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

[Tsarfan]

Tsarfan you appear to be saying that Stolypin was a good thing for Russia? Stolypin was appointed by Nicholas as Prime Minister primarily because of his ruthless conduct whilst Governor of Saratov. Nicholas wanted a hard liner after 1905, an attack dog for the regime. Stolypin delivered and his brutal dispensing of any real legal process to deal with (execute) opponents of the regime and rig the Duma elections did anything but stabalise Russia.

Well, he certainly was a better thing than what came after.

Stolypin's term as governor of Saratov has to be assessed in the context of what Stolypin felt was needed in Russia.  There were basically two types of peasant land organization in Russia at the time:  a system, mostly in the west of Russia, where peasants held land privately and engaged in relatively efficient farming methods similar to those used further westward in Europe; and the communal system that dominated in central Russia which was culturally and philosophically inconsistent with the fundamental notions of private property on which liberal western societies were built and which was extremely resistant to almost any changes aimed at greater economic efficiency or social progress, be it related to farming, transport, education, or even more regular local government (as opposed to local government that was a combination of tradition and the cronyism of village elders).

More than almost all central government figures of his era, Stolypin understood the issues in the countryside and he saw the impediments posed by the communal system to building a stable class of small land capitalists such as the yeoman farmer classes which brought social stability and economic progress to western nations.  And Saratov -- as a communal-based region with a history of particular rebelliousness -- would represent to Stolypin the very thing that most hindered Russia's ability to move its people into the 20th century.

You may call Stolypin an attack dog for the regime, but the landed gentry of his time saw him as a dangerous reformer whose agenda included such outrageous things as giving peasants wider property rights and full civil equality; who wanted to build local government around citizenship and property ownership rather than membership in a hereditary ruling class; who sought to regulate and moderate police conduct, particularly by dismantling the notorious system of Land Captains; who saw the need for compulsory and universal primary education; and who -- sin of all sins for that era -- wanted to end discrimination against the Jews.

It's true that Stolypin pushed for these reforms in order to strengthen the tsarist regime.  But given what 1917 and 1918 revealed about the bankruptcy of any other political philosophy or party in Russia for governing that vast, conflicted country short of a brutal dictatorship, that might not have been such a bad thing.

Even his much feted land reforms that led to the creation of the Kulak class was very unlikely to have worked given that by it he sought to politically disenfranchise the lower classes by turning the peasants away from their communes and in effect via capitalist self interest turn them conservative. Stolypin's ultra conservatism was a reaction, it was a reaction to the chaos and breaking down of the old social order, which was an inevitable consequence of the very late, cynical and clumsy Emancipation of the Serfs.

The serfs were emancipated a year before Stolypin was born, so he had nothing to do with the timing, cynicism, or clumsiness of emancipation.  He had only to do with trying to clean up the mess it left.

And I would argue with the notion that Stolypin was trying to make the communal peasants conservative.  If anything, he was trying to get them to adopt a liberal western view of property and economic organization.  The peasants of the mir were extremely conservative, resisting any efforts to change anything in their lives.  They turned on priests who tried to teach them to read; they ran agricultural agents who tried to modernize crop rotation methods out on a rail; they informed to the police on Mensheviks and Social Revolutionary party workers who tried to stir up their enthusiasm for political reform; they resented even their own who migrated to the cities for factory work and returned with too much book learning and too much new thinking.  As Lenin realized -- and put to viciously cynical use during the civil war -- the peasants of the commune wanted only three things:  to seize land from the gentry (and Church) and to split it among themselves according to ancient traditions and to put it to the plow using ancient methods of farming.

And I don't really know that Stolypin's attempts to create a Kulak class were much-feted.  They were detested by the gentry, resisted by the peasants of the mir, and -- as Stolypin himself acknowledged -- barely reached ten percent of the government's stated goals.

As the early soviet era was to prove, the Kulaks were just the stabilizing and liberalizing force that Stolypin envisioned and that Lenin and Stalin feared.  And the peasants of the mir were just the force of horrific political terror in the countryside that Lenin brilliantly exploited and that Stolypin so feared.

These were Nicholas's policies ultimately, not really even Stolypin's and certainly not Alexandra's.

