Just sad since few days thinking of how they were killed

[CyrilVladisla]

Originally Posted by Muhler

Only to some extent.

I don't think it's appropriate to characterize all Russians for something a few, and desperate extremists ordered 100 years ago.

The children were killed to make sure there would but no pretender in the future to to rally around. It's brutal logic.

The imperial succession included the male linage only. Thus Nicholas' heir was Alexis. The four daughters could not inherit. Thus could not the four Grand Duchesses have been spared?

[Queen Claude]

Russia had female empresses previously so it was not a foreign concept. Also I don't know how credible it was but I recall reading that it was likely that Nicholas was going to decree that females could inherit the Russian throne, so that in the event Alexei predeceased him or died childless then Olga would become Empress of All Russia.

[Iluvbertie]

The law was that females could inherit IF there were no male heirs. It wasn't full salic which didn't allow female inheritance at all.

In the case where the monarch had been overthrown the rules could easily have been changed if one of the daughters survived so that she could be the focus of anti-regime forces. Her descent from the Tsar would be enough in a post-revolutionary attempt to restore the monarchy.

[Frelinghighness]

If you read any of the Shakespeare’s history plays, or in fact, read, any of history, it is always a kill the children! Because they are next in line for the throne.if someone wanted the throne of England who was farther down the line, which happened many times in history, they would kill the ruler and then have to to also kill his children, who were all next in line, to assure clearance.

[Frelinghighness]

Although I have great empathy for Alix as I do for Marie Antoinette of France, I do feel that they aided in their own and their countries destruction however unwittingly

[Muhler]

Originally Posted by CyrilVladisla

The imperial succession included the male linage only. Thus Nicholas' heir was Alexis. The four daughters could not inherit. Thus could not the four Grand Duchesses have been spared?

That would have made absolutely no difference.
From an ice cold perspective the children were destined to die because:
A) The ruling family should be exterminated. There was no room for them anyway in the Communist Russia.
2) Female empresses was far from anything new in Russia.
3) The daughters could deliver a male heir at some point.
4) The daughters were living political symbols for the anti-communists to rally around and fight for.
5) One of the daughters could marry "a strong man", who in his own right could be a dangerous threat. His claim to power would now be legitimized by his and the Imperial bloodline being mixed.

Okay, could they have left the daughters alive? Were there alternatives?
A) Prison, indefinitely. - No, the daughters would still be living symbols, who should be freed.
B) Making the daughters "renounce the world", take a wow and enter an cloister. - The Communists didn't trust and didn't want the church around. It was too big a competitor. And the whole thing about religion goes against Communism as a concept. - And they could eventually leave the cloister. Wows can be overruled if it's "Gods will" and it would be...
C) Exile the girls abroad. - See A, except that you no longer have control over them.
D) Letting them disappear somewhere. - They could still be recognized and there would be endless questions and as long anyone are in doubt as to their deaths, they would be symbols.
E) "Ruining the royal bloodline" by force marrying them to a commoner. - That would be the equivalent of rape and would cause a huge uproar, probably even among the Communists. Also, Communists too have daughters...
F) Sterilizing them. An unsafe procedure at the time. And it wouldn't make that big a difference. Ekaterina the Great wasn't even in the bloodline, yet she became empress. As political symbols that method wouldn't make any difference either.

- They had to die. The only question was how.
"Sickness", "accident", "suicide", "trying to escape" and so on would be a nice solution. But snuffing them out one by one over a period is risky. They would inevitably try to escape, probably with inside help, and perhaps succeed.
So the logic solution was the one taken: Gunning and bayoneting the whole family down at the same time.

[victor1319]

Imho the murder of the Romanovs should not be seen as an isolated incident! To rob all people blind and to murder everybody, who could put up resistance - that was, how the Bolshewiki acted. That was their doctrine! The Red Terror!

[Muhler]

The Communists were not the only ones who used terror and oppression.

There was a Russian saying from the latter half of the 1800's, which translated goes something like this: We can sleep safely in prison, because that's the only place where we are safe from the White Terror. (The secret police.)

Revolutionaries make poor politicians, because revolutionaries are unwilling to compromise and they tend to be extremists.
A wise political move could have been to reunite Russia under a totally powerless Tzar, under control of the Communists. A kind of Shogunate, if you will. Where the Communists would have ruled through the Tzar. (Who would be under house-arrest, basically with his family as hostages.)
That would have been an interesting alternative.

