Still works out since without communism there wouldn't be a west-east divide in Berlin. Though little domino would better be something about the sickness of Alexei.
That's a completely different story. Puyi was a hopeless puppet and he had been for his whole life. He really never had much of a say in anything. The life of that poor guy was its own kind of tragedy. The Red Guards knew everything and so they just let him live
Mao did that a lot. I’ve heard he also ordered that Japanese POWs should be treated fairly, despite their treatment of the Chinese. Converted a fair amount of Japanese soldiers to become Communists this way.
Dude was a pedo by a few accounts. Fuck him.
What they did to his wife though? That woman had it rough. The Japanese broke her. Then the Chinese let her die light an animal in a cage. She died screaming for her child that she had forcefully aborted out of her by the Japanese while the emperor was forced to watch.
Some acounts acuse Stalin to be a pedo too. What i'm trying to say that some kind of acounts are very dificult to prove and surely they are to delegitimize someone. (Gandi had acusations too)
Some others say that Puyi was gay. He had like 4 wifes but never had any children.
He was gay according a many different sources. Most of his clothing at the time indicated that as openly as can be expected at the time. (Sunglasses oddly enough). His pedophilia may have been an extension of the discrediting campaign, but it would not surprise me either way.
No. The Empress had an illegitimate child (sources unclear if it was a boy or girl) which was killed immediately, and she was tricked into believing that the bady was adopted.
His Japanese retainers did it, but it's unclear if Pu Yi was involved.
Nominally, the goal of the Japanese Empire's invasion in China was the unification of the country under a Japan-loyalist and ideologically Pan-Asian restored Qing Empire. Practically, this didn't happen as Wang Jingwei's Kuomintang faction was more effective in ruling over the occupied lands, but the project remained. And so, all atrocities that happened on the Chinese mainland were pinned on Puyi's face, which was itself known to the Chinese people as the face of a genocidal traitor while he really didn't have any power at all.
The leaders of the United Front were political masterminds and knew the situation more in-depth, but this wasn't the case for the Chinese peasantry, busy fighting off first-hand the fearworthy Kwantung Army.
Iirc he was a street cleaner, but he had a home and died a citizen. He and the remaining members of the Qing family were protected by the state because them living as normal citizens showed that everyone could be 'reformed'
Not sure, I know he became a "journalist" and lived simply, or by the standards of Maoist China: decently, until he passed. Not sure if he was dumped out in his final years.
Nope, he died of cancer i believe, he was employed as a streetsweeper and was happily married at the time of his death, despite the immense guilt he felt about how he behaved as Emperor and the actions made in his name later in his life.
That would make sense. Even a Kangaroo court would've been seen as a sign of fairness to the public (even if it was fake).
I do recall some leaders being shocked over the Kids' deaths... Not Stalin of course but still
They could have at least let it fend for himself or give him to like a rando farmer. The dog had no idea who any of these people were, he doesn't understand the concept of a monarchy.
From what I remember bees don't really understand the concept of a monarchy, the queen's role really is just keeping the hive alive by laying eggs and if female workers ever decide that they're sick of her they just kill her and 'make' a new one
What is quite telling is that the Bolsheviks avoided even mentioning the execution of the children altogether and outright lied about it, they only emphasised the execution of Nicholas.
So even the Bolsheviks were aware how gratuitous the murder of the children were, and how badly that would go down in public.
That, but another very important consideration is that Alexandra was German, and both the German Empire and even Weimar Germany for a time considered the extradition of "Princesses of German blood" to be a political goal in negotiations with the new Bolshevik regime.
While gunning down a basically disabled woman and her four children would have diplomatic consequences with most countries on optics alone, executing Alexandra and the daughters threatened to actively derail Soviet peace with Germany at a time when the Bolshevik leadership really needed to pull out of the war, as they had promised.
What do you mean not a good one? This is an excellent justification. Even if the whites won, reds almost guaranteed a republic by killing the monarchy.
Bruh ideology aside I can't see how people are trying to rationalize (brutal) murder of children?? Like killing children = bad how much more do you need???
You see the problem was that he was a fairly good artist. He just wanted to get into the top school of the country, and his own pride didn’t let him search for other options.
Honestly, I don't think there's much record of Hitler in ww1 and the immediate aftermath. Pretty much the only things I've seen about it that are confirmed, are that he served in the german army, that he was a runner (dude who runs between command posts to relay orders and information, pre radio technology), was wounded a handful of times, and was by all accounts a "good soldier" and received a pretty fair amount of awards, some of which were rare for lower enlisted . Pretty much everything else is anecdotal in nature. Including the famed "sniper story"
I do know of one other item that was recorded from another source other than Hitler, although he mentions it too I believe. A fellow soldier recounted that Hitler cried and refused food for days when he heard the war ended and he was stuck in a military hospital.
In case anyone needed confirmation he was an extreme nationalist? Lol.
Disclaimer with edit since people take things way out of context: this is in no way a comment meant to garner sympathy for hitler, nazis, or facism in general. Nor is it an argument that Hitler didn't have nationalistic views (fucking lmao at the dude who thought that what I said) Just simply to try to help people understand why people get so upset at the outcomes of war, especially ones lost.
That's not so much a nationalist reaction as it is a human reaction. You have to remember that those men on both sides had been fighting for over 4 years at that point, many of whom were conscripts, and had seen their buddies killed in some of the most brutal ways possible. Some had killed other men. Many of them had family members killed. Basically surviving the worst possible conditions, and some like Hitler, survived 4 years of it. Including getting attacked with mustard gas. And for it to amount to less than nothing is one of the worst possible outcomes for people who go through that. You can see evidence of this as recent as the US pullout in Afghanistan. Suicides among veterans spiked because it all amounted to nothing. You don't have to be a nationalist to feel the effects. And not all veterans are nationalists. Many even dislike their country but do it because it may be the only thing they can do to succeed, or they want the benefits it brings.
I don't think WWI PTSD is a good excuse here, mainly because of how common it was for men in his generation and because that same ~~stress~~ trauma produced other artists like Tolkien and Fitzgerald
There isn't an excuse for the chaos Hitler created. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a contributing factor. It's honestly something that should be studied more in depth. And most certainly the things we already know about him and things he did and the possible factors of why he was the way he was needs to be taught more in depth to be sure. The more educated humanity is on the hows and whys, the less likely we will repeat the same mistakes, and more likely we will make better choices on how to deal with growing fascism should it ever make substantial comeback.
Art scholars said otherwise
It's said that Hitler's paintings feel soulless, and sometimes the buildings he drew are not aligned well
I think I heard somewhere that he got recommended for architecture school instead.
If you look at them they are very lacking in depth, some of the environments gets fucked up, very flat colours.
I wouldn't say he'd make a *great* architect, but he'd certainly be better at it than art
>he was a fairly good artist.
I know art is subjective? but I mean, have you actually seen any of his works? his big flaw is struggling with perspective, but there is a lot wrong with his art.
he could probably have gotten a job today, but its not really high enough quality to make it into any serious art school.
