Oh good grief....
Really, go and do some actual research for yourself.
Was Tsar Nicholas II a good ruler?
- Thread starter Irrisa
- Start date
Really, go and do some actual research for yourself.
That seems to a very low bar.
I'm still waiting for him to support the various assertions he's made in this thread.
I've mentioned this but the details of the dismal science seem unpopular.
The Russian system of "modernisation" bred civil unrest, political, social and economic. Look at the strikes and violence before the Great War erupted.
Sometimes slow and steady is not enough. Especially when it is that slow. I can use my family history under the Romanovs and Soviets to illustrate the point: they were digging dirt in the bumfucknowhere in North-Western part of European Russia for almost three hundred years. ~12 generations as basically slaves and then another three generations as formally not slaves but still digging in the dirt under constant threat of starvation and crushing collective debt.
So what happened when the whole rotten edifice of the monarchy came crashing down? First Soviet generation (my grandfather) - geologist. Second Soviet generation (my father) - electronics engineer. And I don't think that my family line suddenly became smarter or more enterprising in these last few generations. It was just that the previous socio-economic model never actually allowed them to realize their potentials condemning them to subsistence farming for hundreds of years.
I don't think it did, and there is every possibility the system could easily have limped along until Nicholas dies, which easily could have been another 20 years. Without the pressures of WWI, and the mass conscription and hardship at home which went along with that, which simultaneously turned the people, the nobility, the capitalists, and the army against the tsar. Nicholas II quite adeptly turned everyone except his good buddies (ie sycophants) against him that it truly is astounding. The real test will be who succeeds Nicholas. Because if they're as bad as he is things are going to get much worse. If one of his more reform-minded relatives took over (whih will require his son to die, not exactly unlikely) then the tsar's position can be maintained most likely. But with actual say given to people who are important to the regime and its modernization.
I am pleased your family was able to advance. I am sorry the price of that was losing their religous faith and being monitered by the NKVD.
I’m starting to think I should’ve worded my question to be more about why Nicholas’ legacy had softened in recent years. I mentioned in an earlier reply that people play up the family man angle if they want to give him the benefit of the doubt, but why does that matter? If Stalin had actually been a caring man to his family, would that suddenly erase every horrible thing he’s done? But yeah, it seems that the best thing anyone can say about his reign is, “well, he tried, so the answer to the post’s question is hard no.
On one hand you have three hundred years of slavery. On the other hand you have half a century of gradually easing political repression that predominately didn't even target the poorest categories of Russian peasantry (who were a dominant majority). And of course Soviets never took away anyone's faith. Because faith is something that is in your heart and not something that is peddled by bearded men in fancy dresses.
The nostalgia about Imperial Russian past is outright Russian equivalent of US 'lost causers' basically to a T. And it is about as vile.
It's hard to even say he tried, considering how painfully indecisive he was.
I am not saying it was paradise by any means. I believe religious persucution is dangerous and counter productive.
The Tsars were perfectly willing to persecute Jews, Catholics, and Protestants for not belonging to the church the Tsar wanted them to follow.
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Don't forget the genocide of the Circassians in the Caucasus. While the Russian Empire treated the Muslims of Central Asia fairly well, they were brutal in the Caucasus.
Oh dear. If only his Father hadn't been posioned by Alexander II's murder.
An argument could be made that Antisemitism In Russia, was starting to, or would have, become more race based and pseudo scientific with the growth of right wing mass politics, including the Black Hundreds. Speaking of the Black Hundreds, Nicholas the II's failure to capitalize on the emergence of reactionary mass politics, despite his own approval for thm (including approval of pogroms) shows his political ineptitude.
No, like previously mentioned good rulers do not get overthrow in revolutions.