Apologies for posting.
I should say by way of introductory remarks, that while this is an effort post, it is an effort post on a shitposting website, and thus ab initio a shitpost and therefore be taken in the correct spirit of levity in which it is intended. Don’t get my thread locked.
Recent discussion on here has touched on the moral status of the execution of the Romanov family by Bolsheviks ahead of the advancing White Army1. While not exactly of practical significance given how few of us have Royal Families locked up in our basement, it did reveal several significant, (sometimes severe) differences in the philosophical underpinnings of the posters on this website.
A Moral Communism
Moral status as such actually has very little to deal with communism/leftist (in the Marxian vein) in terms of it’s internal mechanism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the rest of that intellectual lineage2. famously thought very little of moral philosophy. A communist is thus entirely at liberty to dismiss this entire discussion as idealism, and observe that within a Marxist framework, there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’, merely a historically deterministic sequence of class antagonisms that will eventually resolve in favor of the proletariat and thus choosing to be a communist is merely choosing to throw one’s hat in with the predetermined victors. This strand of amoral communism thus is not terribly interested in this discussion, and anyone here that adheres to that framework is excused from the discussion as having won the argument.
Given the rest of us do have moral considerations that prefigure our political beliefs, it’s necessary for us to sketch out at least a scaffolding for what moral commonalities leftists share before going further, lest we fall into a morass of fundamentally incompatible frameworks stemming from different axiomatic premises. Speaking from my own personal position, I ascribe to leftist political positions as they offer me the greatest promise of granting a comfortable and dignified existence to the largest number of people possible. That in of itself does not make a moral axiom though, as achieving a large amount of something is valueless if the individual components don’t themselves have value, and therefore, and a fundamental value informing my politics is the axiomatic value/sanctity of human life. So I am taking on as an assumption that generally speaking, want everyone to have dignified and comfortable lives3. If that position doesn’t more or less describe you, you are also excused as having won the argument.
Justifying Shooting a Tsesarevich in my Pajamas
Which brings us to the Romanovs. In keeping with 3. above, and considering the minor children of royals not culpable for the systematic injustices perpetrated under the dictatorship of their parents, we’ll limit our discussion here to the minors (Anastasia, and especially Alexei), though I think the general outline of the argument can be applied to pretty much all of the Tsar’s issue. The entirety of the family, along with their retinue, were bulleted and bayoneted in Yekaterinburg about 10 days before white occupied the city. In attempting to defend the legacy of one of the most politically successful socialist projects in history4., this action has largely been justified on the left. Examining the commonly proposed justifications in light of our moral principles finds them universally lacking.
- It was necessary in order to safeguard the immediate success of the revolution against an individual with claim to the throne.
This argument goes that while we do value human life and dignity, our efforts to maximize these will sometimes require that certain human lives be forfeit, essentially turning this into a trolley problem5.. This argument differs in an important aspect from the trolley problem in that the trolley problem consists of single moment in time with clearly articulable and certain outcomes given at the outset. Leaving Alexei alive was in no way certain to doom the revolution to failure of significant struggle, as he could have been maintained in custody, and ascribing such outsized influence on the course of political affairs to the life of a sickly 13 year old is a profoundly anti-materialist approach to history. History is replete with challenges to establish socialist authority6., none of which stemmed from claimants to the Imperial thrown. Further, liquidating the Tsar, his children, and his brother did not exhaust the Romanov line, his cousin could and did proclaim himself Emperor-in-exile, and despite being old enough to actually head a restorationist intervention, none materialized. So the notion that killing Alexei was necessary fails to stand up to scrutiny 7.. It is also worth noting as an aside that the Romanovs were deeply unpopular, and to wit, were not the government the Bolshevik revolution occurred under, and supporters of the provisional government (domestic and international alike) formed the overwhelming contingent of the White forces, and the notion that a 14 year old tsarist claimant to the thrown would have had a meaningful impact on that colossal clusterfuck strains credulity.
- It prevented a longterm challenge to Boshevik control in a manner similar to Jacobite uprisings or the Bourbon Restoration.