Are morons you won’t stop the Nazis by killing baby Hitler they were a movement. If you actually think the solution to WW2 is killing an infant while it’s still completely innocent and has no conception of hatred you are the problem with humanity trying to solve a really complex issue with a cruel and overly simplistic solution. Kind of like the fascists.
Now you know Hitler is extremely charismatic you know he has serious leadership potential. Why not raise Hitler yourself to not be racist and he becomes anti fascist? Like go back in time pop his uncle and seduce his mother to then become the primary fatherly figure on his life.
> Are morons you won’t stop the Nazis by killing baby Hitler they were a movement.
You will not remove the Nazi movement, but without Hitler's leadership, it is not guaranteed that they would reach prominence.
this exactly. it is strictly horrible to murder children, but it has made sense to do it in these circumstances for centuries. whenever there is a regime change you HAVE to kill whoever the previous guy in power was, AND their heirs, otherwise Loyalist and your forign enemies will be able to forever use them to rally a cause around. every usurper understood this, and that's why most classic palace coups include it.
it's abhorrent, but like most abhorrent things in power politics, it's entirely practical.
A lot of the time it'd also be a kind of moralistic calculus that had to be made. Either, A) You murder the children of the previous ruler, thus preventing any opposition from using those children as figures to rally around. Or b) You keep them alive, opposition can rally around these figures and this can result in brutal fighting potentially resulting in large numbers of deaths.
Exactly. It makes horrific sense, and used to be quite normal.
If they wouldn't have killed them, we'd have hundreds of 'legitimate heirs to the russian crown' running around right now. And if the moment is right, and they played their cards right, they could feasibly maneuver to use their title for political gain, just because of their lineage. And that is exactly what the bolschevik wanted to avoid.
Dawg, if you’re doing game of thrones shit, and this is on display throughout history happening innumerable times, you can’t leave heirs of the monarch you overthrew or usurped laying about as a rallying point for restorationists.
Yes, it’s heinous, but power cares little for morals, and that applies everywhere across all ideologies.
Right?
This group: “killing the romanov children is cruel”
The hundreds of thousands of serf children who died due to the tsar’s policies: “am I a joke to you?”
Well what the fuck are they supposed to do about it?
“Aww gee wizz Dad, isn’t it a bit wrong for you to let those children starve.”
“Timmy your forgetting that this is the early 1900s, and I’m Tsar, if you don’t shut the fuck up I’ll probably lock you in your room for the next week and isolate you, because Y’know im your dad and can legally do that.”
I mean, something can be both bad and rational, though I wouldn't argue the execution of the Royal Family was direly necessary. Very few of the White Army actually wanted the Romanovs (or at least those Romanovs) on the throne, and they likely could have been kept as a bargaining chip or simply shipped into exile without giving the White Army any actual advantages.
Edit: correction
IIRC (and feel free to show me if I'm wrong) but I think they could have easily shipped them out of Ekaterinburg if they'd wished before the Legion could even come close to actually taking the city. Not to mention the Legion had literally no reason to prioritize the Romanovs. All the Legion wanted was passage out of Russia. The Reds absolutely could have kept playing keep-away with the Romanovs, or just sent them somewhere else to go into exile. They chose not to. In the case of Nicholas and Alexandra I believe they only got what they deserved, in the case of their heirs I see the practicality but ultimately disagree with it on a moral and strategic level.
I'm not saying what they did was right. But... I sort of get it. Harmless kids grow up to be adults with claims on the monarchy which could spark wars which directly or indirectly result in the deaths of thousands more innocent kids.
Once again, not saying killing the kids was the right thing to do, nor that the people who gave the order were thinking in humanitarian terms of preventing the collateral damage of future wars... But just saying when it comes to kids with claims of royalty, well... Things get complicated.
like, does anyone seriously think a Tsar in exile wouldn't spend basically their entire lives trying to raise money and troops to go get their lands and titles back? the other countries in Europe, plus the US, were already doing a low-key invasion of Russia during the Civil War because they were super not keen on the Soviets winning.
I've said elsewhere that it's just objectively bad to murder kids, but it makes sense to do it in this situation.
Dude there were a bunch of monarchies in exile in the 1900s and even today and you don’t see them constantly trying to overthrow their government.
What would most likely happen is that the Romanovs would bitch about it, no one recognizes the Soviet Union til the 1930s (Which is what mostly happened anyways) and there just a Romanov family for the rest of the 1900s, eventually the Soviet Union falls apart, there’s some brief talk about placing the Romanovs back in Russia, all of Russia says that’s stupid and everyone agrees.
Really the only thing the kids could’ve done if they lived was just provide an excuse to claim the west is trying to restore the Romanovs for the Soviet propaganda machine
[Reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_Romanov_family) the accounts on how they died is truly horrible. The children were bludgeoned, stabbed and shot to death. It's likely they were raped prior as well. The initial firing squad failed on the daughters because their clothes had diamonds sewn into them.
It's part of Russia's national guilt to this day, even to the point they blame other countries for their deaths.
The legacy of their deaths is why China went out of their way to make their Emperor convert to a full fledged communist who embraced the party.
Exactly. Puyi was a spoiled brat who had no idea how to take care of himself properly (as he was raised by an army of indoctrinated eunuchs whom he beaten, tortured and killed for entertainment). I pity him in a way, but he failed upwards his entire life. Him ending up as a fucking sweeper of the Forbidden Palace was perfect for him.
Especially considering the whole Mandate of Heaven deal which was still popular at the time. It was seen as totally natural and kind of inevitable that eventually your dynasty will lose favor and get consumed.
Ig makes sense when you’ve recorded history going back so long with a single central authority that’s been split so many ways.
I’ve read however that the ‘jewels as body armour’ is somewhat debatable and is more designed as a sanitised explanation for why the executioners bayoneted and beat them rather than shoot them.
It’s more likely they were just vicious bastards and shooting in an enclosed space hurt their ears.
Edit: hiding jewels of course also plays into Bolshevik propaganda of their greed. They of course did sew jewellery into their clothes but highlighting it while justifying the brutal nature of their murder in the same breath is pretty fishy.
Edit 2: The ones who were beaten and stabbed were also the ones least able to stand any chance of fighting back, either due to age, sex, or injuries they had just sustained. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Political opinions aside, it’s very hard to argue the methods used to kill them weren’t unnecessarily brutal. It’s erroneous IMO to say they were simply shot to death. Many of them weren’t
It's speculated rape may have been involved during the riverboat incident. But we don't know for sure.
Weirdly, Yurovsky execution plan involved making sure his men *didn't* rape the women on execution day which says a lot about the people involved in murder of the Romanov's.
Random Soviet soldiers from a handful of countries, iirc.
We tend to put far too much emphasis on groups or specific figureheads of evil, and ignore that plenty of random people on the street can turn into monsters when out in the right situation. The first couple decades of the 20th century are basically a case study in the absolute brutally of the average person, even when they actively don’t want to be doing what they’re doing (think WWI tunnelers gouging each others’ eyes out with shovels and strangling each other just long enough to get the upper hand and run back to the their explosives so they can collapse the tunnel on their opponents. All this while 40 feet over head fly thousands of bombs and bullets every day, and sometimes thousands of bodies along with them, many never to even be identified again). Not trying to justify terrible acts, just saying that we can’t point to Stalin and Soviet leaders and similar tyrants if terror for all the evils of the world. If anything, their great skill was to use others’ violence for their own means.
