Russia at that time did not have any means to conduct a serious war onFar East. No RR communications, no adequate naval base, no military presence and no local resources to supply the troops.
What’s more important, no meaningful goal to pursue.
What reforms could russian rulers enact to prevent the Russian Revolution?
- Thread starter Jimbo808
- Start date
What’s more important, no meaningful goal to pursue.
I'd say he lived a average lifespan for a person living in the late XIX century.
Yeah considering his economic reforms...........yeah....a total utter moron, Nicholas I for all his faults, under his tenure textile and sugar manufacturing was growing at a steady pace and paper manufacturing on a Industrial scale was just taking off which back in 1830s, 40s, 50s were the only significant Industry. He took the Russian manufacturing Industry which was in shambles to the level of Austrian empire by the end of his reign.
Under his son though....even those Industries began to fail and the gap between Russian and rest of Europe widen to a ocean, maybe if we butterfly his economic reforms and policies away......situation could have improved for his son and grandson. I mean you have people in the western liberal school of thought and Marxist criticize Nicholas I for his bad Industrial policy, to them i say, hindsight is always 20-20? Like Industrialization was new, like really new, it is like how we grapple with artificial Intelligence, you are bound to get things wrong because of lack of knowledge or political consideration at the time etc plus viewing Russian economic development from a western liberal framework is just wrong.
So to answer the question what policies should the Tsars have followed to prevent Russian revolution, is to butterfly away the Economic policies of Alexander II. I mean Nicholas I economic policies did ensure industrial growth at 4 percent per Anum through out his reign.
Not really no, I mean like I said Nicholas I was not that bad, I mean he is not the best man to govern and lead Russia through the challenging times but he is not the worst.
Pretty much, Russian Empire should have avoided wars like avoiding the plague till the mid 1930s, Russia was fragile during as the society was under a lot of stress because of rapid economic and Industrial growth which caused social changes and pressure and population explosion. War was the last thing that society wanted.
Too many if you ask me, all those contradiction added up towards the end causing the people to lose faith in the government.
I’d say that regime of BI was not “business friendly” but this was not due to a whole set of the complicated socio-political reasons which made him fearing that a change could turn things to the worse (as was the case, for example, with the prolonged discussion of the emancipation scenarios). “Industrialization” was easily said then done and, as was convincingly demonstrated by AII, it was too easy to go in a wrong direction with the disastrous results.
His geopolitical ambitions were a different issue and this is where things started getting wrong with a domino effect spreading everywhere.
Agree. The good side was that he was trying to prevent a disaster by avoiding the risky domestic policies. The bad side was that by doing so he was heading to a disaster. 😂
The “educated classes” wanted “reforms” as some kind of a magic wand that solves all problems. What exactly these reforms should amount to an overwhelming majority of them had no idea but pretty much all of them knew that the ongoing reforms are not enough. Of course, it is going without saying that their ideas of the “reforms” were in the areas that had nothing to do with improving Russian economy and implementing industrialization. They were about the court system, freedom of the press, local self-rule, etc.. In practical terms, a freedom of unrestricted talking. When they were finally getting to something relevant like land reform, their ideas were predominantly on a level of mentally impaired five years old child. Look, for example, at political program of Cadet party. With the industrialization it was even worse: anybody who voiced an opinion that it is the capitalists who provide people with a work would be immediately labeled with some nasty definition.
On a “bottom” majority of the peasants did not want true reforms (as was demonstrated by Stolypin’s reform). They wanted things to be exactly as they were but with the big plots of an agricultural land suddenly appearing out of a nowhere on their backyards.
The industrial workers wanted not “reforms” but improvements of their working conditions and salary increases. Which was a normal capitalistic thing that was happening partially due to the labor laws (which the “educated classes” tended to ignore) and partially naturally: a reasonable capitalist wanted to retain the skilled workers. In St.Petersburg between 1891 and 1901 salary of a skilled craftsman tripled.
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Like can you blame him for his reservation of industrialization, he's looking at France, Prussia, Austria, German states and other states in Europe, they're industrializing, while having revolutions, riots, migration to the new world, destitution as a side effect.
