History

I think the thing that people usually frown on is the death of the kids, at least on the left side. Personally, I don't even blame them that much for that either because it was during a Civil War, at the beginning of a delicate time in the new government's period of rule. It's hard to tell what decisions will come back to you bite you or not in that kind of environment, plus fog of war and all that. Wish they did the trial like planned, or even better some sort of reformation like the last Chinese emperor, but oh well, that's real life history for you. It's messy sometimes.

The narrator of the podcast said there was plenty of contemporary evidence that Lenin and Sverdlov ordered the execution and lied about approving it ex post facto, but the only evidence he directly referenced in the podcast itself was the fact that they had a history of lying because the lie that only the tsar died (that they only kept up for just a little while), and that quote from Trotsky.

Then the fact that he said it was years later when Trotsky said this and he had his own motivations at the time, and then ignored this contradiction, made me wonder if there's other evidence out there that made him so sure about this version of events. There's also the vague idea that the Ural Soviet wouldn't dare execute them without Moscow permission, but I'm not sure why he's so sure of that. It seems to me things weren't nearly so centralized at that time, especially with a civil war going on and all.

I appreciate the additional detail that not only was the quote from when the people who could counter are long dead, but it was after he was going rogue. It makes me more and more sure that the narrator was a lot more positive of one version of events for some random personal reason, like anti-Soviet bias, and not for any solid historical reason. And thanks the book recommendation! I'll be sure to check that out.

I mean the best situation is if you can do a Puyi like the Chinese, if only so fuckers aren't complaining a century later.

Who cares?

/thread

Eh. The Tsar Nicholas was pretty hated by the time of his abdication. Had a white warlord rescued him, they wouldn't have restored him, rather just used him to help themselves be Tsar.

Likewise there were not shortage of noble whites to make Tsar with the family gone, had the Bolsheviks been less successful.

I'm team better scenario would have been trial and execution for Nicholas. Rehabilitation for the rest (under close scrutiny in Siberia).

The whites never attempted to restore Nicholas. The attempts to do monarchy were centered on Nikolaevich during the civil war and Kiril post war.

Every Romanov was a potential nerve for the tissues of the White army and international reaction to weave themselves around, so the survival of any was unacceptable

I think it's harder for us to understand now as the era of kings is (mostly ) dead, but it makes sense to end a dynasty like that. The historical norm at that point was even a 3 year old would be used as a sovereign and the white army would have drawn authority from the Romanov line.

Without that lineage, their claim to power was incredibly weak and the only alternative was the communists who had the mandate of the workers and production on their side.

This seems to be what I'm leaning towards, but it does counter the narrator of the podcast who was extremely positive about the Moscow Soviet ordering it. He made it sound like there's tons of evidence they did it. Which if they did, I'd get it, and wouldn't even care, it was a crazy civil war going on, and the Whites were on the move. Shit happens. I just like history and am curious and wanted to know, and I guess it does reveal some of the mindset of the narrator that i can keep in mind going forward (a bias towards believing in Trotsky and a bias against official Soviet version of events).

Damn that's too bad. I was warned that would happen at some point, but up to now, it has been entertaining hearing him get radicalized more and more every season just from reading straight facts from history lol. It's going to be disappointing if that trend reverses now. But it's been part of the reason I've been slow rolling the end of this season so much, because I've been apprehensive of when that will happen =(