!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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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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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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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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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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