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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 10, 2016 9:52:13 GMT
How do the Romanovs stay in power- is it dependent on Russia not joining WW1 or is collapse inevitable without reform?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2016 10:31:31 GMT
In "A People's Tragedy" Orlando Figes seems to take the view that Old Russia had been doomed for a very long time, and that revolution (almost certainly of a Marxist character) was inevitable. I'm not sure that I am altogether convinced.
The Russian Empire had tremendous problems - the land question, the nationalities question, and the problems associated with urbanisation and industrialisation being the most important. However, Russia was no stagnant backwater, and it is important to appreciate that these issues were becoming acute in the context of rapid change, and rising political awareness among the people. Economic growth was explosive, with periods where it was running at around 10% for years at a time. Literacy was becoming common, and was (I think) around 40% by 1914. Nearly two thirds of army officers were non-noble.
Had the liberation of the serfs in 1866 been accompanied by land reform of the kind which began in Ireland in the 1870s, plus an organised response to overpopulation in the central provinces, the peasantry might have been saved for the regime. Had Alexander II been granted time to begin a limited experiment in semi-constitutional government, the liberal elements of the Nobility and middle classes might have remained loyal.
As it was, the authoritarian desert of Alexander III's reign, followed by the weak, foolish and opportunistic flounderings of his son, doomed the Monarchy. A quick victory over Germany might have kept the lid on the pressure cooker for a short time, but no more. Orlando Figes quoted a peasant, who became a Bolshevik. He said: "Before [the abortive revolution of] 1905 I feared, but I still believed. After 1905, I still feared but no longer believed". By then the writing was on the wall.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jan 10, 2016 11:05:26 GMT
The easiest route to survival would have been the for the Whites to win the civil war and to restore a monarchy. That would either have needed a quicker end to WW1, so that France and Britain were prepared to intervene with significantly greater forces or a German victory, in which case the Kaiser would likely have wanted to remove the Bolsheviks and restore autocracy.
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Post by finsobruce on Jan 10, 2016 11:15:14 GMT
In "A People's Tragedy" Orlando Figes seems to take the view that Old Russia had been doomed for a very long time, and that revolution (almost certainly of a Marxist character) was inevitable. I'm not sure that I am altogether convinced. The Russian Empire had tremendous problems - the land question, the nationalities question, and the problems associated with urbanisation and industrialisation being the most important. However, Russia was no stagnant backwater, and it is important to appreciate that these issues were becoming acute in the context of rapid change, and rising political awareness among the people. Economic growth was explosive, with periods where it was running at around 10% for years at a time. Literacy was becoming common, and was (I think) around 40% by 1914. Nearly two thirds of army officers were non-noble. Had the liberation of the serfs in 1866 been accompanied by land reform of the kind which began in Ireland in the 1870s, plus an organised response to overpopulation in the central provinces, the peasantry might have been saved for the regime. Had Alexander II been granted time to begin a limited experiment in semi-constitutional government, the liberal elements of the Nobility and middle classes might have remained loyal. As it was, the authoritarian desert of Alexander III's reign, followed by the weak, foolish and opportunistic flounderings of his son, doomed the Monarchy. A quick victory over Germany might have kept the lid on the pressure cooker for a short time, but no more. Orlando Figes quoted a peasant, who became a Bolshevik. He said: "Before [the abortive revolution of] 1905 I feared, but I still believed. After 1905, I still feared but no longer believed". By then the writing was on the wall. The Figes book is a great read. The reforms as you say would have needed a long while to bed in and the revolutionaries were at work for decades before the final fall. The pesants were mostly radicalised by the SR's (I think I've got this right) who went out into the country whereas the Bolsheviks were more in the urban areas. There was a Peasants Union party which would probably have done very well had democracy been introduced earlier, but like the Irish Nationalists were swept aside once the moment came. A lot of people here will already have Oliver Radkey's "Russia Goes to the Polls" (The Election to the All Russia Constituent Assembly 1917) but I can reccomend it for any who don't....
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jan 10, 2016 11:54:22 GMT
Oh, bollocks. If the Whites won the revolution (particularly the factions who wanted to restore the monarchy), they would have killed millions in the process and kept killing for decades afterwards. And no, a Russia run by incompetent kleptocrats would not be any better off than a Russia run by paranoid Stalinists. Both would be basketcases.
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Jan 10, 2016 11:59:06 GMT
How do the Romanovs stay in power- is it dependent on Russia not joining WW1 or is collapse inevitable without reform? Both, I expect.
