!historychads !anticommunists what's our assessment? Incompetent moron? Bloody tyrant? A product of his time? I already know our resident commies will say he got what he deserved. His wife was extremely r-slurred, ignored all of based granny Victoria's advices and was probably boned by a creepy peasant.
!neolibs was Sergei Witte /our/ guy? Was Stolypin taken from us too soon?
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You know, I actually heard from somewhere else that the Mongols doing their thang and eventually ruling over the Russians with swift and ferocious brutality
is what eventually established a frequent tendency for whatever Russian government to be authoritarian and often, essentially a one-man-regime.
From Tsars to General Secretaries to even regular Presidents and Prime Ministers…it seems as if the Russkies - combined with the heavy whiplash of revolutions and regime changes - simply just can't stop being so wingcucked
!grillers
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The cause of Alexander's repression was witnessing anarchists murder his liberal minded grandfather
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I think part of it is the routine famines which stopped happening later than other countries similar to how droughts hurt the Sahel's ability to have functioning institutions.
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They have the same kind of thing there where every ~10 years there's a drought and the harvest is terrible. At least in part of Russia.
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Would have ushered in a utopia if not for the commies. My only basis for this is the commie track record.
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He was a cuck. All other factors need not be considered.
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!historychads What's the consensus on Rasputin and Alexandra? Did they bang?
!nooticers Imagine leaving your daughters alone with that guy lmao.
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Rasputin has always fascinated me because he was this dirty schizo hillbilly who grifted his way to the top. I think the closest we have gotten since was during Reagan's second term when his dementia was starting to show, Nancy consulted regularly with astrologists and psychics, which definitely had an impact on the president.
Rasputin was a tallstrag and got unearned kitty left and right.
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Always thought Rasputin was gay
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lmao I forgot about Rasputin
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He was a cute twink for the attempted Russification of Finland, but he didn't deserve to go out like he did.
Mannerheim stayed loyal to him even after his death, keeping his portrait in his living room until his own death. Maybe that was where his allegiances ultimately lied.
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Ofc it was. He was tsarist till end. Thats why he hated germans and soviets his whole life and didnt feel like he fit in finland. Becouse he was russian first and formost.
Nick and Mannerheim probably fricked like homos they were.
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Still, he was able to move on somewhat and served Finland beyond admirably. The White movement lost in Russia but Mannerheim lead it to victory here, securing our independence during its first hurdle.
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Independence was secured becouse communist in russia belived communist doctrine fully still.
Civil war just determined what kinda system country should have. Reds had no chanse to win. At best they could have bogged things down to longer war and irregular war. There was too much support tricking in for whites.
And i dont think he was abel to move on. He was asked to leave russia. Lot of his action can be read as revenge for russia. As for his service. Civil war he was great. WW2? He did really well in winter war but Ryti was genious during continuation war. But Ryti couldn't inspire troops like mannerheim did.
Good general early in war. Good leader of man later in war. Kinda like most generals who made it through ww2.
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I was talking about the civil war. The Reds suffered a brutal defeat, Finland's independence was secured and any fantasies of joining the communist sphere were crushed.
Few Finns can be said to have done as much to serve Finland as Mannerheim, whatever his personal feelings may have been. He was our president, for chrissakes.
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There was constant aid trickling in for whites. Even troops. Not much but way more then reds could have. Reds had no chanse to win other then whites giving up.
It wasnt russian civil war where whited adopted most r-slurred policy possible. Where if we win. You pesants dont get shit. Then act suprised when peasants join to fight for reds.
In finnish war. Whites were same as reds. Regular folks. Numbers. Material and training favored whites. And reds didnt even have any home field advanges becouse whites were from same towns they were.
Only way reds could have won was if Bolsheviks threw their weight behind fully.
But that would have brought more atenttion from rest of powers.
Whites didnt need mannerheim to win. All they needed was not to be r-slurs. Like russian whites.
Im just tired of everyone fellating him. When Ryti is much more impresive leader. Mannerheim is just sad sack who mopes around becouse he boyfriend died.
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The White Army suffered from “big tent” syndrome, too many conflicting groups with little ideological cohesion and lack of a unified leadership, while the Bolsheviks were all communists with Lenin and Trotsky at the top. Other examples are the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War and /r/neoliberal 2020-onwards !neolibs
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Well yeah. Everyone knows that. Putins talks about it weekly in his neurodivergent ramblings of russian history.