I think Alexandra had only one policy:  to see that Baby inherited an intact autocracy.  It was not her influence over broader government policy that was so damaging, for she had almost none.  It was her influence over the disastrous decisions Nicholas made regarding execution of policy that helped remove the dangerously-thin margin of error under which Nicholas operated.  Certainly that margin had become so dangerously thin because of the social and economic forces building in late-19th-century Russia, but that reduction of margin was what made Alexandra's obtuse meddling, even when on the margin of things, so problematic.  It surely does not make make her a cause of the revolution.  But it does make her a factor.

[TimM]

The main but not entire reason is that she lost rationality and perspective due to extreme personal tragedy. The sheer level of physical suffering her son endured

That was one of the tragic aspects about the whole thing.  Alexandra was a desperate mother who had a deathly ill child.  The best doctors basically said to her:  "Sorry, we can't help you.  Better get the priest in here for Last Rites and be done with it."  What mother wants to hear that?  So I can understand how she embraced Rasputin when he showed up.  He was able to help Alexei, however he did it.  In her eyes, modern medicine and science had abandoned her son to his fate, while mysticism somehow helped, any wonder she embraced it.

[Tsarfan]

Alexandra was hardly the first Romanov tsarina to suffer the illness or death of a child, including an heir, yet none of rest of them went off the rails over it.  Incurable illness and death among children was sadly much more a part of people's lives into the 20th century -- even among the rich and powerful.

Tsar Alexis lost two sons and a daughter before the ages of 5.  Not counting his heir Alexis (whom Peter mourned more for his politics than his death), Peter the Great lost four sons and three daughters before the ages of 7.  Paul lost two daughters at ages 3 and 19.  Alexander I lost both his children (daughters) in infancy.  Nicholas I lost two daughters at ages 3 and 19.  Alexander II lost a daughter at age 7.  Alexander III (who himself became tsesarevich when his older brother died as a young man) lost a son in infancy.  His wife buried another son after Alexander's death.  In fact, over half of the Romanov tsars and tsarinas endured the deaths of their children.  And they were not indifferent to those deaths.  Peter the Great's letters to his wife Catherine regarding the illnesses and deaths of their children are quite moving, and Peter was known to truncate his state-related travels to get to a sick child's side.  Nicholas I adored his daughter Alexandra who died at 19 and maintained her bedroom as a shrine for the duration of his life.  Marie Feodorovna's letters indicate she suffered deeply over her son's long battle with tuberculosis and was almost inconsolable in the knowledge that he died along the side of a road in the arms of a peasant woman (whom she brought to St. Petersburg to spend hours with her in private).  

No matter how wrenching the suffering or loss of a child can be to a parent, there was something almost pathological in Alexandra's obsession with Alexis' hemophilia.  It has some of the flavor of Victoria's going off the rails over Albert's death and suggests a hysteric streak in the family.  And, while Alexandra might have blamed herself for the hemophilia, she was not the only Coburg to have passed it to a child.

The CEO of the multi-national infrastructure firm ASEA Brown Boveri once was challenged about the strains and lack of family life that the long work hours and constant travel placed on his senior executives.  His response was this:  "If you want to combine a good family life with a secure career and attractive pay, then we have thousands of positions for engineers and other professionals that would suit you nicely.  If, however, you want to be one of the top 200 or so executives on whom the success of this enterprise intimately depends and aspire to become rich rather than just make a handsome living, then you have to make a choice.  The pace of business and the nature of competition in an enterprise such as ours simply prevents me from offering any solution to those who want both."

I have something of the same view regarding emperors and empresses who stand on their rights to ordain the fates of over one hundred million subjects.  In order to assume that responsibility and the power and privileges that come with it, you should be expected to give up some of the ability to indulge your personal feelings, wishes, or obsessions without regard to the consequences that flow from them.  Yes, Alexandra was a stressed, grieving mother for good reason.  But she was also an empress who held fast to her immense power and privileges vis-a-vis her fellow humankind.  ABB or imperial Russia . . . you can't have it all, and successful people know it.

[edubs31]

Tsarfan no doubt the emotional unbalance of Alexandra left her less able to cope with similar situations seemingly handled by other royals. That said I would suggest that having a son alive, suffering through, and often in great pain because of an incurable illness is worse than going through the death of a child. We see this all the time with parents, or at least I have first hand...a mother loses her precious child and after the initial heartache and tears they are provided with some measure of closure. They also are able to take back a piece of their lives that was absent while they suffered through the emotional agony of trying in vain to care for an ill child once that child tragically passes on. The mind is relieved even if the heart remains broken...unfortunate still but better that than to be in agony both emotionally AND spiritually, no?

