Was Czar Nicholas II a Bad Guy?

I thought from reading Nicholas and Alexandria that pogroms were encouraged by Alexander III, but not Nicholas.

There was extreme poverty in Victorian England, probably all of Europe.

Nicholas was certainly not an evil bastard like Ivan Grobney or Peter the Great.

Edit: Hell, that is a relative term. I believe Richard Nixon and George Bush are evil bastards.
:slight_smile:

The massacre of Father Gapon’s followers…Bloody Sunday"? and Rasputin were the cause of the revolution. He should have had Rasputin and a couple of generals shot.

Nicholas was anti Semitic, though.
Annoyed with Edward, the guy who resembled him, he said, “An Englishman is a Jew.”

He certainly didn’t do anything about them. There were particularly bad ones in present day Ukraine where my ancestors lived right smack in the middle of NII’s reign. Many of the perpetrators were the Czar’s secret police who were not prosecuted.

That straw that broke the camel’s back for sure but it had been brewing for a while.

I think the primary cause of the revolution was World War I. It put a huge strain on a weak system. And it shook the military’s loyalty which was what had saved the regime in past uprisings.