A few issues need to be dealt with specifically concerning the events of St. Nicholas II's reign: the Russo-Japanese War, the Revolution of 1905, the reforms of Stolypin, the Duma government and the pogroms. Of course, the events of 1917 have been dealt with ad nauseam, with a bit of ill-clad glee from establishmentarian sources. This section, however, will deal with the more substantial issues of the progress made under St. Nicholas II, universally ignored by that monstrous acid-trip of corruption known as American historiography.
It must be mentioned that foreign influence was always paramount in Russian domestic and foreign policy. It has already been mentioned that the "revolution" of 1917 was heavily subsidized by western bankers, but it is Less well known that the "tribesmen" of the Caucasus were equipped by the British, and the Schiff family was giving massive loans to Japan as the Russo-Japanese War broke out. Such a massive infusion of cash is what permitted the Japanese to ultimately triumph.
Russia was penetrating ever farther east, and the Trans-Siberian railway was the ultimate symbol of that penetration. Siberia was becoming a booming agricultural state, as well as still engaging in its more traditional trades of hunting and trapping.
Of course, contrary to the accusations of Riasanovsky, the Russian move to the east, as is obvious, was a countermeasure to the continued British penetration to the south, throughout the Middle East and central Asia. As the western powers created their inhuman colonial empires surrounding Russia, the policy of Nicholas and Alexander was to answer in the east, developing that area which was (and is) mostly wasteland. Had Russia been left to develop her interests in this vast and almost non-populated region, there would today be a thriving Russo-Asiatic civilization there, developing the vast mineral and oil wealth of the region.
Of course, the potential for Russian development of that large area is what threatened the Schiffs of the world in the first place, as the major banking houses all had their ultimate origin with the House of Rothschild, who controlled British politics and thus developed British interests for his personal profit. Japan, regardless, would have been left to gobble up the undeveloped parts of Manchuria and elsewhere in eastern Russia and Korea (which she demanded) without any countervailing power. In other words, if Russia did not take these areas, then Japan would have.
Nevertheless, a new railroad was planned in partnership with China, the New China Railway, that gave Russia an interest in Manchuria, at that time nominally a part of China. The Japanese were expanding as well on the dime of Jacob Schiff and clashed with Russia over the status of this under populated and uninviting region. Of course, it is also the case that Russia, oddly missing from Riasanovsky's account, had guaranteed the loan that China had floated to pay indemnity after the Sino-Japanese War. This money, also, helped Japan build her massive fleet - incidentally in England. The Japanese, believing a clash to be imminent over their interests in China, attacked the newly built Russian Port Arthur in 1904.
Few realize the extent of that war. The front was hundreds of miles long and involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers. True to form, Riasanovsky and his colleagues are quick to insist that the loss of the war is "proof of Russian weakness and the "backwardness" of her system. The facts, however, are that Russians were extremely overextended in that part of the world. There was one railway that linked the capital to the Far East, and that was not yet complete. In 1905, the fleet under Admiral Rozhdestvensky needed to come from the Baltic region to reinforce the still uncompleted fort. By the time they arrived, they were already exhausted. Goulevitch writes:
It was a mistake to construct and equip Dalni (now Darien), a splendid commercial harbor in the proximity of Port Arthur, as yet not properly fortified. After the capture of this undefended harbor, the Japanese were able to unload their heavy guns, without which the siege of Port Arthur would have been impossible. The third mistake committed was the decision temporarily to cease work on the construction of the Amur railway. The last, and perhaps the gravest, lay in restricting credits for the creation of a powerful squadron capable of defending our possessions in the far east and for strengthening the defenses of our fortresses on the Pacific (179-80).
As is well known, the war ended through the mediation of President Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese had fully admitted, in spite of all their strategic advantages, that they were exhausted, though the Russian outlay of resources for the fight did not nearly approach that of Japan. There is no judgment that can be taken out of either the Crimea or Port Arthur. The Russian military lost in die far east because their forts were not completed and therefore not properly defended. Russia did not have the requisite supplies as their supply lines were too long. Further, the Baltic fleet needed to burn up much of its energy in the extremely long voyage from the Baltics. The Japanese knew they needed to strike quickly and by surprise, for the Russian weakness in this remote region was temporary. The development of the Far East was certainly something that was not going to happen by itself - and not with the smattering of people who actually lived there - and development had proceeded apace long before the Tsars caught up to the extremely difficult task of defending their acquisitions. The very fact that the mainstream of Russian historiography makes such noise about the two wars of the Crimea and Japan, given that both wars were fought with every strategic disadvantage from the Russian standpoint, and occurred in newly developed and annexed territories not fully completed and defended, shows the desperation and transparency of the arguments against the Russian system during this time.
The revolution of 1905 was a direct result of the war, as the liberal press I went wild attempting to link the loss to Japan with the "backwardness" of the system. Such propaganda was heard loud and clear in western capitals. The Russian government had long been considered the most threatening competitor to the British Empire As a result, the financial interests surrounding the House of Rothschild had slated Russia for destruction.
Jacob Schiff, long a student of the Rothschild mind and the beneficiary of her largess, loudly demanded Russia's defeat. This question desperately needs to be dealt with, not least for the reason that the entirety, without exception, of "Russia historians" refuse to deal with it, so tightly bound are they to the robber baron foundations and their endless fronts for grant disbursements. Why, exactly, did the greatest capitalists in the world support, finance and wage a relentless propaganda campaign in favor of the communist revolutionaries? Author Eustace Mullins, a longtime student of that connection, gives a clue:
These Americans "of the finest temper" chose Lenin to do their work because he had outlined the plan they wanted in "The Threatening Catastrophe" in September 1917. "1. nationalization of the banks." Ownership of capital which is manipulated by the banks is not lost or changed when the banks are nationalized and fused into one state bank, so that it is possible to reach a stage where the state knows wither and how from where and at what time millions and billions are flowing. Only control over bank operations providing they are merged into one state bank will allow, simultaneously, with other measures which can easily be put into affect the actual levying of income tax without concealment of property and income (66).
