WI: Fascist Tsarist Russia

What if Russia became the first true totalitarian state in the early 1900s? Tsarist autocracy, Orthodoxy, and the fledgling Black Hundreds could have been the genesis of a Fascist-like movement. With the right kind of Tsar (By that I mean an oppressive power-hungry megalomaniac with the skills to back up his fantasies) to take advantage of the current political situation in Russia I could see Russia making the transition to a mere autocratic monarchy to a totalitarian state.

Do you think a successful totalitarian Russia could inspire other European monarchs to do the same thing? What if the Tsar is legitimately competent and implements policies such as rapid industrialization like Stalin and makes real improvements to the military?
 

nastle

Banned
What if Russia became the first true totalitarian state in the early 1900s? Tsarist autocracy, Orthodoxy, and the fledgling Black Hundreds could have been the genesis of a Fascist-like movement. With the right kind of Tsar (By that I mean an oppressive power-hungry megalomaniac with the skills to back up his fantasies) to take advantage of the current political situation in Russia I could see Russia making the transition to a mere autocratic monarchy to a totalitarian state.

Do you think a successful totalitarian Russia could inspire other European monarchs to do the same thing? What if the Tsar is legitimately competent and implements policies such as rapid industrialization like Stalin and makes real improvements to the military?
SOunds like a Stalin at the turn of 20th century pre-WW1
A big threat to Germany, turkey, japan and austro-hungry
Potentially even to UK if he has ambitions in asia and pacific

a german politician said the communists are red painted Nazis and he was right
 
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't really the aggressive and power obsessed type. I don't think he would be a good candidate to lead Russia into a totalitarian state. No one that close to the line of succession really fits the bill. Although there is Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was the most ultra-conservative of the imperial family if you can somehow arrange him coming to power as tsar or regent. He might be crazy enough to attempt turning Russia into a totalitarian state.
 
Tsarist autocracy, Orthodoxy, and the fledgling Black Hundreds could have been the genesis of a Fascist-like movement.

Not really.

Imperial autocracy was thoroughly anti-modern and quite different from the core concepts of fascism. A "right" kind of Tsar might try to start a transformation into a more modern, totalitarian type of regime but there would be many obstacles which make the success of this hypothetical Tsar's transformation of state and society far from guaranteed. And in any case, the Tsar in the early 1900s (Nicholas II) was definitely not that kind of Tsar.

Orthodox Christianity is a religion like the others; it may be co-opted by the Imperial regime or a fascist one as a crutch, but it cannot create fascism out of thin air.

The Black Hundreds had neither the strength, unity nor discipline to be the genesis of a Fascist or Fascist-like totalitarian movement. They were basically just a loose group of conservative thugs.
 
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't really the aggressive and power obsessed type. I don't think he would be a good candidate to lead Russia into a totalitarian state. No one that close to the line of succession really fits the bill. Although there is Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was the most ultra-conservative of the imperial family if you can somehow arrange him coming to power as tsar or regent. He might be crazy enough to attempt turning Russia into a totalitarian state.
You don't need the Tsar to lead the fascist state; he could be a powerless puppet. See Mussolini's Italy.
 
Tsar Nicholas II wasn't really the aggressive and power obsessed type. I don't think he would be a good candidate to lead Russia into a totalitarian state. No one that close to the line of succession really fits the bill. Although there is Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was the most ultra-conservative of the imperial family if you can somehow arrange him coming to power as tsar or regent. He might be crazy enough to attempt turning Russia into a totalitarian state.

I came to the same conclusion myself. Nicholas II was just conservative and in my opinion actually didn't like being the Tsar. If we ignore the restrictions of the after 1900 rule we could have him take a different path in his youth. Perhaps a failed assassination attempt of either him or his father turns him paranoid like Stalin which could lead him down the road to developing a belief system similar to fascism. That's the best option I could think of. I know people will cry ASB but look at Hitler. He went from wanting to be a painter to being the most evil dictator in history because his life took a few unexpected turns.

For the ones saying that Tsarist Russian culture was antithetical to Fascism I must disagree. Not all Fascism is Nazism or Italian Fascism. I think a Russian type of Fascism (I doubt it would be called that ITTL) would be more like Spanish Falangism or even the lesser-known Austrian variant of Fascism. The combination of an already authoritarian, and oppressive leadership, a state-sponsored religion and the inklings of an ultra-nationalist movement would be the breeding ground for a form of Fascism to form in my opinion.
 
Tsarist and fascist do not belong in the same title. They are incompatible, the same way Tsarist and communist or communist and fascist are.

A truly fascist state could only arise once the royal family is overthrown or otherwise stripped of its power. Otherwise, as similar as it may be to a fascist state, it is just an autocratic right-wing monarchy, not a fascist state.

It is true that Mussolini allowed the king to stay in power, but the king was largely powerless after Mussolini's takeover and his removal would have been unpopular. In Germany, Hitler felt that the kaiser had failed the state and the reactionaries were almost as bad as the communists.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
With the right Tsar, sure it could easily be done. An alliance between Father Tsar and the Peasants against the "landlords, bankers and Jews" (the latter given the rampant anti-semetism in Russia) is an easy trick to pull off.

Model it off Ivan the Terrible and the Oprichina rather than the Black Hundreds- though maybe combine the two. A modern day Oprichina acting like the SS and the Black Hundreds playing the Brownshirts.

Yes it could work. The Tsars were always secretly admired by Monarchs around the world for keeping their power intact while everyone else wasted away. Willie would dream of the day when he could off the Reichstag

And if Nicky was competent- yeah, give him ten years and he could have marched his army all the way to Lisbon
 
This is a fantasy. Foolish superficial analyses of "it's powerful and it's right-wing, isn't it, wot, so FASCISM!" aside, tsarism has little to do with fascism. Nicholas II, and his father before him for that matter, wanted nothing to do with modern concepts of an all-powerful state where the Emperor was just the leader of the state. Russia was not 'enlightened absolutist'. The last Russian emperors distrusted the bureaucracy as a factor separating them from their people and preferred the medieval tradition of personal rule as though Russia were an estate with the Emperor as proprietor and the nobility having the role of helping him to manage his estate. The very idea of a code of law that even the monarch has to obey is contrary to this vision; the idea of a state where the Emperor has power as head of state, separated from the people by an administrative bureaucracy, rather than a country where the Emperor rules all his people directly, is contrary to the reactionary vision that dominated the late Russian Empire. To suggest that Russian autocracy was like fascism with its veneration of the all-powerful state is an utter delusion. Those forces that wanted to make Russia more of a constitutional state (excluding socialists) were generally liberal and seeking more power for the Duma, rather than fascist. The idea of a corporatist state wasn't a significant force in Russian politics.

Could Russia be authoritarian, monarchist, anti-Semitic, nationalist and religious? Sure; it was in OTL, that's not hard. Could it be fascist? Not easily.

If you want a fascist Russia, having some sort of Russian Civil War-equivalent whereby the imperial family is safely deposed and then, later, right-wing conservative, clerical military officers take over is a better bet. A White Russian regime could reasonably go fascist, though even then a reactionary dictatorship is likelier. For Russia to be some sort of fascist absolute monarchy is just not sensible.
 
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