What Could Nicholas II Have Done to Preserve the Imperial Throne?

Tsarfan, due respect I must disagree with you on your assessment of Bush and Obama surviving radical assassination attempts due to the fact that they simply appear to be the better option than the next guy down the rung. Assasins are sociopaths and rarely are they smart or sophisticated enough to see the bigger picture. Those thugs who assassinated Alexander II or tried to take out Alexander III are about as pitiful as the when a gang of depraved Middle Easterners blows up a fruit stand in Israel or crashes planes into a couple of buildings in New York. They make Nicholas & Alexandra's reliance on religion look like downright atheistic by comparison.

Those dipshits, for lack of a better term, probably couldn't even name the sitting Vice President in half the instances. Their agendas are as sickening as predictable. I liken them more to the Joker in the Batman films, as in..."do I look like a guy with a plan?...I just do things!"

I'm sorry I just find that far too often we find ourselves validating the radicals and the prententions of the under class. It'd be cool if there was something more to it all but as a proud member of the so called "slacker generation" most people get all hot bothered by something when they're A) hopelessly liberal and confused or B) just interested in a scene.

I stopped believing in the validity of their "cause", if you can call it that, after realising something that you point out perfectly. The Tsar liberator was cramping their style. They were feckless political opportunists who, as the Bolsheviks proved by their lack of overall support even at their height (not unlike the Nazi Party who consistently accumulated well under 50% support) of their revolutionary success, were more than willing to dominate through the only means they knew knew how. The subversion of the under educated masses in combination with their appeal to the liberal elite at home and abroad.

This much I think we agree on as indicated by your most recent post. It's a damn shame they were led astray by some "6-10 team" they thought was "Super Bowl" worthy. Then to let that lousy team become dominant only by decimating the rest of the league in an unfair manner.

Tsarfan, due respect I must disagree with you on your assessment of Bush and Obama surviving radical assassination attempts due to the fact that they simply appear to be the better option than the next guy down the rung. Assasins are sociopaths and rarely are they smart or sophisticated enough to see the bigger picture. Those thugs who assassinated Alexander II or tried to take out Alexander III are about as pitiful as the when a gang of depraved Middle Easterners blows up a fruit stand in Israel or crashes planes into a couple of buildings in New York. They make Nicholas & Alexandra's reliance on religion look like downright atheistic by comparison.

Those dipshits, for lack of a better term, probably couldn't even name the sitting Vice President in half the instances. Their agendas are as sickening as predictable. I liken them more to the Joker in the Batman films, as in..."do I look like a guy with a plan?...I just do things!"

Some of these guys have an agenda.   Some political, some just crazy.

John Wilkes Booth, for example, was committed to the Confederate cause.  When he saw it was lost, he decided to get in one last hurrah for it, by killing the leader of those that had defeated the Confederacy, Abraham Lincoln.

On the other hand, John Hinckley, the guy that tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, wanted to impress Jody Foster!

Tsarfan, due respect I must disagree with you on your assessment of Bush and Obama surviving radical assassination attempts . . . .

I disagree with it, too.  It was meant as a joke, albeit a rather flat one I suppose.

So you're telling me my big rant was based on my misunderstanding of a joke?! lol, that figures...

Well, it was a pretty pitiful joke.

I think in Booth's case, he was at the end of his rope. He originally wanted to kidnap Lincoln and that was the plan. He just couldn't get the support. He couldn't get the support to kill all of the other officials he targeted on that night as his "band" either got "cold feet" or got drunk or simply were too nervous and missed the mark.

That's what comes of expecting others to do a job for you?  But the only thing he could do alone was to kill the President and he couldn't even do that without breaking his leg and setting himself up for eventual capture.

However it is interesting (I never thought about it before) that the night that Stolypin was killed in Kiev - why didn't the assassin simply turn the gun upward and shoot at Nicholas instead?  I doubt it was in deference to the Grand Duchesses sitting with him.

I wonder if it still had to do with the idea that (at that time) the Tsar was still untouchable and the way to proceed was to attack at the other supporting figures.

However it is interesting (I never thought about it before) that the night that Stolypin was killed in Kiev - why didn't the assassin simply turn the gun upward and shoot at Nicholas instead?  I doubt it was in deference to the Grand Duchesses sitting with him.

I wonder if it still had to do with the idea that (at that time) the Tsar was still untouchable and the way to proceed was to attack at the other supporting figures.