But it would have been impossible to sell that solution to the extremists who were taking over at the time. To extremists only extreme solutions are possible. Not acceptable, possible!
Which is why most extremists end up being shot...

It was Stalin who around this time said about one of the extremist revolutionaries (can't remember who): On the day of the revolution he is absolutely indispensable, on the second day he should be shot.

- You can't build a stable government and a stable society on extremists, so...

[victor1319]

Originally Posted by Muhler

The Communists were not the only ones who used terror and oppression.

There was a Russian saying from the latter half of the 1800's, which translated goes something like this: We can sleep safely in prison, because that's the only place where we are safe from the White Terror. (The secret police.)

What are you implying? That the rule of the Romanovs was in any way whatsoever like Communism?

[Muhler]

Originally Posted by victor1319

What are you implying? That the rule of the Romanovs was in any way whatsoever like Communism?

Well, it wasn't the Communists who came up with the idea of deporting political opponents (as well as criminals) to Siberia.
The omnipresent and much feared secret police (White Terror) with it's network of informants and Commissars with extremely wide-ranging power, was something that was in place centuries before NKVD, KGB and FSB - their first symbol BTW was a broom.
The vast majority of Russians, peasants, were serfs with very limited rights and whose conditions in life were only a notch or two above being slaves. That was under the Romanovs. Serfdom was only abolished in the second half of the 1800's, without a system in place to replace it, which led to disaster in quite few places.
Also, Russia was an expansionist empire, especially in the Caucasus, through Transoxania towards Afghanistan and towards what is today western China were vast areas conquered by Russia, under the Romanovs. And people living in these areas objecting against being a part of the empire were not treated leniently!
The brutal oppression and political castration of a whole class in the society, the Boyars, was not something the Communist came up with either. They finished the job though, that's for sure!
The forced resettlements of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people at a time, for whatever purpose, was not the Communists idea either.
The frequent pogroms against Jews happened under the Romanovs, without the authorities doing much about, or for that matter caring much about it.

What the Communists did was to continue this kind of oppression against their opponents on an order of magnitude higher and in a much more organized way.

I find it much easier to sympathize with Louis XVI, he was by all accounts a genuinely kind man, who with his limited abilities, and even more limited help from the nobility wished to improve the conditions in life for his subjects rather than just maintaining a status quo and who hesitated from using oppressive means to stay in power.
It cost him, and his family, their lives.
How many sleepless nights, I wonder, did Tzar Nicholas spend thinking about those of his subjects at the bottom of the society? Also before he became a Tzar.

[JR76]

Nicholas and Alexandra remained devoted to each other until the day they died. They were loving parents and completely loyal to their friends and to their members of staff. Unfortunately neither Nicholas nor Alexandra were anything near to be suited for ruling an empire.
Nicholas might've been a better monarch with a more savy and competent wife, Alexandra might've remained more grounded had she had a healthy son earlier, but we will never know. What we do know is that it was a happy family where the parents were willingly resorting to violence and oppression to try to save their empire something that in the end led to them all being brutally murdered. We also know that their deaths was only the start of 30 years of terror, oppression and the brutal deaths of millions of their fellow countrymen.
How ever oppressive the tsarist regime was, and it was guilty of horrible crimes, it pales in comparison with the crimes of Lenin and Stalin.

[Al_bina]

Originally Posted by Muhler

Well, it wasn't the Communists who came up with the idea of deporting political opponents (as well as criminals) to Siberia.
The omnipresent and much feared secret police (White Terror) with it's network of informants and Commissars with extremely wide-ranging power, was something that was in place centuries before NKVD, KGB and FSB - their first symbol BTW was a broom.
The vast majority of Russians, peasants, were serfs with very limited rights and whose conditions in life were only a notch or two above being slaves. That was under the Romanovs. Serfdom was only abolished in the second half of the 1800's, without a system in place to replace it, which led to disaster in quite few places.
Also, Russia was an expansionist empire, especially in the Caucasus, through Transoxania towards Afghanistan and towards what is today western China were vast areas conquered by Russia, under the Romanovs. And people living in these areas objecting against being a part of the empire were not treated leniently!
The brutal oppression and political castration of a whole class in the society, the Boyars, was not something the Communist came up with either. They finished the job though, that's for sure!
The forced resettlements of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people at a time, for whatever purpose, was not the Communists idea either.
The frequent pogroms against Jews happened under the Romanovs, without the authorities doing much about, or for that caring much about it. ...