Now for people livin' in the modern day should look at industrialization as how we grapple with artificial intelligence, the 1st and second wave of industrialization lead to automation of human labour at first and later new line of products, some people saw it as the future, like how people these days view artificial intelligence as being the future new ways of working, new production relationship, new consumer relationship, new inter personal relationship, new rights and obligations/liabilities ; while there are sceptics who agree it will change how we work etc but disagree with the whole idea of radical transformation of our society and that the present system is more than sufficient to address the issues that 4th wave industrialization would bring,
The latter is how vast majority of ruling class back in 19th century viewed industrialization, they didn't see it as THE FUTURE they just saw it as a natural progression of things, meaning they didn't see the fuss about it as to why the entire system needs a radical reform and that existing system is strong enough to accommodate these small changes and radical reform would have radical consequences like revolution that rocked Europe or as you pointed out the consequences of a botched up policy of Alexander II had on the Russian economy or they just saw industrialization as a annoyance and a threat to the social order and stability and tolerated it because it brings in revenue and helps in defence.
So this is my defence of Nicholas I, you can criticize the dude all you want but even with our "democratic" government struggle to accommodate the emerging 4th wave industrialization. How can he be "Business" friendly if that wasn't even a concept back then???
Dammed if you did, damned if you didn't. Like modern day liberal democracy wasn't even a thing back during the day of Nicholas I, most countries in Europe didn't have universal adult franchise until the late 19th century. So liberal democratic reforms was not the answer cause why would an autocracy do something as radical as introducing a liberal democratic system? When very few countries have actually tried it out and they were very brand new, violent and messy. I mean if you actually give the ordinary Russian subject of the Tsar a voice in the day to day running of the empire, the Empire would end up as a right wing authoritarian theocracy not social democracy or liberal democracy, cause as you pointed most Russians were looking for something else, not liberal democracy.
Russia needed police reforms, legal reforms, educational reform , military reform and what not but the answer to that is certainly not "if only Russian Empire was a democracy" cause most of it's contemporaries were not and the reforms should have relevance to Russia and should be well though out not reforming for the sake of reforms to feel good as you pointed out.
What if Russia attempts to reduce political consciousness by not encouraging Russification of minorities and not providing industrial subsidies or aggressive protection to industrial centers in major urban centers?
The goal being to keep a larger rural population (ala France) with more traditional customs, encouraging the creation of more cities on top of their old agrarian communities and nearby locations in hopes of avoiding people becoming deracinated in alien urban centers or forced to give up the mother tongue.
Russia could (over time) become wealthy and literate, without forcing quite as strong of a per capita Industrial Revolution as many others, like France. The manufacturing base would still be huge and encouraged to grow, but certain traditional communities and agriculture would receive additional support at the expense of major cities and their manufacturing. OTL Russia had much more impressive growth in manufacturing than agriculture.
If Russia is on good terms with Germany and Austria, this could potentially reduce political consciousness on the home front, perhaps…
The goal being to keep a larger rural population (ala France) with more traditional customs, encouraging the creation of more cities on top of their old agrarian communities and nearby locations in hopes of avoiding people becoming deracinated in alien urban centers or forced to give up the mother tongue.
Russia could (over time) become wealthy and literate, without forcing quite as strong of a per capita Industrial Revolution as many others, like France. The manufacturing base would still be huge and encouraged to grow, but certain traditional communities and agriculture would receive additional support at the expense of major cities and their manufacturing. OTL Russia had much more impressive growth in manufacturing than agriculture.
If Russia is on good terms with Germany and Austria, this could potentially reduce political consciousness on the home front, perhaps…
Indeed. Plus, the whole thing was not just “starting from tomorrow 10AM we’ll start being industrialized.” Besides intention you need, among other things, natural resources and with them situation was not good at all. Russian metallurgy was in the Ural and in Ural there was no high quality coal needed for the Bessemer process. The enterprises had been using charcoal, which was making process expensive, and besides these metallurgical plants started running out of forests. By the time of AII they were running down the tubes. Add to this transportation expenses in an absence of the railroads and shortage of finances for building the railroads. Even if Ural plants were able to increase production noticeably, getting greater volume to the European Russia would be a nightmare. And, IIRC, it took quite a while before anybody decided to build RR connecting Ural with the European Russia: most of the RRs during AII reign were speculative schemas oriented toward European Russia with very little or no thought regarding “industrialization” or actually little though of anything besides profiting on state-offered policies guaranteeing stable profit to the unprofitable private RRs. NI was seemingly having feelings on that account and was afraid but AII jumped into it without thinking about economic component.
