Apologies for posting.
I should say by way of introductory remarks, that while this is an effort post, it is an effort post on a shitposting website, and thus ab initio a shitpost and therefore be taken in the correct spirit of levity in which it is intended. Don't get my thread locked.
Recent discussion on here has touched on the moral status of the execution of the Romanov family by Bolsheviks ahead of the advancing White Army1. While not exactly of practical significance given how few of us have Royal Families locked up in our basement, it did reveal several significant, (sometimes severe) differences in the philosophical underpinnings of the posters on this website.
A Moral Communism
Moral status as such actually has very little to deal with communism/leftist (in the Marxian vein) in terms of it's internal mechanism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the rest of that intellectual lineage2. famously thought very little of moral philosophy. A communist is thus entirely at liberty to dismiss this entire discussion as idealism, and observe that within a Marxist framework, there are no 'good' and 'bad', merely a historically deterministic sequence of class antagonisms that will eventually resolve in favor of the proletariat and thus choosing to be a communist is merely choosing to throw one's hat in with the predetermined victors. This strand of amoral communism thus is not terribly interested in this discussion, and anyone here that adheres to that framework is excused from the discussion as having won the argument.
Given the rest of us do have moral considerations that prefigure our political beliefs, it's necessary for us to sketch out at least a scaffolding for what moral commonalities leftists share before going further, lest we fall into a morass of fundamentally incompatible frameworks stemming from different axiomatic premises. Speaking from my own personal position, I ascribe to leftist political positions as they offer me the greatest promise of granting a comfortable and dignified existence to the largest number of people possible. That in of itself does not make a moral axiom though, as achieving a large amount of something is valueless if the individual components don't themselves have value, and therefore, and a fundamental value informing my politics is the axiomatic value/sanctity of human life. So I am taking on as an assumption that generally speaking, want everyone to have dignified and comfortable lives3. If that position doesn't more or less describe you, you are also excused as having won the argument.
Justifying Shooting a Tsesarevich in my Pajamas
Which brings us to the Romanovs. In keeping with 3. above, and considering the minor children of royals not culpable for the systematic injustices perpetrated under the dictatorship of their parents, we'll limit our discussion here to the minors (Anastasia, and especially Alexei), though I think the general outline of the argument can be applied to pretty much all of the Tsar's issue. The entirety of the family, along with their retinue, were bulleted and bayoneted in Yekaterinburg about 10 days before white occupied the city. In attempting to defend the legacy of one of the most politically successful socialist projects in history4., this action has largely been justified on the left. Examining the commonly proposed justifications in light of our moral principles finds them universally lacking.
- It was necessary in order to safeguard the immediate success of the revolution against an individual with claim to the throne.
This argument goes that while we do value human life and dignity, our efforts to maximize these will sometimes require that certain human lives be forfeit, essentially turning this into a trolley problem5.. This argument differs in an important aspect from the trolley problem in that the trolley problem consists of single moment in time with clearly articulable and certain outcomes given at the outset. Leaving Alexei alive was in no way certain to doom the revolution to failure of significant struggle, as he could have been maintained in custody, and ascribing such outsized influence on the course of political affairs to the life of a sickly 13 year old is a profoundly anti-materialist approach to history. History is replete with challenges to establish socialist authority6., none of which stemmed from claimants to the Imperial thrown. Further, liquidating the Tsar, his children, and his brother did not exhaust the Romanov line, his cousin could and did proclaim himself Emperor-in-exile, and despite being old enough to actually head a restorationist intervention, none materialized. So the notion that killing Alexei was necessary fails to stand up to scrutiny 7.. It is also worth noting as an aside that the Romanovs were deeply unpopular, and to wit, were not the government the Bolshevik revolution occurred under, and supporters of the provisional government (domestic and international alike) formed the overwhelming contingent of the White forces, and the notion that a 14 year old tsarist claimant to the thrown would have had a meaningful impact on that colossal clusterfuck strains credulity.
- It prevented a longterm challenge to Boshevik control in a manner similar to Jacobite uprisings or the Bourbon Restoration.
Taking a more longterm view of the problem, it might be acknowledged that the Alexei presented no immediate threat justifying his liquidation, but, drawing from the history of pre-CIA regime changes, he presented a longterm likely/probable/plausible/possible threat in the form of an eventual challenge, and that acting in light of that possibility was justified if not strictly necessary. If we wish to examine this in light of our moral principles, we need to develop some notion of probability calculus; at what point is taking in innocent life now justified in order to avoid certain possible harms that have a certain probability of occurring. You can formalize this to ridiculous extents8., or you can take the legal systems more qualitative approach, of establish some standard of proof (you are, after all, justifying killing someone), where the execution is deemed justified if seems more likely than not/clearly and convincingly/beyond a reasonable doubt that it will prevent further, greater harm in the future. This lets you weaken the requirement that it is necessary to kill him to merely it is prudent to kill him. What is lacking though is any evidence that anyone has meaningfully carried out this process for any standard beyond plausible. The greatest extent to which this is established is that historically, there have been several restorationist insurrections, but no systematized historical study has been undertaken to quantify the risk of insurrection/coup in the presence or absence of an legitimate claimant.9.