Taking a more longterm view of the problem, it might be acknowledged that the Alexei presented no immediate threat justifying his liquidation, but, drawing from the history of pre-CIA regime changes, he presented a longterm likely/probable/plausible/possible threat in the form of an eventual challenge, and that acting in light of that possibility was justified if not strictly necessary. If we wish to examine this in light of our moral principles, we need to develop some notion of probability calculus; at what point is taking in innocent life now justified in order to avoid certain possible harms that have a certain probability of occurring. You can formalize this to ridiculous extents8., or you can take the legal systems more qualitative approach, of establish some standard of proof (you are, after all, justifying killing someone), where the execution is deemed justified if seems more likely than not/clearly and convincingly/beyond a reasonable doubt that it will prevent further, greater harm in the future. This lets you weaken the requirement that it is necessary to kill him to merely it is prudent to kill him. What is lacking though is any evidence that anyone has meaningfully carried out this process for any standard beyond plausible. The greatest extent to which this is established is that historically, there have been several restorationist insurrections, but no systematized historical study has been undertaken to quantify the risk of insurrection/coup in the presence or absence of an legitimate claimant.9.
Well perhaps we leave it there; a plausible narrative that places Alexei as the cause of some harm is sufficient in our eyes to justify his liquidation. The problem with this is that it is such a liberal standard that it can be applied to nearly everyone. There are scores of documented peasant rebellions throughout history, so by the same standard it is plausible that any given peasant may be at risk for launching a peasant rebellion down the line and thus, by that same standard, we are justified in liquidating them. Universalizing from this generic peasant^.10. to all peasants. And thus our system named aimed an providing dignity and comfort is able to justify pretty much any atrocity.
- The moral culpability of for the executions lies at the feet of the Tsar who created the system and not the executioners themselves.
This argument goes that it was actually the Tsar that placed him in position to be killed by standing at the top of a monarchical system that has ruined and ended untold numbers of lives. Had the Tsar dismantled that system before it came to blows, Alexei would have lived a happily inbred life as a continental European curiosity.
This argument plays fast an lose with the notion of fault to an extent that borders on the absurd. Within getting into the morass that encompasses the legal notion of fault, I’ll observe that the executioners where in total control of the situation, given the Romanovs were in the zone of immediate material influence, while the Bolshevik leaderships were at a more distant proximity, and Tsar Nicholas II at the head of the Imperial State was a fleeting memory, having greatly influenced the events that now overtook them, but having no control over them. The Bolshevik’s in Ipatiev House or those in leadership in Moscow alone decided who in that house lived and died, they knew that, and they exercised that choice.
- Unpleasant things happen during a revolution and we accept that as soon as they begin.
This is true, but once again, it comes down to the notions of control and proximity. As a leftist, I acknowledge that the struggle for political power may involve the world becoming a worse place (as judged according to my moral principles outline above) due to my actions to make it a better one. This is an abstract acknowledgement. It may also result in me taking actions that I find unpleasant or repugnant11. If it is the moral principles that describe motivate my political struggle though, it is fundamentally self-defeating to exercise my control over my immediate surroundings to knowingly act in a manner that results in an immediate degradation of the world around me (once again, as judged by my moral standards). My actions in the here and now, must be justified according to my principles in the here and now and my actions in the here and now. If 10 minutes ago I was standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are closing in, and now I’m still standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are still closing in, but now there is a brand new pile of child corpses of my making, then I have made the world a worse place.
No tears for dead peasants
It is reasonable to ask why go to such great lengths to challenge the justifications for the murder of Alexei (which is so emotionally remote to me as to essentially be fictitious). To which I offer the following justifications.
- It’s ridiculous and therefore funny.
- Because eventually some of us may be in positions to make decisions that make the world a substantially better or worse place for others, and I want it be very clear what stands before us when making those decisions. No, none of us are going to decide whether or not an heir lives or dies, but we are going to decide how to treat with those around us, and want everyone to pause before they exercise what little control they have in the world around them before making it a worse place, justifying it with a glib aphorism or some half-baked argument.
1. The fitness for humor here is not considered, as something can be both morally bad and the legitimate target of well-done comedy. Like 9/11.
