Posted on 07/11/2012 7:01:18 AM PDT by C19fan
Nicholas Romanov, the deposed czar of Russia, and his family were awakened in the middle of the night on July 16-17, 1918, and told to get dressed. They were being moved to a safe location, their Bolshevik captors said, away from the White army that was closing in on Yekaterinburg, in the southern Ural Mountains.
The soldiers shepherded the family and four servants—a cook, valet, doctor and maid—into the basement of the house where they were being held. Nicholas carried his ailing son, Alexei, in his arms. Once all were assembled, a death sentence was read aloud, twice, and the eight executioners raised their guns.
Precisely what happened next took Soviet and Russian investigators nearly a century to piece together.
Now the results of those investigations, the last of which was closed last year, are the subject of an ambitious exhibition at the Russian State Archives in Moscow. "The Death of Tsar Nicholas II's Family: A One-Hundred Year Investigation," through July 29, aims to clear away seven decades of misinformation and silence under the Soviet regime.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
many Russians see the Bolshevik Revolution as the start of a 70-year detour from their nation's path to becoming a developed, Western European-style state—"a normal country," as they like to say
The last hope of Russia avoiding the fate of falling to Marxist hands was probably when Tsar Alexander II was assassinated. His successor Alexander III was a autocrat reactionary and his son Nicholas II was the same except he did not have the force of personality to pull it off. As one historian described Russia during Nicholas II reign, "'autocracy without an autocrat".
Seriously, almost 100 years to determine folks pulled the trigger?
An interesting read. I wonder why the Russian Orthodox Church is not buying it. More reading required on my part.
I've always thought that Nicholas II would have been a very good constitutional monarch (as his cousin George V was); however, the Russian nobility was completely opposed to it.
In the 19th century western Europe was embracing democracy and had an ever-expanding middle class while Russia was still clinging to medieval feudalism. Russia effectively skipped the Industrial Revolution and eventually they had to pay the price for it.
Wonder what they got out of it?
Russia was rapidly expanding in the decade or two leading to Great War. But the fundamentally flawed autocratic state could not handle the pressure from the Great War.
That’s the irony, according to Marx, the Communist revolution was to take place in the Industrial countries, a country could not become socialist until it had a significant proletarian population in an industrialized country. Russia was nowhere near that point in 1917.
This was a tragedy, but millions of other families died in similar ways, murdered by the commies.
And Nicholas and Alexandra arguably deserved their fates, though their children and servants of course did not.
Most of the other millions who died did absolutely nothing to deserve it.
It is an oddity of history that the generally most decent and well-meaning monarchs in their respective dynasties were often the ones who got it in the neck during revolutions. Charles I (somewhat of an outlier in the decency criteria, though), Louis XVI and Nicholas II.
Why?
The opportunity for his descendant to marry into the prestigious Gore family (Karenna)?
Of course they are divorced now.
The average Russian didn't give a damn about the Balkans and didn't understand why the Tsar was willing to go to war over it.
Alxendra was Nicholas’ innocent consort, so I don’t see why she should get any blame. However, Nicholas II did preside over a bloody and arbitrary regime that ruled through tyranny and brute force.
You could argue that Nicholas II was in some ways a victim of circumstances, having been born into a situation where he would one day inherit the position of an autocrat in charge of a backwards Empire, but you cannot say his hands were entirely free of blood.
That said, judging from the history of Russia and the cultural mindset of the Russians, I tend to lean towards the conclusion that the Russians are fundamentally incapable of living under anything less than an authoritarian government. As Stalin once said ‘The Russian People need a tsar’...
Same here, why did they allow the first burial if they do not think it was the Tzar, his wife and daughters?
Absolute monarchs, by definition, have absolute responsibility for all decisions made by their government.
Nick made the decision to take Russia into a war for which it was woefully unprepared, resulting in the deaths of millions.
He also bears at least some moral responsibility for repressive policies in the years before the war, including support of pogroms against the Jews, repression of democratic movements that might have led towards a constitutional monarchy, etc.
Alexandra shares this responsibility because it was well known that he was heavily influenced by her.
BTW, I didn’t say I necessarily believed their fates deserved. I said it is possible to make such an argument, which it is.
World War I was hell on the Russian people. As long as the army remained loyal everything was fine, but the Tsar's fate was sealed when officers started embracing the Bolsheviks.
Because the Church is supported by the KGB communist Putin. Don’t want to create anti-communist sentiment, right?
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