Was the Russian Empire unsalvageable?

[Christian]

I was speaking to someone who knew a hell of a lot on Russian history and he is firmly convinced that the Russian Empire as it was throughout the years was unsalvageable. The functional literacy rate never went beyond 10%, the notables of the empire were more concerned with lording over the peasants than they were with improving agricultural efficiency, while also seeing them as sub-human and never even once considered the possibility of adopting western ways that didn't involve the military. While also, you know, being incredibly anti-semitic.

So, what do you guys think, is the Russian Empire impossible to fix?

 

[Ricardolindo]

With an early enough point of divergence, no. Alexander I seriously considered a constitution several times. There was Count Novosiltsev's project in 1820, for example.

 

[Japhy]

It depends on what we are referring to as "The Empire"

Russia as a Nation has survived of course, so there's a decent chance that some sort of Empire can keep going. After all look at how equally useless the rest of European Aristocracy was like, from the Ottomans to the British. Russia as a territory shrunk, but survived as well.

Russia as an Autocratic Monarchy with all power centered on the form of the latest heir of a dynasty? Well, no that can't survive. After all it just takes one bad run of luck for the talent of the inbreds and suddenly they're getting their heads shot up or getting machine pistoled in a Siberian basement.

I think there is a case to be made that if the last few Romanovs had been willing to build up at least a Kaiserreich Farce of a Constitution there could have been something. I think if the Decemberists had managed a win that would have worked out too. And I think if things had gone a little bit differently here or there with succession that there could have been more options then what happened when Nicholas II was in charge. But in general, the later any potential POD the more likely that fixing the Empire means ending the Empire and replacing it with something more Republican.

 

[ShortsBelfast]

I was speaking to someone who knew a hell of a lot on Russian history and he is firmly convinced that the Russian Empire as it was throughout the years was unsalvageable. The functional literacy rate never went beyond 10%, the notables of the empire were more concerned with lording over the peasants than they were with improving agricultural efficiency, while also seeing them as sub-human and never even once considered the possibility of adopting western ways that didn't involve the military. While also, you know, being incredibly anti-semitic.

So, what do you guys think, is the Russian Empire impossible to fix?

He didn't know as much about the Russian Empire as all that (I assume that he isn't purely talking about the 1820/30s when he might have a point) if he thinks that functional literacy never went beyond 10%, it was at least 40% by the time Nicholas III was overthrown and when the Smiths of Moscow (Russia's biggest boilermakers prior to the 1917 Revolution) returned to the UK after said Revolution, they found that mathematics and science teaching was less well organised in the UK than in Russia. I would encourage going to the other place and searching the Tsarist Russia Survives and White Victory in the Civil War threads where these points are argued over but-
(a) there is room for debate over how high literacy levels actually were but 10% is ludicrously low;
(b) the aristocracy didn't actually own the majority of the land any longer by 1914, it was the peasantry that were very conservative about adopting new agricultural techniques;
(c) such innovation in agronomy as was actually going on was mainly on the remaining aristocratic estates and in the Agriculture Ministry (who regularly brought in foreign experts). Prince Lvov was a patron of agricultural improvement for instance; and
(d) The Russian Empire was one of the world's fastest growing industrial economies prior to WW1.

Yes it was a flawed place and, yes, Nicholas was the wrong man to lead it but viewing it as inevitably doomed is ridiculously deterministic.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Are we defining Russian Empire here as the precise Empire that existed back then, a reformed government that's still recognisable as similar to pre-1917, or that it dominates all the same land? The first and third haven't been true of the other empires from the time either, while the second is what's happened to the UK so I'm sure it's possible it could've happened to Russia (but in the process it likely wouldn't be an empire anymore)

 

[ShortsBelfast]

Are we defining Russian Empire here as the precise Empire that existed back then, a reformed government that's still recognisable as similar to pre-1917, or that it dominates all the same land? The first and third haven't been true of the other empires from the time either, while the second is what's happened to the UK so I'm sure it's possible it could've happened to Russia (but in the process it likely wouldn't be an empire anymore)

Even the rump Russia if it let all the rest go has over one hundred and twenty million people (I am assuming that "all" would include some landlocked ASRs and Caucasian peoples) across five time zones. It is still big enough to constitute an Empire in a way Britain or France ceased to do post 1960. "Emperor" wouldn't be a ridiculously overblown title for a (whether constitutional or absolute) Russian monarch.