I pity the Tsar

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What is going to happen to me and all of Russia? I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.

Nicholas II

I am fully convinced that great and beautiful times are coming for your reign and Russia…we must give a strong country to Baby and dare not be weak for his sake…Don’t let things slip through your fingers and leave it to him to build all over again. Be firm…How I wish I could pour my will into your veins.

Tsarina Alexandra, to her husband, Nicholas II

I pity the Tsar. I pity Russia. He is a poor and unhappy sovereign. What did he inherit and what will he leave? He is obviously a good and quite intelligent man, but he lacks will power, and it is from that character that his state defects developed, that is, his defects as a ruler, especially an autocratic and absolute ruler.

Sergei Witte, Russian minister, speaking of Tzar Nicholas II, executed with his family by their Bolshevik guards on the night of 16/17 July, 1918, in Yekaterinburg.

2 thoughts on “I pity the Tsar”

  1. I know nothing of the business of ruling.

    And he spent every day of his life afterwards proving the truth of that statement.

  2. PG, if you haven’t ever read the telegrams back and forth between “Cousin Willy” and “Cousin Nicky” in those first tense days after the assassination, you should. Eerie and bizarre and hauntingly tragic from this end of history.

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