In other words, the communist program has always been in the interest of the bankers, so long as the communists can be kept under control. To completely standardize the Russian system - which did not have a central bank - was important if the massive wealth (both potential and actual) of the country was to be controlled. The massive economic success of Alexander III and St. Nicholas II was too titillating for the world's oligarchy. Again,
Although Jacob Schiff's personal agent, George Kennan, had regularly toured Russia during the later part of the nineteenth century, bringing in money and arms for the Communist revolutionaries (his grandson said that Schiff had spent $20 million to bring about the Bolshevik revolution) more concerted aid was called for to support an entire regime. Kennan also aided Schiff in financing the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905; the Japanese decorated Kennan with the Gold War Medal and the Order of the Sacred Treasure. In 1915, the American International Corporation was formed in New York. Its principle goal was the coordination of aid, particularly financial assistance to the Bolsheviks which had previously been provided by Schiff and other bankers on an informal basis. The new firm was funded by J. E Morgan, the Rockefellers and the National City Bank. . . (64-5).
The connections between the Schiff, Rockefeller and Rothschild interests and the Bolsheviks - actually all Russian revolutionaries of whatever stripe - are generally suppressed by mainstream academia. It is no surprise that the successors of these same capitalists, such as the Rockefeller Foundation cult or the Carnegie Institute, fund the majority of research that takes place in America's hallowed halls.
Famous British historian Nesta Webster writes in her Surrender of an Empire:
Had the Bolsheviks been, as they are frequently represented, a mere gang of revolutionaries out to destroy property, first in Russia, and then in every other country, they would naturally have found themselves up against organized resistance by owners of property all over the world, and the Moscow blaze would have rapidly been extinguished. It was only owing to the powerful influences behind them that this minority party was able to seize the reins of power and, having seized them, to retain their hold of them to the present day. (102)
And further, Anthony Sutton, fellow at the Hoover Institution, writes in his Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution:
In brief, this is a story of the Bolshevik revolution and its aftermath, but a story that departs from the usual conceptual straitjacket approach of capitalists verses Communists. Our story postulates a partnership between international monopoly capitalism and international revolutionary socialism for their mutual benefit. The final human cost of this alliance has fallen upon the shoulders of the individual Russian and the individual American. Entrepreneurship has been brought into disrepute and the world has been propelled towards inefficient socialist planning as a result of these monopoly maneuverings in the world of politics and revolution. (102).
Nevertheless, the revolution of 1905 was a prelude to the later revolution, and funded by the same people for the same final goal: the complete standardization of the Russian state and therefore, the complete transparency of Russian financial transactions. In other words, standardization means control. The ultimate capitalist, as well as the ultimate communist gnosis is the complete concentration of all productive forces under the control of a single, unified body. In this case, the Rockefellers, Schiffs and Warburgs, as well as Lenin, who was their agent, had identical interests.
The specific event that led to the revolution was the killing of peaceful marchers under the leadership of Fr. Grigorii Gapon, who was a nationalist as well as a trade unionist, and his union, the Assembly of Factory and Mill Workers, had support from the local bishop. His patriotic and Orthodox union drew to itself a huge number of workers, who were definitely responding to both the monarchist and Christian message, as well as to the need for the amelioration of certain grievances. Russian factory workers were the most protected in the world (see the preceding chapter) when compared with the United States and England. Further, the strikes of both 1905 and 1917 mainly were led by the relatively more affluent of the workers. Nonetheless, Fr. Gapon decided to take his petitions directly to the Tsar. Fr. Gapon's demands were common enough for the era: an eight hour working day, the right to strike and a constituent assembly under the monarchy. On the 9th of January in 1905, a huge group under Gapon proceeded to the center of St. Petersburg, where they intended to present their petition to Nicholas.
The Tsar, however, was not even in the area, and knew nothing about the march. Nervous troops and not a few drunken ones opened fire on the crowd, killing about 200. There still is not a satisfactory understanding of why the troops opened fire on a non-threatening crowd. The revolution of 1905 had begun. Hosking and most other scholars in this field will not mention that fact that the Tsar was not at the palace and was not informed of the demonstration or even the killings until much later. They wish to leave it in the reader's mind that Nicholas "ordered" this killing, but not even the most dishonest member of the Anglo-American establishment claims that. Nonetheless, revolutionaries, backed by their western masters, began to start a propaganda campaign that made it look like St. Nicholas ordered the shootings. Suddenly, this allegedly meek and weak Tsar became "Nicholas the Bloody." Many in the Anglo-American establishment continue this absurd line.
Afterwards, a major strike paralyzed the capital city and much of the country. Their support among the rest of the population is a matter of controversy. Hosking (2000) writes that "The workers who set up barricades in the Presnia district of Moscow did not have much support from their fellow townsfolk" (369). Nevertheless, it seems that the urban workers, recently torn from their peasant villages, often without families, were very susceptible to propaganda, and, as is universally known, the revolutionaries were masters at it.
The result of this all was the October Manifesto, issued reluctantly by Nicholas in the Fundamental Laws of 1906. These basically postulated the following: the legalization of political parties, an elected federal body (the Duma) and the enlargement of the sphere of civil and religious liberties. The development of the Duma politics went a bit like this:
The first Duma sat after elections from April 27 through July 9 of 1906. It saw about 55 percent of its deputies opposed to the state as it stood. Thirty right-wing monarchists and about 100 independents (such as various ethnic nationalists) were elected. The franchise was open to almost all males. The Kadet (liberal, revolutionary "democrats") Party dominated the proceedings, and demanded what they knew they would never get, the expropriation of the remaining landlords, among whom were many Kadets.
Of course, the peasants controlled most of the land anyway, thereby making the issue a red herring, something that made good press, but, like most issues in "American politics," had nothing to do with reality. For the Kadets, it was a symbolic demand to show contempt for the government. Even Riasanovsky, ever the Kadet, writes: "The Left merely wanted to oppose and obstruct" (410). The Kadets refused to condemn the leftist reign of terror over government officials and innocent people. In other words, they refused to condemn terror. St. Nicholas dissolved the Duma in July of 1906. The Kadets called for "resistance" against this action but it never materialized.
