Abdication of Emperor Nicholas II

Today is the centenary (NS) of the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas II in 1917.

Having initially abdicated in favour of his son Tsesarevich Alexei in the afternoon late on that day he issued a second abdication on behalf of his son but timed as of his first document. This was because it was feared the outgoing Emperor and his wife would be separated from their invalid son. So instead of being coming Regent the Grand Duke Michael was to succeed his brother as Emperor Michael II. The following day, being awakened to the news he was now Emperor, he met with representatives of the Provisional Government and neither accepting or declining the position, said he would wait for the Constituent Assembly to meet to decide the form of government of Russia. Before it met Kerensky declared the country to be a republic on September 1st, followed by the Bolshevik revolution in October.

The story of the Emperor Nicholas, his Empress Alexandra and the fate of their family is well known - there is an online biography with links at Nicholas II of Russia -  and it is a story full of tragedy and horror.

The tragedy is not just personal, of his family, and dynasty but also of Russia itself. It has elements of Classical tragedy - were the events of the Emperor's reign foreordained by an evil providence, or when and how could things have turned out differently. I do not believe in historical inevitability, and at many points in the last years of Romanov rule different outcomes were possible. 

One obvious question is how might the Duma and the political parties within it have evolved without the disaster of the First World War. Another is whether Russia could have become a constitutional monarchy like those of the rest of Europe - the precise balances of power within such systems being secondary to the basic principle. A further point is whether the Emperor Nicholas could have come to accept and work effectively with such a system and whether Russia could produce a political class to effectively operate and manage a parliamentary system. that, for example, remains a living issue today.

  The State Opening of the first Duma in the Winter Palace in 1906

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  The Emperor reading his speech at the State Opening

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Other members of the Imperial Family appear to have been more responsive, and they appear as a wider family to have felt excluded from the centre as the Emperor and Empress, their daughters and frail son became rather isolated from the rest of the Romanovs. Something of that can be seen in the life of the designated successor Grand_Duke_Michael_Alexandrovich_of_Russia.

Much of this does turn on the personality and abilities of Emperor Nicholas II. He often appears limited and unimaginative, blinkered and out of his depth. He had many good personal qualities as a man, husband and father, and whether those qualities in different circumstances could have made him an effective Emperor under whatsoever constitutional dispensation remains a topic for reflection and to which there is no quick answer.

  

Emperor Nicholas II leaves the Cathedral of the Assumption in the Kremlin following his Coronation May 4th 1896 

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Former People

The Book of the Week read on Radio 4 this week has been Douglas Smith's Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy  published in the UK by Macmillan.

Image: Douglas Smith website

The book was, obviously, abridged but clearly extremely interesting and well documented from the recollections of those who lived through the events described.

Douglas Smith starts with the point that history is usually written by the victors. Here he looks at the victims as he chronicles the political and social tragedy and disaster that swept across Russia from 1917. This may not be cheerful reading, but it is revealing.

My own strongly Hobbesian and Burkeian sense responded to the depiction of the Russian revolutions and their aftermath in a way which corresponded with Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium. 

Here, once again, the revolutionaries appropriated to themselves the possessions of the displaced elite, not in a spirit of real redistribution but by simple theft and greed. Life became nasty, brutish and short for everybody, and human misery abounded.

There is an interview with the author and more about the book on his website which can be viewed here.