Based on your post, one might conclude the following. The Russian Empire had no right to expand or do anything else a classic empire would do, but you would understand and excuse the British Empire's expansionist moves in Caucasus and the Central Asia. At the same time, it is worth noting that your point of view is common.

[Muhler]

Originally Posted by Al_bina

Based on your post, one might conclude the following. The Russian Empire had no right to expand or do anything else a classic empire would do, but you would understand and excuse the British Empire's expansionist moves in Caucasus and the Central Asia.

And you would be wrong to conclude that.

Every empire is by its very nature oppressive.
That doesn't mean that every empire is necessarily an evil through and through.
The more successful empires stay on because they somehow incorporate those whom they subjugate into the empire and maintain a stable rule that is good for business. Leading to a higher living standard and increased opportunities for the population as a whole. - Like the Roman empire. And no one will accuse the Romans for being great humanists...

To look at the Russian, Roman, British empires with modern eyes, is IMO silly.
We have to, the best of our abilities, look at them with contemporary eyes.

The Romanovs were not toppled by an external uprising, leading to an invasion of Russia, with the ultimate purpose of freeing the conquered territories.
The Romanovs were toppled by an internal uprising, that had been brewing for many years - and that's the context we have to study this, not execution, but lynching of the Imperial family.

So let's look at Russia anno 1900.
The vast majority of Russians had no political influence whatsoever.
The vast number of Russians lived in, even for the time, deep poverty. With little prospect of improving their life through hard work or even initiative, not even for their children. (The American dream.)
The vast majority had few rights and even less opportunity to exercise those rights.
Peasants were by now able to move freely around selling their work to the highest bidder, not that it meant much. They went from serf-like condition in the countryside to serf-life condition in the urban factories.
The vast majority received little or no schooling whatsoever. And what education they were taught can very much be boiled down to: Do as you are told, don't complain, endure and get your reward in Heaven.
There was nothing remotely resembling a social system in place. Such systems were being introduced elsewhere, but not in Russia.
That's just to mention some of the major problems.

What is worse is: There was no genuine wish from the top to implement major reforms, not until forced to do so.
That's a problem in an absolute monarchy!
Instead it's my clear impression that Tzar Nicholas was scared of the oppressed masses, and genuinely resented reformers, blaming reforms for the tragedies in his own family.
At the same time there was even less will among what you can call the peers of the Imperial family. I.e. the noble, ultra rich top class of society.
Instead they continued living their absurdly rich lives, closing their eyes for the fact that they had become anachronisms and were destined to go extinct.
Their behavior is typical of society based on slaves, they are indifferent to the plight of their slaves, while living in fear of the slaves, which means they oppress their slaves more and more.
That's how the Romanovs and those around them IMO saw their world. It was a Dance Macabre and the dance ended in a cellar...

If you are not willing to adapt and to conform to new condition, you will go extinct, it's only a question of when.
The Romanovs were neither willing, nor able to adapt.

I will even go so far as to say that people living in the Russian colonies were better off than the Russians themselves. They manly continued living more or less like they always had, with whatever flaws and advantages their societies offered.

Don't get me started on Victorian Britain!
It was a super capitalist society, where human suffering mattered much less than profit. (The Irish Potato Famine and the conditions of factory workers.)
It was also a society where not only the physical, but also the psychological distance between top and bottom increased.
However, at least the common man in Britain had long established rights and knew his rights. He could, albeit with considerable difficulty, rise by merit.
He could, and he knew he could, seek a better life for himself in the colonies or by immigrating.
There was a growing middle class, instilled with typical Christian values, like charity, moral norms and concern for your fellow human beings, even if that concern only went so far. - There was little of that in Russia.

In my unscientific opinion it was the growing middle class, and the growing wealth and influence of the middle class that saved Britain from a revolution during the 1800's, not the monarchy.