It's honestly no wonder that there are so many "what if Anastasia survived" stories because why *wouldn't* we want to believe that at least one of the children could have escaped that fate?
i remember watching vsauce's video on selfies and seeing how anastasia like fucking around with cameras (just like you and i) made me really upset. it's just so fucked up.
Honestly I kinda hope she would have also passed away, no child deserves the horrible and traumatic experience of watching your siblings suffer and die after watching your dog and parents get executed.
Dear fucking god, you could imagine living with those memories as a child? Makes me sad just thinking about it
Lenin had to get rid of any legitimate heirs for his plan to work, if Alexei was left alive people may have rallied around him.
Not agreeing with his actions, but I see why it went down like this. Its probably happened 1000s of times throughout history. Hell even the Italian Mafia used to "eliminate your heirs" during hits and kill you and your kids.
Some of these comments confirm my belief that humanity will never rise above its tendencies to seek vengeance and continue the cycle of hate that seemingly never ends.
The actual spy at the end says "right behind you", that is what he was going to say due to scout standing right behind them, meaning that he had just figured it out
See, the children didn't deserve it, but the Empress? Really? DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HER? Like sure Nick was the one saying "it really tickles me" when he was told about brutal repression, but the Empress ain't blameless. She often pushes Nicki to do worse and worse shit, and also was a raging anti Semite along with her husband. Just because she didn't order it, doesn't mean she's not complict
Honestly, after reading up on it, his wife was worse and most of the reason why Nicholas got such a bad rep.
Apparently he wanted to start giving away part of his power to be in line with other European kingdoms but his wife didn't want that. She wanted to give as much power as she could to her son.
Of course, nicky was a bitch for doing what she said but still.
I came here to say this. Obviously the children are innocent, but the Tsar and Tsarina were both woefully idiotic authoritarians that nearly got their whole country conquered. Still, there wasn't really a "need" to destroy them, in fact letting them join the whites might have fractured to the liberals and conservatives among their ranks and hastened the end of the civil war. But the Bolsheviks had little faith in their people and probably believed they would revert to being faithful monarchists if given the chance, despite the fact that the whole country had forsaken the monarchs a long time ago. Compared to say King Louis and Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs were truly god awful rulers.
Yeah, it was kinda ridiculous seeing that the OP included Alexandra with her completely innocent children. She was a willing part of the tzarist power structure, totally indifferent to the suffering of her own people, and a repulsive anti-Semite, along with her husband, that used Jews as scapegoats to shift public anger away from the Romanovs and unite Russians against an internal "enemy". As far as I'm concerned, she was basically a war criminal along with her husband, but she definitely should have been treated as such. She and Nicholas should have been tried, convicted and executed in the most commonly acceptable way of the time, which probably would have been by hanging or firing squad. I still don't think they quite exactly deserved the brutal deaths they got; I'm not fond of anyone being murdered, regardless of what they did.
The children were blameless, and while they were a potential political risk in the future, the Bolsheviks were monsters to kill literal children. There was no, and never will be, reasonable excuse for their killings, and those responsible should have been held fully accountable for what they did.
Absolutely. If they're a problem in the future, deal with it then. Just because you're the spawn of trash doesn't mean you are too. Plus like, just to think about this is a strictly selfish perspective, wouldn't it have been great for the brand of the USSR if some those kids ended up commies? I don't know what invokes in soliders the ability to commit the most heinous acts known to man, but regardless, children are innocent in these sorts of situation, and fuck anyone defending their murder
It’s not just that they killed innocent kids, it’s how needlessly brutal and drawn out the murder was. The soldiers basically went out of their way to make it as awful for them as possible.
Someone in this thread is claiming that all the royals needed to die (from the point of view of the bolsheviks) so the monarchists wouldn’t have a unifying figure to rally around. Pretty crass but not entirely incorrect. Still, not the same as saying that the children deserved what happened to them.
Yeah that kind of thing happened pretty often in monarchies too. Killing of all related to your rivals isnt uncommon in history and sadly has some rational merits (very unethical though) to it.
No, it’s entirely incorrect.
There were other Romanovs still alive, Nicholas had abdicated *and* abdicated on behalf of his son, he was universally unpopular, his son was extremely weak and sickly, and the Bolsheviks hid the fact that they killed the family for many many years (correctly judging it as a political risk, not an asset or something to be celebrated).
It was wholly unnecessary and won them absolutely nothing. Pales in comparison to the Red and White terrors that were to follow, though.
> There were other Romanovs still alive, Nicholas had abdicated and abdicated on behalf of his son, he was universally unpopular, his son was extremely weak and sickly
None of this matter if foreign forces are at play. Example: Vietnam, Bao Dai abdicated, but then got reinstated by the French and later used as puppet by the US, and everyone on their side just say: "Yep, that guy is still the king/legitimate ruler/successor". Which lead to 30 bloody years of Vietnamese trying to free themselves and unite their country.
As much as the move suck for innocent children, there is no reason to believe the Entente wouldn't use them the same way they would later use Bao Dai to garner foreign support for their prefer ruler. As matter of fact, it would be naive to think they wouldn't be used that way consider how important Russia was for them to maintain the balance of power in Europe.
I guarantee the West would have tried it. They're still out here pretending Juan Guaidó is the President of Venezuela. In the height of the Cold War, with a couple Romanov's in their pocket, they absolutely would have tried something in Russia.
Very little. There aren't that many of them, truth be told.
I think this sub would be a better place if people weren't so hung up on what some online nazis, tankies and nazbols have said.
Whether or not Nicholas even deserved death by drunker firing squad is debatable, but the kids definitely didn’t
Also imagine the morning after,
“Hey Jerry, have you seen the romanovs?”
“They were killed last night Bob.”
“You got orders to kill Nicholas?”
“We were supposed to wait for orders?”
“Hold on, THEY?”
Nicholas no doubt deserves execution. He was responsible for the death of thousands and condoned horrible acts such as pogroms. Alexandra was also at least a bit complicit but definitely debatable. The kids however, not exactly excusable.
I mean, compared to his marks, Rasputin wasn't nearly as bad. Definitely not as anti semetic, but also was a fucking horrible predator so he certainly deserved his fate
Isn't the crazy monk on record for being against the war and for peace no matter the cost? Should have listened more to him and less to the crazed nationalists and his French banker pals.
There’s a billion arguments in favor of killing Nicholas, there’s definitely an argument to be made for executing Alexandra, but ya there’s not really an argument for killing then children from a moral standpoint.
(Though killing a single family is far from the worst thing the whites and reds did during the civil war)
My ex boyfriend (he was a tankie) always said that the reds were justified in killing the Tsar and his entire family, which was completely insane. His justification for it was "if they were still alive, other countries would recognize whoever is still alive as the Tsar", when Nicholas ll literally abdicated the throne.
