A child dying sucks. A monarch existing as a rallying point for multiple competing counterrevolutionary factions and their imperial backers kills many more children because they can act more cohesively. Every year the Romanovs existed meant X number of peasant children dying to empower the regime and their deaths don't factor into your moral maths.
I understand the reasoning and I'm not interested in passing moral judgement on people in desperate circumstances over a 100 years ago.
Keeping dethroned monarchs alive doesn't have to end badly though. The last Chinese emperor was successfully re-educated and spent the rest of his life living a completely normal and by all accounts happy life in Beijing. The former imperial dynasty still lives in China, and the guy who would have been the heir to the throne had served as an elected coffee politician. Despite this monarchism is virtually non-existing as a political force in China.
Are the conditions similar enough? China was after a second world war when monarchy worldwide had far less influence than 1917. While they were facing outside pressure after the revolution it was in proxy wars and via more significant rallying points such as Taiwan/Tibet. Both of those serve that same role but a 1917 monarch would be more culturally/politically relevant. It being a European monarch would mean the revolution is right outside France/Germany/Nonce Island instead of mostly threatening whatever colonial holdings around China that Europe could still manage. The empires opposing Bolshevism in the 1920s were the strong victors of WW1 instead of the mostly ravaged opposition to the CCP excluding the US, and they did just that with the Dalai Lama.
Counter revolutionaries rose up anyway. They didn't have a "rallying point" and they were still fanatically motivated to crush the bolsheviks. It really wouldn't have mattered if they chose not to kill an innocent.
They rose up anyway but without a common goal. The Syrian Islamists without ISIS are less cohesive than they were with that centralising force because all of the various factions have competing interests. I would rather face the latter than the former because they can't coordinate as well.
You're assuming that the Romanov deaths happened in a vacuum, that there weren't conditions that resulted in that moment and conditions that could have been created from any action in that moment. What exactly do you think is going to happen the moment the Bolsheviks walk out with the Romanov children and say "Here you go, remaining royal families in Europe. Look how civil we are as we destroy everything you represent except for a status symbol."? Are those empires going to not immediately turn on the Soviets? Are the Whites going to respect Bolshevik family values? Is anyone going to be meaningfully swayed by that action other than armchair moralists a century later?
Or are they going to say "yeah this is the rightful ruler of Russia" and then intensify a united effort to defeat the Bolsheviks, at which point they would install a leader whose regime is responsible for pogroms. If that's the case, are you willing to accept those civilian deaths somehow morally better and under what criteria? Because they aren't dressed in fancy clothes paid for with the blood of peasant children?
edit: Found it. There was an early Soviet agitprop poster. "Learn to read and write. Children of literate mothers die less often." The desperation behind the need for that poster reflects a depravity that is accepted because it's background noise. How many of those children dead to their mothers' illiteracy as a result of Romanovs is one Romanov child worth? Children are dying either way so we're talking triage.
I think any survivor could have fit the propaganda role as "orphaned boy/girl emperor/empress seeks to reclaim homeland from red terrorists". It sure does suck that their father chose to elevate them to the status of blood successors. It sucks that his choice for an undemocratic regime fueled by violence, which couldn't even provide basic survival for the people it spared, knowingly endangered his children because the stability of the state was tied to their survival rather than the survival of its citizens. It sucks he decided to create several million orphans in the pointless aristocratic war that preceded the revolution that was a consequence of his barbarism.
It's not like Westerners didn't try to create an imposter Anastasia even after the legitimate heirs were dead. Or, hell, bring in the twelfth cousin twice removed to restart the Bourbon Dynasty after the French Revolution. Or just throw up any military dictatorship that is willing to play the role across Latin America.
Nothing particularly royal about Bolsonaro, for instance.
The parents? Sure. But you really can't tell me with a straight face that you think they were right to murder those children.