2. I was promised ice cream if I didn’t say ‘ilk’ here.
3. To wit, one of the main justifications for political violence on the left is that it is directed at those preventing others from enjoying dignity, comfort, or well, life.
4. Such as it is.
5. which we may dub the Yekaterinburg Streetcar Defense
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebellions_in_the_Soviet_Union
7. One could alternatively take the logical form of necessity as a conditional, ~P -> ~Q with P being “the legitimate claimant to the imperial thrown is killed” and “Q” being “the revolution is successful”. Given the contra-factual nature of ~P, the truth value of this statement can’t be evaluated directly, but given the analogous situation in China with PuYi, we can strongly infer that this conditional is in fact false and thus logical necessity is not present.
8. define xi to be each enumerated possible future in space X, p(xi) to be the probability of that future occurring, and h(xi) to be the number of lives ruined by Alexei in that future xi. Shoot kid if
9. To reach a preponderance of evidence standard you would need to establish P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) > P(Insurrection), which the strictly materialist interpretation would hold P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) = P(Insurrection).
10 Regular viewers will recognize this as universal generalization.
11 Orwell’s description of the conditions of fighting in the Spanish civil war come to mind.
I don’t agree with point number one. The more distant a claimant to the throne, the harder it is to draw support for their claim. Alexei represented a direct threat to the Bolshevik revolution, the White Army was closing in, and it’s entirely possible that groups like the Black Hundreds would have been able to draw more support from other European monarchies if they had their hands on the rightful heir. Lenin clearly thought the right thing to do was to shoot the child, and I’m sure he had a clearer idea of what the heir of a monarchy meant to that government than any of us do.
Regardless, I think a more interesting question is why they shot the Romanov’s head cook.
Regardless, I think a more interesting question is why they shot the Romanov’s head cook.
This is honestly so much stronger of an arguement and much more worthy of criticism, but royal children have so much more emotional impact. Like at that point it’d be pretty easy to find far worse things the Bolsheviks did, the only reason I can see to care so much about this is unexamined brainworms about people’s lives being worth more if they’re named in the history books.
Yeah, OP is flattening the difference between a random descendant of the ruling feudal dynasty and the heir apparent lol. There’s a reason why countless feudal dynasties throughout history would either kill or otherwise mutilate the heir apparent (castration, gouging eyes).
When you shoot an heir apparent, you just get a new heir apparent. Likewise for claimants. History is replete with cousins and uncles ending up as heads of houses. As I’ve said elsewhere, you can make a sound, if not fully developed claim that the claimant being underage and in custody put the Bolsheviks in a stronger position than passing that off to a veteran Grand Duke outside of the country. But that’s not any less developed than the justifications I’m seeing here for shooting the kid.
When you shoot an heir apparent, you just get a new heir apparent. Likewise for claimants. History is replete with cousins and uncles ending up as heads of houses.
If this were true, then why didn’t most feudal societies adopt the Chinese method of getting rid of those cousins and uncles? I didn’t mention it in my longer post to you, but the nine familial exterminations also applied if the usurpers lost. If the usurpers won, the previous ruling dynasty would be exterminated and if the usurpers lost, the usurpers’ entire family would be exterminated. The Chinese followed your reasoning to its logical conclusion, which is why the entire imperial clan had to be exterminated and also why the entire usurpers’ family had to also be exterminated (because the usurpers’ kin would want to avenge the usurpers), but the vast majority of feudal societies did not do that. Why is that?
Alexei represented a direct threat to the Bolshevik revolution
Alexei was a child locked in a basement surrounded by dozens of armed guards. He represented a nebulous, potential future threat, not an actual and direct threat at the moment.
more distant a claimant to the throne, the harder it is to draw support for their claim
What does this mean? Napoleon was entirely alien to the Bourbon dynasty, but was successful in pressing his claim for the French throne.
It’s the idea of legitimacy, it’s a big deal when it comes to monarchs - the more legitimate the claim, the more likely it is that other people will recognize you as the legitimate government, and the more likely it is that other monarchies will go to war with the revolutionaries or pretenders that deposed you, or give you extensive loans to do yourself.
