by Cheryl Rofer
I’ve just finished reading Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert K. Massie. A short time before that, I read Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower. And I’ve been listening to Gustav Mahler’s symphonies. I’m not sure why I’ve been in that pre-World War I world so much lately.
Barbara Tuchman tends to give more detail than I really want, but Nicholas and Alexandra is a gem. I haven’t read it until now; it came out in 1967, and, as far as I can tell, has pretty much everything right historically. The photo on the cover of my book, a reprint I picked up in my favorite second-hand bookshop, is this one, in better detail. Both are regal, but Alexandra is sad, Nicholas grave. It must be after they had begun to struggle with the Tsarevich Alexei’s hemophilia.
I’ve read other books on the Russian Revolution, and this one is a new experience. Lenin is barely mentioned until the last few chapters. Massie keeps the action within the imperial family’s bubble. The horrors of the anarchists obtrude when a member of the imperial family is assassinated. The suffering of the Russian people is nowhere as evident as their devotion to matushka and batyushka, the affectionate terms for the Tsarina and Tsar. We know how the story ends, however.
It’s tempting to make an analogy to the people in the streets of Tehran. The people of Russia toppled the Romanovs after many years of grievances against the Tsars. There are other analogies, too, like the demonstrations in Estonia in the late eighties. But, of course, historical analogies are limited.
More than the immediate
There is so much to Nicholas and Alexandra. Even Massie can’t quite resist the “if only” temptation. I was at a dinner recently in which one of the participants was quite taken with the “if only” of Alexandra’s desperate involvement with Rasputin because of Alexei’s hemophilia. If only the heir to the throne had been healthy, if only Alexandra hadn’t been so taken with Rasputin, giving rise to all those rumors and rivalries, maybe we would never had a Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution is one of those big turning points of history, so this kind of speculation is indeed tempting, but, I think, ultimately trivial. Nonetheless, I am tempted for another post.
Then there is the continuing argument I have with Mark Safranski and some others toward that side of the blogosphere, where I advocate the gradual and secure reduction of nuclear weapons and they reply that that would bring us back to the world of 1913. Nicholas and Alexandra has given me the ammunition for a much better rebuttal than I’ve had before. But I think that will be another post, too.
What does it take to bring down a government?
More than people in the streets. There were people in the streets in Hungary in 1956 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. But the Soviet Union had the tanks. The Iranian government has the force to put down the demonstrations, but so far they have chosen not to, although the riot police and Basiji have been brutal at times.
Since 1968, most governments have chosen to avoid using that kind of force, although this depends greatly on the course of events, the organization behind the protesters, and the temper of the government. There appear to be splits in the Iranian government, which is organized almost on the principle of splits. At some point, those in charge of maintaining order may refuse to fire at their fellow citizens. But this is not always the case: the Winter Palace in 1905, Kent State in 1970.
It’s different every time the people take to the streets. The Russian people were in the streets many times from 1905 on. Eventually, enough people made enough plans that they could take advantage of popular discontent and force the Tsar to abdicate. Even his brother, Grand Duke Michael, saw what was happening and also abdicated, leaving things in the hands of the Provisional Government, an outgrowth of the Duma that Alexandra so hated for encroaching on the Tsar’s autocratic power.
Or Estonia in the late 1980s. Nicely mannered demonstrations on environmental issues started it out, becoming more and more political. They were balanced by actions in the Estonian Supreme Soviet, which ever so carefully laid down the legal framework for independence from the Soviet Union.
Or Ukraine at about the same time. We keep seeing protests there because things were much more muddled than in Estonia: corruption in the government and in the protesting organizations and a lack of political savvy on the part of the protesters.
For both Estonia and Ukraine, it made all the difference that Mikhail Gorbachev was in office, and not the more repressive Soviet leaders of 1956 and 1968.
None of these—Russia in the early twentieth century, Hungary and Czechoslavakia, Kent State, Estonia and Ukraine—are a clear parallel for what’s happening in Iran today. How organized are the protesters? From what I’ve seen, more like Ukraine than Estonia. What is the inclination of the government? Not at all clear, and not at all clear that the government is united. One faction or another might seize power, and things could go the way of 1956 or of 1991. So far, they are treading a middle path, closer to Gorbachev than to Khrushchev.
And there are many possible external factors. Israel has been lying low with regard to Iran; Binyamin Netanyahu shifted from his position that Iran is the big problem in the Middle East to a defense of the settlements as the Obama administration has made clear that they want the settlement policy changed. So are most other countries, including the United States, with the exception of the usual neocon cheerleaders for extending their great successes in Iraq throughout the Middle East. Could there be some sort of precipitating event from those secret squads of saboteurs that George Bush supposedly had inside Iran? Or the claim of such a thing?
How about a bloody breakout by government forces against a nonviolent protest? Any one of these actions, and many more I can’t imagine, could be a turning point.
We’re not to a point yet in Iran whether it is clear that Nicholas and Alexandra, or any other historical parallel holds. There is much more to play out.