In OTL the new metallurgy started based upon the Donbass coal and iron ore from the Southern Russia and it took decades to jumpstart the process because there was pretty much none. Even more time it took for the Ural-based industries to update their processes and built infrastructure allowing extraction, transportation and coking the coal from the not too far away locations. Add to this absence of the qualified cadres of workers outside Ural, etc.
Exactly. There was a need to change things but all available ways of the change looked as a pending disaster.
And it was not even clear if the change was going to strengthen the state. If anything, the revolutions in France did not look like the way to follow.
An overwhelming majority did not have any idea of this notion and definitely did not expect to benefit. Even the modest liberal reforms of AII had very serious negative impact on the lower classes. This was remarked upon even by the liberal contemporaries.
Yes. The same goes for a blind following of the fashionable economic theories which were disastrous for underdeveloped countries.
I think it's pretty interesting to notice that WWI basically brought a wrecking ball to four world powers in the midsts of significant economic and political transitions (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottomans, Russia) and caused decades or a century (in terms of Russia) of war and political vaccums for all these countries, the impacts of which are still felt in the modern world. Perhaps TTL Russia gains more of a democratic tradition by the time its empire collapses some years later than OTL or have a Thailand/Japan situtation where Russia still has an emperor but is otherwise a democratic Constitutional monarchy, perhaps the Russian Emperor has more power than the Western monarchs like in Britain or Sweden.
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Why not avoid world war I altogether, may be some other incident takes place which does not threaten Russian interest in the Balkans and Russia sits out the war? or Russia does take part in world war I but it takes place 12 years later say in the late 20s when the Russian state is powerful enough to fight a modern war cause Russian armed forces was in the process of modernization that was not slated to be completed till 1917.
IMO the smartest thing Russian leaders could have done was, starting with the aftermath of the Crimean war, start falsifying their census reports in such a way as to systemically understate the population growth rate of Russia. It's that growth rate that freaked out the Germans and lots of the other Euro powers like the UK. So adopt census methods that exclude lots of people and make the population growth rate look smaller. You can do part of this by rigidly insisting on an actual enumeration and not applying any fudge factors.
Grey Wolf
Donor
Military reforms.
If you are not fighting losing wars that see mass casualties for no gains then your population is a lot happier.
One interesting thing regarding the navy was the massive effect Makarov had when taking over the Port Arthur fleet. This indicates that highering the bar, and adopting more professional expectations could have been institutionalised. There were certainly other highly professional officers of the fleet (Wiren and Essen etc) who were not cast in the moribund mould of the old navy.
In addition, Russia had a good head in early submarines, with a squadron at Vladivostock in the RJ War, and building some great ones before WW1. Building on this, and building it up could have been another successful reform.
And then you have professional rather than political leadership for the army. Grand Duke NN or the Tsar himself taking command is more of a medieval aspect than other countries were enacting.
And yet, there was a big number of the very important reforms during his reign.
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
In Nicholas II's era, the most important 'reform' is probably for him to not take money from the army upgrade budget to fix the navy after Tsushima. That money had been meant for upgrades to the Polish fort system, railroads, new artillery and technical stuff like field telephones -- which were all sorely missed in the first year of WW1, and was of much greater consequence than the extra battleships they paid for.
Also, a different outcome to the military strategic debates after the Russo-Japanese War would be very good.
Also, a different outcome to the military strategic debates after the Russo-Japanese War would be very good.
Even if AIII and all of his children are killed monarchy wouldn't end. Next on line would be the tsar's brother Vladimir.
This is quite reasonable (not sure about spending money on the forts, IIRC, only a relatively small Osovets put up a serious resistance) but an assumption that the people in charge were reasonable or competent is somewhat optimistic. The same goes for “solution of all problems”, the Duma - having a bunch of the posturing nincompoops in charge of a funding made situation even worse. They swallowed the naval program hook, line and sinker.
As a contemporary argument was going, not spending money on the navy would make Russian Baltic and Black Sea ports vulnerable to the German and Ottoman naval attacks. To which degree this could be addressed by the extensive mining and building up the coastal defenses, I can’t tell but, IIRC, there was a proposal to rely upon the submarines and it was defeated by an argument that the submarines would be sunk by the destroyers, etc. all the way to a conclusion that you need a full-scale navy with all types of the ships.
