How Would History Have Rated Nicholas II if....?

[Louis_Charles]

I am not sure what we are talking about when you say he was not "nearly as anti-Semitic as some have made him out to be". Is there a sliding scale in play? There are sins of omission as well as comission. No one suggests that he was Hitler. At the same time, he was considerably more anti-Semitic than the bore at the country club who holds forth about "those kinds of people". Jews died as the result of sanctioned violence by his officials. Were they punished? Did he ever issue a statement deploring the treatment of his Jewish subjects? Did he regard them as loyal Russians? Would he socialize with Jews?

[Raegan]

I am not sure what we are talking about when you say he was not "nearly as anti-Semitic as some have made him out to be". Is there a sliding scale in play? There are sins of omission as well as comission. No one suggests that he was Hitler. At the same time, he was considerably more anti-Semitic than the bore at the country club who holds forth about "those kinds of people". Jews died as the result of sanctioned violence by his officials. Were they punished? Did he ever issue a statement deploring the treatment of his Jewish subjects? Did he regard them as loyal Russians? Would he socialize with Jews?

What I meant was just what I said, and I really didn't think it was that difficult to figure out. Some have suggested that he approved pogroms, and I am curious to know where this information is coming from because what has recently come to light is that this simply wasn't the case. In fact, from what I remember reading, Nicholas ordered a stop to them. I never suggested that he was their buddy, Simon. What I was trying to add to the discussion was that much of what has previously been stated simply isn't true. That was kind of why I posted that link. Here is another below, if you care to read it. And I am still happy to post the passages from the book once I receive it, since I do think it is an interesting one.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/newstudy.html

[Louis_Charles]

I am not sure what we are talking about when you say he was not "nearly as anti-Semitic as some have made him out to be". Is there a sliding scale in play? There are sins of omission as well as comission. No one suggests that he was Hitler. At the same time, he was considerably more anti-Semitic than the bore at the country club who holds forth about "those kinds of people". Jews died as the result of sanctioned violence by his officials. Were they punished? Did he ever issue a statement deploring the treatment of his Jewish subjects? Did he regard them as loyal Russians? Would he socialize with Jews?

What I meant was just what I said, and I really didn't think it was that difficult to figure out. Some have suggested that he approved pogroms, and I am curious to know where this information is coming from because what has recently come to light is that this simply wasn't the case. In fact, from what I remember reading, Nicholas ordered a stop to them. I never suggested that he was their buddy, Simon. What I was trying to add to the discussion was that much of what has previously been stated simply isn't true. That was kind of why I posted that link. Here is another below, if you care to read it. And I am still happy to post the passages from the book once I receive it, since I do think it is an interesting one.

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/newstudy.html

I've read them, Raegan, and  I think I now understand what you are saying.Thanks for the links.  I am merely pointing out that Nicholas II did nothing to stop pogroms --- which usually had all of the spontaneity of a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet --- and it was within his power to do so. I'm not sure that the description of the Russian Jewish soldier he helped does much to advocate his lack of anti-Semitism, if it took a World War to get through to him how absurd his policies were.

[Silja]

Nicholas II was the leader of Russia. The soldiers who died in World War I did so under his command. Hence, it is correct to say that he "let millions go to their deaths". In fact, it was worse than that. He let them fight a twentieth century war with hopelessly inadequate weapons, inadequate supply lines and leadership in the field that lead soldiers into mass slaughter. It doesn't really matter if the soldiers --- each and every one? And this is determined through . . .? --- believed in their Tsar.

Well, certainly all the moanrchs and leaders of the nations involved were to blame for sending their people to war. But one must take into consideration that the majority of the people in all or nearly all of these countries were thrilled about the chance to  be able to go to war AT LAST. The mood among the populations was decidedly pro-war and none of these people would have understood it if the monarchs had suddenly backed out. All these people of course expected a short war, not being aware of what war really meant. This of course changed very quickly when all the horrors of war became obvious. In Russia, it was the generals, and the military people, more than the tsar himself, who should be blamed for letting Russia go to war becasue these people in particular should have known how inadequately prepared Russia was.
I don't see Nicholas II having stood much of a chance of going against the will of all his military commanders and the general mood of the country even if he HAD been wise enough to acknowledge the danger of a war. If so many, especially among the middle classes, were in favour of war in all of Europe then it was hardly possible to stop it. I'm always reluctant to always  blame only the leaders for those fatal decisions which have before met with lots of support among the ordinary people.

