If Nicolous the czar of Russian empire never brought Rasputin in his confidence could he of starved off the Russian revolution.
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No Rasputin
- Thread starter claybaskit
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napoleon IV
Sheer Animal Cunning of the Groundhog
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Short answer: no. Rasputin was incredibly unpopular and he hurt the Romanov's popularity, but ultimately he didn't create any of the structural problems the Russian Empire faced and the actual amount of decision making he did has been greatly exaggerated. People were already angry with the system (the 1905 Revolution took place a year before Rasputin became Alexei's healer), the Russian leadership was already incredibly incompetent, and ultimately World War I (which Rasputin opposed) exacerbated every single problem the Russian Empire had and this proved to be the death blow to Tsarism. Rasputin is often blamed because the idea that this weird, mystic sex pest destroyed an empire is a lot more fun for pop historians than examining the economic, social, and military problems Russia faced, and for those who sympathize with the regime it's easier than admitting that things were fundamentally broken.
Avian Overlord
Mystical American Freedom Bird
Hell, given the worse health of Alexi, the royal couple are probably even more anxious and distracted and the leadership problems are even worse.
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Ricardolindo
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If Nicolous the czar of Russian empire never brought Rasputin in his confidence could he of starved off the Russian revolution.
No offense, but I recommend you fix the title and drop the u for the i.
Beata Beatrix
Camille Paglia on Judge Dredd
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It's an interesting question but @napoleon IV is quite right: Rasputin was a symptom of a dying regime, not so much a cause of it, and he wasn't even the first charlatan prominently entertained by the Imperial family, or even the first Russian 'holy fool' with a dubious past – see here (if you have JStor access, anyways). What's interesting, then, is who else could fill the role of hated healer – Father John of Kronstadt, for example, while never a favorite of Nicholas, was quite a bit more antisemitic and authoritarian than Rasputin, which is to say that someone with his politics, if not John himself, might have been even more disastrous for the dynasty (which, to editorialize, is probably not the worst thing in the world, to put it mildly). Alternatively, a foreigner like Nizier Philippe, one of Rasputin's other predecessors in the familys' affections, could excite anti-French, say, sentiments. It's basically a case of who, not whether.
heraclius
Well-known member
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It's notable that Nicholas actually avoided taking Rasputin's advice in what was arguably his most disastrous politico-strategic decision - upping the ante in the run-up to the outbreak of the First World War and mobilising his armies against both Germany and Austria-Hungary at the end of July 1914, not just Austria-H. This then sparked off Germany mobilising against Russia and brought France into the equation as R's ally, and led to the German military dusting off the plan to invade Belgium - though it's still possible that if N had confronted AH on its own to rescue Serbia in August, then Germany would have sought to distract him from sending troops to the Serbian front by mobilising anyway so his action only brought a confrontation forward by a few weeks. Also, it would have taken a Nicholas with a far stronger character to stand up to his generals and to ultra-patriotic 'save our Slav brothers, the Serbs, from the Austrians and pay them back for annexing Bosnia in 1908 or you're a sell-out' nationalist opinion.
Rasputin, recovering at home in Siberia from being stabbed a few weeks earlier (if he had been killed on this occasion, that provides another CF scenario to avoid the scandals of 1915-16) , telegraphed N in the run-up to war 'Let Papa not plan war for with war comes ruin and you will lose to the last man'. He may even have claimed that N and his family would all end up dead too , as in fact happened. Arguably if he was not just following personal instinct or one of his alleged supernatural warnings he was aware as an ordinary peasant Russian, from his home village acquaintances in the lower ranks of the army?, of the deep problems within the Russian army and civilian as well as army administrative structures (and how taking so many men from the fields for a long war would wreck the harvest and cause bread shortages and riots).
