Who Betrayed Nicholas II?

[Forum Admin]

I think Kurt hit the nail on the head. I tried saying, some ten or more pages back, that it was a complex combination of the personality of Nicholas II AND those around him that lead to the abdication.

Bev's point that the Tsar was "just a human" and lucky in the genetic lottery is a solidly mid to late 20th century notion. Actually, the Emperor's power came exactly from the notion that they were chosen by God, look at Alexander III for example. The whole mess of the Revolution, at least to me, was the turning point in Russian society where the notion of "humanism" was beginning to take root and running smack up against the three hundred year old traditions of the Emperor.

Nicholas was not an evil man, no matter how much you might want to paint him with that brush. Actually, his civility, to me, was part of his fault.  It lead to indecisiveness when strong decision making was required. It sent mixed signals to those around and subordinate to him, when clear leadership was demanded.

Nicholas didn't REFUSE to meet with Gapon. He did not even consider to meet or NOT as an option. THATS the point...It was not because Nicholas wished ill to the workers, or refused to "care" for the poor. Those ideas were not even on his radar screen. Not due to any omission or comission of Nicholas, rather, due to the very nature of the instituion of the autocracy.  I don't think Nicholas "betrayed himself" , while he was a flawed person, rather, I think the nature of the institution of the autocracy itself was unable to be compatible with the societal changes which were taking place. Having read Nicholas' own words, and those who were closest to him for a first hand view, I am convinced that Nicholas believed in his heart that he was doing the best possible job he could for the people of Russia as a whole. It was the institution itself that was "at fault" and Nicholas was just trying to play the role he had been born, bred and trained for at the end of a 300 year old institution that was unable to adapt to the societal changes of the new 20th century.

just my 2 kopeks.
Rob (and not necessarily those of the APTM itself)

[AGRBear]

Kurt,

As the creator of the thread,  I asked everyone to discuss  not how they felt but  how Nicholas II felt.  In his diary he wrote he felt  he had been betrayed.

So, the  topic on this thread  is:  Who do you think betrayed Nicholas II?

AGRBear

[Tsarfan]

It was not because Nicholas wished ill to the workers, or refused to "care" for the poor. Those ideas were not even on his radar screen.

Rob, I have to disagree.

In 1886, a law was passed to create a cadre of factory inspectors in Russia's large urban centers.  These inspectors were put under the supervision of the local zemstvoes, and they were charged with enforcing new, more stringent regulations relating to improving working conditions, and they were also charged with dispensing care and aid to workers in dire need.  This was done on much the same theory that Bismarck had introduced workers compensation and other similar legislation in Germany -- to reduce the appeal of left-leaning movements to the workers.

Early in Nicholas' reign, however, he reversed this policy of liberalization.  The central government took over the supervision of the factory inspectors, there numbers were reduced, they were instructed to loosen their enforcement of pro-worker regulation, and agents of the secret police began to be introduced into the inspector ranks.  This was done, in part, in furtherance of Nicholas' policy to attract foreign capital to Russia by offering investors high levels of factory output at minimal costs.

Worker issues were on Nicholas' radar screen when the factory owners and finance ministry officials wanted them to be. 

[Forum Admin]

It was not because Nicholas wished ill to the workers, or refused to "care" for the poor. Those ideas were not even on his radar screen.

Worker issues were on Nicholas' radar screen when the factory owners and finance ministry officials wanted them to be. 

Tsarfan, that is exactly my point. Sorry not to have been clear, that statement was directly in reference to Bloody Sunday, and not a blanket statement of Nicholas' reign.

[AGRBear]

If you, Tsarfan,  are once again going into the  topic that Nicholas II betrayed his people,   this is not the thread to do it.  There are plenty of threads  where this is  being discussed.   Like Simon has said,   we've already enough on our plate just talking about those  whom Nicholas II believed had betrayed him.

Sometimes,  like, now,  there are "carry overs" from other threads,  like Bloody Sunday,  but,  it's best to returned to  the Bloody Sunday thread to discuss your differences.

AGRBear

PS  It is not  my intent  to white wash Nicholas II's failures as a Tsar.   It is my intent to discover the people who felt so strongly about what was happening to Russia,  that they broke their oath to Nicholas II and conspired to take away his crown and replace him.   Who were these people?  And,  in this  turn over of power,   the man in charge,  the Tsar,  felt betrayed.  Whom do you think Nicholas II saw as his betrayers?