But even if they were lacking cohesion. Their biggest failure was their inability to offer anything for regular people if they sided with them.
Battles between whites and Bolsheviks were pathetically small. Espesily on backdrop of ww1. Whites could have won it if they had just adopted roman legion system. Serve in army and and you get farmland. But no. You are pessant and you will always be pessants. Frick you. Take rifle and fight for your master!
All reds had to do is find one angry young men in village and tell him how he can r*pe, pillage and fight through russia and then his spot in communisty country will be secured. And they were set for victory.
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In Ukraine various SR and anarchist groups sided with the Russians during the Civil War and got purged pretty late.
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He was too soft to act as brutally as he sometimes did and too brutal to be as soft as he often was.
IMO and ironically he would have been a great constitutional monarch.
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He definitely would, and that's what's so weird about him. He wasn't interested in ruling, he liked ceremony and pageantry, yet he clanged to autocracy until the very end and resisted any modest reform.
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I head his advisors were to blame.
Also let's not ignore that giving commies even a finger
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Thats becouse aristocaric elite was obsesed with their place in sun. They didnt want social turmoil. Just keep what was their.
His grandfather, alexander 2. Faced multiple assasination attempts because his reforms for russian system. Nick 2 figured out best way to govern was to make as little waves as possible. But doing so he made lower classes angry.
His choises were. Reforms that will make upper class angry or not do anything that will make lower classes angry.
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Nicky genuinely believed that his royal powers were a literal gift from God, such that Nicky had no right to give away
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It is a recurring theme among unremarkable monarchs. The “divine right of kings” ideology was developed in the 16th and 17th centuries by unscrupulous, power-hungry monarchs like Henry VIII, James I and Louis XIV, and unlike Nicky those guys knew quite well what they were doing. Then there was also stuff like court etiquette and ceremony whose significance Louis XIV understood fully and used as a means to consolidate his power.
The problem with successor monarchs is that they're raised under the system and they don't understand what's going, why the ceremonies are important, etc. They just straight out believe in the system's propaganda.
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He would make fine PM in 2020s.
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Mandate of Heaven
withdrawn. End of debate.
Tell you what, though- he really
did look a lot like his cousin, King George 
V of Bongland...
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It's a very interesting case which contrasts itself with the Louis XVI. Whereas the latter was so soft and empathetic, deciding to negotiate with the revolutionaries and bow to their demands just to avoid bloodshed, culminating in him ceding his power and getting executed, Nicholas seems to be a pretty bloodthirsty figure whose violent and abusive only served to fuel the revolutionary backlash against him. Idk if there's such a thing as monarchic horseshoe theory, but this is as close as it can get to one
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Louis XVI is such a tragic figure, he was a nerdy king who would have been an unremarkable French monarch had he lived in normal times. His wife was also slandered by the revolutionaries (made up quotes, bogus incest accusations) while everyone who knew her described her as compassionate and well meaning. They were extremely sheltered and out of touch from the harsh realities of their people, but I never got the impression they were bad.
Alexandra Fyodorovna got a lot of trash talk as well but it was much well deserved. Queen Victoria told her public image matters a lot and Alexandra responded with “Russia isn't England grandma, they worship us as gods, we don't need to do any effort”
About Bloody Sunday, wasn't Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich who ordered to shoot the protesters in front of the Winter Palace?
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What i dont get with him. Being such nerd looser. Shouldn't he be book smart at least. Shouldn't he have read about past kings and understand what was happing around him?
Usually its Charles the Bold types who are out of touch and dont understand whats happening.
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With nerdy I meant stuff like locksmithing, clockmaking and being a map/geography neurodivergent
No one has the benefit of hindsight, something like 1789 never happened before, even the English Civil War was different, that's why the Romanovs should have known better, monarchies falling and kings losing their heads wasn't news in the early 20th century.
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People were angry all the time in french in later 18th centry. Louis XVI himself witnessed big bread riot himself way before revolution. He knew what mood was.
He also knew things would get worse if aristocracy acted as uppity and in past french kings knocked them down to pegg to preserve stability.
