A lesson learned from THE LAST TSAR: THE ABDICATION OF NICHOLAS II AND THE FALL OF THE ROMANOVS, by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

 Dictatorial governments are inherently destructive, and ultimately ineffective.

            “As awful as that dictator was, he did get stuff done!” That is a myth that has been used throughout modern times to try to justify the very existence of global autocracies, and one has that sadly grown in stature in recent decades as nations around the world have embraced more authoritarian political movements. After all, democracies and societies devoted to individual freedoms are inherently messy and complicated, and people often grow frustrated with just how slow and unwieldy they can be in responding to crisis. However, the myth that dictatorships are more efficient is largely a product of propaganda, and instead history has shown that these societies contain within them the seeds of their own destruction. Whether it takes months, years, or decades, a government that is run by goons and sycophants who are mostly devoted to trying to keep the leader happy inevitably break down and lose touch with the needs of the masses. More often than not, these regimes end in chaos and bloodshed that is far more destructive than the peaceful transfers of power that are attempted by democracies.

            The collapse of one of these autocracies is described in vivid detail by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa in The Last Tsar, his study of the collapse of Russia’s Romanov dynasty during World War I. The Romanov family had ruled Russia for centuries, with varying degrees of success, and by unhappy chance the throne was passed on to Nicholas II at the end of the 19^th century. Nicholas was taught from an early age that he had been appointed by God to rule the Russian people, and any compromises with that notion were a direct violation of religious mandate. By all accounts, Nicholas was a simple man who believed that no one should question his proclamations, and who loved his family far more than he did the Russian state. He loved his wife Alexandra, who believed even more deeply than he did that his word should be unquestioned law. And he especially loved his son Alexei, a hemophilic child whom Nicholas and Alexandra expected to one day inherent the throne as an absolute monarch who would also rule without dissent.

            Hasegawa’s highly readable and fascinating work shows the inherent weaknesses built into any such government. The Tsar was surrounded by advisors and generals who assured him he was a genius, when in private they denounced him as a fool who was leading Russia into ruin. He saw ordinary Russians bowing and praying as he walked by, totally clueless that in private many of those same people referred to him as a “bloodsucker.” One of the most fascinating, comical, and creepy tales from Nicholas’ court was the worship he and his wife had for the Russian holy man Grigori Rasputin, a charismatic fraud who assured the Tsar and Tsarina of their superiority, and that God had chosen them for a destiny of saving Russia (he also helped to treat Alexei’s various ailments, likely through effective psychological placebos). The more Nicholas surrounded himself with frauds and charlatans who assured him of his greatness, the more contempt the rest of the world felt for him and his entire regime, as Nicholas became completely disconnected from the suffering of his own people.

            Eventually, Nicholas’ stubbornness ended in disaster as the Russian people were pummeled over the course of World War I (six million Russians were killed in the war), partly thanks to the incompetent generals that Nicholas had filled the ranks of the Russian military with. He had come to believe his own press that Russia had become a modern world power, even as he had done very little to actually prepare the country for a modern industrial war. Eventually, Nicholas’ reign collapsed once a large protest movement demanded he agree to new democratic freedoms and he refused to give an inch of compromise, convinced to the bitter end that the Russian people he believed loved him would never rise up against him. His narrow outlook doomed not just him but his entire dynasty—Hasegawa points out that Nicholas could have abdicated his throne (once it became clear his rule would not survive) in favor of his ill son, who would then have been raised as a British-style limited monarch, but he could not stand the idea of his son being away from him so he abdicated the throne in both of their names, with no adequate plan of who might assume the throne next. The ensuing chaos lead to the final collapse of the old monarchy, and instead began a chain of events that would culminate in the Communist Revolution several months later. An ignorant Nicholas and his family assumed they could safely flee Russia for safer grounds, and were shocked until the end when they ended up arrested, imprisoned, and eventually brutally executed at the hands of the Communist rebels.

            Hasegawa’s book is a great story of a deeply unlikable historical figure (also known for his anti-Semitism) who ultimately still comes off as a tragic figure, a loving family man and absolutely incompetent ruler whose love of absolute power had left him completely unprepared for the rapidly changing world around him. Anyone who believes that dictators could get more done should remember that it usually is only a matter of time before such governments end up in the hands of men like Nicholas II, and a government structure that is so devoted to trying to keep its leader happy that it has lost all sense of what is truly important for meeting the needs of the people.