Perhaps I'm alone in this opinion but I see some evidence of this during the crisis at Spala in 1912. Alexandra & Nicholas (for that matter) being pushed to the emotional limit by their suffering boy. There almost seems to be an air of calm in the way that they readied that press released to be circulated to the public upon the likely death of the Heir. Almost like the Empress was already surrendering herself to the inevitable and doing so with an almost spiritual sense of relief. The idea, perhaps, that all of their trails were nearly at an end and their precious angel would at least now be taken by the lord to heaven.

Regarding your last comment I'll keep my response rather short by saying that I do mostly agree with you here. However for all of the talk about the responsibility that comes with power and the role of kings and queens, etc, Alexandra to me was unfit to be Empress but not through a lack of respect and appreciation for her "duties" so much as a lack of comprehension. Alix was in love and married Nicky, NOT the Tsarevich of a country of 140-million. There is evidence to suggest that she cared little about assuming the role of Empress. Not because she was disinterested in the responsibilites of being a world leader but because she was not ambituous. She may have enjoyed the privildeged life as a royal but was not concerned with power or the look of the next rung up the ladder. She was certainly naive but much of this could be understood. The obvious criticism being that she had 20 years to figure out her role before acting as an unwitting accomplice to the fall of an empire.

[Vanya Ivanova]

Stolypin a social reformer? really? Witte certainly but Stolypin I really don't think so. Stolypin's behaviour in Saratov was barbaric, as was his conduct as Prime Minister. His policies (or rather Nicholas's via him) sum up perfectly the inherent contradictions within the regime that led to disaster. Unlike Witte who wanted to promote geniune social reform along with industrial growth Stolypin attempted cynical social engineering with a view to industrial progress but with social regression.

Thats an idiotic and inherently contradictory combination that can only lead to disaster and did. Stolypin's actions were contradictory and confused and his promotion of the Zemstvo's etc was born out of the idea that it was a useful tool for repression to be seen to be offering reform with one hand whilst at the same time dismantling any form of genuine democracy (the Duma) with the other hand. Via Stolypin Nicholas was attempting to be subtle however even the peasants saw through this which is why they were so resistant to moving from the communes which were the one thing that had given them any real politcal agency after the Emancipation Act.

But here in lies the very crux of Nicholas's reign. Nicholas did initially flirt with reform by adopting policies put forward by Witte after 1905 and the first Duma was something approaching genuine democracy. However unrest in the country just increased. This convinced Nicholas it was a 'senseless dream' and so he changed tack and brought in the hard line and ruthless Stolypin. Stolypin thought he could create stability by creating a conservative farmer glass in Russia as was seen in western Europe. However he wanted to achieve this without giving those farmers ANY of the rights or freedoms enjoyed by their 'western' counterparts. People saw this and so resisted, because unlike Witte and Alexander II's moves in this direction, Stolypin's goal was industrial growth and social repression-  ie a return to serfdom in all but name.

However the change in Policy by Nicholas really does underline that by 1905 the game was already up. If Nicholas had held fast with Witte's policies it seems almost certain Revolution or certainly the loss of throne would have still ensued. He changed course back to the hard line and that failed too and just notched up the deaths of over three thousand Russians between 1906-1909 and the epithet of 'Bloody Nicholas'. Nicholas could not have held on to his throne either way, the liberation of 85% of the population from slavery so late in Russia's history and then his father's attempts to undo this meant that by the time Nicholas became Tsar revolution was an inevitability whatever he did. The imbalances in Russian society were just too great to withstand a slow and peaceful transition to change.

WWI and the patriotism it engengered actually most likely prolonged the dynasty as people focused on a common enemy outside Russia. The reason Russia lost the war was mainly due to the fact that Russia simply didn't have the infrastructure to support modern warfare. Troops went into battle without boots and sometimes even guns whilst at home people went without basic necessities. No amount of military brilliance could have surmounted that. The reason the country was so poorly organised was because the continuation of the gross social inequalities had prevented Russia from acheiving successful industrialisation. It was a mediaeval state trying to operate by 20th century standards. In my personal opinion, the pivotal period was the reign of Alexander III not Nicholas II. The mistakes made by Alexander III are what ensured disaster.

That is why to concentrate on what Nicholas II's wife did or didnt do is to miss the point entirely. The fact that Alexandra's behaviour is still given such agency in these events I can only attribute to 'good old fashioned' misogyny. The Russian Revolution came about due to enormous social and industrial pressures compounded by the size and diversity of the population. Alexandra like Marie Antoinette before her was and evidently still is, the proverbial 'scapegoat'.