Napoleon
Barrel of a gun, like Mao said. You can just usually get more guns if you’re seen as the rightful heir.
locked in a basement
The town they were in fell to a White Army nine days later. They were on a timer.
the more legitimate the claim, the more likely it is that other people will recognize you as the legitimate government, and the more likely it is that other monarchies will go to war with the revolutionaries or pretenders that deposed you, or give you extensive loans to do yourself. Barrel of a gun, like Mao said. You can just usually get more guns if you’re seen as the rightful heir.
Does that hold, and if so, to what level? Certainly if the material conditions are pushing toward an armed insurrection or intervention, they’re not going to stay their hand for absence of a particular heir. If it’s in their interest to do so, they’ll intervene regardless: which is exactly what you saw in the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. Shooting Alexei didn’t forestall or meaningfully impact that at all.
There have been dozens of times when legitimate claimants went around to other countries and were able to borrow troops and supplies to help reconquer their “rightful throne.” Obviously there’s the Bourbon restoration but Edward II of England being overthrown by his wife also springs to mind. It’s also entirely possible that Alexei would have even been a uniting figure for the White armies, which could have been devastating for the Bolsheviks.
Also let’s not get too Reddit in here - you’re proposing an alt-history and then saying “nuh-uh things played out one way so even if the events that occurred were different they still would have played out that way.” That’s not necessarily true.
here have been dozens of times when legitimate claimants went around to other countries and were able to borrow troops and supplies to help reconquer their “rightful throne.” Obviously there’s the Bourbon restoration but Edward II of England being overthrown by his wife also springs to mind. It’s also entirely possible that Alexei would have even been a uniting figure for the White armies, which could have been devastating for the Bolsheviks.
Napoelon III is a good example as well
There have been dozens of times when legitimate claimants went around to other countries and were able to borrow troops and supplies to help reconquer their “rightful throne.”
And there have been thousands of times where someone with no hereditary claim to sovereignty over some polity borrowed or massed sufficient troops and supplies to conquer the polity, including the 2 revolutions in Russian that immediately proceeded the execution. To say ‘it has happened before’ makes it plausible, but it does not establish it as probable.
Again, do you or I have the perspective that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had on monarchy? Are we as well-equipped to judge the threat of a surviving feudal monarch as they are? Isn’t it entirely possible that the context would have been totally understood in 1918 but not today?
Again, do you or I have the perspective that Lenin and the Bolsheviks had on monarchy? Are we as well-equipped to judge the threat of a surviving feudal monarch as they are? Isn’t it entirely possible that the context would have been totally understood in 1918 but not today?
Like I said, this really isn’t anything about the Romanov’s, this is about not doing the reddit-lib thing of reaching for some quick, easy soundbite of a justification every time you or your side has the opportunity to do something bad.
Good lord would you look at the time?
This thread be like
Have you considered hitting the dab on people who could only have grown to be monsters is funny.
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You haven’t actually established that the children wouldn’t have lended credibility.
Surely the onus is on the people ordering and justifying the child murder to show this instead of the reverse.
It doesn’t matter if the chances of that were very small, it wasn’t impossible and it was certainly higher than a normal person. You kill ten for the possibility and chance to save millions because direct descendants can cause huge issues by working with foreign governments.
This is explicitly addressed, with my footnote 8 actually providing an equation for it. The thing if you are going to assert the murder is justified because the probability of some future risk crosses some necessary threshold (however small), you must show how you arrive at that probability by way of some objective method. Otherwise you’re engaging in motivated reasoning.
If it’s a 1% chance of that happening, it’s still justified with the number of lives potentially saved far outnumbering the deaths potentially gained.
If 1% is the threshold for child murder, fine, show that it was in fact a 1% chance.
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They were in custody for over a year, and the decision to execute them was made over a year into their captivity, and not carried out for another two weeks, and they only finally got around to it when the White Army veered toward to secure some rail lines. This wasn’t some hurried decision they had to make in the heat of the moment. They could have absolutely done due diligence if they cared to.