Well perhaps we leave it there; a plausible narrative that places Alexei as the cause of some harm is sufficient in our eyes to justify his liquidation. The problem with this is that it is such a liberal standard that it can be applied to nearly everyone. There are scores of documented peasant rebellions throughout history, so by the same standard it is plausible that any given peasant may be at risk for launching a peasant rebellion down the line and thus, by that same standard, we are justified in liquidating them. Universalizing from this generic peasant^.10. to all peasants. And thus our system named aimed an providing dignity and comfort is able to justify pretty much any atrocity.
- The moral culpability of for the executions lies at the feet of the Tsar who created the system and not the executioners themselves.
This argument goes that it was actually the Tsar that placed him in position to be killed by standing at the top of a monarchical system that has ruined and ended untold numbers of lives. Had the Tsar dismantled that system before it came to blows, Alexei would have lived a happily inbred life as a continental European curiosity.
This argument plays fast an lose with the notion of fault to an extent that borders on the absurd. Within getting into the morass that encompasses the legal notion of fault, I'll observe that the executioners where in total control of the situation, given the Romanovs were in the zone of immediate material influence, while the Bolshevik leaderships were at a more distant proximity, and Tsar Nicholas II at the head of the Imperial State was a fleeting memory, having greatly influenced the events that now overtook them, but having no control over them. The Bolshevik's in Ipatiev House or those in leadership in Moscow alone decided who in that house lived and died, they knew that, and they exercised that choice.
- Unpleasant things happen during a revolution and we accept that as soon as they begin.
This is true, but once again, it comes down to the notions of control and proximity. As a leftist, I acknowledge that the struggle for political power may involve the world becoming a worse place (as judged according to my moral principles outline above) due to my actions to make it a better one. This is an abstract acknowledgement. It may also result in me taking actions that I find unpleasant or repugnant11. If it is the moral principles that describe motivate my political struggle though, it is fundamentally self-defeating to exercise my control over my immediate surroundings to knowingly act in a manner that results in an immediate degradation of the world around me (once again, as judged by my moral standards). My actions in the here and now, must be justified according to my principles in the here and now and my actions in the here and now. If 10 minutes ago I was standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are closing in, and now I'm still standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are still closing in, but now there is a brand new pile of child corpses of my making, then I have made the world a worse place.
No tears for dead peasants
It is reasonable to ask why go to such great lengths to challenge the justifications for the murder of Alexei (which is so emotionally remote to me as to essentially be fictitious). To which I offer the following justifications.
- It's ridiculous and therefore funny.
- Because eventually some of us may be in positions to make decisions that make the world a substantially better or worse place for others, and I want it be very clear what stands before us when making those decisions. No, none of us are going to decide whether or not an heir lives or dies, but we are going to decide how to treat with those around us, and want everyone to pause before they exercise what little control they have in the world around them before making it a worse place, justifying it with a glib aphorism or some half-baked argument.
1. The fitness for humor here is not considered, as something can be both morally bad and the legitimate target of well-done comedy. Like 9/11.
2. I was promised ice cream if I didn't say 'ilk' here.
3. To wit, one of the main justifications for political violence on the left is that it is directed at those preventing others from enjoying dignity, comfort, or well, life.
4. Such as it is.
5. which we may dub the Yekaterinburg Streetcar Defense
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebellions_in_the_Soviet_Union
7. One could alternatively take the logical form of necessity as a conditional, ~P -> ~Q with P being "the legitimate claimant to the imperial thrown is killed" and "Q" being "the revolution is successful". Given the contra-factual nature of ~P, the truth value of this statement can't be evaluated directly, but given the analogous situation in China with PuYi, we can strongly infer that this conditional is in fact false and thus logical necessity is not present.
8. define xi to be each enumerated possible future in space X, p(xi) to be the probability of that future occurring, and h(xi) to be the number of lives ruined by Alexei in that future xi. Shoot kid if
9. To reach a preponderance of evidence standard you would need to establish P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) > P(Insurrection), which the strictly materialist interpretation would hold P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) = P(Insurrection).
10 Regular viewers will recognize this as universal generalization.
11 Orwell's description of the conditions of fighting in the Spanish civil war come to mind.
I think the argument fails from the first poimy. You haven’t actually established that the children wouldn’t have lended credibility. It doesn’t matter if the chances of that were very small, it wasn’t impossible and it was certainly higher than a normal person. You kill ten for the possibility and chance to save millions because direct descendants can cause huge issues by working with foreign governments. Even though someone else ended up claiming that position, the Bolsheviks can’t see the future, only know what is probable. You claim we only know it’s probable what would happen. That justifies it. If it’s a 1% chance of that happening, it’s still justified with the number of lives potentially saved far outnumbering the deaths potentially gained.
I also don’t think any of us are in a position to judge what was done during the first successful communist revolution in history but that’s a different argument
Surely the onus is on the people ordering and justifying the child murder to show this instead of the reverse.