A child dying sucks. A monarch existing as a rallying point for multiple competing counterrevolutionary factions and their imperial backers kills many more children because they can act more cohesively. Every year the Romanovs existed meant X number of peasant children dying to empower the regime and their deaths don't factor into your moral maths.
I understand the reasoning and I'm not interested in passing moral judgement on people in desperate circumstances over a 100 years ago.
Keeping dethroned monarchs alive doesn't have to end badly though. The last Chinese emperor was successfully re-educated and spent the rest of his life living a completely normal and by all accounts happy life in Beijing. The former imperial dynasty still lives in China, and the guy who would have been the heir to the throne had served as an elected coffee politician. Despite this monarchism is virtually non-existing as a political force in China.
Are the conditions similar enough? China was after a second world war when monarchy worldwide had far less influence than 1917. While they were facing outside pressure after the revolution it was in proxy wars and via more significant rallying points such as Taiwan/Tibet. Both of those serve that same role but a 1917 monarch would be more culturally/politically relevant. It being a European monarch would mean the revolution is right outside France/Germany/Nonce Island instead of mostly threatening whatever colonial holdings around China that Europe could still manage. The empires opposing Bolshevism in the 1920s were the strong victors of WW1 instead of the mostly ravaged opposition to the CCP excluding the US, and they did just that with the Dalai Lama.
So it happened once and has been a disaster pretty much every other time.
Counter revolutionaries rose up anyway. They didn't have a "rallying point" and they were still fanatically motivated to crush the bolsheviks. It really wouldn't have mattered if they chose not to kill an innocent.
They rose up anyway but without a common goal. The Syrian Islamists without ISIS are less cohesive than they were with that centralising force because all of the various factions have competing interests. I would rather face the latter than the former because they can't coordinate as well.
You're assuming that the Romanov deaths happened in a vacuum, that there weren't conditions that resulted in that moment and conditions that could have been created from any action in that moment. What exactly do you think is going to happen the moment the Bolsheviks walk out with the Romanov children and say "Here you go, remaining royal families in Europe. Look how civil we are as we destroy everything you represent except for a status symbol."? Are those empires going to not immediately turn on the Soviets? Are the Whites going to respect Bolshevik family values? Is anyone going to be meaningfully swayed by that action other than armchair moralists a century later?
Or are they going to say "yeah this is the rightful ruler of Russia" and then intensify a united effort to defeat the Bolsheviks, at which point they would install a leader whose regime is responsible for pogroms. If that's the case, are you willing to accept those civilian deaths somehow morally better and under what criteria? Because they aren't dressed in fancy clothes paid for with the blood of peasant children?
edit: Found it. There was an early Soviet agitprop poster. "Learn to read and write. Children of literate mothers die less often." The desperation behind the need for that poster reflects a depravity that is accepted because it's background noise. How many of those children dead to their mothers' illiteracy as a result of Romanovs is one Romanov child worth? Children are dying either way so we're talking triage.
Dont Forget the Heir was a inbreed Bleeder , that wouldn't have made it anyway,
Sign of God and all ...
I think any survivor could have fit the propaganda role as "orphaned boy/girl emperor/empress seeks to reclaim homeland from red terrorists". It sure does suck that their father chose to elevate them to the status of blood successors. It sucks that his choice for an undemocratic regime fueled by violence, which couldn't even provide basic survival for the people it spared, knowingly endangered his children because the stability of the state was tied to their survival rather than the survival of its citizens. It sucks he decided to create several million orphans in the pointless aristocratic war that preceded the revolution that was a consequence of his barbarism.
deleted by creator
It's not like Westerners didn't try to create an imposter Anastasia even after the legitimate heirs were dead. Or, hell, bring in the twelfth cousin twice removed to restart the Bourbon Dynasty after the French Revolution. Or just throw up any military dictatorship that is willing to play the role across Latin America.
Nothing particularly royal about Bolsonaro, for instance.
yes , those children , where by definiotion , not "some innocent children " Door of History need to be shut sometimes or you end up like America...
All Idealistic .... and nothing else ...