[TimM]

Perhaps I'm alone in this opinion but I see some evidence of this during the crisis at Spala in 1912. Alexandra & Nicholas (for that matter) being pushed to the emotional limit by their suffering boy

No, you're not alone.  That must have been horrible for them, especially that they still had to entertain guests and such while poor Alexei was suffering.  Alexandra barely slept, she must have been on the brink of both emotional and physical collapse.  I can't imagine what that must have been like for her.

[Tsarfan]

Stolypin a social reformer? really?

Yes, really.  You are confusing means with ends.  There is no doubt that Stolypin was determined to keep autocracy intact.  But his strategy to use what we loosely call “liberal” policies to accomplish it has a long and storied history.

The practitioners of pursuing liberal polices to create, extend, or consolidate conservative power include Cyrus the Great, Alexander the Great, Louis XIV, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Mikhail Speransky, Alexander II, Otto von Bismarck . . . and Peter Stolypin, to name but a very few.  In more recent times, we see this same strategy in Lyndon Johnson, a Texas Dixiecrat with a solid authoritarian streak, becoming the foremost driver of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and George W. Bush’s Republicans expanding Medicare to prescription drug coverage.

I really cannot see what is so baffling about pointing out the indisputable facts of Stolypin’s reformist agenda in the service of a conservative aim.

. . . Stolypin attempted cynical social engineering with a view to industrial progress but with social regression.

Dismantling discrimination against the Jews, universal primary education, and political rights based on citizenship and property instead of on noble birth are “social regression”?

I never said Stolypin was a nice guy.  I said he pursued social reform in order to help the autocracy retain its grip on power in the face of swelling revolutionary forces.

You don’t like Stolypin.  I get it.  But insisting that black is white is not the strongest of arguments.

And, well-informed as you are, you seem willfully to be overlooking the fact that the determined undercutting of Stolypin came primarily from the extreme right inside the government and the landed gentry in the countryside, not from the centrist or leftist voices.  To me that suggests something worth noting about his agenda.

But here in lies the very crux of Nicholas's reign. Nicholas did initially flirt with reform by adopting policies put forward by Witte after 1905 and the first Duma was something approaching genuine democracy. However unrest in the country just increased. This convinced Nicholas it was a 'senseless dream'

Being forced to adopt reform at the point of a gun is “flirting” with reform?

Nicholas gave his infamous “senseless dreams” address in 1895 and never veered off that course unless under intense duress.  I do not think he had to wait for the unrest of 1905 to become convinced that reform was not his cup of tea.

It was a mediaeval state trying to operate by 20th century standards. In my personal opinion, the pivotal period was the reign of Alexander III not Nicholas II. The mistakes made by Alexander III are what ensured disaster.

On this we agree, except that I would add “the mistakes made by Alexander III and pursued doggedly by his son are what ensured disaster”.

That is why to concentrate on what Nicholas II's wife did or didnt do is to miss the point entirely. The fact that Alexandra's behaviour is still given such agency in these events I can only attribute to 'good old fashioned' misogyny.

You can play the racist/chauvinism/misogyny card all you want, but I don’t see any hysterical Republicans here bleating about Bill Clinton’s bringing his wife into policy-making councils (something which I wish he had done more extensively).

The fact is that Alexandra was not a stay-at-home wife, especially during the final unraveling of the dynasty.  She sat hidden on a loge while he met with counselors.  She had Nicholas’ ministers spied upon.  Her candidate, over the Prime Minister’s objections, was put in charge of the security police.  After 1915 the civilian ministers frequently were required to report to her, and their fates often hung on her approval or disapproval.  She advised the tsar on issues as far-reaching as military command and wartime transport.

I posted earlier that she was hardly the cause of the revolution, saying that she was only a factor and even then less on policy and more on tactics.  But to argue that she had almost no agency in events and that anyone who thinks so is a misogynist is to deny plain facts.  The suggestion that Alexandra, despite all this clear involvement in what was going on, could have had no impact on events actually seems to me to be the more misogynistic viewpoint.

[Vanya Ivanova]

I really enjoy your posts Tsarfan and have enormous respect for what you say, however I think we will have to agree to disagree about Alexandra's level of influence over events.

