Post 1905 Sanity Options For Czarist Russia

[alexmilman]

Killin Lenin/Bolsheviks not help much.

But it would do a lot of good in a long run. 😉

They were ratherly symptom of existing problem not cause. Amd about killing of Rasputin is not any point. He wasn't guilt for collapse of the empire.

I ratherly just kill Nicholas II soon after the revolution and allow his brother Michael becoming regent for Alexei II. He was conservative but still pragrmatic enough to allow Duma operate mostly on its own instead happily dissolving that every time when is not happy for its decisions.

Sounds reasonable but the problem was that, judging by various memoirs, the Duma and Council of State could not “operate on their own” with any degree of a productivity being filled mostly with the demagogues who had agendas, huge personal egos and very modest knowledge of anything useful. The few exceptions would not make a critical difference.

Russia too should prepare WW1.

“Perpare ww1” or “prepare for ww1”? The first it did with a noticeable success (if success is defined as having a war) and 2nd was easier said than done by a long list of the reasons, domestic and international. How about trying to avoid it?

 

[alexmilman]

Short of having a crystal ball and gazing into the future, there is not much they could have done given who they were. 1905 did give them a scare, yes. And there were rational people near the seat of power who were prepared to tack one way or another, but they are dealing with a system whose main power brokers seemingly cannot tell apart a bomb-throwing anarchist from a debating-school socialist from a constitutional democrat. To the powers that be, any change, surrendering even an ounce of Tsarist regime authority (real or wholly imaginary by this point) was tantamount to advocating cannibalism. The Duma could have been a realistic launch point for reasonable change. But it never stood a chance.

It did have a chance but it screwed it up: the game had to be bi-directional and the 1st Duma was concentrating exclusively upon opposition to the government (not NII personally), which, unlike Duma’s members were professionals in finances, transportation, logistics and other vital areas. The 2nd Duma was not noticeably better. So how state was expected to operate effectively within that framework.

Not with Nicky, not with his wife, and not with the hordes of people around them who had a vested interest in pretending the system worked.

Some of these people, like Stolypin, Kokovtsev, Krivoshein, had been high class professionals who did try to make system working and even achieved noticeable results. How many serious specialists in any practical area can one name in Duma?

 

[alexmilman]

AFAIK by the time he was assassinated Stolypin had lost the favor of Nicky II, hadn't he been shot he would've probably been sacked soon after.

Yes. And the land reform kept going on after his death: after all, its practical implementation had been done by Krivoshein. The finances were in Kokovtsev’s hands during Stolypin’s tenure and after his death and, actually, Kokovtsev, as the Finance Minister and then PM was better in dealing with the Duma.

 

[Sasza]

Apart from Poles and Russians, there should be no other Slavic or Baltic nations in the country. So provide Poles with the opportunity to develop not only in the Kingdom of Poland, but also in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. This will allow us to marginalize other minorities in order to create loyal Poles in the future.

 

[alexmilman]

Apart from Poles and Russians, there should be no other Slavic or Baltic nations in the country.

Are you preaching a physical extermination of the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Fins, and complete Russification of Belorussia and Ukraine?

So provide Poles with the opportunity to develop not only in the Kingdom of Poland, but also in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine. This will allow us to marginalize other minorities in order to create loyal Poles in the future.

There were no laws preventing Poles from “developing” anywhere in the RE and many Poles were quite loyal to the regime.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

Apart from Poles and Russians, there should be no other Slavic or Baltic nations in the country. So provide Poles with the opportunity to develop not only in the Kingdom of Poland, but also in Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine.

Why would the RE have to give up on its most important province Ukraine? Why just not stop Russification so that minorities don't feel oppressed?

This will allow us to marginalize other minorities in order to create loyal Poles in the future.

The Poles were relatively loyal up until the Russians committed war crimes when they retreated from Poland.

 

[Kurd Gossemer]

Are you preaching a physical extermination of the Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Fins, and complete Russification of Belorussia and Ukraine?

I don't think they meant quite like that but that Poland is too big to properly assimilate unlike let's say, the Baltics and Finland, which I imagine also means removing whatever privileges and autonomy they might have.

 

[EasternRomanEmpire]

I don't think they meant quite like that but that Poland is too big to properly assimilate unlike let's say, the Baltics and Finland, which I imagine also means removing whatever privileges and autonomy they might have.

Russification never really worked anywhere. Russifying the Baltics and Finland will not bring any more successes than the one in Poland did.

 

[Lalli]

Russification never really worked anywhere. Russifying the Baltics and Finland will not bring any more successes than the one in Poland did.

Exactly. Russification indeed hasn't ever worked and it would has only just counter-productive results. Ratherly just let minorities at least Finns, Poles, Baltics, Ukrainians, Caucasians and Central Asians keep their culture. Russians would are still clear majority and annoying all these minorities not bring any benefit.