Abdication and Alexandra

[bell_the_cat]

Here's my 5c:

Well of course Nicholas was not always uncompromising in his defence of autocracy. He gave in under intense pressure in 1905 to allow the Duma, after which (as has been mentioned by other posters) he proceeded to back-pedal. In this he followed the bad example of Louis XVI, rather than learning from his mistakes.

I can't agree that Alexandra was uninterested in politics. Her wartime letters show that she saw it as her role to prop up Nicholas when it seemed as if he was caving in under pressure. Sure she agreed with him, but she was "plus royaliste que le roi". On some occasions he ignored her advice, when it might have been better to listen to her! I think, for example, that he would not have abdicated if she had been present, which would have been better for almost everyone.

Her retirement from public life was connected with her fear of social embarrassment. Strangely enough this phobia coexisted with an intense intellectual interest in her husband's job as autocrat. Like many "shy" people, she was possessed by a desire for greatness, and found a way of exerting power through her husband. I think this is the difference between her and her mother-in-law for whom the society aspects of being Empress were  enough.

I don't think the security issue was the main reason the N + A secluded themselves. After all other members of the family continued to take the risks associated with public life. I honestly think they preferred it that way, as they disliked the St Petersburg society they felt uncomfortable with (here again it was surely Alexandra more than Nicholas). Thus they alienated the people who should have been the biggest supporters of the monarchy.

Elisabeth, the incident at Borki, I always thought was a train accident. Sergius Witte (?) said it had been caused by the Tsar insisting that the train travel at full speed, and the railway officials not daring to say that the line was in poor condition.  :-/

[RichC]

Well of course Nicholas was not always uncompromising in his defence of autocracy. He gave in under intense pressure in 1905 to allow the Duma, after which (as has been mentioned by other posters) he proceeded to back-pedal. In this he followed the bad example of Louis XVI, rather than learning from his mistakes.

Article 1 of the old Fundamental Laws -- promulgated by Emperor Paul:

The emperor of all the Russias is an autocratic and unlimited monarch [Monarkh Samoderzhavnyi i neogranichennyi].  That his authority be obeyed not only out of fear, but also out of conscience, God himself commands.

Under the new version of the Fundamental Laws, which were written in 1906, this article was changed to:

The emperor of all the Russias possesses supreme autocratic power [Verkhovnaia Samoderzhavnaia vlast].  That his authority be obeyed, not only out of fear, but also out of conscience, God himself commands. (this became article 4 under the new version)

Here are Nicholas II's comments on the matter in the State Council meeting, April 9, 1906:

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY:  Let us now take up article 4.  It contains the most important point in this entire matter.  I have not ceased thinking about this question since I first beheld the draft of the revision of the Fundamental Laws.  I kept the draft for a whole month and have thought about this question constantly also since the chairman of the Council of Ministers (he's referring to Witte here) submitted the altered draft to me.  All this time I have been troubled by the doubt whether I have the right, in the face of my ancestors, to alter the limits of the power I have received from them.  This conflict within me continues.  I have not yet reached a final decision.  One month ago it seemed easier to decide this question than it does now, after long reflection, when the moment for decision is drawing near.  During all this time I have daily received scores of telegrams, letters, and petitions from all ends and corners of the Russian Land, from people of all classes.  They express their touching feelings of loyalty to me, pleading with me not to limit my power and thanking me for the rights granted by the Manifesto of October 17.  As I ponder the idea of these people, I feel that they wish the Manifesto of October 17, and the rights granted by it to my subjects, to be preserved, but that not one step further be taken and that I remain the autocrat of all the Russias.  

I tell you most sincerely, believe me, that if I were convinced that Russia wanted me to abdicate my autocratic powers, I should gladly do it for the sake of its welfare.  I issued the Manifesto of October 17 with all deliberateness, and I am firmly resolved to bring it to completion.  But I am not convinced that it is necessary at the same time to abdicate my autocratic powers and to alter the definition of supreme authority [Verkhovnaia vlast] as contained in article 1 of the Fundamental Laws for the past 109 years.  It is my conviction that, for many reasons, it is highly dangerous to change this article....I know, moreover, that leaving article 1 without changes will provoke agitation and attacks.  But we should consider the source whence the reproach will come.  It will come, of course, from the entire so-called educated element, the proletarians, the third estate.  But I am confident that 80 percent of the Russian people will be with me, will support me, and will be grateful to me for such a decision...