On Stolypin though, my point is that he (and Nicholas) only offered a cynical sham of social progress, because all the while they were dismantling and engineering the Duma so that it effectively ceased to be democratic in any meaningful way. In this there is an eerie symmetry in some ways with Yeltsin and Putin.

Stolypin's 'reforms' were that in name only because they were calculatedly designed to appear to be promoting 'citizenship' and social progress etc but in actual fact were determinedly trying to put that 85% back into serfdom. You say that his main enemies were the far right nobility but the results of the 3rd Duma elections tell a different story.

Its not a case of 'disliking' Stolypin and what happened to him and more poignantly his poor daughter was truly awful. He in many ways was in an impossible situation and early on did try to improve workers conditions, however, it was never with a view to genuine social reform.

A man who masterminded a 'fast track' court system specifically to ordain the summary executions of any political opponents and backed that up with the underhand dismantling of any genuinely consultive government bodies simply cannot in my opinion be called a 'social reformer'.

[Tsarfan]

. . . I think we will have to agree to disagree about Alexandra's level of influence over events.

Frankly, I've been all over the lot about Alexandra, so just wait a few weeks and I might not even disagree with you.  I know there has been some recent scholarship that suggests her influence over Nicholas has been overstated.  But on the other hand, the time correlations between what is in their written correspondence and reported conversations and what Nicholas actually did cannot be ignored.

And there is another angle from which to view this.  Reports about Alexandra figure more prominently in pre-revolutionary diaries, correspondence, and diplomatic conversations and reports than any other consort of that era except Prince Albert.  And from 1915, her name was constantly on the lips of ministers, courtiers, politicians, and diplomats in their reports and correspondence, surpassing even the interest in Albert at the height of his influence.  In fact, not since the relationship of Peter the Great with his wife Catherine do I find a Russian tsar whose wife's name came up so frequently in political discourse of the time as that of Alexandra.  Think about Europe in turmoil as Napoleon's grip extended across Europe and then Russia reeling under an invasion.  Does anyone know much about where Alexander I's wife stood on any of this or what she was doing at the time?  Did anyone at the time really care?

One could argue that Alexandra has become seared into our consciousness due to the heart-wrenching grief of her son's illness, the drama of her demise, and the decades-long fascination with the Anastasia saga and movies such as "Nicholas and Alexandra".  But none of that was widely known or had even happened at the time her name became a recurrent refrain in the politics of the era.

I find it hard to believe there is not some reason for this.  Remember, for all that has been written since about Alexandra, we are looking through a long lens with a lot of filters.  It was Nicholas' and Alexandra's contemporaries who saw things at first hand.  And they could not quit talking about her, from the underground revolutionary press to the private letters and clandestine meetings of grand dukes and duchesses to the plottings of murders in palace basements.

On Stolypin though, my point is that he (and Nicholas) only offered a cynical sham of social progress, because all the while they were dismantling and engineering the Duma so that it effectively ceased to be democratic in any meaningful way.

I agree entirely that Stolypin's purpose in pursuing reforms was cynical, i. e., meant to foster the security of an autocratic system.  But I do not think it follows that it was intended as a sham of social progress, at least on Stolypin's part as opposed to Nicholas.  

Certainly some elements of his reforms could have been engineered as a slight of hand.  For instance, dismantling the network of Land Captains could be hyped as reform but their form of grip on the countryside maintained through less-visible changes in the bureaucratic administration of the countryside.  And police procedures could have been hyped as being regularized and made less arbitrary but repression still maintained by taking steps to be sure the newly-regularized regulations were sufficiently harsh and more evenly applied.

But I really cannot see how things such as granting civil rights to Jews or instituting universal primary education could be done with a slight of hand.  The Jews would have known whether or not their rights were recognized, and the population as a whole would know whether the kids were or were not in school learning to read and cipher.

Stolypin was sophisticated enough to know that for the Russian monarchy to have any chance of surviving long into a new century where capital was flowing across national borders, where rapid mass communication was spreading, where urban worker density was exploding, and where unrest in the countryside was easily ignited his reforms had to be more than for appearance's sake.  And Stolypin's personal history indicates that his desire to make agriculture more efficient and the peasantry more prosperous was real.  During the New Deal era in the U.S., when social revolution was a real fear and mortgage and economic assistance agencies were being formed, a saying emerged that "a nation of homeowners will never have a revolution".  I think this is a rather apt description of Stolypin's motives in making the means available to enterprising peasants to acquire and grow their land holdings and to finance the mechanization of their farming.