It is interesting to deal with "party labels" of "right" or "left" in this context. The establishment history likes to gloat over the "victories" of the left in nearly every elected Duma during this period. There is a problem, as always, with the faculty lounge sneers, however. As Hosking (1973) writes:
Before and during the elections, party labels in the center and right remained imprecise. During the campaign most candidates vaguely described themselves as "right" or "moderate" and did not chose a party label until they got into the Duma and met their associates (44-5).
This is one of the most explicitly revisionist admissions in the history of the University of London. Here, Hosking admits that the gloating by his colleagues over the Duma elections of 1906 is completely uncalled for; there was no discernible "victory" for the left. What the likes of Mark Raeff or Jesse Clarkson do is import the basic campaign and party structure from contemporary English or American politics and apply it to 1905-1914 Russia. There were no parties in the modern sense. Candidates campaigned, as often the case in American politics, as basic conservative reformers who then went to the Duma, "met their colleagues" (such a pregnant phrase) and became part of the dominant parties, ruling as liberals or radicals. There is no connection, therefore, between the makeup of the Duma and the voting behavior of the public. Candidates did not wear their ideology on their sleeves.) Only after they were elected did they go to the Duma and become, shall we say, inculturated into socialist radical chic.
It is also interesting to note that the Socialists and other hard-left parties boycotted the first Duma election. There is good reason for this. The Social Revolutionaries had their largest organization in the county district located at St. Petersburg. It had 200 members. The left boycotted the elections because they would have been humiliated by the result. The Orthodox, monarchist and nationalist Union of the Russian People, on the other hand, numbered their basically peasant and lower "middle class" membership at roughly 300,000.This was done without any help from the state, and in fact, with the glaring and very public condemnation by the westernizer, Peter Stolypin.
The second Duma was elected, and it was more polarized. It met from February 20 to June 3 in 1907. The right won a large victory, as did the communists, now no longer in boycott mode. It was here that the reforms of the new prime minister Stolypin began to take shape. This major figure in Russian life drafted a comprehensive position of reform on behalf of the Tsardom. Leftist terrorism caused 3,000 deaths in 1907. Stolypin was convinced that direct confrontation was necessary to fight this menace. Basically, Stolypin's reforms consisted in the breaking up of the peasant commune and relying on the creation of a strong and independent "yeoman peasantry" to support the system. The great gains in Russian economic life discussed above were the direct result of the cooperation between Nicholas and Stolypin. Of course, the left was outraged that the regime was doing well, and of course, true to form, shot Stolypin dead in 1911, in the midst of the third Duma.
The election laws were changed for the third Duma. As is so often with ill-advised experience in western democracy, the delegates have no interest in "civic culture" or the common good, but come to the chamber full of the latest ideological fads, only half understood and invisible during election season. Political parties, of course, were nothing like one would imagine today. They were not administrative bodies at all, but basically cults of personality that glorified a certain leader or program. The right, it should be noted, did not have political parties. Firstly, the monarchy prohibited its supporters from organizing until roughly 1907. This was because, in royalist thinking, political organization is unnecessary under the king. To organize a "monarchist" political party is a contradiction in terms, if the monarchy is actually the true representative of the nation. Therefore, the left stood basically uncontested. Only the Octoberists, basically 1905-style liberals who supported a limited monarchy, acted as a counterweight to the communist and ultra-liberal revolutionaries.
Nevertheless the electoral law was changed by June 3 1907. The property qualification among the landowners was raised, and normally, this is interpreted as disenfranchising large segments of the voting public. It needs to be mentioned that the first Duma was elected with far greater participation than what was occurring in America or England at the time. One must keep in mind that America, during its founding years, saw a tiny percentage of the public - thank heavens - meeting the property and literacy qualifications. Now, the basic thrust of the changes in Russia went like this: the property qualification for landholders was increased; those not meeting the threshold grouped their assets and voted collectively (Hosking, 1973: 43). The district assemblies that decided on the slate of candidates were cut to seven (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, Riga, Warsaw and Lodz), which meant that the urban vote was "sunk" into the much larger rural vote.
The makeup of the third Duma looked like this, and these figures are very instructive in answering the smug charges of "Russia specialists" concerning the makeup of the Duma and the class basis of it.
Among the Octoberists, 59.3 percent called themselves noble landowners. Those farther to the right included only 31.25 percent who were members of the noble landowning class. The moderate right and nationalists could only count 36 percent of their members to be of this class, while the Kadets and Progressivists found themselves with 26.4 percent and 33.3 percent noble landowners respectively. Now, with the exception of the liberal-monarchists (the Octoberists), there does not seem to be much difference in the percentage of noble landowners in connection with the various political ideas (assuming, and this is not a safe assumption, that ideas and party labels, never mind the electorate, have any connection whatsoever). Therefore, the change in the electoral laws had nothing to do with the makeup of the Duma. The percentage of noble landowners does not seem to have a significant impact on the assortment of parties and ideas in the third Duma. It should be noted, again, that the far right Orthodox monarchists had, in their ranks, the same percentage of members of the noble classes as did the "Progressivists" and Kadets. Nonetheless, the right won with 300 seats. The fourth Duma showed a similar rightist victory with 250 seats. All of this was done with the more restrictive changes in the electoral laws, this is granted. On the other hand, the percentage of the upper nobility were evenly spread over all factions except the liberal monarchists of the Octoberist faction, which, by the fourth Duma, no longer existed as a functioning group anyway.
