Alexei Romanov does not have hemophilia

It would have just eliminated the need for Rasputin, and thus given the people one less thing to complain about. It probably wouldn't have stemmed the rising tide of discontent and revolution in Russia considering there was so much to be unhappy with.

Reform in Russia had a history of coming from the Tsar, and Nicholas II was a placeholder who could maintain the status quo and best. He'd be the first to admit that he was unprepared to take the throne when his father died. The fact that he and the rest of the royal family was hopelessly out of touch with everyday Russian life was another major problem.
 

Hnau

Banned
Eliminating Rasputin would cause significant historical changes. First of all, Nicholas II wouldn't go off to personally lead the Russian Army on the Western Front. That in itself would lend to some wiser decisions made strategically and tactically, though at the moment I can't point out anything specific. By being in Petrograd, he would be more aware of popular opinion. Without Rasputin, the press will not become galvanized in slandering him and the 'German Empress'.

I see a much more peaceful transition of power to the people. There was a lot of thought going around at the time of introducing a parliamentary monarchy: if this was done, it would take a lot of strength out of the revolutionary movement.
 
Russia does not understand compromise

There was no way Nicholas was going to allow a transition from autocracy to democracy. The belief of absolute power being invested in the Tsar was so ingrained that only the most extreme of situations would alter that path, which WWI proved the catalyst.

Despite the apparent changes that were wrought throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, nothing ever truly changed in the empire. Serfdom technically ended, but the former serfs were forced to pay for the land they farmed leading to continued slavery only now on an economic level. Even when Nicky briefly flirted with the idea of a legislature when he established the Duma in 1905 it was all show. He helped to undercut its powers and never took the legislative body seriously. Likewise, the various groups in Russia were so discordant that they made any sort of parliamentary democracy difficult at best and catastrophic the norm. Think Weimar Germany only with an uneducated and riotous public controlled by a government so inept it couldn't even run the country at the basic level.

Russian history from the mid-late nineteenth century to the fall of the empire showed various attempts at grassroot efforts to establish some sort of base for citizens to interact with and influence government including the various Mirs in the countryside and the councils in the cities. The Tsar repeatedly undercut these organizations. Hell, communism was nothing more than Tsarist rule only with a different facade. All land and industry belonged to the state. Ivan Grozny established the same principle in the sixteenth century.

Russia was never going to advance without a revolution of some sort and no revolution would succeed without the fall of the Tsar. Due to the weak, fractured opposition and the strength of the central government, this fall would have to be instigated by an outside force. Russia had weathered many "civil wars" throughout their history. Peasant uprisings were the norm. It was going to take something exceedingly tumultuous to change the direction of Russian political life. I could easily see that being a renewed drive by the Japanese into Siberia. The Japanese wanted it and Russia was really incapable of stopping them save with bodies should the Russian Empire not industrialize along the Soviet lines (unlikely).

Russia's history was still going to be bloody. That IS what Russian history is written with.
 

Hnau

Banned
You speak in exaggerations and generalities. Nicholas II was a soft man, his government, filled with nobles, was the same. He wasn't a hardened dictator that would establish his own rule by any means necessary, he genuinely cared about the Russian people and earnestly believed that only by ruling as the Tsar could they be sheltered from hostile powers. Also, while communism did replace one dictator with another, you could never speak so generally as to make Tsar Nicholas II into Josef Stalin. The communist system was the same as the Tsarist? Please. The Russian Empire didn't kill millions of political opponents, nor did it cause starvation that killed millions more. Capitalism was alive in the Russian Empire, albeit underneath Tsarist controls (the reason it fell along with the Empire), in the USSR it was driven underground and barely evident.

I suggest you flip through Richard Pipes' The Russian Revolution. Maybe I'll come back sometime later and quote a few passages if this thread becomes worth anything.
 
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