Was Tsar Nicholas II a good ruler?
- Thread starter Irrisa
- Start date
Indeed. I'm sure the Tzar, paid for his sins, at the Toll Houses, Orthodox Purgatory, but comparing his reign, to the communist three quarters of a century, is like comparing a broken thumb, to brain cancer.
Ok, in full honesty, maybe I should elaborate.
Even though I'm a Marxist-Leninist, I do feel for Nicholas II. Even though he was an antisemetic moron with a huge chip on his shoulder, he still was ultimately a man unready for leadership beaten down by inferiority complexes and tradition that was increasingly becoming irrelevant*. Do I feel like he should've been murdered in Yekaterinburg? No. Do I feel like he should've been overthrown? Absolutely.
All of the Russian monarchs were bad, but I don't feel like it's an exaggeration to state that Nicky was probably the worst, or at least pretty far down there. The dude was such an idiot that he caused hundreds to die at his own coronation because there wasn't enough beer and pretzels. I'm not saying he's solely at fault for everything that happened during his reign --- Great Man theory fucking sucks --- but given that he was attempting to be an absolutist in a period where absolutism was becoming increasingly irrelevant and he was a moron on an unimaginable scale it's pretty hard not to blame most of it on him, especially the Lena massacre and Bloody Sunday.
In full honesty, there is one good thing Nicholas did; he helped the October Revolution!
*not that this an excuse for anything
From what I've read this is actually what Lenin and Trotsky preferred. Granted, it was going to be a show trial with Trotsky as the prosecutor, but it still would've been a trial. Hell, maybe his family would've been spared. Maybe in a TL where his family lives there might be a Pu-Yi esque scenario; they're imprisoned for a few years, but later on in life are released (probably after Stalin dies, admittedly). Heck, maybe they'll go full Pu-Yi and become communists themselves!
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<pictures one Г-жа Гольштейн-Готторп as a mid-level functionary anywhere in the USSR>
<laughs>
Wasn't there a Montenegrin Prince who was a functionary in Tito's government for a while, until he broke with them?
Frankly I'd say that Kerensky and the Provisional Government did far more to help the October Revolution than the Tsar ever did
To reiterate what I have said in another thread and others have said; good leaders generally don't get violently overthrown in a political revolution. Nicholas II might have done some good things but he also made a lot of mistakes. The only modern-day people in my experience that have positive views of Tsar Nicholas II are either strict monarchists, staunch anti-communists, or Russian Orthodox clergy since they benefitted from the Russian Empire and were suppressed during the Soviet Union.
By being naive and soft? I'm curious what you feel would have been more effective. Not arguing just intrigued
I am not sure how useful that is. I mean, Stalin's Soviet Union was less terrible than the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia; it was never Soviet policy to assign people to death because they wore glasses or had an elementary school location. Does that mean, then, that the Soviet Union was perfectly normal?
Russia under Nicholas II was a vast multinational polity on the edge of massive transformations. The contribution of Nicholas II to this Russia that he claimed absolute authority over was to make things so much worse, to make anything like a transition to stable democracy impossible. Frankly, in embracing and promoting the modern blood libel, Nicholas II has a non-trivial amount of responsibility for the Holocaust and 20th century antisemitism more broadly. He was a small man whose sins were transformed into global catastrophes by the absolute power he accepted as his right.
Can't share your sympathies for Charles I. If ever there was a ruler who was the author of all of his misfortunes, much more so than either of the other two.
Abandon the traditional method of ruling. Wage war on your own people. Lose. Negotiate from prison in bad faith. Wage war on your own people. Lose. Negotiate from prison in bad faith. Plan to wage war on your on people. Get caught. What could be the reason he was so unfairly executed by the traitors in Parliament? The only credit due to Charles Stuart is for the courage with which he met his death.
He inherited a broken revenue system, and Parliament dicked him around on tonnage and poundage before he'd had a chance to actually do anything (a real break with the traditional method of ruling). The Personal Rule did not come out of nowhere, and was actually genuinely popular with the ordinary people. It might have continued indefinitely if Laud had had half a brain.
Charles was a moron, yes. But I see the Civil War as being rooted in parliamentary overreach, and a King without the talent to deal with the challenge.
1) Laud was implementing ecclesiastical reforms approved, if not instigated, by Charles I. Who wanted to unite his Three Kingdoms with a single church structure that none of them wanted. With him as its head to buttress the throne.
2) Parliamentaru overreach: depends on what rights you think Parliament had or should have. From the perspective of the "obstructionists" Charles was not listening to the advice and recommendations of the propertied elite who had a stake in the good governance of England. Trying to govern as an Absolute Monarch in a Kingdom that was still largely medieval in thinking, though tacitly admitting gentry and merchant interests to the elite.
He also was equally uninterested in listening to the elites in Scotland and Ireland preferring to rule by dictat and through proxies.
Basically he may have been a good family man but as a ruler, one of the worst in Anglo-British history. Up there with John, Edward II and Aethelred 'the Unready', even if not as evil as Edward II. Add Henry III and VI maybe.
I normally give Henry VI a pass due to his mental illness. He really didn't know what he was doing.
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Yes, not his fault but he was unsuited to rule. The consequences were the problem hence his reign being a disaster.
Like I said.. sure it’s a tragedy as much as the death of an innocent young woman or a dying grand uncle is anywhere. But you cannot tell me their lives were more meaningful or should be more remembered than the starving young woman who wished to present a petition to her Tsar and was then fucking crushed under the heels of his Cossacks or ran through on their swords. Those hundreds were killed for their association with one idea - the idea that the Tsar might not get to hold absolute power.
Nicholas had easily done the same treatment to many, so no.. the execution of his family was not uniquely horrific given the shit that man had routinely done to his countrymen. It is just an exercise in perspective and who you center your histories and sympathies with. Will not respond to your other comment because I don’t want to derail the thread with mass-killing olympics that aren’t relevant to the discussion at hand.
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