He was a part of history, but he was no hero imho
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Yes you make some good points. However, revolutions come and go... What followed the assassination of the Tsar, I heard Hell had to take notes.
The Tsar’s actions or lack thereof speaks for themselves and when you juxtapose life with Tsar and life after, I can say with confidence he was more than a decent fellow.
Cheers!
1. The horrors of the communists were horrors, yes and they made the Tsarist times seem easy, but the Tsarist times were also horrors, on a lower, incompetent scale (the commies were more efficient killing machines). The gulags, secret police etc. were started under the Tsars, perfected by the Marxists
2. Decent fellow in comparison to Lenin and Stalin -- yes. But that's no comparison, by comparison to Stalin nearly everyone is a saint.
3. a lot of the hell of communism was due to Nicholas's not changing -- he had a chance in 1905 when he set up the Duma. This could have channeled people's ire away from revolution to republicanism/democracy. But he subverted that. The only way for change in Russia was revolution. In contrast in the USA if you didn't like a President, you voted another way in 4 years. In the UK if you didn't like the government, you voted another way. Democracy helps to ease social pressure. The Tsar failed at that (just as Louis XVI was a failure -- why didn't the Tsar learn from history?)