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Due diligence was taken. They could be potential threats and were taken out.
Anything could be a potential threat. Due diligence involves showing that they achieve some level of actual threat beyond potential, which no one has bothered to show, Bolshevik or otherwise.
I said before, if anyone here can do it better than the Bolsheviks did, go do a succesful revolution
And as I said, this doesn’t have anything to do with the Romanovs.
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were absolutely a likely threat
Show your work. How likely? How do you arrive at this conclusion?
So is it bad form, or breaking rules to tag users from the other thread about this that got locked? Because I’d kinda like to see what they have to say about this. For the record I think murdering kids is bad and counterproductive to revolution. Which puts me in agreement with OP if I’m reading this right.
I think everyone agrees murdering kids is bad. I think the people that reduce this to a question of “murdering kids is bad actually” are reducing a complex argument to such an absurdly simple discussion in order to give themselves an unarguable case. It’s honestly incredibly bad faith
i will reiterate my post that was probably rightfully locked to avoid extension of the struggle session:
Given the chance, I would personally turn the entire Romanov family and their collaborators into minced meat with a hammer - and I wouldn’t have enacted a micron of the violence they did against the peasantry
look, i’m sure i can give this a more serious thought or philosophical analysis (aka actually put in effort) when I have time, but sometimes i just have to blurt out my first thought, as flippant as it is.
like, i just don’t see why this is the one leftists hem and haw about - there has never once been an apology, let alone pages upon pages of discussion on the death of Allende or Sankara. When will the violence enacted against us be rationalised to the same extent?
Pretty weird that you have fantasies of beating children to a dead and mushy pulp with a hammer, ngl. I wouldn’t organize with you.
That said, the adults had it coming. The kids though? Kids just want to play.i don’t fantasize about it - i simply don’t think about it. i just don’t fucking care.
kids just want to play with their treats derived from millions of dead slaves and keep that playtime running. cool.
i guess we won’t organise and will continue to have violence enacted against us with no recourse. wouldn’t want to scare anyone. wouldn’t want to be uncivil.
Personally, I think we should split more over 100 year old grudges where everyone involved is long dead
I think you’re really on to something here
Tbh the only reason I’ve been on here posting today is that I had the time set aside to disrupt a fascist rally with some folks, but then I found out one of my “comrades” had an incorrect take on the War of Spanish Succession so I called the FBI.
Same. The monarch is the old system. The monarch is the old economy, and the old government. If you want to build a future for the working class you cannot take that chance
this is that it is such a liberal standard that it can be applied to nearly everyone. There are scores of documented peasant rebellions throughout history, so by the same standard it is plausible that any given peasant may be at risk for launching a peasant rebellion down the line and thus, by that same standard, we are justified in liquidating them.
This folds under scrutiny. Any given peasant may pose a threat of revolt, but a royal heir poses a specific threat, and of a much greater magnitude in both likelihood and severity that the two cases are not comparable. There existed specific powerful groups who had a vested interest in putting an heir to the throne back onto it, and the means to attempt to do so in bloody fashion.
In this case, the specific qualities of the subject set them apart from the general population. I liken it to BRCA positivity. Yes, any given breast may cause cancer. However, it is not prudent to excuse every breast. It is prudent to excise one’s breasts if one is double BRCA positive. One does not have to do this, but it is a reasonable response to a specific threat that can prevent greater harm in the future.
, but a royal heir poses a specific threat, and of a much greater magnitude in both likelihood
I make specific reference to the fact that no one has shown their workings when making the claim that the likelihood of a revolt is higher in the presence of an heir or that the likelihood of a revolt being led by a nonheir is less than the likelihood of a revolt being led by an heir. BRCA positivity has a great deal of work behind it specifically quantifying the probabilities in question.
There existed specific powerful groups who had a vested interest in putting an heir to the throne back onto it, and the means to attempt to do so in bloody fashion.
This interest and possibility existed independent of Alexei. There was an entire extended Romanov tree to contend with, and there still in fact is. Not to mention the fact that there was no shortage of fake Romance running about whose cause they could appropriate.