Actually, we have Spiridovitch's first hand account up on the APTM main site.  In a nutshell: It happened during Intermission, he shot Stolypin down in the Orchestra seats, Nicholas and his family were out of their box, in an adjacent room having tea. Their box was empty.  Also, he was tackled to the ground within seconds of the shooting. He had little time to try for Nicholas, and even if he had the minute or two, the Imperial Box was empty.

http://alexanderpalace.org/palace/stolypin-murder-1911-kiev.html

I think in Booth's case, he was at the end of his rope. He originally wanted to kidnap Lincoln and that was the plan. He just couldn't get the support. He couldn't get the support to kill all of the other officials he targeted on that night as his "band" either got "cold feet" or got drunk or simply were too nervous and missed the mark

I read that most of the others just chickened out because they didn't want to risk getting caught and hanged.

Actually, we have Spiridovitch's first hand account up on the APTM main site.  In a nutshell: It happened during Intermission, he shot Stolypin down in the Orchestra seats, Nicholas and his family were out of their box, in an adjacent room having tea. Their box was empty.  Also, he was tackled to the ground within seconds of the shooting. He had little time to try for Nicholas, and even if he had the minute or two, the Imperial Box was empty.

True.  But Bogrov managed to get a gun into the opera house and had his choice of when to shoot.  Why didn't he just walk down the aisle during the performance to shoot Stolypin?  In fact, he would probably have had a better chance of getting away while people were not milling around and crowding the aisles and halls during an intermission.  And as he probably had the choice of when and where to shoot, why not shoot the tsar?

Bogrov had been an Okhrana agent since 1906, and even Alexander Solzhenitsyn credited the rumors that Bogrov was actually working on behalf of extreme rightist elements who wanted to put a stop to Stolypin's reforms.  Stolypin was, in fact, the object of spying by court circles.  P. G. Kurlov, who was Alexandra's choice to run the secret police over Stolpyin's strong objections, kept Stolypin -- the Prime Minister of Russia answerable only to the tsar -- under surveillance, intercepted his mail, and kept Alexandra informed, particularly on anything related to Rasputin.  (In fact, Kurlov has been suggested as the prime suspect for arranging the assassination of Stolypin, a man who was only holding onto office at that point due to Marie Feodorovna's direct intervention with her son, who was under constant pressure from Alexandra to dump him.)

Bogrov was tried by military court and hung ten days after the shooting, over the protests of Stolypin's widow.  And there is a particularly intriguing epilogue:  Nicholas ordered a stop to the judicial investigation of the assassination.  Now, why would the tsar not want to get to the bottom of the murder of his Prime Minister?

I wonder why the assassins just didn't shoot Alexandra.

I know that killing women was not thought about the way it is today and that it was the men who were thought to be in charge, but there were attempts of Queen Victoria's life a few times.

Actually, we have Spiridovitch's first hand account up on the APTM main site.  In a nutshell: It happened during Intermission, he shot Stolypin down in the Orchestra seats, Nicholas and his family were out of their box, in an adjacent room having tea. Their box was empty.  Also, he was tackled to the ground within seconds of the shooting. He had little time to try for Nicholas, and even if he had the minute or two, the Imperial Box was empty.

True.  But Bogrov managed to get a gun into the opera house and had his choice of when to shoot.  Why didn't he just walk down the aisle during the performance to shoot Stolypin?  In fact, he would probably have had a better chance of getting away while people were not milling around and crowding the aisles and halls during an intermission.  And as he probably had the choice of when and where to shoot, why not shoot the tsar?

Bogrov had been an Okhrana agent since 1906, and even Alexander Solzhenitsyn credited the rumors that Bogrov was actually working on behalf of extreme rightist elements who wanted to put a stop to Stolypin's reforms.  Stolypin was, in fact, the object of spying by court circles.  P. G. Kurlov, who was Alexandra's choice to run the secret police over Stolpyin's strong objections, kept Stolypin -- the Prime Minister of Russia answerable only to the tsar -- under surveillance, intercepted his mail, and kept Alexandra informed, particularly on anything related to Rasputin.  (In fact, Kurlov has been suggested as the prime suspect for arranging the assassination of Stolypin, a man who was only holding onto office at that point due to Marie Feodorovna's direct intervention with her son, who was under constant pressure from Alexandra to dump him.)

Bogrov was tried by military court and hung ten days after the shooting, over the protests of Stolypin's widow.  And there is a particularly intriguing epilogue:  Nicholas ordered a stop to the judicial investigation of the assassination.  Now, why would the tsar not want to get to the bottom of the murder of his Prime Minister?

According to Spiridovitch, Bogrov did not enter the Theatre until after the second act started. Bogrov was being watched by Kuliabko, who didn't order Bogrov to leave until then... Bogrov was a double agent, spying on the Revolutionaries and being paid for his information by the Okhrana.  He was, according to their investigations, working alone to prove himself to the revolutionaries as trustworthy.  Nicholas ended the investigation, because it was clear at that point that Bogrov was acting alone... I can send the full translation of Spiridovitch on the subject. if you want.

