#Tsarist history

[otmaaromanovas]

Previously unseen photograph of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna

Smiling on the Standart Yacht. Found (as always!) by Ilia, LastRomanovs on Flickr from the GARF archives

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Trubetskoi's bronze equestrian statue of Tsar Alexander III, unveiled in 1909 (photo of ceremony above). Public opinion on the statue was conflicted - notably Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich (Tsar Alexander III's brother) disapproved. Tsar Nicholas II however, did not see the statue as a caricature or symbol of the autocracy's inertia, but as a representation of power.

The statue was removed in 1937, but in 1994 was relocated to the courtyard of the Marble Palace.

[herprivateswe]

Image: IWM (Q 77992) Russian soldiers standing beside a Putilov-Austin armoured car during the fighting in Romania, 1916.1917.

[romanov-family-photos]

Olga Nikolaevna

Round/oval face shape

Kind eyes

Thin lips

Broader forehead

Small nose

Tatiana Nikolaevna

Cat like eyes

More soft but chiseled features

Thin lips

Slightly pointy chin

Straight nose

Maria Nikolaevna

Round/oval face

Huge round eyes (Mashka’s saucers)

Thick lips

Chubby

Small and slightly upturned nose

Strong and thick eye brows

Anastasia Nikolaevna

Long nose

Thin lips

Small eyes

Long face

Obvious fringe

Eyes seem to be laughing

Alexei Nikolaevich

Visibly the youngest

Obviously Alexei

[byzantiumcyber]

The famous image of Grand Duchess Anatasia Romanov. The reason I put here on my Byzantine blog is because Russia was considered to be the heir to the Second Rome, being the Second Roman Empire.

[snowandstarlight]

it annoys me that in the overture for the anastasia musical, her grandmother sings the words to "once upon a december"

the whole point of that song is that she doesn't remember more than the tune! the words are about her vague memories of her childhood! it makes no sense for her grandmother to sing them!

[the-first-man-is-a-cat]

“Leo Kohan-Berenstein, a Jewish student in the University of Dorpat, sent to eastern Siberia by administrative process (for helping a runaway political exile to escape) and then hanged from his hospital bed in Yakutsk upon the charge of resisting the authorities”

[scrtchptch]

These mushrooms most giant Grow hidden from sight, They fit well in one's hand and they're quite Delicious with sour cream.

[worker-and-soldier]

(Photo from the Romanovs' 1903 ball at the Winter Palace)

"Three perceived principles of Muscovite tsardom appealed to the Romanovs in their final years. The first was the notion of patrimonialism whereby the Tsar was deemed literally to own the whole of Russia as his private fiefdom (votchina) in the manner of a medieval lord. ...

The second principle of Muscovy was the idea of personal rule: as the embodiment of God on earth, the Tsar's will should be unrestrained by laws or bureaucracy and he should be left to rule the country according to his own consciousness of duty and right. ...

Lastly, there was the idea of a mystical union between the Tsar and the Orthodox people, who loved and obeyed him as a father and a god. It was a fantasy of paternal rule, of a golden age of popular autocracy, free from the complications of a modern state."

Figes, Orlando. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924. The Bodley Head, 2017.

[canaanitechristian]

Me visiting the grave of the last duchess of Russia.

Я посещаю могилу Ольги, последней великой княгини Российской.

[immaculatasknight]

The Russians are staying put

[snatching-ishidates-wig]

Peter the Great and Tsar Nicholas II

There were two opposing models of autocracy in Russia: the Petrine and the Muscovite. Emulating Western absolutism, the Petrine model sought to systematize the power of the crown through legal norms and bureaucratic institutions. This was deemed a limitation on the Tsar's powers in that even he would henceforth be obliged to obey his own laws. The Tsar who did not was a despot. The Petrine tradition also implied a shift in the focus of power from the divine person of the Tsar to the abstract concept of the autocratic state. ... Nicholas[II]'s model of the autocracy was almost entirely Muscovite.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891–1924 by Orlando Figes

[herprivateswe]

Officer of the Russian Armoured Car Division talking to a wounded Russian soldier while his servicemen trying to recover their Lanchester armoured car bogged down in mud in Galicia (the Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland) while retreating during the Kerensky Offensive, summer 1917.

[romanov-family-photos]

The heights of the Romanov Family

Height (in order of tallest to shortest)

Tatiana- 175cm (5ft 8/5ft9)

Maria 172cm (5ft 7/5ft8)

Tsar Nicholas II 170cm (5ft6)

Alexandra 170cm (5ft6)

Alexei 168cm (5ft6)

Olga 165cm (5ft 4 /5ft5)

Anastasia 157cm (5ft 1 /5ft2)

[letterful]

Ha, I found it! This is Paul Robeson singing a Polish communist revolutionary anthem.

[charlesoberonn]

The most extreme minority of the already far-right Republican party used a crisis that they manufactured to bully the rest of the party to elect a fascist as Speaker of the House (the second-in-line to the Presidency after the Vice President)

This is textbook authoritarian takeover. Straight out of the history books. Happened in post-Tsarist Russia and more relevant to the GOP, in Weimar Germany.