BRCA positivity has a great deal of work behind it specifically quantifying the probabilities in question.
The specific mechanism driving the elevated risk associated with an heir is hereditary monarchy. While I cannot produce a scholarly work examining the lineages, both actual and claimed, of the individuals advanced by rebel factions throughout, say, Eurasia from 1400-1900, I would assert that a cursory study confirms that individuals perceived to be legal heirs under the laws of their given title (and who subsequently are denied that throne) have a significantly higher correlation with driving civil war than those not holding such a position. The child and heir of the latest monarch, while not the only claimant who could be co-opted by a faction, is certainly one which would command the most legitimacy to the nation at that time.
There was an entire extended Romanov tree to contend with, and there still in fact is.
Were there Romanovs in a similarly vulnerable position that were spared intentionally, or were these individuals unreachable by the same forces that determined the risks of leaving the proximal Romanovs posed sufficient threat to be eliminated?
It’s doubtful to me that one could ever justify, with formal logic, that the Romanovs’ deaths were necessary, but their killing was rooted soundly in an understanding of the propensity for monarchs and all who associate with them to engage in violence to preserve, even if not the rule of specific monarchs, the institution itself.
I would assert that a cursory study confirms
But the whole point in discussing a justification is in actually filling in the details. If you want to claim that the murders were justified on the basis of some probability, you have to justify where you arrived at that probability, not where one could arrive at a suitable probability and handwaving away the difficult work.
Were there Romanovs in a similarly vulnerable position that were spared intentionally, or were these individuals unreachable by the same forces that determined the risks of leaving the proximal Romanovs posed sufficient threat to be eliminated?
Does it matter? If the claim is that killing the entire issue of the Tsar is needed to avoid the possibility of a royalist, you have to show that it in fact does so, and the fact that the royal line passes to someone outside of their custody, and of age on the killing of the tsars famility would seem to actually increase that threat as opposed to reduce it.
rooted soundly in an understanding of the propensity
They are certainly rooted sounded in that assumption, but there’s no evidence that the bolsheviks or anyone else engaged in formalizing this notion of a propensity beyond gesturing at it.
Any good study should acknowledge its limitations. In this case, applying statistical analysis to historical events faces the issue that statistical analysis is highly dependent on data integrity and on the ability of future events to be predicted by historical data. When we are discussing a proletarian revolution and attempting to predict how the forces of reaction will attempt to combat it, we lack a representative sample in 1918. In this case, we must take the approach of the clinician rather than the pure theorist. Statistical analysis is an invaluable data point, but it is a data point among others. Understanding of the underlying mechanism can and ought to drive decision making in the absence of conclusive data.
Does it matter?
Does it matter that they can’t kill Romanovs they don’t have in custody? Yeah, I’d argue that that puts a damper on things. “There’s Romanovs now” obscures a lot of information about where they are at that time and whether they were even in a position to be executed. Additionally, the entire issue of the dynasty need not be exterminated if the most likely threat is that his direct male-line heir is used as a tool by counter-revolutionary forces. The previous Tsar’s child will enjoy broader support than a cousin by virtue of proximity.
Getting back to my core problem with this argument, “why not just kill everyone” is a poor component of an otherwise well documented and well thought-out post. I think you make some thought provoking points and genuinely care about the moral calculus of revolution.
ability of future events to be predicted by historical data
This limitation extends to any methodology we attempt to use to justify shooting Alexei based on the consequences, and fatally so.
Does it matter that they can’t kill Romanovs they don’t have in custody? Yeah, I’d argue that that puts a damper on things.
To put my point more clearly. On the death of the tsar, to legitmate (hah) claimant to the imperial Russian throne was.
- 13, in Bolshevik custody.
On shooting him, it was Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich
- 42, not in custody, a decorated naval veteran.
If you were a royalist looking for a return to the tsarist system, which of those would be a more attractive option to rally behind? From a clinical perspective, it would the greater risk would be an iatrogenic uprising.
And yet monarchists feuded amongst themselves until 1929 over the rightful heir. I have a low level of confidence that this would be the case with a surviving Alexei.
