And yet in a letter from Toblosk his oldest daughter Olga writes that "Father asks to . . . remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love . . . "
Historians have often dismissed Nicholas as a dull fellow but I find him rather complex. Beneath the handsome yet bland exterior I think he was far more complicated than just about anyone--even his closest family members--were aware. (Alexandra, of course, and possibly his eldest daughter being the exceptions.) To apply a more modern term, he was certainly "button down" . . . the sort of person a corporation would gladly hire. He learned the rules and followed them, all the while displaying a convivial hail-fellow-well-met personality. Yet he was expected to lead, and that had to have been excruciatingly difficult for him.
After loosing his occupation and home, plus being humiliated and seeing his family and associates likewise humiliated . . . well, on the surface he presented a calm, go-with-the-flow attitude. But inside it must have cut to the very depth of his soul.
When we are wounded by exterior forces we question what we could have done better but also--a very human tendency--place blame on others. In recent months I've heard vociferous commentary--much of it accusatory--regarding "illegal immigrants and what they do to us." Decades ago I heard similar charges leveled against "uppity black people." So when someone fitting the description of the group you dislike/fear is found to be breaking the law and/or committing a heinous act, it's very easy to get on the bandwagon about EVERYONE who belongs to that ethnic/racial/religious/whatever group.
No doubt about it, the revolution was fueled by, among other people, Jews. But there were also non-Jewish revolutionaires (Lenin, to begin with) as well as Jewish people who did not identify or wish to be associated with the movement. It would be easy, though, given his youthful inculcation plus his rarified situation for Nicholas to feel that anarchist=Jew and Jew=anarchist.
We don't know what tone and attitude Nicholas took while reading this book to his children. Perhaps it was similar to the manner in which my father used to make sure I was aware that such-and-such a crime had been committed by a Negro. (Funny, he never pointed out crimes committed by middle class white guys like himself . . . and there were, to be sure, plenty of those as well!) Or, perhaps Nicholas was just throwing it out to them for their commentary. So, was he taking the attitude of a high school civics teacher, exposing his children to an opinion . . . or trying to ingrain a philosophy?
Another thought: What looks and sounds reasonable to us now may seem laughable, grieviously stupid, highly embarrassing, or even worse several decades from now. I know of a number of people, now in their seventies, who would deny, up and down, that they had ever made inflamatory and enormously hostile comments about racial parity. But guess what . . . they did.