[Tsarfan]

Tsarfan, that is exactly my point. Sorry not to have been clear, that statement was directly in reference to Bloody Sunday, and not a blanket statement of Nicholas' reign.

Fair enough, Rob.  But I was also taking a bit of issue with the point that Nicholas did not wish ill to the workers or refused to care for the poor.  I won't go so far as to say he wished them ill.  But, when confronted with the choice of whether to favor their interests or that of the factory owners, he opted for the latter.  And his government actually reduced the number of inspectors at the same time that the urban factory population was growing -- inspectors who had the care of indigent workers among their duties.

[AGRBear]

Tsarfan,

Why don't you start up a thread about the WORKERS  and their grievanes.   I for one would find the topic interesting and  we'd all probably learn a lot  due to your understanding of the problems  in Russia at that time.

AGRBear

[Forum Admin]

I agree Tsarfan. However, what was the US government's position when faced with the same choice of Factory owners vs. Worker? What was the British choice? Remember, the thought was, at the time, that economic development and industrial growth was paramount to the national interest.

I, personally, can not fault Nicholas for making the same choices that the British governement made, or even the choices made by the US government at the same time. Remember the Homestead massacre of 1892? The US government sent the National Guard in to suppress the workers, ten were killed.

The Pullman strike in Chicago of 1894? Pres. Cleveland stepped in on the side of big business.

There was NO US Federal regulation of worker's rights until Franklin Roosevelt in the early 30s.

How can we judge Nicholas by any different standard than our own history of the period?

[AGRBear]

Speaking of inspectors,   have you ever counted how many meat inspectors there are here in the USA.  

You'll find many of these problems still exsist  in most countries  today.

AGRBear

[Bev]

Rob, there were federal laws concerning labour - the child labour act is just one.  There was also a vast body of state laws protecting labour. 

The Homestead Strike was stopped when the governor sent in the state miilitia, the U.S. government had no legal standing in the strike.

I'd like to point out that Gapon's march was not a "strike", it's express purpose was to present a petition to the Tsar.

[Louis_Charles]

I don't think that people are judging Nicholas by different standards, to tell you the truth. I don't find anyone defending the very real attacks on labor mounted by American society at the end of the nineteenth century. But there were also those who advocated for the workers, and ultimately people like Teddy Roosevelt --- not FDR --- who did a great deal to lay groundwork for the gains they made during the first fifty or so years of the 20th century. And much of the opposition to labor originated with the corporations as opposed to the government --- not a problem for Nicholas. After all, it was necessary get certain trusts and monopolies dismantled in the USA in order to pave the way for workers' gains.

Don't you think that the autocratic system, if you want to call it that, can be held culpable for making it impossible for the autocrat to see outside the box? And even as I typed that, I realized that the Tsars and Tsarinas of Russia were a diverse group, many of whom did have the ability to do that. Even when forced by events like Bloody Sunday/the foundation of the Duma to consider endorsing changes to the autocratic system, Nicholas was unable to do so. You then have a situation in which the supposed authority for the constitutional changes doesn't actually want them.

Simon

[AGRBear]

I think Kurt hit the nail on the head. I tried saying, some ten or more pages back, that it was a complex combination of the personality of Nicholas II AND those around him that lead to the abdication.


....[in part]....
just my 2 kopeks.
Rob (and not necessarily those of the APTM itself)

I think that once the rumors started to fly around the Romanov  palaces that generals were talking about removing  Nicholas II from the throne,   there were a number of  Romanovs,   who would have loved to have taken up the crown.

Some of these "betrayers"  [conspirators]  went to  Nicholas II's cousin,  the popular GD Nicolai,  whom Nicholas II had removed as Commander-in-Chief.   Who were they?  And what did he say to them?

Many historians believe this was  the "straw that broke the camel's back"  for the military leaders when  Nicholas II  removed GD Nikolai and took command, so,  I think, now, is as good time  as any to talk about the Romanovs   and the parts they played.

AGRBear

  

[Forum Admin]

Rob, there were federal laws concerning labour - the child labour act is just one.  There was also a vast body of state laws protecting labour. 

17 April 1905 The Supreme Court held that a maximum hours law for New York bakery workers was unconstitutional under the due process clause of the 14th ammendment.

