"Sam ikh privel v podval..." "he led them to the basement himself"

[James1941]

If he was going to put down the disorders in Petrograd and anywhere else they might spring up, the tsar needed the army. He needed his generals to march the army to the city and put down the revolt. Thus, he was forced to sound out his generals as to whether they would support him in this endeavor and continue the war. The generals were "polled" so to speak. The results came back decidedly against Nicholas. The majority of the generals stated they would not support using force against the demonstrators and strikers.
There is some indication that they had joined in a plot to force Nicholas aside because of the war situtation and the unpopularity of the government. In any case, without the support of the army Nicholas realized his rule was bankrupt and he had no power, so he did what was asked of him. Unfortunately he bungled this also.

[marina]

Is Nicolas II guilty for what happened to him and to his family?

[Yseult]

For sure, tsar Nicholas never deserved an cruel execution in a cellar of Ipatiev without a previous trial. He and his wife and children never deserved be killed by firing squad and finished off by bayonets.

But, If you ask if Nicholas deserved to loose his crown, his throne, his empire...from my point of wiew, yes, he deserved it. He was so unexperienced when he became tsar after the death before of time of his father...true. But he rested unable to understand the signs of times. Autocracy was not the way, but he fight against wind and tide to reasure the autocracy. When he was forced to acept a Duma, he almost inmediately came into conflict with the parlament; when the second Duma replaced the first Duma, closed as he ordered, the relationship never grew up to an understanding and later changed the electoral laws to made sure that the next Dumas to have a more conservative containt, and it was not fair play. He banished the most clever ministers if they seemed (relatively) liberals, as Witte or, in the last times, Stolypin (Stolypin was not in fact an liberal but he had comon sense enough to admit they need to make some reforms).

Nicky made a lot of mistakes, but the more remarcable mistake was to allow the tsarina involving herself in politics. Alicky was simply minded and obtuse at the same time. She believed in autocracy more than his husband and she encouraged him to send away Witte or Stolypin because these men were not friends to "Our friend" Rasputin. She also encouraged him to assume the role of commandant en chief of the armies during the war, dismissing Nicolasha from this position. She remained at home and domestic issues were in her hands, a stupid choice of Nicky. He really loved his wife, and was devoted to her, but to let Alicky free to make this or make that when she was really hated at this time...what a foolish thing!

[Ortino]

This has been discussed in similar threads. Please refer to those first before posting a new one.

[marina]

Yes but this is a POLL and the thread is here only to argue your vote. I'm also fed up to see many as discussion only about family's physique, kindness and bla bla bla. I would like to see more topics about history and if it has been already discussed, that's fine!!! Nobody blames a host of topics of pictures. Even me, I join in it.  

[Angie_H]

This has been discussed in similar threads. Please refer to those first before posting a new one.

Kinda hard to do at the moment since we can't access them  :-/

[Ortino]

This has been discussed in similar threads. Please refer to those first before posting a new one.

Kinda hard to do at the moment since we can't access them  :-/

Has the search button malfunctioned or something?

[ordino]

Poor man. He did what he believed correct.  At the end, he did not try to go out of Russia, he was an autocrat, but no for himshelf election but for education. Maybe the fatal error was the absence of a good adviser near him. For instance, the brothers of Alexander III, maybe they did must help him much, much more. Really no guilty.
Ordino

[Angie_H]

This has been discussed in similar threads. Please refer to those first before posting a new one.

Kinda hard to do at the moment since we can't access them  :-/

Has the search button malfunctioned or something?

The Search button only lets you get up to 15 results  :-/ (the old site let you put up to a 100 in the results field) and you can't access some pages because of the move to the new server. Older pages can not be accessed, you get an error message. The FA said they are trying to make the old site a "read only" site, but I don't think it's happened yet.  

[Mazukov]

I think it's a tough question to ask, could he have done more. i would have to say of course he could have. if he is to fault it would be his lack of good advise, or his lack in taking good advice.