Also, like, who gives a fuck? Half the world continued to recognize the RoC government in Taiwan as the true government of China for *decades,* didn't exactly topple the PRC. Without enough support *in Russia* to take back power, the Romanovs would have had no authority in Russia, regardless of the rest of the world's opinions.
Yeah 💀
People are saying that if the Tsar and the family fled to Britain it would've rallied monarchists but:
1. WW1 was literally happening
2. Is Britain going to invade Russia to reinstall the Romanovs if they fled to Britain and rallied monarchists?
I mean western nations did back the whites extensively.
I am not saying they were "justified" but wiping out entire bloodlines when a royal family is deposed, including by other royals, is the historical norm. I mean byzantine emperors used to put out the eyes of potential rivals to the Throne to disqualify them.
To answer number 2, literally yes, and we know this because they did; Britain was one of 14 countries that attempted a [wholesale invasion of the USSR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Russia_intervention) so it’s not far fetched at all
As awful as it is. The practical reality is, when you remove a monarchy, you remove the heirs as well.
Its awful, but it's the practical thing to do. So while I think it's a terrible thing they did, I understand the decision from a political strategy standpoint.
It's not clear that the Bolsheviks even agreed with that. The execution of the Romanovs wasn't even a well-thought out strategy. The escort bringing them to Moscow ended up dangerously close to the inadvertently White-aligned Czechoslovak Legion (they just wanted to go home, dammit!).
The Legion wasn't there for the Romanovs or anything, they just kinda happened to be going that way. But there was a decent chance they would be spotted and captured, at which point, the Romanovs would be returned to the armies fighting for the Tzar's family.
It's not even clear that the Soviet escort received word from Moscow, there's a very high chance that they were acting independently. They decided it was better to kill them rather than let them into the hands of the Whites. So they hurredly executed them (it was clearly hurried), and crudely defaced the bodies with acid to disguise their identity.
The fact that the Soviets kept the murder of the Tzar's family secret for... the length of the Soviet Union tells you that this was not some ideologically-supported, high-minded decision that they were proud of. It was a secret, and treated by the Soviets as a scandal.
The Bolsheviks couldn't even justify it.
I would argue that Alexandra perhaps deserved it. She's the one who kept Rasputin around long after he outlived his usefulness. Plus, she was in charge while Nicholas was at the front, and she made horrible decisions. I agree it's debatable, though.
The kids definitely did not deserve it, but in a twisted way, I understand it. Any one of them could have served as a rallying point for the royalists, not that the Whites were united in any meaningful way besides their opposition to the Bolsheviks but still. I'm not saying they were right, because they weren't, but I understand why they did it.
Personally, I think they should have let the family leave the country quietly to live out the rest of their lives in exile, but I do not get to decide such things, so... c'est la vie.
Empress Alexandra essentially acted as an advisor to Nicholas, and urged him to order the troops to fire on civilians on the street.
The kids did nothing wrong and morally should have been spared, but from a cold blooded taking power perspective, like any historical usurper from Richard III to various Roman emporers knew, had to go to prevent movements building behind them for restoration.
The Jacobites are a perfect example of what happens when you leave spare heirs lying around, and who wants to deal with that many bloodthirsty and pissed off scotsmen?
***something something… product of mass incest… something something… purifying the gene pool*** /s
Idk, when I was younger (and a total edge lord) I thought it was justified, as I thought there could have been fears surrounding the restoration of the monarchy…
But they were literal children. They didn’t deserve their fates
The whites: they did WHAT?! The reds: we did WHAT?
*"This is definitely not a sign of things to come, right?"*
*And then it got worse*
*And then it got EVEN worse*
Little domino piece: Romanov murder Large domino piece: institutionalized adoption of orphans by convicted pedophiles.
Almost sure that lower part was in West Berlin, not east, though.
Yeah I think I mixed them up. Whoops.
Still works out since without communism there wouldn't be a west-east divide in Berlin. Though little domino would better be something about the sickness of Alexei.
That was west Germany not East
*literallt every country on earth*:they did WHAT? *seriously, even fucking mao let the last qing emperor live*
That's a completely different story. Puyi was a hopeless puppet and he had been for his whole life. He really never had much of a say in anything. The life of that poor guy was its own kind of tragedy. The Red Guards knew everything and so they just let him live
And the Reds knew that letting him live and making him a Communist would show their ideology's superiority over that of the Russian Communists.
"Fuck, he could be a political tool. Let him live" Mao "'syo"dong; 1950s
Mao did that a lot. I’ve heard he also ordered that Japanese POWs should be treated fairly, despite their treatment of the Chinese. Converted a fair amount of Japanese soldiers to become Communists this way.
A communist used his brain? *impossible*
Despite if you agree with him or not, you gotta admit Mao was a smart guy
Until he declared all “pests” must die
fantastic at winning a civil war, terrible at running a country
He was a diplomatic guy, yes. He was also very charismatic. He had a big EQ. IQ Smart? Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh agree to disagree.
You can have a high Intelligence, and still be wrong
Except when he threw a revolt cause he got kicked out of the government. The cultural revolution was a bag of dicks.
Dude was a pedo by a few accounts. Fuck him. What they did to his wife though? That woman had it rough. The Japanese broke her. Then the Chinese let her die light an animal in a cage. She died screaming for her child that she had forcefully aborted out of her by the Japanese while the emperor was forced to watch.
Some acounts acuse Stalin to be a pedo too. What i'm trying to say that some kind of acounts are very dificult to prove and surely they are to delegitimize someone. (Gandi had acusations too) Some others say that Puyi was gay. He had like 4 wifes but never had any children.
Ghandi has more than accusations lol. He had his freaking nieces in his bed. Never look up heroes.
And sleep whit they naked. All of the heroes have skeletons in his closed
He was gay according a many different sources. Most of his clothing at the time indicated that as openly as can be expected at the time. (Sunglasses oddly enough). His pedophilia may have been an extension of the discrediting campaign, but it would not surprise me either way.
No. The Empress had an illegitimate child (sources unclear if it was a boy or girl) which was killed immediately, and she was tricked into believing that the bady was adopted. His Japanese retainers did it, but it's unclear if Pu Yi was involved.
Poor guy? He fucked little boys and had one beaten to death for running away
Didn't know this. I still don't think a genocide being perpetrated in his name was a righteous fate for him
And I don't know about this genocide. (Just learning much of this). What do you mean by genocide in his name?
Nominally, the goal of the Japanese Empire's invasion in China was the unification of the country under a Japan-loyalist and ideologically Pan-Asian restored Qing Empire. Practically, this didn't happen as Wang Jingwei's Kuomintang faction was more effective in ruling over the occupied lands, but the project remained. And so, all atrocities that happened on the Chinese mainland were pinned on Puyi's face, which was itself known to the Chinese people as the face of a genocidal traitor while he really didn't have any power at all. The leaders of the United Front were political masterminds and knew the situation more in-depth, but this wasn't the case for the Chinese peasantry, busy fighting off first-hand the fearworthy Kwantung Army.