The great irony is that Stolypin's viewpoint had much in common with Lenin's in this sense:  both believed that unassailable central authority and brutal methods to maintain it were not inconsistent with social reform for some abstract "good of the people".  In fact, if you believe that one cannot be a sincere social reformer and a power-obsessed murderous brute at the same time, there are quite a few Bolsheviks I'd like you to meet.

[Louis_Charles]

I think Stolypin can be called a social reformer if you do not necessarily limit the terms to operations that you regard as benevolent. Mussolini and Hitler --- and I am not comparing Stolypin to either of them --- were social reformers. Lenin and Stalin certainly were. I also am not sure he can be given credit for creating the kulak class; there were always serfs in any village who were wealthier, exercised more influence, held a larger share of land privately. And was the Duma in, say, 1908, all that helpful a body. It seemed to divide down the middle, more or less, between those who supported the autocracy and those who really, really didn't. The best it could be at that point was onstructive, and given Nicholas' perogatives, not even that. So perhaps making an end run around them to try and strengthen a class that would have added stability and at least the possibility of gradual change was  truly "social reform".

As for Alexandra, I admire her for nursing soldiers during the war (although since her husband was the one who sent them to be wounded, it may be that she had learned a lesson from the Japanese War), but sorry, that wasn't her job, and of course, that wasn't the only thing she was doing during the war. After 1915, she was also gridlocking the imperial government by shifting a series of incompetent proteges in and out of office at a dizzying rate. Moreover, I seriously doubt that the birth of Alexei made her personality significantly more awry. She was a pill in the making in Livadia in 1894. She did not become a royal when she married Nicholas, she was born into it --- this is a person who grew up calling Victoria "Granny". Her sisters married into the imperial families of Russia and Germany, and Victoria Mountbatten didn't marry the boy next door. At some point it must have crossed the young Alix's mind that her position in life could be elevated --- "Nicky" was making his interest known in "Sunny" when the girl was barely a teenager. I think it would be very interesting for someone to do a serious study of Alexandra's education. Nicholas was an autocrat not by temperament, but because of the way he was educated, and to some extent because of his general upbringing. I think Alexandra was an autocrat by temperament. In less elevated terms, this was someone who had to have her own way. For example, for someone who yammered along in her letters about God's Will, she was certainly mighty quick to attempt to influence the Almighty in her general direction. By the tenets of her own belief, it was God's will that she had four daughters, so what was with all of the voodoo behaviors to beget a son?

If you want to continue the Titanic analogy, and I am always up for a good Titanic analogy, how about this? When the bridge was notified by the lookout that there was an iceberg dead ahead, the first officer had decisions to make. It is widely believed that if he had made the choice to hit the berg bow-on, the ship would not have been damaged enough to sink. Instead, he attempted to turn her, and by doing so caused a series of glancing collisions that puunched holes along her below the waterline. Were there decisions that the Tsar could have made between, say , 1984 and 1914 that might have prevebnted the horrors of the Revolution and what followed? And did Alexandra have the kind of influence over her husband that might have caused him to make the wrong decisions --- even if it was only to uphold his mistaken ideas about Russia, outdated even to some of his predecessors? I think the answer to both questions is yes.

[Louis_Charles]

And while I think we are more interested in political actions (if any) that Nicholas might have undertaken to preserve the throne, I really do think that his single most disastrous mistake was to marry Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. The families knew there was a possibility of hemophilia. Her personality was difficult during the courtship until she managed to convince herself that God's will and her desires were in alignment, and she, more than any single factor, caused Nicholas to withdraw into what was more or less "private life". And that wasn't their job. I totally get the Duke of Windsor, and I think he ought to get some credit for taking himself off the throne when he realized that he couldn't be King Emperor and have Mrs. Simpson. If you are not cut out to be an autocrat . . . don't be an autocrat. Although I did just think of something. If Alix imprinted her idea of how a ruler behaves from what her grandmother got away with after Albert's death, it would explain a lot. Of course, Victoria had Disraeli and Gladstone to actually rule the British Empire while she did what she pleased.

[Petr]

I really cannot see what is so baffling about pointing out the indisputable facts of Stolypin’s reformist agenda in the service of a conservative aim.

