How much royal power can be kept? Also, do you think that some form of neo absolutism could rise in the future?
The empire ain't going to blow up unless there is some foreign invasion. The soviet union blowing up was one chance in a million and in most scenarios it would end surviving for an undetermined amont of time.
And by what metric have you made that determination? Because the Soviet Union is 0:1 vs Collapse lmao
The Empire almost did blow up in 1905, and after the end of that experiment the Empire was almost certainly doomed. As WWI demonstrated the institution of the Tsardom itself was rotten, sure it took a couple years for things to finally boil over where resentment from all sides pushed out 1917. In any case, the Empire's prospects are limited, the way its elite understood itself "one and indivisible" precludes true democratic development because Russians were a minority in the Empire. Demographics probably wouldn't improve that.
Of course, even if WWI as we know it doesn't happen, you're not getting through the first half of the 20th century without a couple more shocks to the system, be they an equivalent of 1929 or a war with a foreign power, Germany, Turkey, Japan, Britain, whatever. The point is, the makeup of the empire, and its institutions, hardly favors the developments of the 20th century. Sure, we can probably formulate a way in which a regime takes place that is more liberal, but fundamentally you either are an Empire or you aren't an Empire, and when this Empire isn't an overseas farflung series of colonial outposts but a contiguous landmass from an elevated core to an imperial periphery, you can't turn that into a democracy. That's not even touching on the economic situation.
Yeah, the Russian Empire provinces did not take account ofethnic boundaries and it would be much eaaier to control regionalism in Russia this way. The Soviet republics were split along ethnic lines and Soviet propaganda prided it as "a union of brotherly people", so the seeds for a nationalist break-up were already planted. Also, one of the most overlooked facts is that the Soviet republics had the express right to secede enshrined in every Soviet Constitution (unlike US states), so their eventual secession was done on very legal terms.
Austrians were 23% of the population of Austria-Hungary, while Russians were 44% inside the Russian Empire(not to mention the soft power instrument of the Russian Orthodox Church, controlling 87% of the population), not to mention the population being extremely spread out in Eastern Europe and monopolizing Siberia, so if reformed properly the Russian Empire would be able to survive.
What was the percentage of Catholics in Austria-Hungary? The hierarchy there was strongly enough behind the monarchy there was talk of breaking with Rome because they didn't want an Italian pope before 1915. Religion was not as effective a tool of state policy in 20th century, true in Eastern Europe as it was in Western Europe.
The point is that the Russian Empire was an Empire, it governed core->periphery, and had at various levels a massively disparate ethnic, confessional, and socio-economic hierarchy. To transition it into something we'd call a democracy in a sustainable way (as it is Russia, in its history has had one arguably fair election in 1905 and that's it) seems, to me, unlikely. Germany's situation was very different, as a point of comparison, and its monarchy's transition to constitutionalism was only ever incomplete.
I feel like Russia before communist Revolution gets too much flack. Even a worst case scenario Russian empire ruling Russia through the 20th century, is still leagues better than the Bolsheviks.
Ask the Circassians.
Secondly, this is not a contest.