Even more telling is the percentage of third Duma members who served at the zemstvo level, that is, the local government bodies that were the closest to the people. Among the Octoberists, 26.7 percent so served. The right found nearly 20 percent, die nationalists and moderate right 7.9 percent, the Kadets 20.8 percent and the Progressivists, 18 percent. In other words, those serving as local government politicians at the zemstvo level (considered part of the liberal opposition), found themselves as likely to be supporters of the monarchy as opponents of it. Interestingly, among the right, only 15.3 percent had any record of commercial activity in their past. This is a powerful indictment of the Anglo-American historical bias now dominating publishing and university teaching. Hosking (1973) writes: "by contrast [to the left] the deputies of the right, nationalist and moderate right tended to serve or have served in peasant institutions, government offices the army or the church" (191). In other words, the right, in contrast to the attacks of the mainstream historical establishment, were far from the "industrialist" or "noble landowner" oligarchy, but rather were minor civil servants, soldiers or zemstvo workers. They were as much from the broader population as anyone else. In fact, the leftist "Progressivist" party was the sole brainchild of hard left industrialist W.D. Morozov and noble Kozak landowner I.N. Efremov. Their paper, the Utro Russi (Russian Morning) was extremely liberal, and, incidentally, was never shut down by the government.
The Duma government(s) actually did very little of substance. It was too polarized, the revolutionaries too violent and angry, and there was a complete lack of civic culture or even a common moral basis for cooperation. There is no question that the "electoral victories" of the Kadets and other revolutionaries are in question given the discrepancies between campaign behavior and actual governing behavior. By the fourth Duma the Octoberists had split up, removing the moderate monarchists from consideration at all. The left, again, had won by default. The last two Dumas worried only about education and military affairs. The third Duma did make progress in the former area. The last Duma is not worth discussion, for only threats and violence marked the seating.
Meanwhile, the population of the empire was growing at about 2.4 million a year, and represents another reason the British and their imperial interests were so worried about Russia. Demographics mean power. There was little debt and the budget displayed surpluses every year, in spite of the distracting irritation of the liberal gnats of the Duma. Part of the reason for this is that about 60 percent of the budget was under the direct supervision of the Tsar, not the Duma. As has been said, the tax burden of the Russian subjects was 9 times lighter than that of "liberal" England and 4 times lighter than that of France. The average Russian worker had little to complain about (all statistics from Hosking, 1973).
The pogroms are a set of issues that need to be addressed. They are consistently mentioned in the mainstream literature, and are crying out to be revised competently. The mainstream idea is that a group of Orthodox Russians, for absolutely no reason, began to slaughter Jews in an "orgy" of hate that was "sponsored" by the government.
The first fact is that Jews were not singled out for any reason except that they were radically overrepresented in the revolutionary groups, which had no support in the Orthodox population. The mainstream literature is mixed about this fact. Many will admit this truth, and then dismiss it by claiming that they were so persecuted that they could have been nothing else than revolutionaries. Others deny the fact altogether, lest they be tarred with that most terrible of career-destroying insults. Every recorded pogrom took place after the assassination of a Tsar or other important public official. In other words, in spite of their unbalanced character, the common people blamed the disproportionately Jewish terrorist cells for the deaths of the officials to whom they were basically loyal. The Jewish settlement, therefore, was hit with the brunt of this fury, and some innocent life was lost.
For example, Jewish author Mikhail Beizer, in his (1989) The. Jews of St. Petersburg, claims that the entire People's Will organization was Jewish, so much so that they were able to keep their plans secret from the state by speaking in Yiddish. R.N. Terrall's article in the eminent historical journal, The Barnes Review, quotes Beizer's book, page 66, saying: "it is well known that many of the most active Jews in Russia took part in the revolutionary activity and that Jewish participation in the political struggle and in both revolutions (1905 and 1917) was disproportionately high" (53). Further, Beizer admits that the formation of the People's Will was at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary.
Of course, no one sanctions the murder of innocents, as the Bolsheviks, Social Revolutionaries (the new name for People's Will, cf. Terrall, 52) or some of the pogromists committed. Nevertheless, it must be mentioned that the Kishinev, the most violent of the pogroms, came directly after the murder of the Minister of the Interior by an "SR hitman" (Terrall, 52). In other words, they were not entered into for no reason, "prejudice," "blind hate" or other such obscurantist phrase, but they were misguided attempts to support the monarchy by attacking representatives of the groups who were disproportionately involved in terror activity.
The fall of the Romanovs, specifically that of the martyred St. Nicholas II and his family, is the subject of far too many books and papers. Therefore, this section will attempt to bring out a few revisionist points and be done with the whole matter. It in no way purports to be an exhaustive explanation and defense of the Russian conduct in the First World War or even of that historical irritant, Rasputin. This author does not have the stomach to deal with the coup of the Bolsheviks - likely the greatest mass murderers of world history - at any length. Unlike the screw-ups in the universities, this writer does not consider the 50 million deaths perpetrated by Communist Russia to be in any way "progressive." Of course, it is not too far of a stretch to consider the causes of the fall of the Tsardom, and, by that, the end of the era of the Christian state inaugurated by St. Constantine the Great in the fourth century, of which the Russian Tsardom was the direct descendant.1 These causes might be summarized as the rise of Rasputin and World War I. From thence, the Orthodox remnant became a fairly small, defensive and scattered Church. In other words, a true devotion to the Christian tradition, as opposed to a contrived and artificial ecumenical pseudo-theology, became a catacomb Church.
There is not much controversy that the fall of Nicholas II was a complex one, taking into itself many factors and issues. All of these have been dealt with more or less competently, and the works are to be found in the bibliography at the end of this volume and of many others in this field. However, the first thing to consider is that Russia was doing extremely well at the dawn of the First World War. Her economy was expanding and the peasantry controlled (in one fashion or another) the overwhelming majority of the land, and no longer had to pay anything for it.
This was a situation completely unique in the world, as Tsar Nicholas II had cancelled all redemption payments. Her industry was expanding; she ran continuous trade surpluses; and her local government was far more autonomous and representative than in any other nation in the world. All of this has been addressed in previous chapters. Therefore, the unrest brought about by the war was manifest at a period of relative good times and prosperity for Russia. From the figures and ideas explicated earlier, it is not an exaggeration that royal Russia under Tsar St. Nicholas II was the best run and most just state in the world. Two enemies of Holy Russia, Donald Treadgold and the extremely hostile writer Hans Kohn, have written on the condition of Russia as the war began. Treadgold writes, with some distortion, to be sure, in his 20th Century Russia:
The years of Nicholas II's reign witnessed a speedy industrial growth; a sweeping transformation of the peasantry into small proprietors; the rapid spread of education; new, diverse and original cultural developments; the schooling of a generation in political thought in the zemstva, municipalities, the Duma and the courts; and an amazing growth of Siberia. . . . The old dynastic absolutism left behind it much that was healthy and promising which the new totalitarianism stifled and corrupted (121).