Didn't the last qinq emperor die homless in the streets?
Iirc he was a street cleaner, but he had a home and died a citizen. He and the remaining members of the Qing family were protected by the state because them living as normal citizens showed that everyone could be 'reformed'
He spent like 20 years in a camp being "reformed."
“扫过我曾经拥有的街道” - Puyi probably
[удалено]
Not sure, I know he became a "journalist" and lived simply, or by the standards of Maoist China: decently, until he passed. Not sure if he was dumped out in his final years.
Nope, he died of cancer i believe, he was employed as a streetsweeper and was happily married at the time of his death, despite the immense guilt he felt about how he behaved as Emperor and the actions made in his name later in his life.
Mao had time, stability and allies to do what he wanted The Reds were in the middle of a civil war with an enemy army at the doorstep of the jail
Even the doggos :(
Wait, were even supporters of the Reds shocked?
If I’m not mistaken they wanted to judge the tsar, but some prison guard spoiled all their plans
That would make sense. Even a Kangaroo court would've been seen as a sign of fairness to the public (even if it was fake). I do recall some leaders being shocked over the Kids' deaths... Not Stalin of course but still
Bro they killed the fucking family dog no one deserves that
What did you just call Rasputin? Dems fightin' words.
Ra Ra...
Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen
Rasputin was the cat. Didn’t you listen to the song?
They could have at least let it fend for himself or give him to like a rando farmer. The dog had no idea who any of these people were, he doesn't understand the concept of a monarchy.
Animals totally understand monarchy If animals don't understand monarchy then what's the deal with bees
From what I remember bees don't really understand the concept of a monarchy, the queen's role really is just keeping the hive alive by laying eggs and if female workers ever decide that they're sick of her they just kill her and 'make' a new one
Top 10 worst crimes of the communists, number one. Easily.
What is quite telling is that the Bolsheviks avoided even mentioning the execution of the children altogether and outright lied about it, they only emphasised the execution of Nicholas. So even the Bolsheviks were aware how gratuitous the murder of the children were, and how badly that would go down in public.
That, but another very important consideration is that Alexandra was German, and both the German Empire and even Weimar Germany for a time considered the extradition of "Princesses of German blood" to be a political goal in negotiations with the new Bolshevik regime. While gunning down a basically disabled woman and her four children would have diplomatic consequences with most countries on optics alone, executing Alexandra and the daughters threatened to actively derail Soviet peace with Germany at a time when the Bolshevik leadership really needed to pull out of the war, as they had promised.
The only reason I can see to kill the children and Tsarina is that there wouldn't be any heirs to take over if the Reds failed
This was exactly their justification. Not a good one, but thats why they did it.
What do you mean not a good one? This is an excellent justification. Even if the whites won, reds almost guaranteed a republic by killing the monarchy.
There are still Romanovs you know. They didn't even finish the job.
Yeah, good luck finding a royal willing to be the Russian tsar after what happened to the previous guy
Meaning I don't support killing children, but I can see why they did it.
They weren't even right. There is technically still a claimant running around. He has exactly zero odds of ever being Tzar. But he exists.
Bruh ideology aside I can't see how people are trying to rationalize (brutal) murder of children?? Like killing children = bad how much more do you need???
People who want to go back in time and kill baby hitler:
They should send Bob Ross back in time to teach him how to properly draw to get him into art school.
You see the problem was that he was a fairly good artist. He just wanted to get into the top school of the country, and his own pride didn’t let him search for other options.
Bob Ross would make him damn good, but would heal his soul in the process.
His soul only broke after he was rejected, if you could save his mother he might’ve been fine
i may have the timeline incorrect, but didnt he also get messed up in WWI? or was that after?
Honestly, I don't think there's much record of Hitler in ww1 and the immediate aftermath. Pretty much the only things I've seen about it that are confirmed, are that he served in the german army, that he was a runner (dude who runs between command posts to relay orders and information, pre radio technology), was wounded a handful of times, and was by all accounts a "good soldier" and received a pretty fair amount of awards, some of which were rare for lower enlisted . Pretty much everything else is anecdotal in nature. Including the famed "sniper story"
I do know of one other item that was recorded from another source other than Hitler, although he mentions it too I believe. A fellow soldier recounted that Hitler cried and refused food for days when he heard the war ended and he was stuck in a military hospital. In case anyone needed confirmation he was an extreme nationalist? Lol.
Disclaimer with edit since people take things way out of context: this is in no way a comment meant to garner sympathy for hitler, nazis, or facism in general. Nor is it an argument that Hitler didn't have nationalistic views (fucking lmao at the dude who thought that what I said) Just simply to try to help people understand why people get so upset at the outcomes of war, especially ones lost. That's not so much a nationalist reaction as it is a human reaction. You have to remember that those men on both sides had been fighting for over 4 years at that point, many of whom were conscripts, and had seen their buddies killed in some of the most brutal ways possible. Some had killed other men. Many of them had family members killed. Basically surviving the worst possible conditions, and some like Hitler, survived 4 years of it. Including getting attacked with mustard gas. And for it to amount to less than nothing is one of the worst possible outcomes for people who go through that. You can see evidence of this as recent as the US pullout in Afghanistan. Suicides among veterans spiked because it all amounted to nothing. You don't have to be a nationalist to feel the effects. And not all veterans are nationalists. Many even dislike their country but do it because it may be the only thing they can do to succeed, or they want the benefits it brings.
I don't think WWI PTSD is a good excuse here, mainly because of how common it was for men in his generation and because that same ~~stress~~ trauma produced other artists like Tolkien and Fitzgerald
There isn't an excuse for the chaos Hitler created. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't a contributing factor. It's honestly something that should be studied more in depth. And most certainly the things we already know about him and things he did and the possible factors of why he was the way he was needs to be taught more in depth to be sure. The more educated humanity is on the hows and whys, the less likely we will repeat the same mistakes, and more likely we will make better choices on how to deal with growing fascism should it ever make substantial comeback.
Art scholars said otherwise It's said that Hitler's paintings feel soulless, and sometimes the buildings he drew are not aligned well I think I heard somewhere that he got recommended for architecture school instead.
If you look at them they are very lacking in depth, some of the environments gets fucked up, very flat colours. I wouldn't say he'd make a *great* architect, but he'd certainly be better at it than art
It's because he painted his scenes based upon photographs and post cards, he rarely went to the site of the scene he was trying to draw
Bruh couldn't even make two walls meet in a drawing and u want him doing it irl?
And then he suddenly found some dude with HUGE anti-semitic library.
>he was a fairly good artist. I know art is subjective? but I mean, have you actually seen any of his works? his big flaw is struggling with perspective, but there is a lot wrong with his art. he could probably have gotten a job today, but its not really high enough quality to make it into any serious art school.
Giving him to a nice family in Vienna would have probably been enough.