He had seen food riots and other unrest. Aristocracy acting crazy and people willing to act crazy too.
He also saw american revolution where people just ditched elite to forge their own way. And his neurodivergent brain didnt connect the dots it might happen in his kingdom.
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As described in the trve telling of the history
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In both cases. They didnt see real proplem. Both thought issue was masses and thought they could be dealt with one way or another.
But in both cases issue was aristocracy who were reason why masses had enough.
Both cases their predecessors had in those situations dealt with aristocracy to avoid collapse of kingdom/state.
But these two fools didnt see what was happening.
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I don't know much about him, but I'd guess he gets blamed for a lot of stuff that would have happened no matter what. Like can you blame him for the railroad network breaking down? There was actually a lot of freedom for the press during the war, so his subjects could talk shit about him in the papers in ways they couldn't elsewhere. Also, Russia effectively knocked Austria-Hungary out of the war, so he couldn't have always been fricking everything up.
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Tsarist Russia relationship with the press and personal liberties were weird.
There was the secret police, the Okhrana, and they were definitely repressive to the point of pissing off a LOT of people, but they weren't as repressive as the Soviet Union, the sentences were lenient and they treated dangerous subversives with kid gloves. Stalin for instance was arrested and sent to Siberia for bank robbery and murder (after which he would run away), in the US he would have been hanged/electrocuted, in 70's Chile he would have been taken for an helicopter ride and under his dictatorship the mere suspicion of plotting was enough reason for the NKVD to knock at your door and then you'll never be seen or heard off ever again.
So terrorists would constantly murder government officials, be sent to exile, run away and kill more people. Not before government troops chimping out shooting peaceful protestors.
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True, but this is just what happens when you stubbornly insist on being an absolute monarch. The buck stops here.
For example: during WWI, Nicky decided to personally "lead" the military from the front lines. In reality, his role was mostly ceremonial, so he didn't actually affect the war. However, since he was officially the supreme commander, he got all of the blame.
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Don't forget about leaving his r-slurred and unpopular German wife in charge in the capital along the creepy monk. Going to war was already a huge mistake considering their PR was damaged after the 1905 revolution and they kept doubling down.
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Its true they knocked at the Austrians but imo with von Hotzendorf at the helm that was like beating up an r-slured kid.
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I met a guy that looks A LOT like this 10 years ago, and I think he's possibly a distant cousin of mine but I'm not sure
some of the dudes in my hometown including my uncle ribbed on him for being a hipster skinny jean wearing metrosexual that drinks lattes
but now he makes furnature & cabinets, is ripped from hauling wood, and has tons of kids that he watches bluey with and makes stuff for. Tablet free home, his kids have a treehouse.
...and my uncle calls him "Captain Ahab" when he's not around bc of his big wife.
average_millenial_couple.jpg
That uncle has no kids though and is all deferential and shit when he comes around
Total hipster victory?
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There's this guy I sort of know that looks like Nicholas II in that picture and idk how I know him
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Looser. Took easy way to not repeat Alexander II. But Alexander II is what russia needed. Not some looser who didnt have balls to reform his country.
If nick 2 and alex 2 had switched places. Russian empire wouldn't have fallen.
But there would had been civil war in russia still.
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I like Kotkin's take on him, that the tsarist's regime failure to tap into mass politics after 1905 fatally weakened it. In effect the tsar and his advisors could have tapped into the popularity of the russian far right to form a majority in the Duma, but paradoxically they hated the duma and mass politics and could never lower themselves to using it.
When a political regime willingly narrows its base of power it risks annihilation
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Overall worthless, but his remaining aloof from poliitics probably helped Russia foster more of an industry that was suited toward market incentives. Don't know much about Russia at this time, so
.
If the Bolsheviks didn't overthrow him, Russia would've been significantly better off. Those r-slurs wiped out 30 years of industrial progress, not just from starting the civil war but also from their own communist policies (abolish currency cuz Marx said so).
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Great dad. Shit-butt leader. Complete cuckold.
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cuuuuuuck
in all things, not just his marriage
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Got less than what he deserved.
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He who undertakes the role of a historian must sink his personal likes and dislikes, and often award the highest praise to his enemies when their actions demand it, and often, too, blame his nearest relations if their errors require it.
-- Anna Comnena
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