[Raegan]

I've read them, Raegan, and  I think I now understand what you are saying. Thanks for the links.  I am merely pointing out that Nicholas II did nothing to stop pogroms --- which usually had all of the spontaneity of a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet --- and it was within his power to do so.

From what I recall, he did stop them. I will double check once my book arrives though, and if you or anyone is still interested in this info, I will provide it to save everyone else a trip to the library.

[Elisabeth]

What I meant was just what I said, and I really didn't think it was that difficult to figure out. Some have suggested that he approved pogroms, and I am curious to know where this information is coming from because what has recently come to light is that this simply wasn't the case. In fact, from what I remember reading, Nicholas ordered a stop to them. I never suggested that he was their buddy, Simon. What I was trying to add to the discussion was that much of what has previously been stated simply isn't true.

Nicholas II did actually approve of the pogroms that broke out immediately following the October Manifesto of 1905. I've read this in numerous different books, BTW, but I'll quote first from Steinberg and Khrustalev's The Fall of the Romanovs because it seems to be the most widely accepted and trusted book about the last days of the IF in this forum:

page 22
In late October 1905 he [Nicholas] wrote to his mother that "in the first days after the manifesto bad elements strongly raised their heads, but then came a strong reaction and the whole mass of loyal people rose up.... The people were angered by the brazenness and insolence of the revolutionaries and the socialists, and since nine-tenths of them are yids, their whole fury turned against them - hence the Jewish pogroms."

According to Orlando Figes (A People's Tragedy, p. 197) there were "690 documented pogroms - with over 3,000 reported murders - during the two weeks following the declaration of the October Manifesto. The Rightest groups played a leading role in these pogroms, either by inciting the crowds against the Jews or by planning them from the start. The worst pogrom took place in Odessa, where 800 Jews were murdered, 5,000 wounded and more than 100,000 made homeless. An official investigation ordered by Witte revealed that the police had not only organized, armed, and supplied the crowd with vodka, but had helped to root out the Jews from their hiding places and taken part in the killings."

Figes then quotes Nicholas II's letter of 27 October 1905 to his mother in full.

[Raegan]

Nicholas II did actually approve of the pogroms that broke out immediately following the October Manifesto of 1905. I've read this in numerous different books, BTW, but I'll quote first from Steinberg and Khrustalev's The Fall of the Romanovs because it seems to be the most widely accepted and trusted book about the last days of the IF in this forum:

page 22
In late October 1905 he [Nicholas] wrote to his mother that "in the first days after the manifesto bad elements strongly raised their heads, but then came a strong reaction and the whole mass of loyal people rose up.... The people were angered by the brazenness and insolence of the revolutionaries and the socialists, and since nine-tenths of them are yids, their whole fury turned against them - hence the Jewish pogroms."

According to Orlando Figes (A People's Tragedy, p. 197) there were "690 documented pogroms - with over 3,000 reported murders - during the two weeks following the declaration of the October Manifesto. The Rightest groups played a leading role in these pogroms, either by inciting the crowds against the Jews or by planning them from the start. The worst pogrom took place in Odessa, where 800 Jews were murdered, 5,000 wounded and more than 100,000 made homeless. An official investigation ordered by Witte revealed that the police had not only organized, armed, and supplied the crowd with vodka, but had helped to root out the Jews from their hiding places and taken part in the killings."

Figes then quotes Nicholas II's letter of 27 October 1905 to his mother in full.

Thanks for the information. I didn't really read that letter as approval as much as I did him explaining something that happened. Then again, it wasn't quoted in full so maybe there is more to it. Now I am really anxious for my copy to arrive because, as I recall, the information from the Okhrana Archives stated quite the opposite. Much of this was discussed on the Anti-Semitism thread, and as I stated before, I will post the info from the book because I think it would be interesting to compare all of this information.

[Elisabeth]

Thanks for the information. I didn't really read that letter as approval as much as I did him explaining something that happened. Then again, it wasn't quoted in full so maybe there is more to it. Now I am really anxious for my copy to arrive because, as I recall, the information from the Okhrana Archives stated quite the opposite. Much of this was discussed on the Anti-Semitism thread, and as I stated before, I will post the info from the book because I think it would be interesting to compare all of this information.

Raegan, the letter in full is totally damning. Take my word for it, I wouldn't lie to you. And if I had the energy, I would type the whole stupid thing out myself, but I don't. The gist of the matter is, Nicholas thought all Jews were revolutionaries, and all revolutionaries deserved to meet their deaths at the hands of the mob. Whatever way you slice it, he wasn't exactly being an advocate of law and order and "innocent before proven guilty" here. There are few if any mitigating circumstances even for the most accomplished lawyer for the defense of tsardom...and none at all when you consider that the vast majority of the victims of these pogroms were innocent civilians, men, women, and yes, I hate to say it, but children too.