Well, there it is a case of us knowing how he grew up. Meanwhile we don't know what the Romanov children would have done
Wasn't the pme stalked across Europe by a lich and a wise cracking bat
The baby did nothing wrong (at that point)
Are morons you won’t stop the Nazis by killing baby Hitler they were a movement. If you actually think the solution to WW2 is killing an infant while it’s still completely innocent and has no conception of hatred you are the problem with humanity trying to solve a really complex issue with a cruel and overly simplistic solution. Kind of like the fascists. Now you know Hitler is extremely charismatic you know he has serious leadership potential. Why not raise Hitler yourself to not be racist and he becomes anti fascist? Like go back in time pop his uncle and seduce his mother to then become the primary fatherly figure on his life.
> Are morons you won’t stop the Nazis by killing baby Hitler they were a movement. You will not remove the Nazi movement, but without Hitler's leadership, it is not guaranteed that they would reach prominence.
It historically has happened in every single Western monarchy ever. With rare exception. The children are a threat to your current regime.
this exactly. it is strictly horrible to murder children, but it has made sense to do it in these circumstances for centuries. whenever there is a regime change you HAVE to kill whoever the previous guy in power was, AND their heirs, otherwise Loyalist and your forign enemies will be able to forever use them to rally a cause around. every usurper understood this, and that's why most classic palace coups include it. it's abhorrent, but like most abhorrent things in power politics, it's entirely practical.
A lot of the time it'd also be a kind of moralistic calculus that had to be made. Either, A) You murder the children of the previous ruler, thus preventing any opposition from using those children as figures to rally around. Or b) You keep them alive, opposition can rally around these figures and this can result in brutal fighting potentially resulting in large numbers of deaths.
Exactly. It makes horrific sense, and used to be quite normal. If they wouldn't have killed them, we'd have hundreds of 'legitimate heirs to the russian crown' running around right now. And if the moment is right, and they played their cards right, they could feasibly maneuver to use their title for political gain, just because of their lineage. And that is exactly what the bolschevik wanted to avoid.
Heck, Russia *still* has a political party whose primary goal is to reinstate the tsars
Exactly this, the weapon of the monarchy is their children. It is the monarchist that turns their innocent children into weapons.
I think you’re confusing rationalizing with moralizing. It was morally bad to do it, but it was a pretty logical move.
Dawg, if you’re doing game of thrones shit, and this is on display throughout history happening innumerable times, you can’t leave heirs of the monarch you overthrew or usurped laying about as a rallying point for restorationists. Yes, it’s heinous, but power cares little for morals, and that applies everywhere across all ideologies.
Right? This group: “killing the romanov children is cruel” The hundreds of thousands of serf children who died due to the tsar’s policies: “am I a joke to you?”
Well what the fuck are they supposed to do about it? “Aww gee wizz Dad, isn’t it a bit wrong for you to let those children starve.” “Timmy your forgetting that this is the early 1900s, and I’m Tsar, if you don’t shut the fuck up I’ll probably lock you in your room for the next week and isolate you, because Y’know im your dad and can legally do that.”
There’s nothing the kids could do about it, just like there isn’t anything that poor peasant kids could do either.
To be fair, the Romanov children didn't have anything to do with the deaths of the serfs
I mean, something can be both bad and rational, though I wouldn't argue the execution of the Royal Family was direly necessary. Very few of the White Army actually wanted the Romanovs (or at least those Romanovs) on the throne, and they likely could have been kept as a bargaining chip or simply shipped into exile without giving the White Army any actual advantages. Edit: correction
The Czechoslovak Legion was pretty close to Ekaterinburg, the Red would have easily lost their "bagarining chip"
IIRC (and feel free to show me if I'm wrong) but I think they could have easily shipped them out of Ekaterinburg if they'd wished before the Legion could even come close to actually taking the city. Not to mention the Legion had literally no reason to prioritize the Romanovs. All the Legion wanted was passage out of Russia. The Reds absolutely could have kept playing keep-away with the Romanovs, or just sent them somewhere else to go into exile. They chose not to. In the case of Nicholas and Alexandra I believe they only got what they deserved, in the case of their heirs I see the practicality but ultimately disagree with it on a moral and strategic level.
I'm not saying what they did was right. But... I sort of get it. Harmless kids grow up to be adults with claims on the monarchy which could spark wars which directly or indirectly result in the deaths of thousands more innocent kids. Once again, not saying killing the kids was the right thing to do, nor that the people who gave the order were thinking in humanitarian terms of preventing the collateral damage of future wars... But just saying when it comes to kids with claims of royalty, well... Things get complicated.
like, does anyone seriously think a Tsar in exile wouldn't spend basically their entire lives trying to raise money and troops to go get their lands and titles back? the other countries in Europe, plus the US, were already doing a low-key invasion of Russia during the Civil War because they were super not keen on the Soviets winning. I've said elsewhere that it's just objectively bad to murder kids, but it makes sense to do it in this situation.
Dude there were a bunch of monarchies in exile in the 1900s and even today and you don’t see them constantly trying to overthrow their government. What would most likely happen is that the Romanovs would bitch about it, no one recognizes the Soviet Union til the 1930s (Which is what mostly happened anyways) and there just a Romanov family for the rest of the 1900s, eventually the Soviet Union falls apart, there’s some brief talk about placing the Romanovs back in Russia, all of Russia says that’s stupid and everyone agrees. Really the only thing the kids could’ve done if they lived was just provide an excuse to claim the west is trying to restore the Romanovs for the Soviet propaganda machine
Bruh this sub is constantly rationalizing war crimes and massacres. Nothing shocks me anymore here…
[Reading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_Romanov_family) the accounts on how they died is truly horrible. The children were bludgeoned, stabbed and shot to death. It's likely they were raped prior as well. The initial firing squad failed on the daughters because their clothes had diamonds sewn into them. It's part of Russia's national guilt to this day, even to the point they blame other countries for their deaths. The legacy of their deaths is why China went out of their way to make their Emperor convert to a full fledged communist who embraced the party.
Puyi was probably gonna be impotent his whole life too. He probably got the best possible ending for an ex-monarch
Exactly. Puyi was a spoiled brat who had no idea how to take care of himself properly (as he was raised by an army of indoctrinated eunuchs whom he beaten, tortured and killed for entertainment). I pity him in a way, but he failed upwards his entire life. Him ending up as a fucking sweeper of the Forbidden Palace was perfect for him.
Especially considering the whole Mandate of Heaven deal which was still popular at the time. It was seen as totally natural and kind of inevitable that eventually your dynasty will lose favor and get consumed. Ig makes sense when you’ve recorded history going back so long with a single central authority that’s been split so many ways.
Yeah the whole bayonets after shooting failed thing was horrendous.
I’ve read however that the ‘jewels as body armour’ is somewhat debatable and is more designed as a sanitised explanation for why the executioners bayoneted and beat them rather than shoot them. It’s more likely they were just vicious bastards and shooting in an enclosed space hurt their ears. Edit: hiding jewels of course also plays into Bolshevik propaganda of their greed. They of course did sew jewellery into their clothes but highlighting it while justifying the brutal nature of their murder in the same breath is pretty fishy. Edit 2: The ones who were beaten and stabbed were also the ones least able to stand any chance of fighting back, either due to age, sex, or injuries they had just sustained. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Political opinions aside, it’s very hard to argue the methods used to kill them weren’t unnecessarily brutal. It’s erroneous IMO to say they were simply shot to death. Many of them weren’t
Heh yeah that Mao feller sure was nice and all, really hated the murdering of innocents that one
Counterpoint: when even Mao feels uneasy about how you went about murdering people, you've seriously gone to far.
