Murder case of Tsar Nicholas II & family closed

[Steve]

Eh, I've long regarded the executions of Nicholas II and his Czarina to be a harsh but somewhat karmic fate for a couple that, through their vapidity and incompetence, destroyed the very system that sustained them and doomed the nation their duty demanded they preserve to bloody war and a bloodier successor regime.

OTOH, their children were innocent and were the victims of cold-blooded murder by the Reds, who were a bunch of bastards. They have become very prominent victims of the Communists, if hardly the only ones, and IMHO can be mourned in the fashion that one could, say, mourn Anne Frank.

Yeah, they looked like sweet kids and were innocent even if they were brats. Personally, I think the Reds should have tried to convert them- it would have been a big propaganda coup.

I'm not even sure if they were "brats" in the fashion people would assume. Alexei was a terminally sick boy stricken with hemophilia or whatever that blood disease was and led the life such a condition foisted upon him (though you can naturally argue he was more comfortable and better-treated than peasant children who had similar medical issues, it was still a debilitating condition). IIRC the two older daughters Olga and.... I forget the second - was it Maria? - spent at least part of WWI serving as nurses in Army hospitals tending to wounded soldiers. One of their aunts also performed that service and was amply rewarded for it by the Reds by being thrown into a mineshaft (or was it well?) and left to die.

I am hardly a monarchist, indeed I've long been a complete Republican - and I don't mean the GOP - but that doesn't mean I'll ignore injustice against royalty and nobility or positive contributions they may have made to their nations. In a just world the children of Nicholas II and Aleksandra would have been spared, while the Tsar and Tsarina would have met their fates as karmic justice for the disaster their incompetence and foolishness had wrought upon a country they were supposed to serve (particularly Aleksandra.... I can see why Russians thought she was actually a German agent, this was a woman who demanded that any ministers of government or high-ranking military officers accept advice from the charlatan Rasputin, browbeating her husband with demands to dismiss or belittle any who ignored Rasputin no matter their other qualifications while supporting the rise of incompetents precisely because they were sycophantic toward her and the Mad Monk, to the extent that one of the new high ministers, I think it was Protopapov or maybe Sturmer, was unavailable during the critical early hours of the February Revolution because he was in his room trying to contact Rasputin's spirit for advice.)

Anyway, though the people of Russia can feel free to approach this as they see fit, my own position would be to inter the bones of all the assembled, to mourn the tragedy of the last Tsar and his family - the lost potential of his reign, his own failings as a ruler and the disaster they wrought, the snuffed out lives of his innocent children - while acknowledging that the days of the Romanovs are over for the most part, and thus move on to hopefully greater things. Russia is a Republic, if becoming a particularly authoritarian one under Putin, and will remain one short of some massive change in society. Honoring the past must be part and parcel with looking to the future.

And after the last couple of centuries that Russia as had, as a people and as a nation, I think they are long overdue for a Happy Time. Hopefully one that involves peaceful coexistance with their neighbors and the world at large.

[Samuel]

I'm sorry- they don't do inflection on the net.

emphasis on

and even if

I meant to imply even if they weren't sweet, it still would be wrong.

And after the last couple of centuries that Russia as had, as a people and as a nation, I think they are long overdue for a Happy Time. Hopefully one that involves peaceful coexistance with their neighbors and the world at large.

I don't think they are going to have such luck- the bright spot is they don't have to worry about being invaded anymore. But, as Stas has shown... well, the shit just hit the fan after the fall of the USSR.

[K. A. Pital]

I don't think the Tsar's family was killed because the Soviet government, or even the immediate executors particulary hated the small children of the Tsar. That was a ruthless crime, but the logic behind it is perfectly clear: any surviving children of the Tsar could and would have been used by the monarchists in the Civil War as a rallying point to fight for a "legitimate ruler" of Russia.

Remember that most of the whites and monarchists were not of royal blood, and thus could not claim the throne of Russia - meaning their abilities to use monarchism as a rallying cry were diminished. If they captured the Tsar or any offspring of his alive, that would've changed. Killing every royal successor without exception doomed the chances of re-establishment of monarchy.

In 1857, the British forces killed the entire Moghul royal family (who surrendered) in Delhi IIRC, just to make the indian rebellion leaderless. I don't see any sharp distinction between these events anyhow.