Article 4 is the most important in the entire draft.  But the question of my perogatives is a matter for my conscience, and I shall decide whether the article should be left as it is or altered.

I.L. GOREMYKIN:  Eighty percent of the population will be distrubed, and many of them will be displeased, by a limitation of the boundaries of sovereign power...

COUNT K.I. PALEN [PAHLEN]:  The entire question is whether the word "unlimited" [neogranichennyi] is to be left in article 1 [i.e. in the old version].  I entertain no sympathies for the Manifesto of October 17, but it exists.  Until that time, you possessed the unlimited right to issue laws; but since October 17, Your Majesty can no longer issue laws by yourself, without the legislative institutions....The word "unlimited" cannot remain in the Fundamental Laws.

[RichC]

M.G. AKIMOV:  There is no need to be confused by what is easily resolved.  I too am not a supporter of the freedoms granted to the people.  But on October 17, Your Majesty voluntarily limited yourself in the field of legislation....Where legislative power does not belong fully to the emperor, the monarch is limited.  To use the word "unlimited" at this time means throwing down the gauntlet and creating irreconcilable enmity in the Duma....The word "unlimited" must be excluded.

COUNT D.M. SOL'SKII:  Since you have decided, Sire, to carry out the Manifesto of October 17, article 1 must be changed....If you cannot bring yourself to do so, it would be best not to publish the Fundamental Laws at all.

HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, THE GRAND DUKE NIKOLAI NIKOLAEVICH:  By the Manifesto of October 17, Your Imperial Majesty has already stricken out the word "unlimited".

HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS, THE GRAND DUKE VLADIMIR ALEKSANDROVICH:  I agree with my cousin.

P.N. DURNOVO:  Half-educated and educated persons can stir up even a well-intentioned people.  The entire unrest comes not from the people, but from educated society, which must be reckoned with:  the state is governed by educated society.  It is important to have as many well-disposed persons as possible among the educated elements.  After the manifestos of October 17 and February 20, the unlimited sovereignty of the monarch ceased to exist....The word "unlimited" cannot be left to stand, since this will not correspond to the manifestos of October 17 and February 20.  It will produce sedition in the minds of educated persons, and that will lead to nationwide sedition.  

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY:  We shall now recess for fifteen minutes.

LATER

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY:  I shall announce my decision later.  Let us now take up further questions.

MEETING OF THE STATE COUNCIL, APRIL 12, 1906

COUNT D.M. SOL'SKII:  Your Imperial Majesty was pleased to postpone decision on article 4.  What is your command:  shall the word "unlimited" be preserved, or excluded?

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY:  I have resolved to accept the wording of the Council of Ministers.

COUNT D.M. SOL'SKII:  Consequently, the word "unlimited" is to be excluded?

HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY:  Yes, it is to be excluded.

[RichC]

Here's my 5c:

Her retirement from public life was connected with her fear of social embarrassment. Strangely enough this phobia coexisted with an intense intellectual interest in her husband's job as autocrat. Like many "shy" people, she was possessed by a desire for greatness, and found a way of exerting power through her husband. I think this is the difference between her and her mother-in-law for whom the society aspects of being Empress were  enough.

Where is this coming from?  Since when are "shy" people possessed by a desire for greatness?  

Elisabeth, the incident at Borki, I always thought was a train accident. Sergius Witte (?) said it had been caused by the Tsar insisting that the train travel at full speed, and the railway officials not daring to say that the line was in poor condition.  :-/

This is what it says in Witte's memoirs.  The family thought it was a bomb, but it turned out that the tracks were unsafe.

[Belochka]

Here are Nicholas II's comments on the matter in the State Council meeting, April 9, 1906:

[size=10]Hi RichC,

Could you please provide the full citation for this debate please?

Thanks in anticipation,

Margarita[/size][/color]  

[RichC]

Here are Nicholas II's comments on the matter in the State Council meeting, April 9, 1906:

[size=10]Hi RichC,

Could you please provide the full citation for this debate please?

Thanks in anticipation,

Margarita[/size][/color]  

Hi Margarita,

The selection was originally taken from

Protokoly zasedanii soveshchaniia...po peresmotru osnovnykh gosudarstvennykh zakaonov (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia Tip., 1906)

I have a thick file of these, all translated into English, which was part of a course pack for a Russian history class I took at Yale many years ago.  I never threw it out.