1929 over the rightful heir. I have a low level of confidence that this would be the case with a surviving Alexei.
You know this in large part stems from the lack of knowledge over who whether or not Alexei and others were in fact alive. Ambiguity that couldbe maintained whether or not he is in fact dead.
I would disagree with your latter point. Nobody is arguing that Alexei himself would be leading an army, but that he would be used as a rallying symbol for such an army. In all likelihood, the Grand Duke would be leading a military charge either way—the question is whether it is preferable he does so with or without the legitimacy of office that a direct male heir represents under the feudal system.
They killed them kids because they believed they had to.
Why did they believe that? History.
If you don’t want your kids killed simply do not participate in and reproduce the circumstances in which killing your kids would be believed to be the correct thing to do.
Fucking skill issue. If I was born a Romanov my kids would be just fine on collective land.
They killed them kids because they believed they had to.
I know they killed them because they believed they had to, the question is should they have believed they had to and the answer is no. “History” isn’t some magic word that can justify any old atrocity. Why did the US invade Iraq? “History”? In order to actually justify things that are at cross-purposes with our nominal moral tenants, we have to actually do the work of justification.
should
justification
How feudalism reproduces.
Ain’t really a tough question and really not worth the hay made over it.
nominal moral tenants
Communist thought and moralist thought, pick one.
Someone didn’t read the original poooooooosssssssttttttt
Marx was published by 1895 Romey and the bois had like 20 years to not get Merced.
Skill issue.
I became a communist in like a year.
The real quandry is why would an educated aristocrat allow himself and children to get murdered.
It’s estimated that around 70 shots were fired at the family, coming from 6 handguns each capable of firing at 80 rounds per minute. We can estimate then that it took around 8.75 seconds for the the hailstorm of bullets to take place, which is approximately enough time to shout ‘git gud’ 10 times at the cowering family.
I would have done a cool spin before discharging my firearm, but alas I’m a professional and have standards.
360 no scope kill cam but with the Romanovs
If the family didn’t want to cower, Nicky could have not been a tyrant or his family could have killed him / fled for his being a tyrant because that shit is to be expected with a hereditary monarchy. Making such a request is no less absurd than asking the Bolsheviks to have whatever hindsight knowledge you wish they had that they didn’t need to kill the family despite the centuries of royal bloodline conflict justifying that impression.
Also, I promise you they stopped cowering long before the last of those 70 shots was fired.
if my family was starved, tortured, or otherwise killed by someone like the tsar (who led secret police hunting jews and communists), i would probably be extremely willing to kill their family in front of them before killing them if i ever got the opportunity. i may or may not feel bad about it afterwards.
- Monarchs (according to people who support monarchs) are not people as soon as they are aware of their circumstances. Thus killing a monarch transcends morality of killing young vs old.
On the other hand, imagine if hitler was holding monarch’s heir as a rallying point for him (whitess and monarchs’ views on jewish question make that very real possibility)
P.S. But yes ideally, they should have send them to felix.
ideally, they should have send them to felix.
who would have made the best gamer and MMA fighter out of them.
Leftism is when you are sad about the Romanovs and the sadder you are the more leftist it is
Who are the Romanovs?
An idea, world historical heroes, light itself
The resemblance is uncanny
Marxists should look at outcomes in the world, not moral deontology. Shooting the family would be correct even if Nicky was a much better person because it still would be much better for the people of the USSR if the royal family was out of the picture.
The only appreciable difference between outcomes that can reasonably be predicted is that in one future, you’ve got two more dead kids, and in the other you don’t. You can try to speculate about some causality change that leads to horrors if you don’t shoot the kids, but then you’re not looking at outcomes in any methodical way, you’re literally just making shit up.
when their silks are stuffed with so many precious gems that the bullets are bouncing off them I think that’s the point where I just lose all sympathy
When you have minecraft diamond armor getting shot is really on you at that point.
That was probably Alexei’s idea.
I think it was a mistake, but an understandable one by the Ural Soviet, given the Legion was advancing on the town and there had been major (somewhat justified) anarchist/SR riots in the town shortly before.
