating a Duma however powerless and perhaps introducing some form of localised government in the provinces - he's also let Finland continue with her own forms of Government - these small reforms have been enough to curb the extremists (with no murder of Alexander II there's no dead brother for Lenin to be inspired by) - the Duma is still packed with aristocrats and merchants who would like to see Russia move further but under the benevolent Alexander II all is well.
However waiting in the wings is an increasingly autocratic and resentful Cesarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch. He has consistantly opposed his father's reforms and has frequently pointed out that he considers the Duma a talking shop and an ecouragement to those who want to end the autocracy, he believes that his father has betrayed his coronation oath to uphold the autocracy, relations between the two have not been helped by the increasingly open affection that the Tsar showers on his younger children by his mistress and later wife Princess Yurievski - the family is held together but only just and by the fact that the Emperor has kept his promise to his sons and not proclaimed his second wife Empress.
Alexander III's accession in 1899 is hailed as a return to traditional values - orthodoxy and autocracy. Despite misgivings the more liberal elements in the Duma soon find that the new Emperor is willing to tolerate them as long as he is able to govern and given that his Ministers are competant and no one can doubt his work ethic. Though some reforms are rolled back and there is increasing restrictions on press freedoms.
The new heir Nicholas is close to his father but it is no secret that the Tsar has more time for his third son Michael (the middle brother having died in the same year as his grandfather) however the new Cesarevitch has been appointed to the state council and his father perhaps unhappy at his exclusion from government during his father's long reign is more willing to allow him a say. The cesarevitch had married Alix of Hesse despite his parents not being to fond of the match and there are mutterings at court about her social ineptitude and shyness and so far she's not produced an heir.
There are also major foreign policy changes - until the accession of Wilhelm II - Alexander II had maintained his relations with both Austria and Germany but Wilhelm was a different matter. It was not helped by the fact that it was common knowledge that the new Emperor's wife was no friend to Germany and that her views were increasingly shared by her husband.

 

[robertp6165]

The problem and it is a big one is that Alexander II was nowhere near moving his country towards a constitutional monarchy - he was moving very very slowly towards some liberalisation but it was so slow as to be almost invisible which is why he was still a target for assasination. Assuming in 1882 an attempt to assasinate him fails then even the attempt may well stall matters and the pressure on him to halt any reform is going to grow. By 1882 his heir had already fallen under the spell of those opposed to reform.
Anyway assuming by 1899 Alexander II has moved a little further down the road - creating a Duma however powerless and perhaps introducing some form of localised government in the provinces - he's also let Finland continue with her own forms of Government - these small reforms have been enough to curb the extremists (with no murder of Alexander II there's no dead brother for Lenin to be inspired by) - the Duma is still packed with aristocrats and merchants who would like to see Russia move further but under the benevolent Alexander II all is well.
However waiting in the wings is an increasingly autocratic and resentful Cesarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch. He has consistantly opposed his father's reforms and has frequently pointed out that he considers the Duma a talking shop and an ecouragement to those who want to end the autocracy, he believes that his father has betrayed his coronation oath to uphold the autocracy, relations between the two have not been helped by the increasingly open affection that the Tsar showers on his younger children by his mistress and later wife Princess Yurievski - the family is held together but only just and by the fact that the Emperor has kept his promise to his sons and not proclaimed his second wife Empress.
Alexander III's accession in 1899 is hailed as a return to traditional values - orthodoxy and autocracy. Despite misgivings the more liberal elements in the Duma soon find that the new Emperor is willing to tolerate them as long as he is able to govern and given that his Ministers are competant and no one can doubt his work ethic. Though some reforms are rolled back and there is increasing restrictions on press freedoms.
The new heir Nicholas is close to his father but it is no secret that the Tsar has more time for his third son Michael (the middle brother having died in the same year as his grandfather) however the new Cesarevitch has been appointed to the state council and his father perhaps unhappy at his exclusion from government during his father's long reign is more willing to allow him a say. The cesarevitch had married Alix of Hesse despite his parents not being to fond of the match and there are mutterings at court about her social ineptitude and shyness and so far she's not produced an heir.
There are also major foreign policy changes - until the accession of Wilhelm II - Alexander II had maintained his relations with both Austria and Germany but Wilhelm was a different matter. It was not helped by the fact that it was common knowledge that the new Emperor's wife was no friend to Germany and that her views were increasingly shared by her husband.

Well, all this discussion of Alexander III is kind of beside the point, because the stated POD is that Alexander II lives until after the OTL Alexander III has died. So the question is what will Nicholas II do when he comes to power. How much were his conservative views shaped by the fact of Alexander II's assassination, how much might he have been influenced by his grandfather, as opposed to his father, in an ATL where Alexander II lives until 1899.

In such a scenario, for example, he might not marry Alix of Hesse. There may be other changes as well.

The point about Lenin's dead brother is a good one...that could definitely create massive butterflies.

 

[sotdorus]

If Nicholas became the Heir in 1894, maybe he would have been instructed in government by his grandfather--something his father did not do. So he might have inherited or carried on at least some of his grandfather's liberalism; he was so easily influenced, after all, and there would have been five years for him to be bent in a more liberal direction.

