#tsarist

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin

[tomorrowusa]

Putin is using old tsarist and Communist boundaries to justify his imperialistic attempt to take over Ukraine.

But if Putin chooses to use 18th through 20th century maps to claim Ukraine, there’s nothing to stop the Mongols from from doing the same to reclaim much of Russia.

What Putin fails to understand is that Russia would have more influence if it acted like a normal country rather than like a kleptocratic fascist aggressor.

Putin is no Peter the Great, he’s more like Saddam Hussein with nukes.

The Soviet Union is DEAD DEAD DEAD and nobody other than a cohort of nostalgic “ватники“ inside Russia would like to see it return.

[marawesson]

The Witch of Saint Petersburg

[evilelitest2]

Was the last Tsar of Russia (aka Nikolas II) really such a horrible ruler as Soviet propaganda had tried to portray him?

Maybe not quite as bad as Soviet Propaganda, but like..it was close.  Niki was a bad ruler on basically every level and is living proof about why monarchy is terrible.  He was sweat natured, shy, and very friendly, a good father, great husband, but utterly unsuited to any kind of political power what so ever, he would have been great as a stay at home husband or maybe a translator but as the ruler of an absolute monarchy...ugg.  His only real skill was that he was great at languages.

Like, I can’t empathize this enough, Tsarists Russia was an awful regime, and it was well before Nicolas came to power.  Massive corrupt, an unbelievable division between the wealthy and the poor, basically no human rights for the people, the slogan of the Empire was “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality”.  Orthidoxy as in it was basically a theocracy, and all non Orthidox Christians were persecuted.  Autocracy in that the state was a super absolute monarchy with all power lying in the hands of the Tsar until 1906.  And Nationality because despite being a massively ethnically diverse country, the Russian empire enforced racist policies that prioritized ethnic Russians over everybody else.  This was all true before Nicolas took power, but he continued all of the most right wing policies, and it was his secret police for example which wrote the Elders of Zion as a way to divert criticism away from his regime and instead to the Jews.  Actually I really want to empathize this, Nicolas was an extreme antisemitic who seriously contemplated doing a Russian equivalent of the Holocaust at several points.  

But beyond all that though Nicolas II is...just kind of an idiot.  Like his father Alexander III was a brutal racist vicious tyrant who would kill you before you even thought of rebellion but he was you know...basically competent.  Nikki was, what historians call it, a bit thick.  LIke the impression you get with him beyond everything else is a complete clueless about almost everything going on around him, he always seemed to trust the wrong people, he appointed the wrong people, he disliked the right people, he never seemed to have a firm grasp on policy.  The disastrous Russo Japanese War that directly triggered the 1905 Revolution, Nicolas basically goaded Japan into it..by mistake.  And then fucked it up.  This is a guy who couldn’t even get through his coronation ceremony without accidentally getting like 1300 people killed. He was weak willed, indecisive, and never really understood how to manage anything without fucking it up.  This is not to even get into the disaster upon disaster that was his role in WWI.  

He was also just a bad administrator, he was a micromanager of the highest degree but was so afraid of conflict he would never openly tell people if they were fired or if he disagreed with him, he didn’t know anything about the policies which he over saw, and he 100% bought the notion that because he was God’s divinely appointed representative on earth, all he had to do was secure God’s favor and he would win out in the end.  Which like...not so much.  The impression you get of this guy was somebody who is just oblivious to how much damage he does, or what is needed to actually run a state...in addition to being a racist conspiracy theorist.  Just to make this clear, despite the fact that his own men wrote up Elders of Zion deliberately as a way to divert attention away from the regime, he still bought it...even though he knew it was fake.   

The one thing he seemed aware of was that WWI was a bad idea, and he still fucked that up.  

The Soviet Propaganda of the man tended to show him as a deliberate sadist who actively reveled in the pain of his subjects, and I don’t think that is true (though he was quite indifferent to the suffering of Jews), instead he was obliviously amicable dunce.  For example, the Bloody Sunday massacre which kicked off the 1905 revolution, was imagined by the Soviets as a deliberate act by “Bloody Nicolas” when in fact it was the result of an administrative miscommunication and Nikki not doing his damn job.  From all accounts he was a really nice person to talk to, easy going, friendly understanding and even kind, he was just also utterly incurious, stupid to the point of dangerous, and woefully incompetent at everything, who happened to be the most powerful man in Russia.

Its actually similar to Charles I, George III or Louis XVI, a tendency to attribute to malice which was mostly incompetence, though I think Nicolas was the worse of the lot (except maybe Charles I).

I don’t like the Soviet Union, but Tsarist Russia needed to end.  

Good Question btw

[autochromeplates]

Leonid Andreyev / Savva Andreyev, 1910-1912

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

When Jack Johnson Met the Black Russian

(Special to The Root) — This is an excerpt from Vladimir Alexandrov's recent book The Black Russian, which tells the true story of Frederick Bruce Thomas, the son of former slaves in Mississippi who became a millionaire entrepreneur in czarist Moscow and the "Sultan of Jazz" in Constantinople. (For more on Thomas' incredible story, check out Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro column). One of Thomas' boldest moves was to invite Jack Johnson, the black American heavyweight-boxing champion of the world, to fight in Moscow.

An astonishing article here, about the meeting between Frederick Bruce Thomas, who made his millions in Moscow before the Revolution, and Jack Johnson, the famous American boxer. I have “The Black Russian” on my bookshelf, though I have not read it. Since I have returned to my enduring passion for Russian history, and since I have African ancestry myself, this would be a good time to familiarise myself on the limited, but most interesting history of black Americans and Africans who visited/lived in Russia and the subsequent USSR. A great article here by Vladimir Alexandrov. 

[rvexillology]

Flag of the Sokolniki District, Moscow, former Tsarist falconry grounds

from /r/vexillology Top comment: [Grew up in the district and never knew it had such a badass flag, though I swear anytime you try to draw eyes on an animal they come out derpy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokolniki_District)

[tatianaromanov-1918-blog]

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Imperial Russia sewing in her mother's lilac boudoir.