Question by Is: How did Rasputin affect WWI and the fall of the Romanov Dynasty in Russia?
Apparently Rasputin was a pacifist and tried to convince Tsar Nicholas II not to get involved in WWI? (which presumably would have had catastrophic effects on Britain, France and other countries?) I don’t know if that’s true or not but I was hoping for some more info, and about his connection to the fall of the Romanovs? thanks very much! 🙂
Answers and Views:
Answer by Son of Woodrow
I should probably sum up what I’m trying to say: The fall of the Romanovs certainly cannot be blamed on Rasputin. Like I mention below, I believe that the main reason was the inability of Nicholas to either crack down like a true tyrant, or yield to the demands of the 1905 revolutionary liberals, and make Russia a constitutional monarchy (like the UK).
However, on top of all the grievances the elite in Petersburg, the farce of the holy man straight out of the Middle Ages must have only intensified their feeling that the Tsar must be overthrown.
Hi, I have read a slightly different account of this particular character’s influence on Russian history, but make no mistake, he was critical in the downfall of the Romanovs.
In my undergrad days, I majored in Russian history and I do not recall ever hearing that Rasputin was a pacifist. If anything, Rapsutin was a supporter of the Tsar and mother Russia.
The Tsaritsa, Nikolas’ wife, was German…this probably had something to do with the implications of treachery, since she was Rasputin’s patron.
Rasputin is fascinating because of the influence he held over the Romanovs, at a critical time, and because of that, the influence he has had on world history. It was a bad influence on all accounts.
Most Russian elites with half a brain hated Rasputin since they could see what he was: a power-hungry con artist who preyed on the Tsaritsa’s motherly instinct to care for her hemophiliac son. That is how he first got his foot into the palace at Petersburg.
Before shortly he was influencing the Tsar as well, who was not a particularly strong leader. Strong leaders are the only ones who ever survive in Russia. It was in fact Rasputin’s advice that Nikolas go to the front in WWI and take personal control of the Russian Army, which was a tremendous mistake, since Nikolas had no military strategic training. The Germans ended up making no headway in the west, but beating the Russians so bad that people started to think Nikolas and his wife were actually German agents who were sabotaging the war effort! Imagine a president in America doing so bad we thought he was deliberately screwing things up because he was a foreign agent!
The main reason for the fall of the Romanovs was the series of military defeats: first in the far East to the Japanese, a tiny nation of people who hadn’t even had guns a generation before the war.
And then World War 1, which was the most brutal war in the history of the world. All of the nations fighting in that war went through massive social upheavals. Russia, though, had been a pressure cooker of revolution for the decades leading up to the war.
Russians, for the most part, aren’t like us Americans or Britons who value freedom over anything else. The Russians don’t mind an autocrat if he is an effective autocrat, and glorifies the Russian people through military, economic, and/or technological feats. Nicholas II was the worst of both worlds–he was a weak leader but determined to rule with an iron fist, and simply did not understand that the 20th century would be different from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Rasputin was the personification of everything that was wrong in the Russian autocracy–backwards, corrupt, irrational. He was an alcoholic, unwashed charlatan who held sway over millions of peoples lives, even though Russia had a fairly capable bureacracy and thousands of well-educated, highly cultured nobles who were interested in local government and the rule of law. Rapsutin was a throwback to the court jester or the mystic of the court–something you may see in ancient Persia, perhaps, but not in a modern European state.
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What do you think?
Gino's mom says
Rasputin was a kind of uneducated Siberian Monk who practiced mysticism. He became very influential at court when he stopped the bleeding of Alexis (crown prince),it was primarily the Tsarina he had on his side. Rasputin had no influence on the outcome of WWI because Nicolas hated Kaiser Wilhelm (Willy) with all his heart and would have fought on the side of England anyway (Queen Victoria was his aunt).
His influence on the Romanov's earned him the hatred of the aristocracy but that again was irrelevant with their fall.
Their fall was due to the stubbornness of Nicolas and his Queen to let go some of their power and see to it that the common people did not starve and were treated in a more humane way.
The Mushiks (farmers) were no better than slaves they belonged to the land they worked on ,this situation in the 20th century could not last any longer.