Indeed, one of the bonuses of listening to R for the (non-Russian and antagonistic to the 'immoral' Russian nobility) Empress Alexandra was that as a humble and 'godly' peasant he was in touch with the people and represented the real, rural Russia, for which she had a romantic enthusiasm, better than the upper classes or the intelligentsia. So , ironically, if Nicholas had listened more to R on this occasion he might have ignored his strategists, not mobilised at once in late July, advised Serbia to meet all of the AH ultimatum at once as Russia would not rescue them, and kept a channel of communications open day by day to his close cousin the Kaiser with reassuring telegrams . This might still have led to war if AH went ahead with invading Serbia anyway, then - or later if the Serbs failed to round up all the 'Black Hand' organization and Serbia military intelligence backers of Princip and an angry AH high command sent in troops backed by Germany to punish them , possibly in spring 1915. Alternatively, with the Russian generals furious at N backing down and 'betraying' Serbia he could have let them have their way in one of the risky current plans to seize Constantinople in the next Balkan crisis or internal outbreak in the Ottoman state, and faced the Ottomans' financial and military sponsor Germany sending in troops to stop this. But the trajectory of the 'World War' crisis would have been different, and if the UK had by then been too busy dealing with an armed Ulster defiance of Home Rule for Dublin after the HR Bill was passed and implemented the British govt might have had to stay out of a Continental war as it had no troops to spare.
No Rasputin would not alter the trajectory of a dismal Russian military performance on the German front in 1914-15 leading to Nicholas sacking GD Nicholas as commander in chief, taking over in person as Alexander I had done in the last great 'invasion' crisis, and leaving Tsarskoe Selo for 'Stavka' (HQ) so the govt was now supervised by and ministers often chosen by the ill-informed, impractical, and mercurial (not to mention personally prejudiced) Alexandra. This would land Russia with a succession of weak PMs and poor or corrupt ministers in crucial positions such as Protopopov - who were Rasputin's allies in OTL but were still quite likely to get office otherwise if they were deferential to the Empress and had Court sponsors to push their claims. (Choosing men who lacked leadership ability, wide knowledge, or energy as PMs was a long-term problem for the Czar's inner circle once Witte was retired and Stolypin dead ; the system of a Czar not a PM as the technical lynchpin between and selector of the ministers, a hybrid of constitutionalism and autocracy, was a leftover from the pre-1905 constitution and worked OK with a hard-nosed and energetic workaholic like Alexander III but not the vague and stubborn but easily influenced N.) This lack of capable central direction to the war and 'home front' effort, and lack of honest and truth-telling experienced administrators to keep Alexandra in touch with the real situation not just flatter her, plus the admin failures of the Russian military and the food-supply system would still push Russia towards the brink in any case - but slower than in OTL. The losses of capable and respected army officers 'fighting in the front line' at the Front and the constant changes in the personnel of regiments and arrival of untried peasant recruits in the ranks after high casualties wrecked the old cohesion and internal unity of army regiments and the mutual respect of officers and men (meaning that the mutinies of early 1917 were more likely and the crucial St P bread riots could not be suppressed). But in an alt 1916-17 with no urgent scandal affecting the reputations of the Czar and his wife, their declining reputations would be due to a feeling that the war was being run incompetently rather than to lurid gossip - though Alexandra , as a 'German' and as being seen as running the govt once N was away , would still have been targeted. The personal antipathy of Nicholas' uncle Vladimir's widow GD Marie Pavlovna and assorted Grand Dukes to the withdrawn, morally censorious, and 'alien' Alexandra would still have been a problem , as was her alienation from St P high society - but Nicholas withdrawing from personal interaction with most of his elite was the same throughout his reign and he had disastrously misinterpreted the Bloody Sunday march and delayed granting a constitution in 1905, before Rasputin became a major figure (and had failed to show his concern over the Khodinka Field stampede at his coronation festivities back in 1896).
My own opinion is that Rasputin made things worse, as the tittle-tattle about Marie Antoinette and court luxury and sex scandals did in France in 1789, though the alienation of 'Court' and 'political nation' (and the rural populace) was already a 'given' - and Nicholas and co. were mainly resident out of the capital in a 'cut-off' world at Tsarskoe Selo from 1905, ie lacking crucial info on the situation in the capital and with news filtered to them by flatterers (cf Louis XVI and MA at Versailles), and to a degree right from N's accession. A far more important problem was the lack of political cohesion and 'grip' on the war effort. Making that less apparent and providing confidence in the govt was more important , at least for the 'political classes' and the sort of semi-reformists who were to end up running the Provisional Govt in Feb-Nov 1917 - though a major food crisis and mass military mutinies from fed-up soldiers combined could still have swept a competent and more united govt away some time in 1917 given how the cohesion of the state and army was breaking up.
