Potential Problems for Tsar Nicholas II
- Different Nationalities - Bad communication/Differing beliefs
- Large amount of people in agriculture - poor living conditions lead to less food available/in uprisings they want to seem overpowering/less easy to influence
- Social system - lots of differing beliefs
Nicholas as an autocrat
- Absorbed by his "right" of being Tsar
- Held his beliefs very close and believed everyone else should believe the same
- Seen as week after great ruling monarchs
- Strict/stubborn in his dealings. Unwilling to accept the advice from those who are the more experienced and instead as his friend/those who were in his favour
- Lacked self-confidence
- Had little/no interest in the goverment
- Did not have qualities needed to change the country (political identity)
- Quiet and easily bored by monarchy
- No one believed he was to rule
- more focused on himself rather than the country
- Stubborn about his beliefs
His ancestors did not bequeath him one quality which would have made him capable of governing an empire." Trosky 1932
Historian's perspectives
SOVIET HISTORIANS
LIBERAL HISTORIANS
- Survived 1905 revolution intact but doomed to failure because he didn't remove the causes of discontent
- 1917 revolution was a "conscious assault on tsarism, spearheaded by the proletariat"
LIBERAL HISTORIANS
- Disagree with everything that the soviets say
- after 1905 there was opportunity for stable development.
- Agrarian reforms helped with rural poverty and the peasant disturbances were down indicating peaceful progress
- turning to more reformist methods to deal with change