What "should" have happened to the Romanovs?

Bourgeois states use the law as a weapon to attack would be revolutionaries. Ask Sacco and Vanzetti about how just a country with a strong rule of law can be. Then you can ask Fred Hampton how they react when their attempts at judicial repression fail-they switch to regular old murder! And while we're at it, why don't we ask Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknicht about the moral superiority of the law abiding, peace loving Social Democrats?

But seriously, a quote from Mao is relevant here:



I cannot give you a line because the line does not exist. I cannot justify all revolutionary violence with legalities and traditions of bourgeois justice because a socialist revolution is an illegal rebellion against the "justice" of capitalism. Needs must when the devil drives.

Where do you yourself draw the line? Who deserves to be purged and who shouldn't be?
 
"Who needs to die to win a class war" is an unanswerable question in a vacuum. If you win election to power and the ruling classes peacefully surrender their control of the means of production, nobody. If it ends up like China or Russia, apparently millions.

If you know of a guidebook with simple answers to all tough moral choices regarding war and oppression, I would be happy to buy it.
 
Not sure what impact the following would likely have on this subject, though how would the Bolsheviks capitalize on revelations of Alexandra having an affair with Rasputin with the latter even revealed as being the father of a few of the former's ATL children?
 
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"Who needs to die to win a class war" is an unanswerable question in a vacuum. If you win election to power and the ruling classes peacefully surrender their control of the means of production, nobody. If it ends up like China or Russia, apparently millions.

If you know of a guidebook with simple answers to all tough moral choices regarding war and oppression, I would be happy to buy it.

Then again, a lot more people died in the Russian revolutions and civil war than absolutely needed to for the Bolsheviks to win. It is hard to say how big a part of the deaths were superficial in terms of achieving a Red victory, but we can certainly posit that this excess death might be counted in millions, or at the very least in hundreds of thousands. Saying that "you need to break a few eggs to make an omelet" is all well and good, but when it comes to revolutions, "making the omelet" usually includes cartons and cartons of perfectly good eggs getting smashed up, in a spiral of violence, bloodlust and retribution, for no real additional gain to show for it. And even then, the omelet that is eventually created might turn out to be rather mediocre, even actually inedible.

To compare to a smaller event closer to me personally, in the Finnish civil war of 1918, thousands of more people died on both sides than would have strictly needed to die for the same general result of the war to be achieved - an unsuccessful Socialist revolution leading to a White victory which gave birth to a flawed but functional democratic system. As this result a) led to virtually all of the losing side's main demands to be realized in a decade or so (an eight-hour working day, administrative reforms, a general land reform including ending the croft system, etc) and as b) through this result Finland was spared a lot of further death (in the tens or hundreds of thousands) that visited the lands to the east in the next two decades, it is hard to say how many deaths then would have been needed for a Red victory in Finland - and whether those deaths would have been worth it in any measurable way.
 
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Given the eventual failure of the USSR and the CCP's totalitarian state capitalism, I don't think anyone needs to be told that the supposed fruits of victory in a revolution can be bitter. But given the rapid progression towards global suicide capitalism' s profit obsession is pushing, the greater tragedy might yet be our failure to move beyond capitalism.

However, at this point, we are well beyond the original question, and ought probably just let this topic die if the discussion is now "At what price a revolution?"
 
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Ideally, the whole family would have been spared and sent into exile with essentially zero hope of returning. I can't see the more progressive monarchies of western Europe (say, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy) offering asylum. Maybe Portugal or Spain might, but that also might be one way to harm diplomatic relations. A long shot might be one of the postage stamp monarchies (the Romanovs in Monaco?). But how about this: exile to Argentina? That would put them in a developed Western nation (at the time, Argentina's standard of living was closing fast on that of Canada, IIRC) with all of the amenities, but sufficiently removed from Russia such that a return would be essentially out of the question.

In time, one or more of the daughters might decide to try returning to the northern hemisphere--i.e., the US or Canada, if either would permit that. Got a life-size picture of, say, Tatiana or Anastasia marrying a du Pont, Pew, Rockefeller, or someone along those lines...
 

Deleted member 92121

Well, lot's of People giving their opinions, so here's my two cents.

The problem is that the question makes us debate between pragmatism and idealism. Is it right to shoot a boy? Of course not. What if the boy can be used as a tool for a civil war, and his escape is imminent? Remember the french bourbons, remember the english restoration before that. It's a dangerous affair. Do we put ourselves in the shoes of the bolsheviks? For this example I will.

Tsar Nicholas II Romanov, Autocrat of Russia : A Big Public Trial. I like trials, I believe they give a sense of public justice by allowing the people to confront the accused. The Bolsheviks, by executing the royal family quickly in the middle of the night, deprived the russian people and their own cause of a sense of righteous justice. Therefore, charges must be brought up agaisnt the Tsar. Since there's no precedent, I imagine they could be something like: "Abuse of power", and "Crimes against the Russian People". The bloody sunday massacre could be a good example of both. There can only be one veredict of course: GUILTY. And there can only be one punishment: DEATH. Firing squad might seem a little bit too partisan, showing soviets shooting the Tsar. Hanging has been the standard method of execution of the common man(and he's now a common man, as is everyone else) for centuries. Hang the man. If they really want to be dramatic, bring forth the guillotine.