ADDED:
I see you added a sentence, which I don't quite understand. Are you saying my opinion expressed in my previous post is shared by many? Or...?

[Denville]

Originally Posted by victor1319

What are you implying? That the rule of the Romanovs was in any way whatsoever like Communism?

In many respects, it wasn't all that different....

[Duc_et_Pair]

No need to feel more sad about the tragic deaths of the Tsarevitch and the Grand-Princesses than about the tragic deaths of millions and millions of innocent men and women because there was an absurd World War which saw royal cousins' realms fighting against each other.

[Al_bina]

Originally Posted by Muhler

And you would be wrong to conclude that.

Every empire is by its very nature oppressive.
That doesn't mean that every empire is necessarily an evil through and through.
The more successful empires stay on because they somehow incorporate those whom they subjugate into the empire and maintain a stable rule that is good for business. Leading to a higher living standard and increased opportunities for the population as a whole. - Like the Roman empire. And no one will accuse the Romans for being great humanists... [snipped]
ADDED:
I see you added a sentence, which I don't quite understand. Are you saying my opinion expressed in my previous post is shared by many? Or...?

Several teachers from USA and UK shared your point of view about the Russian Empire and the USSR. Such benevolent empires as France and the UK atoned their atrocities by surrendering their empires. Being Byzantine by nature, Russia remained/remains defiant/unapologetic.

Based on the current events, one can conclude that "American Dream" and the western middle class in question are coming to an end ... and Russia marks "an end to its "repeated fruitless attempts to become a part of Western civilization" over four centuries".
https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-advise.../29155700.html
Original article
http://www.globalaffairs.ru/global-p...rovki-14-19477

[Muhler]

I wouldn't discount the western middle class just yet, nor "the American dream".

The middle class is growing in Continental Europe, China, India, Brazil and so on. The places where the middle class has gone back or stagnated in recent years are USA and Britain.
The "American Dream" is very much alive in countries like China, India and Russia.

The consequences of the middle class breaking down as you predict, would be chaos. A chaos that would also very much affect Russia!

The larger the middle class is the more prosperous a nation is as a society, and also the more politically stable it is.
Look at 20th century history, when the middle class suffers or diminish in number, the societies become politically more unstable. And the wealth in the society become more unevenly distributed.

Russia is reverting to it's more traditional stance: On the outskirts of Europe. A part of Europe and yet distant from Europe.
The Western world made a huge mistake back in the 90's. In hindsight a kind of Marshall help to Russia would have been the best solution and the current situation where the west and Russia is facing off again would likely IMO have been avoided.
Instead we are now having a semi-paranoid Russia.

An interesting question is: Could Russia, that has always had a Tzar, no matter what they called themselves, be ready to reinstate the monarchy again? The monarchy also being a symbol of Russias past and greatness - while being a conveniently politically neutral figurehead.

[Empress Merel]

I think your answer to that question would be a firm no. Russia is a country that has too much corruption and is paranoid to the bone. The legacy of the Tsars has made sure that no family will ever inherit a throne again. Unless you want to count Putin, but that's a different story.

To the point of reinstating monarchies, I don't think it's ever a good idea. Monarchies in general are a dying breed and in many ways, rightfully so. If anything, we will see a decrease of constitutional monarchies over the coming decades/centuries.

[Muhler]

Hmm, I think you are right that some monarchies will fall, but I also believe there is a very good chance that some monarchies will be reinstated.

We live in a time with increasing nationalism and with a nostalgic look at "a golden age."
A monarchy is a potent national and nationalistic symbol. Especially as there is also an increasing loathing of the politicians and certainly in regards to EU an increasing sense of distance between those in power in EU, and the population in the individual countries.
So it might be palatable to reinstate an institution that will serve as a national rallying point, rather than some president who comes from "the system."

- And I don't say that because I'm a monarchist. I'm a monarchist because I believe it works in my country. Had I lived in another country I might have been a republican, if I though that was best for that country.

[Empress Merel]

I get where you´re going with this, but in this day and age, no citizen will ever just accept a figurehead family, with zero qualifications, as their head of state. What you see globally is the rise of fascism. That does not serve as a good starting point for any new monarchy. That might have worked in times when those more poweful could beat the ´´plebs´´ in obedience, but that is precisely what got the Romanovs killed.