I quite agree. By the way, there was quite a bit of support for his reforms in the upper classes, even among the landed gentry. I always heard from my Grandmother that he was the one person who could have avoided the onset of the Revolution. His promotion of Zemstvos and other agricultural reforms gave rise to improvements in agricultural production and the development of a peasant landowning class which, but for Stalin's cruel and barbarous suppression of the Kulaks, would have truly revolutionized Russia.    

It was a mediaeval state trying to operate by 20th century standards. In my personal opinion, the pivotal period was the reign of Alexander III not Nicholas II. The mistakes made by Alexander III are what ensured disaster.

On this we agree, except that I would add “the mistakes made by Alexander III and pursued doggedly by his son are what ensured disaster”.[/quote]

As I have stated elsewhere, I believe the reign of Alexander III requires a reexamination and I await Margaret Nelipa's new biography with great anticipation.  One needs only read Witte's Memoirs (and he certainly cannot be deemed a right wing fanatic) and his comments regarding Alexander III to realize that Western liberal views of his reign may be overly negative and lack balance. That he was conservative, absolutely. That he harshly repressed revolutionaries and members of the "Peoples Will", undoubtedly. That he made errors, particularly with respect the Jewish question, no question, but that should not necessarily color the view of the totality of his reign. He unquestionably pushed Russia towards industrialization and the 20th Century (see Witte's Memoirs), an industrialization which presented increased opportunities to various segments of society that heretofore were excluded from advancement, including Jews.  Without excusing his views on this subject, antisemitism was, unfortunately, universally present throughout Europe and even in the United States among many different classes in society (not just in ruling circles). Furthermore, his foreign policy was nonbelligerent and in many respects of great benefit to Russia and, had he lived, I personally believe he would have kept Russia out of WWI with a resulting profound effect on history.
  
Having ones Father blown up is not conducive to maintaining a tolerant attitude towards those whose sole purpose was to violently bring down the government and all those associated with it. One needs only look at the change in political thinking of the publicist M.N. Katkov (from a European educated liberal supporter of AII’s reforms to a conservative adviser to AIII) to realize the profound effect the terrorism of the 70s and 80s had on society and the “thinking classes”. Should President Obama be castigated for drone attacks on the Taliban (and that at a much greater remove and arguably lower threat level from what was happening in Russia during the latter part of the 19th Century). AIII was an autocrat (like many other European monarchs of the era) and saw it as his God given duty to protect the throne (at a time when duty and the belief in God meant something).  Our views of autocracies may have changed but correspondingly the President of the United States swears an oath to defend the Constitution and, hopefully, taking that oath is not merely lip service.

Petr              

[edubs31]

And while I think we are more interested in political actions (if any) that Nicholas might have undertaken to preserve the throne, I really do think that his single most disastrous mistake was to marry Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt. The families knew there was a possibility of hemophilia. Her personality was difficult during the courtship until she managed to convince herself that God's will and her desires were in alignment, and she, more than any single factor, caused Nicholas to withdraw into what was more or less "private life". And that wasn't their job. I totally get the Duke of Windsor, and I think he ought to get some credit for taking himself off the throne when he realized that he couldn't be King Emperor and have Mrs. Simpson.

Interesting take on it. Marrying for love is sadly, and often, not a privilege extended to those who wield great power. Leaders, it would seem, need to think of their marriage as a business partnership stimulated only by an inner-office style affair, lol.

[Alixz]

Wow, I have been away and this thread is fantastic!

I am so tired of everyone trying to mitigate Alexandra's faults with the sad story of her being the mother of sick child. Many of us are the parents of sick children or autistic or down syndrome children. The best example is the Kennedy family and their down syndrome sister. I know that she wasn't going to die as Alexei was, but the Kennedy family and Eunice in particular didn't take this sitting down and moaning. She started Camp Shriver which eventually led to the Special Olympics Games.

Alexandra was a self centered and self involved moaner. From the original "no I can not" to Nicholas's proposal to her involvement in the politics of the final days of the monarchy. When life hand us lemons we are supposed to make lemon aid not sick back and suck on those lemons and become more sour than we were before.

[Louis_Charles]

Petr,

Well, even if you write off a series of unfortunate behaviors like pogroms, there still remains the problem:  whatever Alexander III did to move Russia forward as a modern industrialized nation was going to make the Revolution more or less inevitable unless he managed to give up his truly medieval ideas of what being Tsar were all about (and these were opposed to those of, say Peter the Great, or Catherine the Great). You cannot be a batushka-tsar to factory workers. And factory workers made the Revolution.