On the Black Sea the existing battleships were pre-dreadnoughts and the Ottomans were planning to buy dreadnoughts from Britain. It seems that even Goeben was scary enough for these ships.
On an army side the competence problems were the same. Sukhomlinov was laughing at Alexander Mikhailovich when he came with a request to start the aviation program. Which, BTW (besides AM having the last laugh) is quite illustrative of a general situation. By 1914 Russia had the biggest air fleet of all war participants but it was heavily relying upon the import of the motors, ignitions and pretty much everything else except for the plane bodies and also it was producing mostly the licensed models, quite often obsolete. The original designs by 1914 boiled down to a heavy bomber (Ilya Muromets series) and its escort fighter but, again, the engines were imported. Some domestic production of these parts started during the war but it was inadequate. An original (not very good) fighter was built in the noticeable numbers only around 1916-17.
And shortage of the domestic production of the engines, ignitions, etc. also handicapped production of the armored cars, army trucks, etc. Again, some domestic production started during the war but it was licensed (expensive) and too little too late.
The money had to be spent not on purchasing all these things but on designing and making them domestically and both in avia- and car-production RE was doing things the wrong way and not using existing engineering potential. Strictly speaking the state was doing close to nothing in advancing the technological sector of the Russian economy. Speaking of which, even in the area where Russia was traditionally good, chemistry, a practical technology for producing the synthetic rubber was developed only in 1920s when the Soviets came with an “original” idea of promising a bonus to the winner of a competition. And, surprise, surprise, they ended up producing it in big quantities. The winner was not just around, in 1910 he was the first to get synthetic rubber based on poly-butadiene (the method was not industrial) and kept working in that area but nobody (except for the professional chemists) was paying attention and Russia kept paying enormous money for imported rubber (BTW, the navy consumed huge amounts of it).
IMO, the main task of a strategic debate should be along the lines “how not to get into another war”. 😉
Anyway, RJW demonstrated that France is a lousy ally and can’t be relied upon. The only place where the 2nd Pacific Squadron was permitted to take a stop was German colonial base. And still Russian leadership had been hanging to that “ally” because of the loans. Well, when WWI came France screwed Russia royally pretty much blocking ability to buy necessary supplies during the critical 1914-15.
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Given how the battles of Riga and Moon Sound turned out, the predreadnoughts were enough for the Baltic.
And given that neither the Russian or the Ottoman squadrons in the Black Sea really did much of note after the initial raid, that turns out to have been a needless expense. A squadron of submarines lying in wait for the Ottomans just north of Constantinople would be a far more cost-effective investment for defense than a squadron of battleships.
The main task of a strategic debate is to determine how best to finish a war should you find yourself stumbling into one.
An offensive strategy that relies on keeping the Polish salient should also keep the majority of the army in the western districts and generally do everything it can to optimize for having as many troops available on the front in Day 1. A strategy which intends to do this, but makes all the preparations necessary for a defensive plan instead, is going to end up worse than either a pure offense or a pure defense. And a pure offense would be best, since the fortification system the defense relies on is outdated and not getting upgraded, and going full passive in the opening stages would just let the Germans concentrate on their enemies one at a time.
But there was no pre-dreadnoughts (or pretty much anything else serious) left on the Baltic after RJW so something had to be built. Quite agree that this would not have to be the dreadnoughts: as long as the primary goal was coastal defense, the smartly built smaller ships with a good armor and heavy artillery probably would do, especially if competently used in combination with the coastal fortifications.
The fundamental problem, judging by some publications for the dummies like me, was that the Russian dreadnoughts were not too good due to the technological issues. As I said, RE had to develop technology as a top priority.
Quite agree. With the Black Sea being a dead end, anyway, wasting money and resources on a whole series of dreadnoughts was plain stupidity. Surely, Russian top priority in WWI was not capture of the Straits even if, in theory, this could open an otherwise blocked supply route. Which, IMO, would be “dentistry Russian style” (pulling tooth through a rectum). Much cheaper would be before the war to have a normal gauge RR from Archangelsk, to build RR from Murmansk and to do build a bridge across the Amur for TransSib (and on a remaining change to buy more locomotives and RR equipment) rather than doing all these things during a war.
