#Tsarist history

[deceptigoons-attack]

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.

[slaviclore]

there's this one historical power couple whose dynamic i'm just obsessed with, both born in the mid 1800s. michał wojnicz (anglicized wilfrid voynich) was a polish book dealer who discovered what's today called the voynich manuscript, a mysterious book made of parchment carbon-dated to the early 1400s, full of fantastical illustrations and written in a (possibly coded) language that to this day with all the tech we have is still unintelligible to us.

michał was married to ethel boole, an irish novelist and pianist who was the first person to translate fryderyk chopin's correspondence from polish to english (published under e.l. voynich). since i study chopin documents as a hobby, i can only imagine being the first person to try to put those into english with little historical research to go on, and polish wasn't her native language... it must've been super difficult, and she couldn't even say shit because there was poor michał sitting in the other corner pulling his hair out over a LITERALLY indecipherable manuscript.

ethel: gosh this passage is so odd, i don't know if --

michał: WHAT DID U SAY

[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.

[harminuya]

Anna Davidovna Abamelik-Lazareva (1824-1889) was a Russian-Armenian translator, lady-in-waiting, socialite and public figure. She was recognized as one of the most beautiful women of Russia of her times.

[fizzycherrycola]

I hope I’m just late to the game on this. But does anyone else think that Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon Bonaparte would have made a fantastic (albeit tragic) gay ship or have I just completely lost my mind.

I mean look at this.

The very first thing Alexander said to Napoleon was probably well-calibrated: “I hate the English as much as you do”. Their meeting lasted two hours. Despite waging wars against each other the two Emperors were very much impressed and fascinated by one another. “Never,” said Alexander afterward, “did I love any man as I loved that man.”

And this.

Napoleon was charmed by Alexander, describing him as “especially handsome, like a hero with all the graces of an amiable Parisian.”

And wow.

“If Alexander were a woman,” Napoleon wrote to Josephine, “I would make him my mistress.”

There’s even fanart of them from the 1800′s.

This complicated historic bromance has Enemies-to-Lovers-to-Enemies written all over it.

[herprivateswe]

Officers of the Machine Gun Section of the RNAS Russian Armoured Car Division with Russian officers in the trenches on the morning of 1 July 1917, the first day of the Kerensky Offensive. Galicia (the Austro-Hungarian partition of Poland).

[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”

[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.

[deceptigoons-attack]

"Yet it would be mistaken to assume, as so many historians have done, that Nicholas's failure stemmed from a fundamental 'weakness of will'. The generally accepted wisdom has been that Nicholas was a passive victim of history who had become increasingly mystical and indifferent towards his own fate as he realized his growing powerlessness against the revolution. This interpretation owed much to the observations of his revolutionary enemies, who dominated the early literature on him. ... There is of course an element of truth in all this. Frustrated in his ambitions to rule as he thought a true autocrat should, Nicholas increasingly retreated into the private and equally damaged realm of his family. Yet this covert admission of political failure was not made for want of trying. Beneath his docile exterior Nicholas had a strong sense of his duty to uphold the principles of autocracy. As he grew in confidence during his reign he developed an intense desire to rule, like his Muscovite ancestors, on the basis of his own religious conscience. He stubbornly defended his autocratic prerogatives against the encroachments of his ambitious ministers and even his own wife ... It was not a 'weakness of will' that was the undoing of the last Tsar but, on the contrary a willful determination to rule from the throne, despite the fact that he clearly lacked the necessary qualities to do so." [emphasis mine]

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

[canaanitechristian]

Me visiting the grave of the last duchess of Russia.

Я посещаю могилу Ольги, последней великой княгини Российской.

[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)

[immaculatasknight]

The Russians are staying put

[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.