Kohn, though with some factual errors, writes in his terrible Basic History of Modern Russia:
By 1914 Russia was successfully on the way to becoming a full partner of the Europe community.... During the decade preceding the revolution, Russia lived through an era of rapidly growing prosperity; culturally, the fight against illiteracy was started with full vigor, and intellectual and artistic relations with Europe became closer than ever before or since (73).
Keep in mind also the condition of the Russian state as St. Nicholas II fell from power. Usually, the mainstream literature and the Bolshevik propaganda that continues to inspire it paint the picture - indeed Kohn and Lincoln in particular, in their venom, fall for this as well - of "unbelievable corruption" (using Kohn's phrase) throughout the government. However, there is a bit of Bolshevik propaganda that the mainstream writers seemingly forget about in their bizarrely obsessive drive to delegitimize the royal state. Both the Provisionals and the Bolsheviks opened the confidential files concerning the private correspondence of the Tsarist government and its ministries. They were trying, of course, to find any substance or truth (in other words, they knew their propaganda was false) to the charges and accusations their respective parties spent countless lifetimes at home and abroad trying to disseminate. They, therefore, when taking power, sought to vindicate themselves by going through the records of the Tsarist state. They found nothing. According to Deputy Minister of the Interior under Nicholas, V.I. Gurko:
The integrity of the overwhelming majority of the high officials is beyond question. Only persons who are absolutely unfair can now accuse our high officials of graft, for all our state archives have been opened and all our secret documents have been published. The Provisional Government, and later the Bolsheviks, conducted most exhaustive inquiries into the activities of our ministers and were unable to detect one compromising fact (quoted in Pushkarev, 413)
In other words, the issue has been settled. However, Ferro - in his second-rate biography of Nicholas - and other biographers of Nicholas have left these facts out. Therefore, the modern work on Nicholas cannot be considered professional and must be discarded as crude attempts to exonerate the Bolsheviks, as well as bolster their personal academic respectability.
The issue of Rasputin has been dealt with ad nauseam. Normally, the issue of this "holy man" is simply used and distorted in the identical way the Bolsheviks and other revolutionaries did: to discredit and mock the Tsar, of course. Poverty and serfdom could no longer be used as political issues (they never were issues, they were merely means to an end for unscrupulous liberals and well funded "radicals"), and therefore, the war and Rasputin were needed as grist for the impoverished liberal mill.
Rasputin was not a monk. He was a member of a sect that equated, like much in the occult, sexual frenzy with "divine enlightenment." The American hippies of the late 1960s were very much a part of this, as are northern Virginia yuppies presently experimenting with "wife swapping," ushering in the Age of Aquarius in the corporate board room. The modern porno industry, heavily subsidized by Time Warner and AT&T, also is esoterically based on this occult idea.
Unfortunately, the heir, Alexei, was a hemophiliac. The torment such a close family had to deal with cannot be judged by the modern talking class, whose solution to teen pregnancy generally consists of demanding that taxpayers fund the tearing apart of little boys and girls by abortion. Rasputin, having been received by the Tsar's family as a holy man and healer, was able to maintain the loyalty of the empress solely because he was able, inexplicably, to cure Alexei of his bleeding, internally or externally. It cannot be the historian's role to judge the Empress' reaction to this ability; but a mother does what she needs to do. End of story. Nonetheless, St. Nicholas did not trust Rasputin and frequently would send the police on his trail. From these police reports we get the descriptions of the dozens of typically slutty high society women who were seduced, drunkenly, by Rasputin.2 Eventually, members of the royal family murdered the "holy man."
All accounts agree, both eyewitness and secondary witnesses, that Nicholas' reaction to the killing was to walk out of the room where he was informed of the murder, whistling happily. Rasputin placed the already embattled St. Nicholas in an impossible situation. He did not trust the man, but found his freedom to act hampered because of the clear and rational loyalty the Empress showed Rasputin, who quite literally saved the Tsarevitch's life dozens of times. Nonetheless, the closeness that Rasputin was said to have with the family because of this was used skillfully and dishonestly by the revolutionaries and their modern day followers. Additionally, some pseudo-historians, asphyxiated in academic honesty, have attempted to link St. Alexandra and Rasputin romantically. Their only source of evidence is the Empress' letters to him loaded with effusive and romantic imagery.3 However, the only real difficulty with their story is that the Empress wrote that way to everybody. A cursory look at her collected correspondence proves that this was her normal writing style, poetic though it was.
Never was Empress St. Alexandra "hysterical" as Riasanovsky - who seems obsessed with proving to the world his unfitness to write on Russian history-nastily claims, but acted no different than any mother who saw her son nearly die, not once, but dozens of times in his short life. It must be kept in mind that Riasanovsky was a student of the pro-Soviet writer B.H. Sumner, and the former seems to have completely absorbed the Menshivik propaganda his mentor disseminated in America. In fact, it might well be stated that one of the major conduits of leftist propaganda in America concerning Russia, apart from The New York Times whose praise of Stalin never seemed to end, is Sumner. Indeed, the American academic establishment on Russian history can be summarized in one shameful event after another. The liberal propaganda mill can be traced from the Times, to Sumner, to Riasanovsky to Bruce Lincoln. It remains with us to this very day, regardless of how many bodies pile up. Moscow, it seems, is certainly worth an academic career. Enough on Rasputin. Too much ink, as well as blood, has been spilled because of him as it is.