We do know that he wasn't an evil man in the lines of a stalin he more or less wanted to keep the status quo. in that erra of change much like today coming into a new centry, he lacked the forsite to behond the past.

was he guilty of crimes? did he purge his nation? did he comit mass murder for the sake of keeping his power. history says no.was he guilty of being nump at the helm yes he was.

if we look at western leaders of this past centery, churchill, fdr, trumen, ect,, they all did things that didn't go well.i'm not sure there has been a leader that hasnt always done what was right. for whatever reason. then we have leaders like satlin,hitler, ect men in this company were simply evil and guilty of all sort of crimes against there own people. if he is guilty of anything it in being a weak leader in a time when his nation needed a strong leader who would have been willing to make strong changes that would have been a benafit to the masses rather than to the people of uper class.

[marina]

So responsible but not guilty?  :-?

[Laura Mabee]

So responsible but not guilty?  :-?

I think the answer your looking for is difficult to answer given only three options. There is to much involved (in my opinion) to make it such a simple answer.

Ortino was right in the fact that there was another thread, in fact, there is a whole slew of them. So much so, that the FA made a seperate part of the forum for it.
Check it out here

 

[Caleb]

I think that Nicholas, shared only SOME of the blame. I think quite a bit of the blame goes to the "People's Will", in that, I think had Alexander II not been assasinated in the way he was, I think neither Alexander III, nor Nicholas II would have been quite so reactionary. I also think that some of the blame goes to the church, in that the leader of the Holy Synod used his influence over Alexander III & Nicholas II to instigate many of the pogroms in Russia, particularly against the Jews. (I'm not just singling out the Orthodox Church, because I think when you have an autocracy, religous groups & ministers can get the monarch to go one way or the other. This is especially true when one religous group has a "monopoly" on a country.) I think that people need to know where to draw the line. It's fine with me when someone tries to instigate some form of morality in the laws. Particularly in the 20th century the morality that the United States was founded on was being forgotten, causing problems in many areas. (Sorry if I offend anyone but this is how I strongly feel) Also however relgious groups need to know when to stop, personally dictating the policies of the government, becuase, you'll either have extremists on one side, or everything will come loose because of near anarchy. So, I feel that we need morality in a government, but I do think that we do need to have some type of place where we draw the line. Anyhow....to say that Nicholas is guilty, would probably imply that Nicholas soley took the blame for what happened. I think he acted a BIT on his own initiative, but I think he was dominated too much by the past (especially his father's legacy of being a reactionary) & bad advise. I think the old addage that someone was "in the wrong place at the wrong time" could somewhat be applied to Nicholas. To sum it up. Nicholas II as a politician wasn't totally innocent, but he CERTAINLY wasn't totally guilty.

[marina]

I think that Nicholas, shared only SOME of the blame. I think quite a bit of the blame goes to the "People's Will", in that, I think had Alexander II not been assasinated in the way he was, I think neither Alexander III, nor Nicholas II would have been quite so reactionary.  

"People's Will" as you write it was, for me, justified. We have to make a difference between terrorist and all these people who just wanted a better world, a fair world. I remember "Doctor Zhivago" when he demonstrates in the streets, thinking naively that communism will save them. One year later, all these people have been robbed, some of them have been killed. It gives me the occasion to think of all anonymous people who have also been victim of red terror; We write a lot about Imperial family (normal!), but too little about them.    

[Romanov_fan]

I would choose the last one. Yes, he made serious mistakes, but they were not meant, in the sense of being intentional, like Stalin, or the Communists in general, or some of Russia's pre Romanov rulers. He did end up making mistakes, and a leadership role wasn't the best thing for him. He stuck to doctrines such as Fatalism, which made him accept bad things, almost as if willing them, and not try to change, them or even think change is possible-which is fine in personal life, but when you are ruling an empire, it isn't so much.  And also the autocracy, that everything that the autocrat did was right, and that letting any power go to others was wrong, the autocracy was God's will. And also naive notions of the Russian peasantry supporting their father Tsar, ignoring the realities of their lives. Everything the autocrat did, was God's will, and could never be wrong, when obviously, that wasn't true. Nicholas believed all these things, and let them dominate the goverment, and also let his wife govern later according to these ideals.

But he did not realize these things were intentionally harmful, that change and reforms were the future, and that constituinal monarchy was as well. He believed he was doing his best, and the best for Russia. He did not intentionally let innocents die, for political crimes they did not commit, nor for no reason, like Stalin and the Communists, intentionally. These things may have happened, but they were not his ideas. He did not realize the course he followed may not have been the best, and he most likely thought it was the correct one. His was merely weak, not harmful leadership.