Tsarina Alexandra Romanov: Trial besides her husband as a accomplice to the abuse of power and perpetuation of imperialist oppression. Veredict: GUILTY. Punishment: DEATH. Gods representatives go meet their manager together.

The Princesses: Even though all with the exception of Anastasia are adults, they were not directly involved in politics. Shooting spoiled children will prove little. Send them to different collective farms around the country(preferably far from civilization) with loyal bolshevik garrisons nearby to check on them from time to time. Change their names, make sure it stays changed.

Alexei, the crown prince: He's a 13 years old boy with a serious physical condition. Send him to Petrograd or Moscow, put him into a very confortable room, keep him guarded and watched at all times. Teach him the values of communism. Use him as a propaganda tool for the bolshevik revolution, "The prince that chose Marx". Most important of all, control his access to the outside world, including who he meets.
 

iVC

Donor
I had a firm conviction that during the conditions of the summer of 1918, the Ekaterinburg's Ural Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies was as manageable and controllable by Moscow and the Council of People's Commissars as it is may be with the rover on the Red Planet.

Communication is disgusting, orders are delivered for a long time, you have almost no means of verification and control, and most importantly - Ural is now almost absolute inaccessible.

So, the sound idea to remove the former Tsar and his family from the metropolitan regions ignited by the uprising for his own safety later turned to be a terrible idea when it became clear that civil war was raging in regions which lay between Moscow and the Urals. Only the commucation via telegraph became available and the local Ural's council also became very aggressive, especially when the town fell under siege.
 
A bit horrific but if you want catharsis there is... another option, which I'll call the Perfume option.
In "The Perfume" by Patrick Süskind, the hero develops a perfume that makes people love him unconditionally, so they tear him to pieces and eat him.

You want to make a big show and deliver catharsis: put the Tsar in the middle of the Red Square with a sign around his head and let the crowd lynch him.
Then, it's not technically your fault he died, you actually set him free, and the people would have spoken.

Now, internationally speaking, it probably would not go down well, as it would personify all the fears of the bourgeoisie around the world, but the symbol would be there.
 

iVC

Donor
To compare to a smaller event closer to me personally, in the Finnish civil war of 1918, thousands of more people died on both sides than would have strictly needed to die for the same general result of the war to be achieved - an unsuccessful Socialist revolution leading to a White victory which gave birth to a flawed but functional democratic system. As this result a) led to virtually all of the losing side's main demands to be realized in a decade or so (an eight-hour working day, administrative reforms, a general land reform including ending the croft system, etc) and as b) through this result Finland was spared a lot of further death (in the tens or hundreds of thousands) that visited the lands to the east in the next two decades, it is hard to say how many deaths then would have been needed for a Red victory in Finland - and whether those deaths would have been worth it in any measurable way.

After the sounding defeat in the Finnish Civil war, along with the wartime purges, executions, prisons and a total ban on activities in Finland, the Finnish communists still managed to took 14.81% of the popular vote and took 27 seats in parliament during the 1922 elections.

They did this by creating a mock "Socialist Workers Party of Finland" and putting ahead the charismatic and courageous head of the seamen’s trade union, Niilo Wälläri. During the election campaign, everything was clear to everyone, but formally there was nothing to complain about. In addition, the government did not expect anything special from the new party.

Therefore, having received such a surprise, the Finnish authorities did not think of anything better than to ban the communist ideology in the country again and imprison the entire parliament faction of communists.
 
After the sounding defeat in the Finnish Civil war, along with the wartime purges, executions, prisons and a total ban on activities in Finland, the Finnish communists still managed to took 14.81% of the popular vote and took 27 seats in parliament during the 1922 elections.

They did this by creating a mock "Socialist Workers Party of Finland" and putting ahead the charismatic and courageous head of the seamen’s trade union, Niilo Wälläri. During the election campaign, everything was clear to everyone, but formally there was nothing to complain about. In addition, the government did not expect anything special from the new party.

Therefore, having received such a surprise, the Finnish authorities did not think of anything better than to ban the communist ideology in the country again and imprison the entire parliament faction of communists.

This is true. What's your point? There was some support in Finland for the far left, sure, but then there was even more support for the moderate left and the "bourgeois" parties. All the flaws of the Finnish bourgeois republic that was born after the civil war notwithstanding, and despite the repression of the far left, the nation managed a more peaceful period of development in between 1919 and 1939 than it most likely would have if the Reds won the civil war and Finland was either joined to the Soviet system or remained a closely aligned "Socialist republic". As it was IOTL, the moderate left-wing (centre-left) Social Democrats were allowed to continue their work and become one of the central pillars of Finnish society since 1918. We can be reasonably sure that the bourgeois classes, especially the economic elite, would have been repressed and purged more heavily in an ATL "Red" Finland than the Communists/the far left (and suspected symphatizers) were in the OTL "White" Finland.

Consider the option to the OTL: would you say that after a civil war victory in 1918, in a Bolshevik-aligned Communist Finland they would have had fair elections in the early 1920s where any bourgeois, nationalist parties could have freely taken part?
 
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