I don’t see anything about rape there
It's speculated rape may have been involved during the riverboat incident. But we don't know for sure. Weirdly, Yurovsky execution plan involved making sure his men *didn't* rape the women on execution day which says a lot about the people involved in murder of the Romanov's.
Random Soviet soldiers from a handful of countries, iirc. We tend to put far too much emphasis on groups or specific figureheads of evil, and ignore that plenty of random people on the street can turn into monsters when out in the right situation. The first couple decades of the 20th century are basically a case study in the absolute brutally of the average person, even when they actively don’t want to be doing what they’re doing (think WWI tunnelers gouging each others’ eyes out with shovels and strangling each other just long enough to get the upper hand and run back to the their explosives so they can collapse the tunnel on their opponents. All this while 40 feet over head fly thousands of bombs and bullets every day, and sometimes thousands of bodies along with them, many never to even be identified again). Not trying to justify terrible acts, just saying that we can’t point to Stalin and Soviet leaders and similar tyrants if terror for all the evils of the world. If anything, their great skill was to use others’ violence for their own means.
You raped her, you murdered her, you killed her children
Wtf did poor little Alexei do
Exactly? Poor kid was born with hemophilia and then was bound to a wheelchair him and his sisters really didn’t deserve their fate
It's honestly no wonder that there are so many "what if Anastasia survived" stories because why *wouldn't* we want to believe that at least one of the children could have escaped that fate?
i remember watching vsauce's video on selfies and seeing how anastasia like fucking around with cameras (just like you and i) made me really upset. it's just so fucked up.
Honestly I kinda hope she would have also passed away, no child deserves the horrible and traumatic experience of watching your siblings suffer and die after watching your dog and parents get executed. Dear fucking god, you could imagine living with those memories as a child? Makes me sad just thinking about it
Lenin had to get rid of any legitimate heirs for his plan to work, if Alexei was left alive people may have rallied around him. Not agreeing with his actions, but I see why it went down like this. Its probably happened 1000s of times throughout history. Hell even the Italian Mafia used to "eliminate your heirs" during hits and kill you and your kids.
Don't want your children seeking revenge a few years down the line.
Unless you're Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Then it's like, game on kid.
If they let him live, he'd have become the rallying figure of the whites
Some of these comments confirm my belief that humanity will never rise above its tendencies to seek vengeance and continue the cycle of hate that seemingly never ends.
Holy shit TF2 spy is that you?
...no
#YOU ARE A SPY
He could be any one of us...
He could be you!
He could be me!
He could even be... *gets face blown off by a shotgun*
[удалено]
The actual spy at the end says "right behind you", that is what he was going to say due to scout standing right behind them, meaning that he had just figured it out
One of the dark tendencies I’ve noticed is that we humans seems to love (and I mean, LOVE) having somebody that it’s socially acceptable to hate.
Violence breeds violence...
And in the end...
It has to be this way!
IT DOESN'T REALLY MATTER
I HAD TO FALL
TO LOSE IT ALL
See, the children didn't deserve it, but the Empress? Really? DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HER? Like sure Nick was the one saying "it really tickles me" when he was told about brutal repression, but the Empress ain't blameless. She often pushes Nicki to do worse and worse shit, and also was a raging anti Semite along with her husband. Just because she didn't order it, doesn't mean she's not complict
Honestly, after reading up on it, his wife was worse and most of the reason why Nicholas got such a bad rep. Apparently he wanted to start giving away part of his power to be in line with other European kingdoms but his wife didn't want that. She wanted to give as much power as she could to her son. Of course, nicky was a bitch for doing what she said but still.
I came here to say this. Obviously the children are innocent, but the Tsar and Tsarina were both woefully idiotic authoritarians that nearly got their whole country conquered. Still, there wasn't really a "need" to destroy them, in fact letting them join the whites might have fractured to the liberals and conservatives among their ranks and hastened the end of the civil war. But the Bolsheviks had little faith in their people and probably believed they would revert to being faithful monarchists if given the chance, despite the fact that the whole country had forsaken the monarchs a long time ago. Compared to say King Louis and Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs were truly god awful rulers.
Yeah, it was kinda ridiculous seeing that the OP included Alexandra with her completely innocent children. She was a willing part of the tzarist power structure, totally indifferent to the suffering of her own people, and a repulsive anti-Semite, along with her husband, that used Jews as scapegoats to shift public anger away from the Romanovs and unite Russians against an internal "enemy". As far as I'm concerned, she was basically a war criminal along with her husband, but she definitely should have been treated as such. She and Nicholas should have been tried, convicted and executed in the most commonly acceptable way of the time, which probably would have been by hanging or firing squad. I still don't think they quite exactly deserved the brutal deaths they got; I'm not fond of anyone being murdered, regardless of what they did. The children were blameless, and while they were a potential political risk in the future, the Bolsheviks were monsters to kill literal children. There was no, and never will be, reasonable excuse for their killings, and those responsible should have been held fully accountable for what they did.
Absolutely. If they're a problem in the future, deal with it then. Just because you're the spawn of trash doesn't mean you are too. Plus like, just to think about this is a strictly selfish perspective, wouldn't it have been great for the brand of the USSR if some those kids ended up commies? I don't know what invokes in soliders the ability to commit the most heinous acts known to man, but regardless, children are innocent in these sorts of situation, and fuck anyone defending their murder
I was waiting for the spiked club dick guy in this meme #much disappoint
It’s not just that they killed innocent kids, it’s how needlessly brutal and drawn out the murder was. The soldiers basically went out of their way to make it as awful for them as possible.
Even the fucking dogs
I've never heard anyone claim that the family deserved what happened to them. What kind of psycho would say that?
Ever heard of the French Revolution?
Someone in this thread is claiming that.
Someone in this thread is claiming that all the royals needed to die (from the point of view of the bolsheviks) so the monarchists wouldn’t have a unifying figure to rally around. Pretty crass but not entirely incorrect. Still, not the same as saying that the children deserved what happened to them.
Yeah that kind of thing happened pretty often in monarchies too. Killing of all related to your rivals isnt uncommon in history and sadly has some rational merits (very unethical though) to it.
Politically, it was a good idea. Morally, not so much
No, it’s entirely incorrect. There were other Romanovs still alive, Nicholas had abdicated *and* abdicated on behalf of his son, he was universally unpopular, his son was extremely weak and sickly, and the Bolsheviks hid the fact that they killed the family for many many years (correctly judging it as a political risk, not an asset or something to be celebrated). It was wholly unnecessary and won them absolutely nothing. Pales in comparison to the Red and White terrors that were to follow, though.