[Raegan]

Raegan, the letter in full is totally damning. Take my word for it, I wouldn't lie to you. And if I had the energy, I would type the whole stupid thing out myself, but I don't. The gist of the matter is, Nicholas thought all Jews were revolutionaries, and all revolutionaries deserved to meet their deaths at the hands of the mob. Whatever way you slice it, he wasn't exactly being an advocate of law and order and "innocent before proven guilty" here. Few if any mitigating circumstances even for the most accomplished lawyer for the defense of tsardom... none at all when you consider that the vast majority of the victims of these pogroms were innocent civilians, men, women, and yes, children too.

Then I will look into "A People's Tragedy" again since it has been some time since I last read it. As I said before, I want to compare all of the sources, especially since "Fontanka 16" had some very interesting info in it.

And I know you wouldn't lie to me. 

[ilyala]

See, it they had been better trained they would have realized these possibilities before starting the war. And before you post, Robert, The parallels are eerie, I tells you, EERIE.

uhm.
are you suggesting wilhelm should have taken control of the way franz joseph was training his troops or something? franz joseph was pro-german but not that much.
you cannot control what your allies do. you need your allies because you can't fight the whole world by yourself. but if they're going to be your subjects and not your allies, you cannot control what they do to their armies. you can just suggest.
wilhelm 2nd had the best trained army and a very well trained navy. he had spent his last 20 years of life devoted to that, devoted to arming germany so that it would be stronger than england. he didn't lose because he didn't have a trained army. he lost because his allies were not as prepared as he was and when they collapsed he couldn't help but follow.

[Kurt Steiner]

i don't think wilhelm 2nd had an untrained army... i think his was the most trained of all! 

I meant the Russian army, sorry.

Perhaps not. They did lose.

Technically, when the war was over, Germany was still fighting in enemy ground and the Allies were slowing their pace. Of course, had the war went on, Germany would have been utterly defeated. But Germany was fighitng almolst single-handed against half of the world.

[Tsarfan]

What I meant was just what I said, and I really didn't think it was that difficult to figure out. Some have suggested that he approved pogroms, and I am curious to know where this information is coming from because what has recently come to light is that this simply wasn't the case. In fact, from what I remember reading, Nicholas ordered a stop to them. I never suggested that he was their buddy, Simon. What I was trying to add to the discussion was that much of what has previously been stated simply isn't true.

Nicholas II did actually approve of the pogroms that broke out immediately following the October Manifesto of 1905. I've read this in numerous different books, BTW, but I'll quote first from Steinberg and Khrustalev's The Fall of the Romanovs because it seems to be the most widely accepted and trusted book about the last days of the IF in this forum . . . .

One has to remember that western governments lodged numerous protests with St. Petersburg over pogroms.  As Nicholas' government gave assurances that pogroms were neither institigated nor approved by the central government, their occurence was a rather embarrassing signal that either Nicholas was not in control of internal affairs in his empire or that he was playing a rather cynical game that we today would call "credible deniability."  So the fact that Nicholas did not approve of pogroms could have been less a reflection of his personal views than a reflection of his need to attract foreign capital to a Russia that appeared civilized, stable, and thoroughly under the government's control.

In posts on other threads relating to this topic, I cited numerous sources that showed several things.  First, although the central government did occasionally "investigate" the involvement of local tsarist officials in the more highly-publicized pogroms, these "investigations" almost never resulted in anything more than the culpable officials being quietly transferred to another region.  Second, Nicholas officially received and congratulated for high journalistic standards the head of newspaper that had whipped the locals into a frenzy of Jew-baiting shortly before the outbreak of the vicious Kishinev pogrom in 1903 by reporting the "ritual murder" of a Christian boy who later turned out to have been killed by a relative (if I remember that particular detail correctly).  Third, Nicholas' Interior Ministry surreptitiously funded the activities of the Black Hundreds, an ultra-tsarist organization that funded a string of anti-semitic publications and that bore significant parallels in terms of secrecy and operating style to the U.S.' Ku Klux Klan.

Then there are numerous references in memoires and correspondence to incidences such as Nicholas banning an orchestra from Yalta because it had too many "zhids", and his ranting in a letter to his mother about "Christ killers" after seeing a particularly incendiary anti-semitic play in St. Petersburg in the aftermath of the 1905 Revolution.