They were not to know the situation was stabilising. They thought the political situation was getting tenuous and, well, can you imagine the Czech Legion with the Tsar or his children under control? Or the SRs and Anarchists with the same (which could go any number of ways, many worse than what happened)? People panic, and when they panic they do dumb shit.
At the risk of being a little petty by using this post as an opportunity to address some things said to me on the locked thread I never got a chance to respond to:
Comparing killing the Romanovs to not only dropping atomic bombs on civilians, but also to the Iraq War you really have no sense of scale at all huh.
It has nothing to do with scale. It has to do with the justice (or rather injustice) of innocent people, kids nonetheless, being killed. I am so very aware of the scale. I am aware of the insignificant scale any of this makes in the geologic history of the earth. I am aware of the insignificance of the scale of less than a dozen people compared to thousands. I am also aware of the scale of being from a family where a single child was murdered. Gone. Dead. Lost. And while her snuffed out little life is not on the scale of the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and all the children wiped out from that despicable war crime, the life she won’t ever have is NOT FUCKING INSIGNIFICANT. I assure you, on the scale of her family and the people who loved that child, it matters. It always fucking matters. Got that? It always matters.
I really don’t care about this at all, I’m sorry it makes you so upset.
That’s very telling. I’d say thanks for your crocodile tear “sorries,” but I know you don’t care about the death of children who you don’t personally know because you said as much. A few kids a hundred years ago, right? Who cares? None of the kids murdered by the OG nazis will matter soon, so long as they’re taken on an individual basis. It’s only scale that matters.
I’m hesitant to respond since the discussion is clearly more meaningful to you than it is to me, but I stated my response to this reaction elsewhere in this thread:
A lot of innocent people died on 9/11. You can say what you will about the bankers but you can’t seriously claim that the firefighters or plane passengers deserved it. This event happened much more recently than the Romanovs, and there are people alive today with real injuries or trauma who could concievably see a post making fun of 9/11. You can say “America deserved 9/11” all day long, but did those specific Americans? I could just as easily say “The Romanovs deserved it” (though perhaps not those specific Romanovs). We can compare the scale of 9/11 to the scale of the Iraq war in the same way we can compare the scale of the dead Romanovs to the scale of WWI and so forth, and we can compare the cringey overreaction to 9/11 to the cringey overreaction to the Romanovs, given for example that Nicholas II was canonized as a saint not all that long ago. So I say that making fun of 9/11 makes you at least 1000 times more of a monster than making fun of the Romanov’s deaths - and yet we (mostly) all do it and make fun of people who take it seriously. So let’s put aside the absurd grandstanding of people calling me a monster or whatever and turn to a more levelheaded discussion of the moral philosophy.
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You weren’t even the person I was referring to, asshole. Did you say the things I quoted above? No. And as for running my own revolution, why don’t you go first? Murder as many kids of the capitalist class as you can, (kids whose only crime was being born to adults who actually deserve to be killed because they actually made choices that lead them to where they are) and see how well that revolution works out for you.
and don’t do a single immoral thing during said revolution
Oh good, so you’re admitting that killing kids is immoral. A step in the right direction at least.
It’s a lot easier to judge from the armchairs of the future than to do
No shit. It’s a lot easier to hand wave deep mistakes or even outright atrocities from there too, like you seem find of doing.
Also, thanks for trivializing the murder of someone, a child, in my family with your hypothetical revolutions that demand the sacrifice of dead kids. You fucking ghoul.
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"Murder of kids” is unfortunately necessary sometimes
Murder of kids” is unfortunately necessary sometimes
Murder of kids” is unfortunately necessary sometimes
Murder of kids” is unfortunately necessary sometimes
Murder of kids” is unfortunately necessary sometimes
What’s unfortunately necessary sometimes is purging fascists who genuinely think they are leftists. Sad as it may be to their well-meaning families, child murderers have no place in a post revolution society. They’re worse than pedophiles because they think their ideology absolves them from their crimes against the innocent.
child murderers have no place in a post revolution society.
People who think revolution is a dinner party have no place in a pre-revolutionary society except as useful idiots to the bourgeoisie.