The first US federal law concerning Child labor was not until 1916. It was held unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. I would not call six states with child labor laws a "vast body", especially since most went unenforced.

Organized labor in the US was not granted Federal protection until the Clayton Act of 1916.

The "Eight Hour" Act not approved until 1917.

National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was not passed until 1935.

The Comprehensive Fair Labor Standards Act was not passed in the US until 1938.

[Louis_Charles]

I get your point about not judging Nicholas II by standards that did not exist during his lifetime (indeed, the whole "judging" thing is problematic for me --- what are we "judging" him for? Heaven? Not our job.) I do think that we can fairly estimate him as an unsuccessful Tsar.

But he didn't live in 1550, either, or even 1750. The notions of individual liberty, inalienable rights, things like that were not only in existence in 1900, they were being pretty hotly discussed. There is simply no way to prove that most people, even most Russians, bought into the "divine right of kings" at the beginning of the 20th century --- in fact, if you look at the way the institution of monarchy evaporated in Russia, Germany and Austria-Hungary, there is evidence that people had simply ceased to believe in it some time before.

Divine right was an argued position from the get-go, in dialogue with a whole lot of people --- if you want to leave Plato and Aristotle out, try John of Salisbury, Marsilius of Padua, Macchiavelli and a raft of other medievals and early moderns. It was always something which was under scrutiny. Sometimes, as in England in 1649 and 1688, it was found seriously wanting. Occasionally there was a ruler who could pull off l'etat c'est moi, but then it seems to me you are dealing with an aberration, not a product of a workable system.

If you want to deal with the mindset of Nicholas in 1900, you have to deal with all of the other mindsets with whom he dealt. The same Petersburg that contained Nicholas also contained Gapon. So it does seem fair to me to judge Nicholas as "wanting"

I brought this from the 1905 thread, as it addresses an issue also being raised here.

The federal laws you quote are correct, Rob, but there were state and urban regulations dealing with some of these issues before this --- many of these acts merely legislate them as universals. Again, the infrastructure of the American workers' movement is very different during this period than that of Russia's.

[Tsarfan]

I agree Tsarfan. However, what was the US government's position when faced with the same choice of Factory owners vs. Worker?

All governments from that era left something to be desired in their handling of the social stresses around industrialization.  However, I think the clearest way to compare and contrast them is to look at directional trends.

Let's take the case of the U.S., with which I am more familiar.  There one finds developments running on two tracks.  The U.S. judiciary was unrelentingly hostile to labor issues, beginning with the Philadelphia Cordwainers case of 1806, which set the precedent for a string of cases ruling against workers' rights to organize, peaking in a notorious decision by which the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1910 was bizarrely applied against labor unions before it was applied against business monopolies, and culminating in the final showdown when Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court in 1938 due, in part, to judicial hostility to pro-labor legislation.

However, on the legislative track, things were evolving toward more sympathy for the plight of industrial workers.  The culmination of this trend was the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.  And, even though the courts distorted its purpose, the 1910 Sherman Act was clearly intended by the legislative and executive branches to rein in the power of big business.  By the early 'teens -- two decades before the Social Security Act -- the largest corporations were beginning to think about defined-benefit pension systems of their own accord, in an attempt to forestall government legislation that they saw coming in this area if business did not accept responsibility for the retirement security of workers who were not paid enough to save on their own.  (In effect, unlike Russia, the U.S. was addressing the fact that the migration of labor from farm to city had disrupted the social support systems that multi-generational family homesteads had provided in rural America.)

Now, this is a gross simplification of a century of complex and volative government/labor relations, but there was a clear trend toward more solicitude for workers' interests as we turned into the 20th century.

Though Russia might not have looked much worse on a given date on one labor issue or another, directionally  Russia by1900 was pursuing a deliberate policy away  from an earlier liberalization on labor issues.  Factory owners were acquiring more power, factory inspection was becoming a spy arm for the secret police, and the workers' working and living conditions were eroding.  And the fingerprints of Nicholas' government were all over this trend.

Several nations confronted labor unrest that could, in the right mix of circumstances, have mushroomed into something truly nasty.  But only in Russia did it produce a revolution in 1905 and again in 1917, ending in the complete radicalization of the worker movement into the horrible ideological excesses of Leninism.