Saying that Nicholas did not personally order his troops to start pogroms, while accurate, is a very far cry from proving he was not anti-semitic.

[Elisabeth]

In posts on other threads relating to this topic, I cited numerous sources that showed several things.  First, although the central government did occasionally "investigate" the involvement of local tsarist officials in the more highly-publicized pogroms, these "investigations" almost never resulted in anything more than the culpable officials being quietly transferred to another region.  Second, Nicholas officially received and congratulated for high journalistic standards the head of newspaper that had whipped the locals into a frenzy of Jew-baiting shortly before the outbreak of the vicious Kishinev pogrom in 1903 by reporting the "ritual murder" of a Christian boy who later turned out to have been killed by a relative (if I remember that particular detail correctly). 

This was actually the notorious trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis (1874-1934), a Russian Jew who was arrested in 1911 and spent the next two years in jail awaiting trial on the charge of "ritually" murdering an Orthodox Christian boy (who it later turned out had been murdered by a gang of thieves associated with his mother). In fact this case was the twentieth-century Russian equivalent of the Dreyfus case in France, because the defendant was so obviously innocent and the victim of an anti-Semitic frame-up by the state (and endorsed by the tsar himself, Nicholas II). Despite considerable political pressure, numerous famous Russian writers and statesmen came forward to speak in the defense of Beilis, including Alexander Blok, Maxim Gorky, and Pavel Miliukov. (Even the controversial Russian philosopher, Vasily Rozanov, who, as a so-called expert witness on Jewish "blood rituals," testified against Beilis, would later recant his testimony with great shame.) Beilis was at long last acquitted by jury and promptly emigrated to Palestine, and from there to the United States, where he died in 1934. His story later became the basis for a celebrated novel by Bernard Malamud, The Fixer, which I was required to read in college and which also, apparently (according to Wikipedia), was even made into a movie way back in 1968.

[Louis_Charles]

See, it they had been better trained they would have realized these possibilities before starting the war. And before you post, Robert, The parallels are eerie, I tells you, EERIE.

uhm.
are you suggesting wilhelm should have taken control of the way franz joseph was training his troops or something? franz joseph was pro-german but not that much.
you cannot control what your allies do. you need your allies because you can't fight the whole world by yourself. but if they're going to be your subjects and not your allies, you cannot control what they do to their armies. you can just suggest.
wilhelm 2nd had the best trained army and a very well trained navy. he had spent his last 20 years of life devoted to that, devoted to arming germany so that it would be stronger than england. he didn't lose because he didn't have a trained army. he lost because his allies were not as prepared as he was and when they collapsed he couldn't help but follow.

No, too many pronouns in my answer, sorry. There is more to military training than shooting weapons and snappy salutes. "They" being the German General Staff and Wilhelm (although I think you seriously overestimate his actual control over the German army, as he had nothing to do with it in a leadership sense once war broke out) should have been able to (1) form an accurate estimation of their allies' stability and (2) avoid placing themselves in a war that entailed fighting 'almost single-handed against half the entire world.' As an actor friend of mine once said when his play closed because of lack of advertising, "That's stinking management!"

[Tsarfan]

This was actually the notorious trial of Menahem Mendel Beilis (1874-1934), a Russian Jew who was arrested in 1911 and spent the next two years in jail awaiting trial on the charge of "ritually" murdering an Orthodox Christian boy (who it later turned out had been murdered by a gang of thieves associated with his mother).

Are we talking about the same case?  I am confused by the 1911 date you report.

I dug up the source for my old post.  The Krushevan referred to in the following passage was the publisher of Kishinev's anti-semitic newspaper, Bessarabetz, which the tsar's local officials continued to support despite numerous complaints of its incendiary character.

"However, to make the mob rise, Krushevan had to resort to something familiar, deeply engraved in the superstitious mind of laymen against which no logic or authority will work – 'something which is always there'. This was the old motif of bloody calumny - the belief that Jews perform a ritual murder of a Christian boy or girl to use their blood for the preparation of Passover Matzos. Already in 1902 Krushevan attempted to set a bloody calumny case in motion, when a murdered boy found in a well just before Easter was declared by him to be the victim of Jewish ritual murder. But his plan was spoiled, because the real murderer was found. Krushevan had to publicly admit that the story was untrue. But the next year Krushevan was luckier. In the first days of February 1903, a body of a boy with a huge number of knife-wounds was found in Kishinev neighbourhood. Taking advantage of the fact that the murderer was not found yet, Krushevan published a number of articles with chilling details about the way the Jews murdered him. It was a spark dropped inside the cask of gun powder."