Also, who's to say his grandfather would have approved of a marriage to Alix of Hesse? Nicholas's mother certainly didn't like the idea. Thus, if there was no hysterical Alix prodding him on, there would also be no hemophilia, and no Rasputin.

 

[Matthais Corvinus]

Alexander II living would probably change the exact events and possibly the outcome of the coming political revolution, but I don't think that his reforms could do anything to avoid it. I think that when this group looks at the end of the Czars' rule in Russia, we tend to focus on WWI as the cause of Czarist Russia's fall in 1917. If that long war can be avoided, we think, then Russia would be wounded but would limp along.

However, that line of thinking ignores the 1905 Revolution, which is really the starting point of the end of Czarist Russia. The 1905 Revolution proves that the Russian people, at least in the industrializing cities, are ready to violently oppose the Czarist leadership. The '05 Revolution show that Czarist Russia was incredible brittle, and that even a small war on the other edge of the Empire was enough to threaten the Czarist regime. '17 was very similar to '05, but the level of systemic failure was higher, because the war being fought was larger, so the revolutionaries were able to overthrow the Czarist regime.

So Alexander II lives to 1899. If he establishes some kind of representative body, with members selected by Russian voters, then he is creating a body which can claim to derive its authority to rule from the people. That is antithetical to the whole Autocracy, which is built on the idea that the Czar is Russia, and that the Czar is the foundation of all governmental authority. This is what was so offensive to monarchs across Europe about elected bodies- they derive their authority from somewhere other than the monarchs divine right to rule. In a country where there were never alternative centers of legitimacy, the idea of a body that could supplant the Czar would not be allowed. Indeed, its why the Duma agreed to in '05 was suppressed.

So my point is that Russia was going to have an overthrow of its Czarist regime. I think if Alexander II allows a Duma, then members of that Duma may be able to establish themselves as leaders of the country when the revolution occurs. Perhaps the extremes of Bolshevikism can be avoided. But the autocratic Czarist regime, which is what Alexander II was trying to defend through his reforms, is going to fail eventually, and the longer it holds out the greater the chance is that there will be violence on OTL Russian Revolution/Civil War levels.

 

[robertp6165]

Alexander II living would probably change the exact events and possibly the outcome of the coming political revolution, but I don't think that his reforms could do anything to avoid it. I think that when this group looks at the end of the Czars' rule in Russia, we tend to focus on WWI as the cause of Czarist Russia's fall in 1917. If that long war can be avoided, we think, then Russia would be wounded but would limp along.

However, that line of thinking ignores the 1905 Revolution, which is really the starting point of the end of Czarist Russia. The 1905 Revolution proves that the Russian people, at least in the industrializing cities, are ready to violently oppose the Czarist leadership. The '05 Revolution show that Czarist Russia was incredible brittle, and that even a small war on the other edge of the Empire was enough to threaten the Czarist regime. '17 was very similar to '05, but the level of systemic failure was higher, because the war being fought was larger, so the revolutionaries were able to overthrow the Czarist regime.

To say that, by 1905, the regime was "incredibly brittle" and that the Russian people were "ready to violently overthrow the Czarist leadership" may be true of OTL, although the point is certainly debatable. But even if we take your statements at face value, would they be true of a Russia where the preceding 20 years had been a period of slow, but steady liberalization? Your whole argument ignores the fact that the 1905 revolution in OTL was immediately preceded by 20-odd years of brutal, reactionary rule under Alex III and Nicky II. Change that, and the conditions which created the 1905 Revolution may not exist.

So Alexander II lives to 1899. If he establishes some kind of representative body, with members selected by Russian voters, then he is creating a body which can claim to derive its authority to rule from the people. That is antithetical to the whole Autocracy, which is built on the idea that the Czar is Russia, and that the Czar is the foundation of all governmental authority.

This is what was so offensive to monarchs across Europe about elected bodies- they derive their authority from somewhere other than the monarchs divine right to rule. In a country where there were never alternative centers of legitimacy, the idea of a body that could supplant the Czar would not be allowed. Indeed, its why the Duma agreed to in '05 was suppressed.

Which Alexander II...who seems to have been an intelligent man...must have realized, yet he was willing to take a chance on it, even though, unlike Nicholas in 1905, he was under no immediate pressure to do so.

So my point is that Russia was going to have an overthrow of its Czarist regime. I think if Alexander II allows a Duma, then members of that Duma may be able to establish themselves as leaders of the country when the revolution occurs. Perhaps the extremes of Bolshevikism can be avoided. But the autocratic Czarist regime, which is what Alexander II was trying to defend through his reforms, is going to fail eventually, and the longer it holds out the greater the chance is that there will be violence on OTL Russian Revolution/Civil War levels.

You really can't (well, you can, but you shouldn't) compare Nicholas creating a Duma with a knife to his throat in 1905...and having absolutely no intention to do anything other than to destroy it as soon as humanly possible...with what Alexander II was planning to do in 1881. Alex was acting of his own free will, in conditions where he did not feel threatened by immediate overthrow by revolution. He had taken similar action, at the local level throughout Russia and at the provincial level in Finland, earlier in his regime. Given these facts, what we see here is not an autocrat desperately trying to preserve autocracy, but a dynast desperately trying to preserve his dynasty, and willing to make concessions he sees are necessary to do that.