World War I was brought about by many factors, not the least of which was British anger and jealously over the rising might of Germany. The German navy was now the equal of England's, as was her industrial and financial power. Russia, too, was a threat, both in southwest and southern Asia, but Germany, being closer and having greater international ties to England, was the primary target. Nonetheless, the German plan against Russia as the war began was to extinguish France first while the Austrians were holding out against Russia, then begin dealing with Russia with her full Prussian might. Therefore, nearly 90 German divisions were mobilized and thrown against France. The nearly 40 Austrian divisions were used with a smattering of German troops to keep Russia occupied in the East while Germany dealt with the French. Unfortunately for the Central Powers, Austria was a great military disappointment, and therein lay the problem for Germany. Nonetheless, the German high command performed brilliantly against France and England, starving the latter through a complete submarine blockade and pushing the French into a full blown Napoleonic retreat. A full corps was sent to the eastern part of Germany to shore up the terribly flagging Austrian weakling who was now dealing with a major advance into German held territory led by the commander in chief, Tsar Nicholas himself. Nicholas, seeing the inability of Austria to continue the war, and of the coming defeat of France, decided to launch an assault against Germany and thus distract her from the ultimate victory against Paris.
Now, this author would, had he been alive at the time, have loved to see the rotten, Freemasonic-controlled and anti-clerical French republic smashed asunder by royal Prussian guns, but, insofar as historical circumstances sent France and Russia together (largely over the Balkan question), Russian policy, therefore and most unfortunately, was to win against Germany. Nonetheless, it is true that, outside of the Balkan quagmire, the interests of Prussia and Russia were far closer than to those of France or England. Russia certainly had an interest in joining with the Germans against the imperial arrogance of England, which was continually chafing the Russians in Asia. Prussia, not exactly interested in south Asia as she had her own political consolidation to worry about, would have been far Jess of a competitor. Let it suffice to say that the world would have been a much better place had Russia been able - by some miracle of providence - to join with Prussia and create an alliance of Christian monarchs against the vapid liberal capitalism that typified Britain and France, and, unfortunately, post-modern America. Thus, it is safe to say that the Balkan questions artificially twisted the objective interests of Wilhelm II such as to shift the natural alliance structure between Germany and Russia. In other words, challenging British dominance and inhumanly arrogant imperialism was far more a shared interest of both Russia and Prussia than has been heretofore been mentioned in the literature.
The Kaiser and Tsar were cousins, and had corresponded regularly before the war. St. Nicholas had sent many telegrams to his cousin in Berlin to reach a peace agreement as war clouds loomed echoing the peace missions of Nicholas I to Paris before the Crimean War exploded. It should be kept in mind that the Serbs had long since satisfied every demand of the weakening and insecure Austrian monarchy after the assassination of their archduke. Austria, however, desperate to smash that ever present threat to Catholic imperialism in the Balkans, wanted war at any price. Germany, interested herself in the potential wealth of Croatia and Slovenia (both of which had long been faithful servants of Vienna), did not seek to influence Vienna in any constructive manner, but clearly understood the situation. Kaiser Wilhelm II stated concerning the Serbian concessions after the assassination: "This is more than one could have expected. . . . With it, every reason for war disappears. ... I am convinced that, on the whole, the wishes of the Dual Monarchy have been acceded to" (Singleton, 118-9). In other words, Wilhelm understood that there was no reason for war, but waited and saw what Prussia could gain from one. Unfortunately, it was the loss of his throne and the redrawing of Europe by the liberal capitalist powers and the financial tyrants who controlled them.
Meanwhile, it was not long before Austria was in full and humiliating retreat against an energetic Russia, and Germany desperately needed to come to her rescue. The offensive in eastern Germany was called off against the original Russian move, and troops were sent southward to bail out the flaccid Austrian state. Russia had driven to the Carpathian mountains and into Galicia, taking the Orthodox town of Evov back to its proper home. The German high command decided to create a major thrust, along with the remnants of Austria, into Russia. The undefended Vistula River was quickly refortified and the Germans consequently thrown back into Silesia (Goulevitch, 186).
By the beginning of 1915, Austria was very near collapse. Again, a planned German offensive against Paris was called off due to the emergency in the east, as Russia was poised to win the war against the Central Powers by completely knocking Vienna out of the war, and marching on to Berlin as the bulk of the German forces were struggling in the muddy trenches of France. Further, the Germans were worried about a British landing in the Balkans which would have dealt a major blow to Germany if she combined with Russia. Germany acted quickly. Hundreds upon hundreds of heavy guns were transferred from the western front and used to pound Russian positions thriving on the corpse of Austria-Hungary. Quickly, Russia retreated and regrouped, hitting Germany back hard, and causing Hindenburg to write: "Our Calvary is being driven back by the counterattacking foe! The road to the East is again open to the Russians. We have arrived too late and we are utterly exhausted" (quoted in de Goulevitch from Hindenberg's memoirs, 189).
As the war dragged on, the weakened Austrians were able to put Italy out of the war, causing a major problem for the Allies. Germany stretched her resources to the limit and attacked at Verdun, forcing the Russians to move far earlier than anticipated against Germany. The attack was stalled, and the Allies had forced Russia to try to save both the gains of the previous year as well as Italy. Russian supplies were dwindling. Austria functionally ceased to exist as an independent military force when Germany was compelled to take over the military operations of Vienna completely. Austria withdrew from Italy to fight the ill-prepared Russian advance. Nonetheless, Pushkarev, a Russian liberal, alive during the revolution, writes:
Evaluated objectively, the military situation of Russia at the beginning of 1917 was not at all catastrophic. During 1916 the Russian army on the Austrian and Hungarian fronts went over to the offensive and achieved a number of major victories, although not in the German held sections of the front. The shortage of ammunition was a thing of the past, and the army was supplied better than ever before. The morale of the front line troops was, on the whole, fully satisfactory, as foreign observers such as Alfred Knox or Bernard Pares have testified. But as General Golovine put it: "the further from the firing line, the greater the pessimism" (107).
