[Zhang Fei]

Yeah, and the Bolsheviks killed not only Nicholas II, but his entire family, as well as the family dogs (Ortipo, who was bayoneted; and Jimmy, who was shot). Sick bastards, the Bolsheviks.

The bit about the dogs might be excessive, but slaughtering the royal clan - that's not unique to the Bolsheviks. When Russian aristocrats killed Tsar Feodor II, they also slaughtered his family. The idea is to deny other contenders for power a rallying point (around a royal, real or alleged). But the fact is - it took WWI and the loss of more war dead than every one of Russia's previous wars combined, by an order of magnitude, for Nicholas II to fall from power. That's not Putin's situation.

[ought-six]

“The bit about the dogs might be excessive, but slaughtering the royal clan - that’s not unique to the Bolsheviks.”

No, but the Bolsheviks were Russian. Just saying.

It is unusual to wipe out a leader’s entire immediate family. Yes, historically it has been done. But the extermination of the Tsar’s entire immediate family in 1918 was the only time such a thing had happened in modern times (probably because hereditary rule is — aside from some Arab regimes — extremely rare).