[TithonusSyndrome]

Speaking of the whites, what exactly are they likely to do with this knowledge? I don't know a lot about them or the character of their devotions, if it takes on a religious quality or what - so what effect is this news likely to have on them?

[Mayabird]

Speaking of the whites, what exactly are they likely to do with this knowledge? I don't know a lot about them or the character of their devotions, if it takes on a religious quality or what - so what effect is this news likely to have on them?

Well, with monarchies you can always go find somebody's cousin's grandchild and claim they're the new legitimate ruler by tracing the 'bloodline', but it really weakens your case for anyone who's not already a True Believer in the system when you try claiming that this guy who technically has a title from inheriting it with the name but just owns an old estate and a bit of surrounding land and writes travel guides for a living is the Rightful King.

[Steve]

Oh, I'm not saying they didn't have a practical reason for murdering the kids, but that doesn't excuse the act, just explains it. Nor will I defend the record of the Raj.

As for the Whites, they were a pretty disparate bunch as I recall. Monarchists of both autocratic and constitutional stripes, Republicans, Mensheviks, the Social Revolutionaries (first just the Right SR, then the whole thing when Lenin's policies turned the last allied party, the Left SR, against the Bolsheviks). Though some were more proactive than others. It didn't help the Whites that they proved unwilling to make concessions to any of the independence movements like those in the Baltics (Yudenich's advance on Petrograd would've had a higher chance of success had it received support from the Baltic states, whom the Whites wouldn't recognize).

[K. A. Pital]

It didn't help the Whites that they proved unwilling to make concessions to any of the independence movements

They were trying to save the crumbling Empire, while the Bolsheviks were building a new Russian state. This is why the Whites were recklessly going against all the small republics' independence movements but at the same time feeling allright when it came to giving away territories of Russia to the Entente.

[Antie]

I'm not even sure if they were "brats" in the fashion people would assume.

I don't think any of them were brats, except maybe Anastasia sometimes.

IIRC the two older daughters Olga and.... I forget the second -

*Points to avatar and fanlisting*

You're thinking of Tatiana.

According to what I've read, Tatiana was the most well-known of the sisters when they were alive.

[Pelranius]

Well, actually, Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal Emperor, lived until 1886, though he was exiled in Rangoon. However, most of his male relatives were killed. A small technicality, but Stas's point still stands.

[K. A. Pital]

Well, actually, Bahadur Shah II, the last Mughal Emperor, lived until 1886

Yeah, I messed that up. I did remember that his family members were shot without any sort of trial or process at all at the whim of the commander who captured them, but not the fate of the Emperor himself.

[Sarevok]

As far as I know the era of Tsar Nicholas was a terrible time to live in Russia. Many families must had been killed during those dark days. So how come a century later this one mans tragedy is such a big issue when so many Russians, most of them ordinary humble folks without any politics coloring them died as well ?

[K. A. Pital]

So how come a century later this one mans tragedy is such a big issue

Orthodoxy, and neverending enthusiasm for monarchy as a "godly" form of rule.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Speaking of the whites, what exactly are they likely to do with this knowledge? I don't know a lot about them or the character of their devotions, if it takes on a religious quality or what - so what effect is this news likely to have on them?

Since I was raised in a White family, I can answer this question precisely and authoritatively:

The Tsar, the Tsaritsa, the Tsarevich, and the Grand Duchesses are Martyrs of the Faith, their deaths having been long ago acknowledged by the White movement, and the Russian Orthodox Church which provides the fundamental underpinning of the White ideology having assigned them the status of martyrdom, and indeed Sainthood; Nicholas II is now Saint Nicholas the Passion Bearer. In short, this changes nothing; it is just, to the White partisans, a symbol of the confirmation of the martyrdom of the Imperial House and the crimes of the Bolsheviks. Beyond that point, the existence of a continued monarchist movement is not in one single respect diminished, for Romanov heirs did survive, and a currently functional dynastic descent represented by the Pretender, the Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov, or, due to the competing claims, Nicholas Romanov. In either case the general idea of a restorationist movement has not changed, though only a very small percentage of non-Cossack Russians support such an action; most of the Cossack bands remain staunchly Imperialist, to the point where they refuse to vote and instead "pray for the return of the Tsar."

[Steve]

Cossacks are kind of "special", in their own little way....

[That NOS Guy]

Cossacks are kind of "special", in their own little way....

Ironic that in Repin's Zaporozh'e Cossacks they come across as so unwilling to be dominated by anyone fancing himself a king.