This clearly demonstrates the power of propaganda, and its falsity when applied to its main target, the performance of Russia in the war. Keep in mind that Pushkarev himself was basically a Menshevik and part of the socialist opposition to the Tsar. His admissions in his works are authoritative and very candid. The endnote to the above paragraph reads:
For understandable reasons that have little to do with history, Soviet writers have attempted to prove that the disintegration of the morale of the army had already started to a consider' able degree before February of 1917. They exaggerate the proportions of desertion and of cases of insubordination on the front, which in fact were isolated cases and occurred in the armies of all fighting powers.
As 1917 dawned, Russia was extremely well equipped. Churchill, in his World Crisis, 1916-1918, pages 102-103 in volume I, speaks of the immense ability of Tsarist Russia to reequip and to begin the fight anew. He was explicitly impressed that Russia was able to go from an equipment shortage to an abundance of supplies in a few short months. Contrary to mythology, Russia was not dealing with an equipment shortage relative to Germany or France by late 1916. Niall Ferguson, in his famed The Pity of War, makes it very clear that modern research has determined that the shortages and crises facing the Russians were universal in World War I, and, indeed, Russian mobilization was superior to the German in the early years of the war. As usual, the English language historical literature on Russia merely rehashes 90 year old Bolshevik propaganda and calls it history.
All through this time however, the German high command, as dealt with earlier, was attempting to undermine the Russian war effort by bankrolling the revolutionary movement. Russia was winning against Germany and had defeated Austria. Thus, not only were the Bolshevik murderers and liars being funded from New York and Washington D.C., but were subsidized by Berlin as well. As the war went on, it is very safe to say that the Bolsheviks had a better equipped propaganda division than the Tsar or the Kaiser. It should be noted that "propaganda" was developed as purely a tool of the left. Traditional monarchs did not need such crudity and had only a dim grasp of its importance.
The Russian army disintegrated as the Tsar was overthrown in February of 1917. The Bolsheviks, keeping their deal with the Germans, signed the treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany in that same year. The regular forces of the Tsar became the "white armies" and fought the better funded Bolshevik and revolutionary forces until the latter's final victory later in the year. British and American forces attempted to keep Russia at the front through their landing in northern Russia during the civil war, but to no avail. Bankers are more powerful than governments. Lenin had won, and kept his other promise to the Schiff family by nationalizing Russia's banks and, of course, leaving the Russian branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York untouched, the final proof of the western bankrolling of the "revolution." Russia's losses in the war numbered 2.5 million dead or missing, amounting to nearly 50 percent of the Allied total losses for the entire war.
Unsurprisingly, as the revolution was progressing, the Duma, that vile agent for revolution, did nothing. The violently factionalized "parties" could, of course, agree on no common action, and the Duma called a "provisional committee," later perverted into the mouthpiece of the Masonic Kerensky government. The Bolsheviks, both well funded and well armed, as well as under a centralized command, ultimately triumphed. The white armies were too spread out and too disorganized. The red forces were connected by a common ideology, which makes for a more formidable fighting force than mere numbers. The white forces included monarchists, conservatives, liberals, Kadets and Mensheviks. Not only were they fragmented, there were utterly at loggerheads.
During the last days of Russia's involvement in World War I, it came to pass that the commanders of the Russian army, led by General Alexiev, had asked the Tsar to abdicate. The problem was, dealt with in an earlier chapter, that the Bolsheviks, not really utilizing the "economic" sort of propaganda considered normal for them, utilized, in the most cynical fashion, patriotic propaganda to discredit the Tsar. By both claiming that the Empress St. Alexandra was a German agent (indeed she was of both English and German blood) and that Rasputin was running the war, the "radicals" sought to place patriotic public opinion on their side.4 Shortages caused by the war as well as the capture of the railways by the well funded revolutionaries caused rioting to break out in St. Petersburg. As the German advance began to gather steam (by the abdication, the Germans had placed nearly 140 divisions on the Eastern front, compared with 80 in 1915), due to the massive demands placed on Russia by the Allies, as well as Allied help not materializing (as it was in France, for example), the revolutionaries, with German funds, were capable of contriving a strand of public opinion in the capital that the war was being "thrown" by the "German" element in the royal family, led and manipulated by Rasputin, and later on by Alexandra. In other words: the Bolsheviks could not use economic strife as a weapon, for 1) Russia before the war was doing well economically, and 2) all nations at this time were suffering shortages due to wartime demands. Therefore, the propaganda funded by Berlin needed to lie about the war itself. To put it simply, revolutionary propaganda had been impoverished and needed to find a new set of targets. The German blood of Empress St. Alexandra and her co-dependent relationship with Rasputin were then utilized endlessly by the propagandists to turn urban public opinion from the Tsar. Therefore, it was considered expedient that, to avert civil war, the Tsar should abdicate. In other words, Tsar Nicholas II chose to leave power in an attempt to avert civil war and avoid signing the shameful treaty that the Germans were offering him (that the Leninists eventually signed). Nicholas' farewell message to the army read:
My beloved soldiers, I am speaking to you for the last time. After my abdication, in my own name and in the name of my son,5 supreme authority was assumed by the provisional government forced on the initiative of the Duma. May it, with God's help, guide Russia to prosperity and glory.6 May God help you, courageous soldiers, to defend our country against the cruel foe. For over two years and a half you have withstood the enemy's pressure. Much blood has been shed and great feats accomplished. The hour is at hand when, in common effort, Russia and her gallant Allies will break the stubborn resistance of the enemy.This war, without precedent in history, must be fought till final victory. Anyone at the present time considering peace or even desiring it is a traitor to his country. I feel confident that every honest fighter thinks like I do. Do your duty, obey your superiors and remember that any waning of discipline serves no one but the enemy.
I am firmly convinced that boundless love for our lovely country has not yet died in your hearts. May God's blessing be upon you and may the Great Martyr George lead you to victory.