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Post by East Anglian Lefty on Jan 10, 2016 12:39:10 GMT
Oh, bollocks. If the Whites won the revolution (particularly the factions who wanted to restore the monarchy), they would have killed millions in the process and kept killing for decades afterwards. And no, a Russia run by incompetent kleptocrats would not be any better off than a Russia run by paranoid Stalinists. Both would be basketcases. Why would they have killed millions? The communists actually did kill millions so the Whites could have hardly have made that worse. As for being incompetant kleptocrats at least they wouldn't have been incompetany Kleptocrats who weighed their country down with the dead weight of communism. A bad government can be better than a worse one. Look at the history of Africa in the 80s and 90s. In South Africa the African population was treated terribly. They had no political rights, no freedom of speech, no personal liberty. They lived under tyranny and their country was torn by violent conflict. In Angola and Mozambique the African population was treated terribly. They had no political rights, no freedom of speech, no personal liberty. They lived under tyranny and their country was torn by violent conflict. So were they as badly off as one another. No, the Angolans and Mozambiquans were worse off because they had the dead weight of communisms destroying their economic development. Complete crap, from top to bottom. The Whites would have killed millions because it would have been necessary to win the war - they were viciously unpopular, especially in Russian-speaking areas and in cities and substantial terrorisation of the civilian population would have been necessary to secure compliance. The Reds were hardly well-liked either, but that was primarily due to their actions (food seizures etc.) whereas the Whites were also the representatives of the hated ancien regime. (Obviously I'm primarily talking about the Southern Whites and Kolchak - the earlier SR-led forces in the east had rather more popular support.) Moreover, armies need to be fed and civil war Russia's infrastructure was in a mess. To provision an army advancing as far as Moscow, it would have been necessary to seize vast quantities of grain, which would likely have precipitated famine - there were chronic food shortages in the south throughout the civil war, and with the lower agricultural yields north of the Black Earth, it's very likely you'd have seen mass starvation in central Russia. And that's before we consider that the Whites were rabid anti-semites and that Russia had millions of Jewish citizens. Do you seriously think the butchers who ran the White armies would have distinguished between the Jews of the shtetl and Jewish bolsheviks? No, we'd have seen wave after wave of pogroms. And any future industrial unrest would be responded to with a viciousness that would have made the Kronstadt mutiny look like a picnic. And the comparison between Angola and Mozambique on the one hand and South Africa on the other is just jaw-droppingly stupid. You cannot compare one country with a well-developed industrial economy that was plagued with comparatively low-level domestic unrest (concentrated in areas the government didn't care about) with two other countries with next to no infrastructure which were repeatedly attacked by a much better-armed neighbour. I'm not saying that the MPLA were economic geniuses, because their record since South Africa stopped trying to bring them down has been something less than stellar. But I am saying that your comments are downright cretinous.
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Post by carlton43 on Jan 10, 2016 14:25:47 GMT
How do the Romanovs stay in power- is it dependent on Russia not joining WW1 or is collapse inevitable without reform? Yes to no involvement in WW1. It was the catalyst. With tendency to revolution the one thing not to do is to introduce cautious reform. Rapid meaningful reform that benefits many and give genuine hope to others may well work. It did for Britain. Otherwise go for whole-hearted brutal repression and scare them into the submission to which centuries have inured them.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 10, 2016 14:37:09 GMT
To the point about Stalin's deliberate murders and the Holodomor, it must be remembered that Nicholas II encouraged the pogroms deliberately as a ghoulish safety valve.
Nicholas and his father look very much like the problem. How do we eliminate them and replace them with something better?
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 10, 2016 16:52:53 GMT
And that's before we consider that the Whites were rabid anti-semites and that Russia had millions of Jewish citizens. Do you seriously think the butchers who ran the White armies would have distinguished between the Jews of the shtetl and Jewish bolsheviks? No, we'd have seen wave after wave of pogroms. As indeed actually happened in the parts of the Pale that they controlled.
