Thank you Elisabeth.
Bear, I understand your desperation at this point, but please do not quote me in support of your bizarre ideas. If I can see Nicholas II as a suffering human being, who was in the throes of some kind of nervous collapse in March 1917, that doesn't mean I support your thesis that he had this nervous collapse because he felt betrayed by everybody in his immediate proximity (wife, ministers, Duma deputies, generals, - I'm surprised you haven't included his children as well!). On the contrary, I think his nervous collapse was a direct response to the recent defeats of the Russian army and the atrocious casualty figures pouring in from the front... how many dead and wounded? Look it up. Nicholas II was on the brink of a breakdown precisely because he was not a pathological monster, like Hitler or Stalin, but because he knew and felt that he was directly responsible for the thousands upon thousands of deaths that were occurring daily in his name, not only as Tsar, but also as Commander-in-Chief of the Russian army.
There is no need for me to be desperate when discussing historical events.
If you cannot understand why Nicholas II felt betrayed then you cannot understand.
And, here is where we really part the ways. Sometimes a leader, be the person a Emp. or a Pres. see the broader picture of what is occuring around them and in the world, and, having made commitments are forced into war. Nicholas II had commitments and declared war. All of Petrograd cheered and thought the war was going to be quick. For some reason the masses always seem to think a war is going to be quick. Sometimes I wonder if it's a self deception to fool themselves because they should know wars are rarely short and rarely without spilling the blood of good men, women and children.
Unlike some who think that Nicholas II was not prepared, there are stats which show that in materials such as guns, weapons, boots ect. that Russia was on, almost, equal footing as Germany. The big difference was that Russia didn't have their Krupp Co. who was well aware that the war wasn't going to be short and churned out weapons like "Big Berthas".
In Russia, war became tangled with revolutionaries. The Germans were happy to help the revolutionaries and sent Lenin back to Russia with a train load of gold to help pay for guns which were secretly purchased by Radek from Krupp's man.
There are so many twists and turns of history that it's difficult to follow all the trails of betrayals between the different groups.
When Nicholas II asked his general not to send mounted troops toward the German lines that held machine guns, they told Nicholas II that he knew nothing about war and they, the generals, should be left with the business of war.
How many of you know why Nicholas II took over the command when he did? And, why he sent his cousin Nikolai to another area?
Look at Bush, look how much he's aged in the last six months alone. You know, I despise Bush and all his works, but you can see the man is suffering to some extent. He honestly does not understand where he went wrong. Thousands of Americans have gone to their deaths in the last several years, Iraq is still not secure, and yet he still doesn't "get it." Leaders, even bad and incompetent leaders (I'm not talking about truly evil leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, or Saddam), have some sense of their responsibility to the dead and their families, some sense that they are acting like gods in dispensing death for the sake of a higher cause. This is an awesome responsibility for anyone, but especially for men as limited in their abilities as Nicholas II and for that matter Bush - thoroughly ordinary men, who in any other situation would no doubt be regarded as upright, conscientious pillars of the community. Instead they're saddled with these moral burdens of truly biblical proportions - and as ordinary men, of course, they cannot meet the challenge. They fail. They have nervous breakdowns. Or they give incoherent press conferences. Etc. None of this means they're "betrayed" if their country starts looking around for better, more competent, and saner leadership... it just means they took on a job they couldn't handle and they now deserve to be replaced. In the United States, we have a constitutional, legal means of achieving this; whereas in the Russia of Nicholas II they did not, unfortunately.
I am not going to discuss Bush's politics in general, nor am I going to voice my opinion on the war in Iraq on this thread.
I support the rights of the individuals whom I believe were and are created equal, untill their actions prove they are unworthy of that status.
Sometimes, people have to make a stand somewhere, sometime and some place to stop terrorists or to change a govt. and it's leaders. And, yes, they will have to betray these leaders, and, yes, if they had given an oath of alligence, they will have to break from the oath. If they do NOT then men like Hitler, Stalin and other dictators can terrorize country's without the slighest worry of having to face any kind of reprisal for their actions. However, this is not the topic of this thread. This about how Nicholas II felt betrayed.
AGRBear