I hope this helps!

Rich

[Belochka]

Here are Nicholas II's comments on the matter in the State Council meeting, April 9, 1906:

[size=10]Hi RichC,

Could you please provide the full citation for this debate please?

Thanks in anticipation,

Margarita[/size][/color]  

Hi Margarita,

The selection was originally taken from

Protokoly zasedanii soveshchaniia...po peresmotru osnovnykh gosudarstvennykh zakaonov (St. Petersburg: Gosudarstvennaia Tip., 1906)

I have a thick file of these, all translated into English, which was part of a course pack for a Russian history class I took at Yale many years ago.  I never threw it out.

I hope this helps!

Rich

[size=10]Thank you Rich!

A wise decision to retain those course notes.

Best regards,

Margarita[/size][/color]  

[bell_the_cat]

Where is this coming from?  Since when are "shy" people possessed by a desire for greatness?  

It's a paradox I know, but many shy people suffer from the delusion that everyone is looking at them, which is connected to an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Small children are like this - and some adults - including, I would dare to say, Alexandra (and me sometimes!  

[bell_the_cat]

This is what it says in Witte's memoirs.  The family thought it was a bomb, but it turned out that the tracks were unsafe.

Which was a good metaphor for the entire situation.

[Belochka]

This is what it says in Witte's memoirs.  The family thought it was a bomb, but it turned out that the tracks were unsafe.

Which was a good metaphor for the entire situation.

[size=10]Actually Witte attributted the Borki disaster to the train's weight (the two front locomotives) combined with the customary imperial speed. Both unusual factors had rendered the existing rails unfit for that journey. (Memoirs of Witte, pp 94-95)  
[/size] [/color]

[ilyala]

Where is this coming from?  Since when are "shy" people possessed by a desire for greatness?  

It's a paradox I know, but many shy people suffer from the delusion that everyone is looking at them, which is connected to an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Small children are like this - and some adults - including, I would dare to say, Alexandra (and me sometimes!  

i don't know if this is in other countries too, but around here there's talk about 'the violence of the shy people'. a shy person holds back a lot and then blows up at the smallest of things. they do so usually when they feel they're being stepped on and they do that because they're aware of their own shyness and the fact that that could get them to be stepped on sometimes.

[Elisabeth]

Bell, I don't believe I said that Alexandra remained uninterested in politics her whole life long. What I actually said was that she was, to all reports, uninterested in politics at the time of her marriage. Obviously she only became interested after she had become the mother of a son and heir to the Russian empire (or arguably, perhaps a little sooner, during Nicholas' near-fatal illness from typhus shortly before the birth of Anastasia). What I was trying to say was, that Alexandra's stake in Russian politics always remained on a purely personal and very emotional level. She was not a true statesman, interested in politics for its own sake (nor for that matter a political junkie like my husband, who has to read all the British newspapers online and watch BBC America on TV every morning, or else he's irritated for the rest of the day!). She always translated politics on to an exclusively personal level - us against them - which was indeed not helpful in such a dangerous situation, but as far as I can see not so very different from her husband's own attitude.

I am inclined to think (unless persuaded otherwise) that both Nicholas and Alexandra believed that compromising with the forces of liberalism was tantamount to unsheathing the forces of darkness (revolutionary and/or peasant anarchism and violence). You can see this conservative impulse in Nicholas's intense reluctance to restrict his autocratic powers in the transcripts RichC gives above, but also in all his actions to curtail the Duma's powers after 1905. Whether Nicholas was right or wrong in taking this approach is something perhaps only RichC can address adequately. But needless to say the socio-political situation in Russia in the teens of the twentieth century was certainly radically different than that of France at the end of the eighteenth century. Russia's position at this time was not nearly as empowered as that of France's before Napoleon. For one thing, Russia lacked an adequately sized, strong middle class. There was only a tiny educated elite and as its counterpart, a vast peasant mass craving the very same land that mainly belonged to that very same elite. Stolypin tried to change this recipe for disaster - with only limited success (some say none). Then World War I came along and blew the entire Stolypin experiment to hell.

But how can you say Alexandra herself was a factor in this disastrous formula? If she was a factor, she was so minor as to be all but discounted...    