Actually I would enjoy reading Spiridovitch's recounting of the assassination.  It's a shame that his memoirs are not available in English.

But this story still bugs me.  It seems extraordinary that Bogrov, in an attempt to prove himself to the revolutionaries as trustworthy in order to continue gathering intelligence for the Okhrana, would choose a target as prominent as the Prime Minister.  He could have shown his bona fides as a revolutionary by picking a slightly less senior official.  It's sort of like killing the patient to stop the infection when there is a bottle of antibiotics standing on the table which could do the job with somewhat less consequence.

And surely Bogrov must have known he would be apprehended when he not only picked a venue that would be crawling with security due to the tsar's presence but chose a moment when the milling crowds would have made his escape especially difficult.  What would be his purpose in trying to maintain his cover as a double agent if he thought he was going to be hanged for it?

As a double agent, this whole scenario only makes sense if Bogrov had reason to believe he had some sort of immunity for killing Stolypin.

And I don't understand why Nicholas needed to stop the investigation if he was certain it could only conclude that Bogrov was acting alone.  Why be seen to interfere with the conduct of a much-followed judicial investigation if the outcome could only be benign for the regime?

The fact that the head of the secret police was spying on a Prime Minister who was unquestionably a devoted monarchist and doing everything he could to restore the dynasty's grip on power is an indicator of how bizarrely dysfunctional the imperial regime had become.

Through its surreptitious support of the Black Hundreds, the government was funding unprovoked physical attacks on the tsar's own subjects.  Through the Ministry of the Interior, incendiary and viciously cynical publications such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion were deliberately stirring up domestic violence.  The tsar was granting audiences and honorifics to newspaper publishers who openly incited pogroms.  Okhrana agents were assassinating senior government officials.  A tsar in the thrall of an unstable wife was using a magic comb to prepare for meetings with generals and advisors.

The last decade of the imperial regime simply beggars belief by any standard of rational government.  In the final analysis, autocracy was not the problem.  Institutionalized insanity was.

I agree with Tsarfan. The idea that a double agent in the payment of the Okhrana sent to ingrain himself with the Revolutionaries doing something so public that he could hardly use it for currency in the future makes no sense. That might be why it looked as if he was acting alone. Neither side - the Okhrana nor the Revolutionaries -it would seem would have advised him to go into public and kill a prime minister.

Kuliabko "ordered Bogrov to go into the theater during the intermission"?  Sounds to me like Kuliabko was doing a little bit of work on his own. If all the Revolutionaries needed was some form of good faith gesture from Bogrov, then going into a crowed theater, shooting the Prime Minister and getting caught wasn't going to prove anything to anyone.  It actually made Bogrov look like he must have been acting alone because neither the Okhrana nor the Revolutionaries got anything more form him.

What about the background of Kuliabko?

What about a cabal who wanted the Prime Minister dead and used Bogrov to get the deed done - it had been tried before - and "to Hell" with the Okhrana/Revolutionary information connection.

Maybe Bogrov or Kuliabko or the local Okhrana were "triple" agents?

You both need to go read the link I gave you. Kubliako never ordered Bogrov to go into the Theatre. He ordered B to go HOME...

OK. Bogrov was burned as a double agent to the Okhrana.  The Revolutionaries excluded him out of suspicion.  So, being burned the Okhrana stopped paying him and Bogrov was trying to play both sides.  Since the Okhrana had no use for him, he decided to go back to just the Revolutionaries and Stolypin was exactly the highest target possible and would ensure his success.  To me, though Spirid. never says it, I think Bogrov did it as a means of suicide/Martyrdom...he had to know he would never walk out of the theatre after shooting Stolypin.  Sort of like todays "suicide by cop"...

Read the long story posted. The investigation was stopped more because the ineptness of the Kiev police was embarrassing to the regime more than anything else.

It doesn't appear from the account that anyone could have been moving in the aisles during the performance, so the opportunity to shoot was only going to come at intermission. Bogrov's action makes sense. However, the account raises more questions than it answers (shades of the Warren Commission). It doesn't mean that it's false, but it does mean that there are legitimate questions. Spiridovich seems to hear everything about Bogrov and what people said to him through hearsay. Is this just a fragment of a longer report? Are there statements from those involved, especially what might be called Bogrov's "handlers"? Why bother sending the man home to confine him, and then not checking to be sure he actually went? It was also interesting to read that Stolypin gestured to the Tsar to leave his box (presumably out of fear for his safety), but I didn't see anything about Stolypin blessing the Tsar with the gesture of the cross, something that I have heard happened.