A key change would have been to have Stolypin not assas in 1911 and still in charge of the govt in 1915-16, given his competence and ability to run a capable admin system - he was trusted by N (though not Alexandra) and could give the impression of energy and action and so inspire more confidence, even though a run of defeats on the German front and a retreat towards Riga would still be likely in 1915-16. Arguably if the Russians had had more luck, a few more imaginative generals (difficult in the rigid promotion system and 'groupthink' of HQ) and better timing in the Brusilov offensive on the AH front in 1916 and German troops arriving to stabilise the situation had been delayed, the Russian advance might have reached further SW in Ruthenia and threatened to penetrate to the Danube plain, forcing Germany to devote its main effort to pushing them back there not advancing across Lithuania - putting the Russians in a less demoralising position by Feb 1917. In Turkey, Russia was doing far better and had taken Erzerum in NE Anatolia so a full conquest of the Trebizond and Sinope region or a march South on the Turkish rail links to Syria was possible for 1917. A mixture of all these factors could then have delayed a major crisis in 1917 or even caused Germany to rush troops to Hungary and Turkey and halt their NE advance - but more than just 'no Rasputin' was needed.
Rasputin, recovering at home in Siberia from being stabbed a few weeks earlier (if he had been killed on this occasion, that provides another CF scenario to avoid the scandals of 1915-16) , telegraphed N in the run-up to war 'Let Papa not plan war for with war comes ruin and you will lose to the last man'. He may even have claimed that N and his family would all end up dead too , as in fact happened. Arguably if he was not just following personal instinct or one of his alleged supernatural warnings he was aware as an ordinary peasant Russian, from his home village acquaintances in the lower ranks of the army?, of the deep problems within the Russian army and civilian as well as army administrative structures (and how taking so many men from the fields for a long war would wreck the harvest and cause bread shortages and riots).
Indeed, one of the bonuses of listening to R for the (non-Russian and antagonistic to the 'immoral' Russian nobility) Empress Alexandra was that as a humble and 'godly' peasant he was in touch with the people and represented the real, rural Russia, for which she had a romantic enthusiasm, better than the upper classes or the intelligentsia. So , ironically, if Nicholas had listened more to R on this occasion he might have ignored his strategists, not mobilised at once in late July, advised Serbia to meet all of the AH ultimatum at once as Russia would not rescue them, and kept a channel of communications open day by day to his close cousin the Kaiser with reassuring telegrams . This might still have led to war if AH went ahead with invading Serbia anyway, then - or later if the Serbs failed to round up all the 'Black Hand' organization and Serbia military intelligence backers of Princip and an angry AH high command sent in troops backed by Germany to punish them , possibly in spring 1915. Alternatively, with the Russian generals furious at N backing down and 'betraying' Serbia he could have let them have their way in one of the risky current plans to seize Constantinople in the next Balkan crisis or internal outbreak in the Ottoman state, and faced the Ottomans' financial and military sponsor Germany sending in troops to stop this. But the trajectory of the 'World War' crisis would have been different, and if the UK had by then been too busy dealing with an armed Ulster defiance of Home Rule for Dublin after the HR Bill was passed and implemented the British govt might have had to stay out of a Continental war as it had no troops to spare.
