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To: Reily
You are right about the Pan-Slavic sentiment, but they weren't willing to go to war with Austria and Germany for it.

World War I was hell on the Russian people. As long as the army remained loyal everything was fine, but the Tsar's fate was sealed when officers started embracing the Bolsheviks.

17 posted on 07/11/2012 8:37:01 AM PDT by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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To: wagglebee
If you look at the pictures of the crowds in August 1914 in Saint Petersburg and elsewhere they seem pretty willing. (As do the crowds in every other European belligerent capital!) What doomed Russian was it's backwardness and its military incompetence. War had moved past where all you needed to win was feed numbers to the battlefield. Technology was at a point where it could kill and maim faster then you could feed the beast. The Russo-Japanese War did send the message that battlefield technology was the deciding factor, but obviously it fell on deaf ears.
As far as Czar Nicholas II goes, he was a good and decent man, and I think cared for the Russian people. However he wasn't very bright, his father poorly prepared him for the throne, he was way too mild mannered to be the Czar of Russia. I think he did care for the Russian people but didn't know how to be effective, whatever levers he had to pull or push were corrupt, obsolete and made things worse. None of this he understood it was beyond him and outside his world view.
20 posted on 07/11/2012 9:38:00 AM PDT by Reily
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