And setting the mine fields outside Sevastopol, Odessa, etc. would not cost much either. Probably using few fast destroyers or whatever to set mines outside the Bosphorus was not going to cost a fortune either. But it seems that the naval brains did not work this way. Even Kolchak, who by the end of WWI got reputation of one of the world’s leading specialists in a mine warfare, had been making disparaging remarks about the submarines and other non-exciting ways to conduct a naval war. Do not forget, he was one of the leading figures in a design of the first Russian dreadnoughts and his stated goal was to create a “perfect gun platform” (resulting in noticeable design problems). So, prior to wwi there was no meaningful opposition to the dreadnought mantra.
Yes, I know. Within a debate of “how to best finish a war if you have the allies that are going to screw you” probably a part “how you can make your military effort independent from the allied supplies” should be #1 followed by “define your own realistic tasks”, “how to disregard the allied demands for help if these efforts will be ruinous for you”, “how to organize war propaganda” and “how to mobilize all branches of the economy for a war effort”. In OTL all of the above had been done other way around and the results are well-known.
Alternatively, go to a defense against Germany with the western front type tens lines of the trenches augmenting existing fortifications, while keeping enough good quality reserves to parry the German attacks and go aggressively against AH with enough resources to make this strategically meaningful forcing the Germans to patch the holes thus weakening them elsewhere.
Defense against Germany may involve some offensive operations with the limited goals but, let’s be realistic, short of some ASB-related miracle, OTL RE circa 1914 could not successfully fight an offensive war against Germany: its equipment was not adequate for the task and OTL attempts to resolve the problem by the piles of corpses did not work . In 1915 the German artillery was pretty much annihilating the Russian positions with a minimal opposition: not only did not Russian army had heavy field artillery, it also suffered from a severe shells shortage all the way to 1916. The famous Brusilov Offensive started with a very strict shells limits (partially, thanks to this a successful breakthrough formula came to life). So even the defensive scenario would require a much better pre-war preparedness. Shells, barbed wire, infantry helmets and even the machine guns were not high-tech items requiring sophisticated tools and could be produced in mass quantities in the machine tool shops. Surely, the Mosin rifles, which were in production since 1891, could be produced and accumulated in the numbers excluding a need to beg the allies for supplies of obsolete rifles, etc. The strategic planning had to address issues like that, not just the battle schemas which you can’t implement anyway without all necessary hardware.
And, among other things, not wasting huge resources on the navy together with certain things that had been done during the war and could be done before it, may provide an ability for an army to face Germany on better terms than in OTL.
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Reforms he was never comfortable with and often forced to go along with them like the Duma. He would, after all, dissolve the Duma twice in order to undermine any threats to curb his power and bring meaningful changes
The Russian Revolution of 1905 and 1917 had as much to do with Nicholas II as it did with other factors
Sacer Bubonicus
Banned
Ultimately, the budget decision rested with Nicholas, so it's him that needs to be persuaded. Or rather, not persuaded, as it was Guchkov and the Octobrists that originally drew Nicholas's attention to the naval issue in an attempt to gain more Duma oversight for the military budget, even if his reaction was not what they'd wanted.
That was the offensive plan in a nutshell: shorten the front in Prussia, hold Poland, and use that to anchor the offensive into Hungary, which is where most of the actual divisions will be. The Masurian Lakes region would be difficult to fight in, so the front needed to be extended forward to the Vistula as fast as possible before German reinforcements could arrive to shore up the weak local defenses. With the north secured, they could then dive into Hungary, which would put the onus on the Germans to move troops there to prop up the Austrians, which will dilute any German offensives into Poland. Unfortunately, Poland was overrun before that could be set up to support the offensive, which meant that the offensive itself fizzled out because of German forces on its northern flank.
Which happens to be one of those things that was cut back for the army budget to work after the navy got its cut.
The sensible strategic plans, as proposed by Mikhail Alexeyev, pointed to defending in Poland after shortening the front by taking Prussia, and holding that position so it can anchor an attack into Austria to the south. Austria was, after all, the weaker enemy and the Russians had obtained their time tables for mobilization, so they would be easier to deal with.
The defensive plan, as proposed by Yuri Danilov, proposed attacking on neither.
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