This is explicitly addressed, with my footnote 8 actually providing an equation for it. The thing if you are going to assert the murder is justified because the probability of some future risk crosses some necessary threshold (however small), you must show how you arrive at that probability by way of some objective method. Otherwise you're engaging in motivated reasoning.
If 1% is the threshold for child murder, fine, show that it was in fact a 1% chance.
Do you think there is time to make some long drawn-out and unnecessary decisions during the revolution. One must act decisively and carry out said actions. If people sit around discussing this all day then the Bolsheviks wouldn’t have gotten anything done
They were in custody for over a year, and the decision to execute them was made over a year into their captivity, and not carried out for another two weeks, and they only finally got around to it when the White Army veered toward to secure some rail lines. This wasn't some hurried decision they had to make in the heat of the moment. They could have absolutely done due diligence if they cared to.
Due diligence was taken. They could be potential threats and were taken out. As I said before, if anyone here can do it better than the Bolsheviks did, go do a succesful revolution rather than attacking what actual revolutionaries did over a hundred years ago while killing literal heirs to a royal throne. This whole affair is obvious in why they did it and I can’t image someone would, in good faith, attack the Bolsheviks by defending the fucking Romanovs. They might have been children but they were threats either way
Anything could be a potential threat. Due diligence involves showing that they achieve some level of actual threat beyond potential, which no one has bothered to show, Bolshevik or otherwise.
And as I said, this doesn't have anything to do with the Romanovs.
Why do you say due diligence wasn’t taken? I would argue it was. The kids were absolutely a likely threat and they weee taken out. You can say whatever you want but that doesn’t make you correct. They were killed to help safe guard the future of the revolution.
Show your work. How likely? How do you arrive at this conclusion?
How likely doesn't matter. Simply that it was quite possible. Having heirs can help encourage counter revolutionaries. As I said, critique the Bolsheviks when you successfully lead a revolution.
I'm afraid that it's possible for you to become an axe murder, however unlikely. So I'm afraid you'll need to be executed as a preventative measure.
And as I said, this doesn't have anything to do with the Bolsheviks.
You are just writing in bad faith. It’s obviously far more likely that Alexi would have tried to intervene. Him and his sisters were raised to be evil. The Bolsheviks did the complete correct thing and in the current day, knowing what he know now, I would still have told them to do it. If you want to sprout unneeded moralizing and judging of the Bolsheviks, go on with it. You know more about how a revolution should be done than those who successfully lead one
Show your work, how likely? How do you arrive at this number?
I do grant I sound like a reddit smuglord, but I don't think there is anything more reddit lib-tier than handwaving atrocities with pat 30 second explanations.
Do you have any knowledge of what disposed royalty generally do?
To engage with some good faith, I'm curious about how you would approach the situation coming from the opposite direction. Say, should the Bolsheviks have killed the Tsar - not any of the other Romanovs, just him? We cannot prove that Nicholas II couldn't have renounced his previous views and became a communist like Puyi. If a person has a 1% chance to do more total harm than the harm of just killing him, as stated up the thread, and that's insufficient, is 10% sufficient? Is 50%? 80%? 99%? 100% cannot be guaranteed. Where is the line? Do we need to start talking about p-values? If we're taking all of this out of emotional language and just start talking in the language of mathematics and probability, do you think killing any of the Romanovs - hell, any of the Russian capitalists or feudal lords - was necessary according purely to that mathematical analysis? Have you ran the numbers and shown your work?
You could transplant the same situation to the current day with a little tweaking. Obviously we should have no need to kill children in capitalist regimes as it's just a fundamentally different politics compared to monarchy, but I can see how the line of argument you give could be used both for genuine good ("we must make sure to not inflict unnecessary pain, and think our actions through") but also lead to endless amounts of thinking and people arguing that, no, X capitalist shouldn't be killed because I've run the numbers in my probability algorithm and I reckon they could do more good with their skills if we could make them realize that Marxism is good and their actions up to this point have been bad, and then counterarguments about how a 23.55% chance for this to happen isn't worth it compared to the pain they could inflict if they got free, then countercounterarguments and so on, while the forces of reaction are building their forces to strike back against us.
I personally haven't been shifted from my position (that is, killing all the Romanovs may or may not have been strictly necessary, but I can understand and sympathise with the Bolsheviks' decision to do so, as they did not know their future), though I am grateful for the writeup and it has given me more food for thought.
Should I answer this from my personal moral framework, or from the minimal common moral framework I would hope all leftists to hold?
In the case of the latter, I don't take issue with leftists in general carrying out the death penalty on the basis of past crimes, so it would not even be necessary to show he presented any future risk to condemn him, merely that he previously had overseen a system of atrocity, which is adequately document and articulable.
In the case of the former, my personal view would require him to be such an immediate threat that even my deflationary epistemology would feel comfortable assigning: he has a gun, he's making a break for the white lines, he's going at one of the guards with piano wire, and so forth. Things like that which don't require a more methodical system of investigation because they speak toward much more proximate scenarios.