- Nicholas
This message, Goulevitch writes, was not permitted to reach the army, for the Kerensky government feared that it would have a loyalist effect on the soldiery. In other words, even the revolutionary government knew the basic loyalty of the common soldiers. Further, proving the loyalty of the population, both the ancient Monastery of the Kiev Caves, as well as the house at Ekaterinburg where the royal family was murdered, were razed to the ground given the groundswell of support these monuments engendered. Both became Tsarist sites of pilgrimage after the Bolsheviks were firmly in the saddle. In other words, the Bolsheviks knew of the massive outpouring of loyalty to the Tsar (said not to have existed) after his squalid murder and thus acted to prevent a monarchist counterrevolution by destroying them.
Spurned by the ever-sleazy British ruling classes, who were petitioned to take Nicholas and the royal family as refugees - after the massive outpouring of Russian blood for the Allied cause - the royal family, including the children, were murdered on July 4th, 1918. Masonic symbols and slogans were scrawled upon the walls in the blood of the Tsar-martyr. Pictures still exist of the occult esoteria. But, just to add one more insult to the royal family, Geoffrey Hosking, in his Russia and the Russians, now the standard work in Russian history in English, refuses to mention the murders at all. Not a word.
The battle against Tsar Nicholas II was clearly bound up with the battle against God and faith. . . .He became a Martyr, having remained faithful to the Ruler of those who rule, and accepted death in the same way as the martyrs accepted it.
The only thing more agonizing than contemplating the sordid murder of the Tsar Martyr and his family is contemplating the lies, myths and slanders uttered against this saintly man from armchair professors and historical dilettantes. Few men in history are vilified beyond measure the way Nicholas is, and few so vilified without any evidence. History, they intone, is inevitably moving towards liberalism and finance capitalism, and therefore, inconvenient men such as Nicholas should be thrust out of the way.
Without exactly saying so, this bizarre twist on Hegel is the centerpiece of all contemporary writings on Nicholas. Few are written with even a smattering of historical knowledge, or, just as important, the understanding of context, tradition and development. The assumption is that all peoples are moving towards the same goals, goals just coincidentally exactly identical to the political systems of the Anglo-American imperium.
Tsar Nicholas was a man of high intelligence and bravery. He knew full well that by accepting the throne of all the Russias he took his life in his hands. He knew his grandfather, Tsar Alexander II the Liberator was torn to pieces by a bomb. By the time Nicholas took the throne, the “lovers of humanity” had murdered tens of thousands of government officials, and ordinary civilians.
Professors of Russian history have deliberately falsified the history of Russia. More intensely have they deliberately falsified the reign of Nicholas II. University professors lecture to a captive audience. They are rarely upbraided for their dogmatism or invective, especially where Christian monarchs are concerned. Many of them have simply thrown out historical investigation altogether, and merely repeat slogans and cliches from the Menshivik school, or worse.
The accomplishments of Nicholas were many and varied. He oversaw a massive expansion of the Russian economy. Russia boasted of the lowest tax rates in the civilized world. She had become the granary of the globe. A new class of peasant proprietors was rising, and the remainder was protected by the commune, which guaranteed a living and the land of peasants, periodically redistributed according to need. All officers in the commune were elected by universal male suffrage.
Economic growth was astounding, particularly in industry. Factory legislation, begun by Nicholas’ father Alexander III, was the most advanced in Europe. Russia also boasted of budget surpluses and a massively positive balance of trade. The rouble maintained its integrity. Tens of thousands of miles of railroad track were laid, increasingly by companies owned by the state. To connect a massive and often uninviting Russian terrain with track was amazing in itself, considering how small the landmasses of France of Belgium. Russian engineers had to face severe winters and Spring mud that made much work impossible. Russia began her industrial tasks at every disadvantage from her competitors.
The terrible events of Bloody Sunday cannot be laid at the feet of Nicholas, who was not even in the vicinity of the protests. He gave no orders to fire on the crowd. Keep in mind that strikes and violent protests were erupting all over Europe and the Americas at this time, and that Russia, despite her advanced legislation, suffered from them as well. The cities ripped peasants from their pastoral life and introduced them to a life ridden by alienation and dislocation. Russia’s tradition is to be found in the rural commune and the parish church, not in the cities or the urban guilds. Russian industry could have been highly specialized and limited by the state without embarking on a radically transformative industrial project.
The Russo-Japanese war is another area of mythmaking and slander. Port Arthur was not completed and undefended. It was a very recent aquisition for the crown, and Russia’s military might fought the Japanese under every conceivable disadvantage. Japan won the war only because she dedicated her entire industrial base to it, and she was being kept afloat by the perennial enemy of Russia, England. The Japanese navy was financed and built by Great Britain. Russia exhausted Japan rather quickly, dedicating only a tiny fraction of her resources to the war, in a battlefield thousands of miles from home, in strange territory with local Russian institutions only in their embryonic state. Making matters worse, only one railway had traversed the distance from the capital to the far East, and even that lay uncompleted for about 100 miles. No conclusion about the state of Russia can be drawn from the Russo-Japanese war.
World War I has its own share of myths and lies. Russia performed admirably in the war, knocking Austria-Hungary out of the fight quickly, forcing the Kaiser to transfer much of his heavy artillery to the Eastern front, likely the turning point in the war. There were shortages in material, but such shortages were universal and not specific to Russia. Von Hindenberg claimed in his own Memoirs that the Russians had exhausted Germany and that the war was lost. The British crown won this sordid way for one reason: the tenacity and courage of the Russian soldier. When Nicholas needed asylum, the British denied it to him, sealing his fate.
The reign of Nicholas was a great success for Russia given the tremendous obstacles his enemies placed in front of him. How would our tenured set have faired in his place? How dare they judge Nicholas from their comfortable suburban homes, high salaries and tenured positions. Nicholas was surrounded by enemies and plotters. The “revolutionary” movement was funded almost entirely from abroad, and never amounted to any significant percentage of the Russian population.
But for the professorate, comfortable lies are far preferable to uncomfortable truths. Today, rembering both St. Job the Longsufferer and Nicholas, himself stressed beyond measure by the massive responsibilities of his job, we look forward to the day when the monarchy is restored, and Russia shows herself to the world as the center of resistance to Antichrist.