[bell_the_cat]

Elisabeth, I agree with you that Alexandra's political advice didn't affect things significantly. As you say mostly she agreed with her husband, and when she did disagree with him, he often ignored her. Alexandra's contribution to the Revolution was by "not doing her job" as Maria Pavlovna put it. By retreating from society she alienated the people at the apex of power, who were the ones who had most at stake in the regime.

I'm not sure about the young Alix - she certainly fancied herself as an intellectual, inspired by her brother Ernst. I wouldn't be surprised if she took in upon herself to read a few political tomes. She was also interested in Art and Music, so it wouldn't have been degree level Political Science though. What I am trying to say is she wasn't just interested in homes and babies as a young woman. She had the example of her mother to follow, as well as her sisters ( don't know about Irene) and brother, who were intellectuals by royal standards!

[ilyala]

But how can you say Alexandra herself was a factor in this disastrous formula? If she was a factor, she was so minor as to be all but discounted...    

i think it would have taken a miracle to stop the revolution. just like it would have taken a miracle to stop the french revolution. just like it would have taken a miracle to stop the austrian empire to disintegrate at the beginning of the 20th century. and a miracle would have also taken to keep any absolute regime you can think of. even if the current ruler of the absolute regime is a good one and people are pleased, there's bound to be a bad one coming either after him either after the person that comes after him and so on. and people invariably rebel when things don't go as they want them to. you cannot blame nicholas and alexandra for the russian revolution. you cannot blame louis xvi for the french revolution (i personally think louis xiv was more to blame but that's another discussion). you cannot blame charles of austria for losing his empire. these things were all coming. and yes louis and nicholas were unfit monarchs but i sincerely doubt anyone could have stopped the revolutions from happening. the roots were too deep.

however, you can blame louis and nicholas for their unpopularity. yes, alexandra was misunderstood, but that was her own fault. once people start thinking bad of you, for any reason, they will pick on every little thing you do. maybe she was not haughty but she showed herself to be. she was that woman from tsarkoe selo who wouldn't talk to anyone. no wonder people jumped to conclusions! she never bothered to show her real self to anyone but close friends and nicholas! she may have been shy but shyness can be fought, and i'm telling you that as a person who used to be painfully shy. she didn't, she just didn't talk to people. she may not have slept with rasputin but by allowing a man like him (and we must all agree that he was a really bad man to allow...) to enter her family the way he did is like smoking in a gas station. ok, so you didn't actually want to set the gas station on fire, you just couldn't help yourself from smoking, but that doesn't mean it's not your fault that the gas station is now burning. people didn't know about alexei's condition. she was too proud to let them know. all they knew was that rasputin was dangerously close to the family, they knew what he was like... from that to assuming that he must be doing the empress is a very small step. and assuming that people won't think that of you is stupid, if you don't mind me saying so.

she indeed did not help things. she made them worse. nicholas made them worse. and they died because of it. and their family with them. i sincerely believe (it must be the xth time i'm saying this) that they would have been left alive had there been one shred of respect for them.

[Elisabeth]

We'll have to agree to disagree, Ilyala. I don't think the Bolsheviks cared one iota about public opinion. Lenin always believed in terror as a political tool and espoused it as such even in his earliest political writings, long before the October Revolution. So, I repeat for the nth time, even if Nicholas II had been a much-loved monarch it would not have saved him from the revolutionary vengeance of the Bolsheviks or for that matter the SRs, which was indeed the party with the most popular support amongst the Russian masses in 1918 (and a party which needless to say also believed in terror).

Have you ever seen the Bertolucci film about the last emperor of China? Called The Last Emperor, naturally... What most struck me about this film (aside from the gorgeous sets and the brilliant acting) was that the Chinese revolutionaries, as radical as they were, retained an almost religious awe before the figure of their former emperor, the Son of Heaven. They couldn't bring themselves to execute him, even if he was a mere vestige from the despised past - no, instead they sent him to a concentration camp to be reeducated. And this emperor was by no means popular with the Chinese people; in fact he was widely hated for his collaboration with the Japanese during World War II. Which only goes to show the tremendous difference between the Russian and Chinese imperial traditions - the Russian one was hated and destined for outright destruction, down to its last physical remnants, whereas the Chinese one, so many thousands upon thousands of years older, was so deeply ingrained in the Chinese psyche that even the most radical elements of the revolutionary movement could not bring themselves to lift a hand against the person of the former emperor.