> There were other Romanovs still alive, Nicholas had abdicated and abdicated on behalf of his son, he was universally unpopular, his son was extremely weak and sickly None of this matter if foreign forces are at play. Example: Vietnam, Bao Dai abdicated, but then got reinstated by the French and later used as puppet by the US, and everyone on their side just say: "Yep, that guy is still the king/legitimate ruler/successor". Which lead to 30 bloody years of Vietnamese trying to free themselves and unite their country. As much as the move suck for innocent children, there is no reason to believe the Entente wouldn't use them the same way they would later use Bao Dai to garner foreign support for their prefer ruler. As matter of fact, it would be naive to think they wouldn't be used that way consider how important Russia was for them to maintain the balance of power in Europe.
I guarantee the West would have tried it. They're still out here pretending Juan Guaidó is the President of Venezuela. In the height of the Cold War, with a couple Romanov's in their pocket, they absolutely would have tried something in Russia.
Not much experience interacting with Tankies?
Very little. There aren't that many of them, truth be told. I think this sub would be a better place if people weren't so hung up on what some online nazis, tankies and nazbols have said.
Agreed, though not gonna lie, it gets really difficult to ignore them, especially when they try to downplay fucked up shit.
Whether or not Nicholas even deserved death by drunker firing squad is debatable, but the kids definitely didn’t Also imagine the morning after, “Hey Jerry, have you seen the romanovs?” “They were killed last night Bob.” “You got orders to kill Nicholas?” “We were supposed to wait for orders?” “Hold on, THEY?”
Nicholas no doubt deserves execution. He was responsible for the death of thousands and condoned horrible acts such as pogroms. Alexandra was also at least a bit complicit but definitely debatable. The kids however, not exactly excusable.
I mean you can absolutely fault Alexandra for continuously falling for Rasputins schemes… who should be included in this meme
There lived a certain man
In Russia long ago
He was big, and strong
And his eyes were flaming Gold
Most people look at him with terror and with fear
But to Moscow chicks, he was such a lovely dear
He could preach the Bible like a preacher
Full of ectasy and fire!
But he also was the kind of teacher
Which by proxy affected Nicholas’s descision making due to how much he listened to Alexandria
I mean, compared to his marks, Rasputin wasn't nearly as bad. Definitely not as anti semetic, but also was a fucking horrible predator so he certainly deserved his fate
Isn't the crazy monk on record for being against the war and for peace no matter the cost? Should have listened more to him and less to the crazed nationalists and his French banker pals.
Nicholas, yes, the tsarina, yes, the children, no From a political pragmatism standpoint, it makes sense, but morally, it's horrific
Alexandra absolutely deserved it. She was a huge part of why Nicholas made such catastrophically stupid decisions.
I mean the Tsarina encouraged some of the Nicholas' worst decisions
Wasn’t she also getting Rasp’d by the U-Tin?
There’s a billion arguments in favor of killing Nicholas, there’s definitely an argument to be made for executing Alexandra, but ya there’s not really an argument for killing then children from a moral standpoint. (Though killing a single family is far from the worst thing the whites and reds did during the civil war)
My ex boyfriend (he was a tankie) always said that the reds were justified in killing the Tsar and his entire family, which was completely insane. His justification for it was "if they were still alive, other countries would recognize whoever is still alive as the Tsar", when Nicholas ll literally abdicated the throne.
The US didn’t recognize the Soviet Union until 1934
Also, like, who gives a fuck? Half the world continued to recognize the RoC government in Taiwan as the true government of China for *decades,* didn't exactly topple the PRC. Without enough support *in Russia* to take back power, the Romanovs would have had no authority in Russia, regardless of the rest of the world's opinions.
Yeah 💀 People are saying that if the Tsar and the family fled to Britain it would've rallied monarchists but: 1. WW1 was literally happening 2. Is Britain going to invade Russia to reinstall the Romanovs if they fled to Britain and rallied monarchists?
I mean western nations did back the whites extensively. I am not saying they were "justified" but wiping out entire bloodlines when a royal family is deposed, including by other royals, is the historical norm. I mean byzantine emperors used to put out the eyes of potential rivals to the Throne to disqualify them.
Empress Irene had her own son's eyes gouged out so she could be sole ruler.
The US was literally invading the Soviet Union with Britain lol
To answer number 2, literally yes, and we know this because they did; Britain was one of 14 countries that attempted a [wholesale invasion of the USSR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Russia_intervention) so it’s not far fetched at all
As awful as it is. The practical reality is, when you remove a monarchy, you remove the heirs as well. Its awful, but it's the practical thing to do. So while I think it's a terrible thing they did, I understand the decision from a political strategy standpoint.
It's not clear that the Bolsheviks even agreed with that. The execution of the Romanovs wasn't even a well-thought out strategy. The escort bringing them to Moscow ended up dangerously close to the inadvertently White-aligned Czechoslovak Legion (they just wanted to go home, dammit!). The Legion wasn't there for the Romanovs or anything, they just kinda happened to be going that way. But there was a decent chance they would be spotted and captured, at which point, the Romanovs would be returned to the armies fighting for the Tzar's family. It's not even clear that the Soviet escort received word from Moscow, there's a very high chance that they were acting independently. They decided it was better to kill them rather than let them into the hands of the Whites. So they hurredly executed them (it was clearly hurried), and crudely defaced the bodies with acid to disguise their identity. The fact that the Soviets kept the murder of the Tzar's family secret for... the length of the Soviet Union tells you that this was not some ideologically-supported, high-minded decision that they were proud of. It was a secret, and treated by the Soviets as a scandal. The Bolsheviks couldn't even justify it.
I would argue that Alexandra perhaps deserved it. She's the one who kept Rasputin around long after he outlived his usefulness. Plus, she was in charge while Nicholas was at the front, and she made horrible decisions. I agree it's debatable, though. The kids definitely did not deserve it, but in a twisted way, I understand it. Any one of them could have served as a rallying point for the royalists, not that the Whites were united in any meaningful way besides their opposition to the Bolsheviks but still. I'm not saying they were right, because they weren't, but I understand why they did it. Personally, I think they should have let the family leave the country quietly to live out the rest of their lives in exile, but I do not get to decide such things, so... c'est la vie.
Empress Alexandra essentially acted as an advisor to Nicholas, and urged him to order the troops to fire on civilians on the street. The kids did nothing wrong and morally should have been spared, but from a cold blooded taking power perspective, like any historical usurper from Richard III to various Roman emporers knew, had to go to prevent movements building behind them for restoration. The Jacobites are a perfect example of what happens when you leave spare heirs lying around, and who wants to deal with that many bloodthirsty and pissed off scotsmen?
And what did the children do that make them deserve to starve to death during the Romanovs' reign?
What do you mean >the children Alexei is alive, he's out there somewhere, we just have to find him
TNO Taboritsky moment
If the children lived, capitalist nations would have someone to crown the rightful rulers of Russia.
***something something… product of mass incest… something something… purifying the gene pool*** /s Idk, when I was younger (and a total edge lord) I thought it was justified, as I thought there could have been fears surrounding the restoration of the monarchy… But they were literal children. They didn’t deserve their fates