No Rasputin would not alter the trajectory of a dismal Russian military performance on the German front in 1914-15 leading to Nicholas sacking GD Nicholas as commander in chief, taking over in person as Alexander I had done in the last great 'invasion' crisis, and leaving Tsarskoe Selo for 'Stavka' (HQ) so the govt was now supervised by and ministers often chosen by the ill-informed, impractical, and mercurial (not to mention personally prejudiced) Alexandra. This would land Russia with a succession of weak PMs and poor or corrupt ministers in crucial positions such as Protopopov - who were Rasputin's allies in OTL but were still quite likely to get office otherwise if they were deferential to the Empress and had Court sponsors to push their claims. (Choosing men who lacked leadership ability, wide knowledge, or energy as PMs was a long-term problem for the Czar's inner circle once Witte was retired and Stolypin dead ; the system of a Czar not a PM as the technical lynchpin between and selector of the ministers, a hybrid of constitutionalism and autocracy, was a leftover from the pre-1905 constitution and worked OK with a hard-nosed and energetic workaholic like Alexander III but not the vague and stubborn but easily influenced N.) This lack of capable central direction to the war and 'home front' effort, and lack of honest and truth-telling experienced administrators to keep Alexandra in touch with the real situation not just flatter her, plus the admin failures of the Russian military and the food-supply system would still push Russia towards the brink in any case - but slower than in OTL. The losses of capable and respected army officers 'fighting in the front line' at the Front and the constant changes in the personnel of regiments and arrival of untried peasant recruits in the ranks after high casualties wrecked the old cohesion and internal unity of army regiments and the mutual respect of officers and men (meaning that the mutinies of early 1917 were more likely and the crucial St P bread riots could not be suppressed). But in an alt 1916-17 with no urgent scandal affecting the reputations of the Czar and his wife, their declining reputations would be due to a feeling that the war was being run incompetently rather than to lurid gossip - though Alexandra , as a 'German' and as being seen as running the govt once N was away , would still have been targeted. The personal antipathy of Nicholas' uncle Vladimir's widow GD Marie Pavlovna and assorted Grand Dukes to the withdrawn, morally censorious, and 'alien' Alexandra would still have been a problem , as was her alienation from St P high society - but Nicholas withdrawing from personal interaction with most of his elite was the same throughout his reign and he had disastrously misinterpreted the Bloody Sunday march and delayed granting a constitution in 1905, before Rasputin became a major figure (and had failed to show his concern over the Khodinka Field stampede at his coronation festivities back in 1896).
My own opinion is that Rasputin made things worse, as the tittle-tattle about Marie Antoinette and court luxury and sex scandals did in France in 1789, though the alienation of 'Court' and 'political nation' (and the rural populace) was already a 'given' - and Nicholas and co. were mainly resident out of the capital in a 'cut-off' world at Tsarskoe Selo from 1905, ie lacking crucial info on the situation in the capital and with news filtered to them by flatterers (cf Louis XVI and MA at Versailles), and to a degree right from N's accession. A far more important problem was the lack of political cohesion and 'grip' on the war effort. Making that less apparent and providing confidence in the govt was more important , at least for the 'political classes' and the sort of semi-reformists who were to end up running the Provisional Govt in Feb-Nov 1917 - though a major food crisis and mass military mutinies from fed-up soldiers combined could still have swept a competent and more united govt away some time in 1917 given how the cohesion of the state and army was breaking up.
A key change would have been to have Stolypin not assas in 1911 and still in charge of the govt in 1915-16, given his competence and ability to run a capable admin system - he was trusted by N (though not Alexandra) and could give the impression of energy and action and so inspire more confidence, even though a run of defeats on the German front and a retreat towards Riga would still be likely in 1915-16. Arguably if the Russians had had more luck, a few more imaginative generals (difficult in the rigid promotion system and 'groupthink' of HQ) and better timing in the Brusilov offensive on the AH front in 1916 and German troops arriving to stabilise the situation had been delayed, the Russian advance might have reached further SW in Ruthenia and threatened to penetrate to the Danube plain, forcing Germany to devote its main effort to pushing them back there not advancing across Lithuania - putting the Russians in a less demoralising position by Feb 1917. In Turkey, Russia was doing far better and had taken Erzerum in NE Anatolia so a full conquest of the Trebizond and Sinope region or a march South on the Turkish rail links to Syria was possible for 1917. A mixture of all these factors could then have delayed a major crisis in 1917 or even caused Germany to rush troops to Hungary and Turkey and halt their NE advance - but more than just 'no Rasputin' was needed.