Tsar Alexander III lives and reigns to a ripe old age.

Tsar Alexander III was the epitome of The Great Russian Bear, 6 foot 5 and some 260 pounds. A true Tsar Autocrat who ruthlessly crushed any opposition. He was in many ways the exact opposite of his son Nicholas II. I've read that Nicholas II was very much in awe of his father and of the fact that he would someday succeed him on The Russian Throne.

That someday came in 1894 when Alexander III died after several months of a debilitating and mysterious illness. Today it is believed he had nephritis a kidney disease. In 1888 the Imperial train derailed as the Imperial Family was eating dinner. The roof of the dining car collapsed and Alexander III held up the roof with his back as his wife and children escaped. It is believed in doing so that he seriously bruised his kidneys which led to nephritis some 6 years later.

But what if Tsar Alexander III had not bruised his kidneys, what if he had not developed nephritis or whatever it was that killed him? Instead he lives and reigns even into old age. At his death in 1894 he was only 49 years old so presumably he could have lived and reigned for a considerably longer time than he did.

What influence might Alexander III have had on Russia and the world had he lived a longer life? How would he have handled The Russian Revolution and World War I? What influence might he have had on his son Nicholas II and his grandson Alexei? What kind of Tsar might Nicholas II have been had his father lived and reigned a lot longer and had better prepared him for the Russian Throne?
 
I might be predujiced but I think Nicholas just wasn't the character to be a good leader. However he could avoid ruling in a time of crisis.

The problem of Russia remains modernization and it's difficult to see if Alexander would deal differently with that than his son. Maybe Russia could remain allies with Germany under him? Otherwise slow modernization, some revolts, he might give in the same way as Nicholas, being forced to give more power to the duma although occasionally shutting them down.

Maybe he'd win the japanese? If he does that lot is avoided. If the tsardom survives him and Nicholas (saying a major catastrophy like a war with Germany is avoided) then maybe one day a Tsar like Alexander II will show up willing to embrace constitutional monarchy. 1956 Duma accepts the russian constitution proposed by Alexander IV.

This is very optimist of course. I say, the Tsars eventually face a succesful revolution, the question is only when.
 
Before nephritis claimed him, Alexander III had embarked on something of a campaign of modernization (indeed, I've read references that many of contemporaries were thinking of him edging into Peter the Great territory). Now, temper that with the fact that he was a despot, pure and simple-although not a stupid one. All that said, one suspects he might have paid considerable attention to the counsels of Sergius Witte to modernize Russia technologically, and at least enact some partial reforms politically (although the latter would have to come at almost glacial speed).

I don't know that he would have been able to avoid was with Japan, though, considering the drive for a year-round port. Would the Japanese have launched an attack prior to an actual declaration of war as they did in OTL? Somehow I doubt that, given that Tokyo would have recognized they were dealing with someone who could be quite obdurate when necessary. My gut says the war would have been fought to an approximate draw, with TR still negotiating a peace-but this time, the Russian military might have had a few forced lessons learned afterward.

All of this might have been undone, though, had events in the Balkans in June 1914 played out as they did in OTL: somehow I doubt Alexander would have equivocated on what to do, jumping in with both feet as soon as the Austrians began their campaign against Serbia. That might have bought some initial success, but the responsibility for taking the conflict up several quantum levels would have been attributable to Russia in that instance-not a pleasant prospect when the final day of reckoning came around.

Possibly the Russian military would have learned enough from the Russo-Japanese War to roughly stalemate the Germans and enjoy some modest success against the polyglot, incompetent Austrians. However, I doubt that this would have been sufficient to stave off rioting in Moscow and St. Petersburg by 1917 over increasing privation and war-weariness. What would happen thereafter would be a function of how much, if any, Alexander mellowed/matured: if significantly, he might have been able to grant sufficient reforms to buy time while maintaining a status quo and perhaps a separate peace; if not...Ekaterinburg awaits.
 
There are so many ways we can avoid a USSR (keep the Germans from putting Lenin on the sealed train, end their participation in WWI after Tannenberg, have the Russian military actually learn the lessons of the Brusilov Offensive, have a Provisional Govt that was more firm against the Bolsheviks, etc.). I'm not sure that keeping Alexander III in the picture is necessarily one of them, though. If Alexander's great trait was stubbornness, and the Russians stayed in WWI past the point of exhaustion anyway, how do things end up any differently?
 
Given that he had the same check in the East with the Japanese, Russia would have returned attention to Europe.
The first changes would come in the Balkan Wars of 1900's ~ 10's
 
It's worth noting that Alexander III really disliked war. (He would have agreed with Elizabeth I's comment about uncertain outcomes.) He was okay with leaning on the Ottomans and adopting a "forward position" in Central Asia, but he had zero interest in actual shooting.

As a result, Alexander was pretty much the only Russian czar (excepting a couple of the short-lived ones from the 1700s) never to lead his country into war.

I doubt that would change with age. So, we'd have a Russia still willing to throw its weight around in certain spheres, but very reluctant to push matters to the point of war.

Here's a question. The one notable diplomatic accomplishment of Nicholas II's reign was the rapprochement with Brtain and the end of the "Great Game" in Central Asia. From the late 1890s to 1905 there was a steady warming trend, and then in 1907 the agreement over spheres of influence in Persia moved the two powers from hostile neutrality to cautious engagement. Okay, tt took the lost war with Japan to make it happen, and the French did most of the diplomatic heavy lifting... but still.

I suspect Alexander would find it much harder to get on friendly terms with the British; he wasn't connected to the royal family by blood, he disliked British high-handedness and moralizing, and the concept of constitutional monarchy filled him with contempt and disgust.

So the Great Game probably runs longer in this TL, though it likely ends up being just as pointless.


Doug M.
 
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