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 10, 2016 17:13:06 GMT
The Reds may have been more popular to start with because many people thought they would be better than the Romanovs. Well they were never popular outside the cities (Revolution in general was popular everywhere - hardly surprising given the state of the country by 1917 - but it meant something different in the countryside) but what's being got at here is that they did at least have a genuine support base, even if it was much smaller than their propaganda (and later apologists) claimed. The Whites didn't; when we're thinking of senior officers those that weren't just playing at warlordism wanted to bring back a political system that was so utterly bankrupt that it was toppled by a single bread riot. By the time the civil war started there was no chance of a happy ending. Yeah, thing is no one here is defending the Red Terror. It is a matter of record that both sides acted appallingly during the civil war and that both regarded the terrorisation of sections of the population as a legitimate means of waging war. Well considering how absolutely f ucking awful the Communists were once firmly ensconced in power that is a pretty damning suggestion, is it not? But actually I suspect that things would have been about as awful but not in the same way; chaos and warlordism rather than totalitarianism. And as the history of China tells us, what's to say that a phase of warlordism would not just lead to totalitarianism later? It took titanic efforts on behalf of the Bolsheviks to put Russia back together again and they at least had some genuinely talented politicians (Stalin for one) amidst the ideological hacks. The Whites, though, were never a united front and their senior figures were a dispiriting rabble of senile Generals and alcoholic junior officers. This is without considering outside intervention: presumably under such a scenario PiĆsudski's Poland returns to something like its pre-Partition borders in the east. The trouble is that there was no way of this happening. They had many chances, but they blew them all because they didn't understand the gravity of the situation.
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Post by Sibboleth on Jan 10, 2016 17:19:11 GMT
Talking about missed opportunities, let us turn to the Mensheviks who could have taken power in Petersburg early in 1917 but refused to because (wait for it) the bourgeois revolution was not yet completed and that therefore it was not a historically opportune moment.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Jan 10, 2016 20:43:25 GMT
Another point. Imagine Nicky II dies early and we end up with the Tsarina imposing a whacko theocracy as regent!
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2016 20:58:40 GMT
Another point. Imagine Nicky II dies early and we end up with the Tsarina imposing a whacko theocracy as regent! All rather irrelevant. Everything after 1905 was a postscript to a regime which was already finished. Nicholas II came to the throne with the benefit of some goodwill, or at least relief that his father was finally dead, but squandered it very quickly.
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Post by Tangent on Jan 10, 2016 23:05:07 GMT
And how did South Africa get its 'well-developed industrial economy'? Given the MPLAs record since South Africa stopped trying to bring them down have you considered that South Africa might have had a point in opposing this communist tyranny. The Angolan government is many things, but it has not been recognisably Marxist since the mid-1990s. The MPLA now has some vague similarities with the PRI during its years of dominance.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 10, 2016 23:45:38 GMT
Moorcock has some good alternative history re Russian Empire / Confederate states
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Post by Tangent on Jan 11, 2016 22:33:42 GMT
How do the Romanovs stay in power- is it dependent on Russia not joining WW1 or is collapse inevitable without reform? My own view is that the easiest way for this is to get rid of WWI in its current form. Thus, Bismarck's successors (leaving aside his own efforts) must avoid the great blunder of allowing antagonism between Vienna and St. Petersburg to fester, giving them the old Holy Alliance to rely upon at a time of real crisis. In theory, that would allow Russia time to enjoy the fruits of industrial growth and development it was just beginning to taste at the start of the C20. But it would be difficult to prevent Tsardom biting off more than it could chew geopolitically, given an opening. Anglo-Russian friction across Asia, from the Straits via Afghanistan to China, gives endless possibilities for serious friction, although neither empire would be likely to seriously threaten the other directly. My pessimistic hat, though, could see a WWI taking place in the 1920s or 1930s, with a Germany which had become the supreme industrial power in Europe on one side, alongside a Russia with firmer economic sinews, facing the two Western Powers, whose main concern would be to defend their relatively declining power, with the decaying Ottoman Empire serving as the spark, and Vienna having no alternative but to go along with the other Northern Courts.
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Post by greenchristian on Jan 13, 2016 23:28:50 GMT
The easiest route to survival would have been the for the Whites to win the civil war and to restore a monarchy. That would either have needed a quicker end to WW1, so that France and Britain were prepared to intervene with significantly greater forces or a German victory, in which case the Kaiser would likely have wanted to remove the Bolsheviks and restore autocracy. What an absolutely tragedy both for Russia and for the world that this didn't happen. Russia could have developed at a far greater level and this country rich in natural resources could be far richer financially today. Economically, I don't see that happening. The five year plans saw quite a high rate of economic growth,and turned the USSR into an industrial powerhouse that could rival the USA. Whilst industrialisation was happening before that, most of the country in 1917 was still feudal. Whilst the Soviet system was abhorrent, I don't see any way that the Whites would have pushed economic development to anywhere near the same extent as the Soviets did. Also, under the Whites, Russian industry would have been hit by the Great Depression as were the Western nations, slowing or halting economic development for a decade or so, whilst Soviet Russia wasn't affected by it at all.
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Post by neilm on Jan 14, 2016 4:23:39 GMT
That isn't strictly true: the collapse in grain prices hit the USSR.
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