Was Tsar Nicholas II a good ruler?

Let's put it that way: When your rule ends by being executed and nobody really cares about your death, not even your White generals, you weren't the most popular ruler.

The only reason some people try to redeem him is because they a) like autocratic monarchism or b) want to stick it to those damn Commies. In Russia nobody after 1991 wanted to restore the monarchy and if that's no good indicator how little people liked the last monarch, I don't know what is.
That may not actually be true, depending on how much you trust polling. According to a 2017 poll, 37 percent of the Russian population wouldn't be against restoring the monarchy. Assuming this is true, monarchism in Russia may not be as strong as it is in Libya, Nepal or Afghanistan, but it's stronger than in most other European republics.
 
Oh dear, it was XIX century and beating was an universally accepted part of the education process so your moralization is neither here nor there.
Uh seems fairly clear that they were trying to understand his life and actions through a lense of childhood trauma (and victims of abuse suffer trauma, whether that abuse was a commonly accepted as part of society or not), so...emphatically not moralization.

I happen to disagree with your assessment: showing example on a top is useful and so is trying to live according to your means.
"Showing example on top is useful and so is trying to live according to your means"
This, however, is moralization.
 
The fact that the Orthodox Church felt the need to make him a saint doesn't mean we have to overlook his moral failings, his obstinacy and his complete inability to manage the country or lead the government.
For a time the Church of England held Charles I up as a martyr. Seems getting killed for being an incompetent moron makes a king somehow holy.
 
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Just as statement of the fact, NII and his family had been canonized in 2000 by the Russian Orthodox Church as passion bearers (someone who faces his or her death in a Christ-like manner) so they are “official saints” (as far as I understand the whole mumbo-jumbo) with a right to have their own icons, the nimbus and whatever. Not a subject to debating as far as the official Church definition is involved. Justification is a completely different matter but, if I understood you correctly, you were talking strictly about the formal side of an issue.

Nicholas II being killed unjustly, massacred with his family, has nothing to do with him actually being a good sovereign or even a good person.

It is imaginable that a non-Bolshevik Russian court might well have convicted the man of crimes against the Russian people, even executing him, and could have done so at the end of a legitimate judicial process. Certainly there were crimes aplenty he could be prosecuted for.
 
Uh seems fairly clear that they were trying to understand his life and actions through a lense of childhood trauma (and victims of abuse suffer trauma, whether that abuse was a commonly accepted as part of society or not), so...emphatically not moralization.

Going from having little power and being a victim of those with power to having absolute power over a vast empire is the sort of shift In would bet few people could manage successfully, without help. Nicholas II was not one of those.

"Showing example on top is useful and so is trying to live according to your means"
This, however, is moralization.

Quite. Now, if Nicholas II had been brought up in what we would consider a normal middle-class household, that would be rather different. Sadly, he was not.
 
Was Nicholas’ antisemitism rooted in race like Hitler or was there some other reason?
His antisemitic tutor Konstantin Pobedonostsev, infamously quoted as saying Jews were parasites upon other races, and that he wanted a third of Russian Jews to be converted, a third to be exiled, and the remaining third to be exterminated.
 
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That may not actually be true, depending on how much you trust polling. According to a 2017 poll, 37 percent of the Russian population wouldn't be against restoring the monarchy. Assuming this is true, monarchism in Russia may not be as strong as it is in Libya, Nepal or Afghanistan, but it's stronger than in most other European republics.

When I read Libya, I presumed you meant a return to Gaddafi's family as the pseudo-monarchial but still Republican leaders, considering that Saif is the prospective front-runner of the next Presidential election.

But then I remembered "oh wait, Libya had a monarchy after the Italians and before Gaddafi." I just plain forgot about Idris of Libya, the last King that Gaddafi was the one to coup. That's a little embarrassing on my end.

His antisemitic tutor Konstantin Pobedonostsev, infamously quoted as saying Jews were parasites upon other races, and that he wanted a third of Russian Jews to be converted, a third to be exiled, and the remaining third to be exterminated.

I'm pretty sure that's what the Ustaše had planned for the Serbs during WWII.
 
For a time the Church of England held Charles I up as a martyr. Seems getting killed for being an incompetent moron makes a king somehow holy.
I'm dubious about the martyrdom bit. For the Second Civil War he had promised the Scots he would impose their version of a Calvinist & Presbyterian Church throughout his Three Kingdoms. Doesn't seem a commitment to the Episcopalian Anglicanism he had previously espoused and caused Scots to rebel. Though he defied Cromwell when making the same request so maybe he'd have reneged on the Scots.

Incompetent Moron is spot on. Anyone who creates Civil Wars in Three Kingdoms, a rebellion in Ireland (OK, not that difficult) and invasions of each by a second Kingdom has no talents for governing.
 
I'm dubious about the martyrdom bit. For the Second Civil War he had promised the Scots he would impose their version of a Calvinist & Presbyterian Church throughout his Three Kingdoms. Doesn't seem a commitment to the Episcopalian Anglicanism he had previously espoused and caused Scots to rebel. Though he defied Cromwell when making the same request so maybe he'd have reneged on the Scots.

Incompetent Moron is spot on. Anyone who creates Civil Wars in Three Kingdoms, a rebellion in Ireland (OK, not that difficult) and invasions of each by a second Kingdom has no talents for governing.
Not to mention screwing up Edgehill.
 
The criterion of "good" for "ruler" is continuation of rule.
No. No he wasn't.
That's it.

Advanced achievements are people believing you're a good ruler. Ruling using the methods people like. Etc.

Did he maintain his rule? No. Not a good ruler.

Consult with Cromwell for the earliest modern documented case of poor and good rulership compared.
 
I'm dubious about the martyrdom bit. For the Second Civil War he had promised the Scots he would impose their version of a Calvinist & Presbyterian Church throughout his Three Kingdoms. Doesn't seem a commitment to the Episcopalian Anglicanism he had previously espoused and caused Scots to rebel. Though he defied Cromwell when making the same request so maybe he'd have reneged on the Scots.

Incompetent Moron is spot on. Anyone who creates Civil Wars in Three Kingdoms, a rebellion in Ireland (OK, not that difficult) and invasions of each by a second Kingdom has no talents for governing.
Legitimate or not he was a genuinely popular saint in the aftermath of the restoration, especially amongst high church and tories. Much like Nicholas in the sense that it’s probably more about what was done to him than by him. Although Charles was bizarrely both a better person than Nicholas and more justifiably executed.
 
Simply not to judge others. It is very easy to say this or that person was horrible but not think of our own failings.
Personally speaking, I haven't orchestrated any pogroms, promoted ethnic cleansing, ordered genocidal policies in my Asian provinces to maintain unaccountable rule, rejected constitutionalism as a 'foolish dream' or any such thing. Certainly I have flaws aplenty, but I think I can say with perfect candour that Nicolas was a worse person, thank you very much.
 
It seems the Orthodox Church saw him as acting how ever incorrectly as a man of his era. As He himself said to Keresky. "Damn it I'm a father with a family" How much of his actions came from the advise of the mystics around him, Rasputin was only the most well known, Only Historians know.
 
It seems the Orthodox Church saw him as acting how ever incorrectly as a man of his era. As He himself said to Keresky. "Damn it I'm a father with a family" How much of his actions came from the advise of the mystics around him, Rasputin was only the most well known, Only Historians know.

It might also be worth knowing that the Russian Orthodox Church in 2017 decided to seriously consider the question of whether Nicholas and his family were victims of a ritual killing, i.e..by Jews.


In light of this it is worth questioning the relevance of the ROC's evaluation of Nicholas as a moral figure.

I would also note that very many of Nicholas' contemporaries, inside and outside of Russia, were deeply critical of the man's actions as a ruler. At times, especially at outstanding events like the Beilis trial, this was enough to complicate Russia's foreign relations.
 
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