Tsarist Russia Challenge- " Russia, light of the free world"

[NHBL]

Those troublesome monorities...

The challenge did not require that Russia retain the same holdings it did then--there's nothing to prevent a more liberal government from letting some parts go their seperate ways, or perhaps gaining the sort of Home Rule that was finally approved for Ireland in OTL 1914--then postponed for the duration of hostilities, and not re-implemented.
Let the restive territories rule themselves domesticly, with a common currency and defence, and you might keep them--especially if, across the border, bed things are happening, and it's clear that the Imperial Army is keeping those Bad Things at bay...

 

[Peter]

ah, the wondrous "democratic" Ottoman parliament
election to the Ottoman parliament was indirect
it was such a liberal body that within 3 years it had its first debate on the danger of zionism (1911)

I dont get why you are whinning. Last time i checked there was a Jewish state in the Middle east.

 

[Faeelin]

It's a stretch to claim that Russia was "almost on par with the West" in 1914 - it was really quite far behind. As for politically, it was considerably LESS democratic than even the Ottoman Empire.

Russia in 1914 had the same GDP as the UK and Germany
(obviously not on a per capita basis)

Could you cite this?

 

[Wozza]

I dont get why you are whinning. Last time i checked there was a Jewish state in the Middle east.
The issue has nothing to do with the desirability of a Jewish state, rather the whiff of intolerance associated with this debate

Russia in 1914 had the same GDP as the UK and Germany
(obviously not on a per capita basis)

Could you cite this?
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/wwibarcelona.pdf

Fortunately I found the above, p17
Russian per head GDP is clearly lower, and so I concede level of development
but it is far ahead of the Ottoman empire and not that bad compared to Austria Hungary

NB
the same source provides figures for Ottoman GDP, 10% the size of the Russian or German. There was a thread here recently arguing that the Ottomans could have become a superpower by staying out of WW1. This data suggests not simply because they were SO far behind.

 

[Wendell]

land area

No where in the challenge did it state that Russia had to maintain its terrirtorial integrity.

 

[Peter]

I dont get why you are whinning. Last time i checked there was a Jewish state in the Middle east.
The issue has nothing to do with the desirability of a Jewish state, rather the whiff of intolerance associated with this debate.

What intolerance? Obviously they were right. Zionism was a threat to the territorial integrity of the Muslim world.

 

[George Carty]

the same source provides figures for Ottoman GDP, 10% the size of the Russian or German. There was a thread here recently arguing that the Ottomans could have become a superpower by staying out of WW1. This data suggests not simply because they were SO far behind.

Yes - that seems ridiculous to me. I think the earlier 'Ottoman superpower' thread with a pre-1876 POD is more realistic.

To paraphrase a saying about the Partitions of Poland, "Russia did not attack the Ottomans because the Ottoman Empire was degenerate, weak and backward; rather, the Ottoman Empire was attacked because it was weak, backward, and trying to reform itself."

 

[Wozza]

What intolerance? Obviously they were right. Zionism was a threat to the territorial integrity of the Muslim world.

Your obssession with Zionism is slightly disturbing.
You are also imposing a modern perspective. zionism in 1911 meant mad conspiracy theories about the "elders." Not Jewish territorial settlement. The debate was in response to a Jewish land purchase, but one wonders if the content was more along the Jews rules the world lines.

 

[Peter]

Your obssession with Zionism is slightly disturbing.

You are also imposing a modern perspective. zionism in 1911 meant mad conspiracy theories about the "elders." Not Jewish territorial settlement. The debate was in response to a Jewish land purchase, but one wonders if the content was more along the Jews rules the world lines.

No it did not. That, if anything, is the modern meaning of the word, among some circles, at least. In that time and age Zionism was simply Jewish nationalism.

 

[Wozza]

No it did not. That, if anything, is the modern meaning of the word, among some circles, at least. In that time and age Zionism was simply Jewish nationalism.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

The central Parliament had it's problems but the Ottomans had had local democratically elected assemblies since the 1850s. Indirectly elected parliamentarians is not necessarily anti-democratic, either, since they were indirectly elected by directly elected electors.

I have never seen a figure to support that Russia had a GDP equal to Germany's - I do not find that credible, and even if it were true, that's still one third per capita. Not exactly "almost".

Check on the Arab National Congress' membership and support, which was vitually nil. You can adopt a grandiose name, it doesn't make you representative of the will of a people that don't even exist in their own minds. Arabs served in the legislatures and executive. The Grand Vizier at this time was an Arab, after all, as were a very large percentage of the CUP leadership. That you would use the term "beduin" suggests you have no idea what you're talking about.

It's a stretch to claim that Russia was "almost on par with the West" in 1914 - it was really quite far behind. As for politically, it was considerably LESS democratic than even the Ottoman Empire.

Russia in 1914 had the same GDP as the UK and Germany
(obviously not on a per capita basis)

ah, the wondrous "democratic" Ottoman parliament
election to the Ottoman parliament was indirect
it was such a liberal body that within 3 years it had its first debate on the danger of zionism (1911)
this merry state of affairs was so liberal that the Ottoman governor only had to execute 21 dissident intellectuals in Beirut and Damascus in 1913

the wonders of Ottoman democracy were such that the the 1st Arab National Congress was held in the traditional bedouin town of... Paris in the same year.

Russia meanwhile had ABOLISHED THE DEALTH PENALTY because it was such an awful tyranny...

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I might be wrong, but I believe you misinterpret what he was saying. He said Russia in 1914 was less democratic than even the Ottoman Empire. I dont think he was saying that the Ottomans were by any means the shining example of a democracy in 1914.

And what does the Death Penalty have to do with anything? By your logic, West Virigina is more democratic than Virginia because it abolished the Death Penalty in the 1960s.

That is correct, which was why I used the qualifier "even" before "less". The Ottomans, BTW, abandoned the death penalty in 1876 (although the military government used it some in the war - but then so did the Russians, and British, and French, and...), so that's not really a very good argument. The Sultan didn't even execute people that tried to assassinate him.

 

[Forum Lurker]

No it did not. That, if anything, is the modern meaning of the word, among some circles, at least. In that time and age Zionism was simply Jewish nationalism.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Yes? The imaginary "Elders of Zion" were not members of a conspiracy called Zion, which was a tiny faction of the Jewish nation; they were believed to be the leaders of Zion, which was the Jewish nationalist movement, and used largely interchangeably with the Jewish people as a whole.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

I might be wrong, but I believe you misinterpret what he was saying. He said Russia in 1914 was less democratic than even the Ottoman Empire. I dont think he was saying that the Ottomans were by any means the shining example of a democracy in 1914.

And what does the Death Penalty have to do with anything? By your logic, West Virigina is more democratic than Virginia because it abolished the Death Penalty in the 1960s.

I have shifted the debate from democracy to liberalism to democracy I concur.
However the fact that one could be executed as a dissident in the Ottoman but not the Tsarist empire is a clear sign of the level of political development.

This debate is however about Russia as a progressive society. This is a good example of its potential in this regard. Communist propaganda has steadily crushed this story to justify its own brutality and to make

Again, wrong. Except in extremis, exile was the strongest punishment meted out to dissidents - even for attempted assassins of the Sultan, who often got full pardons if they were Christians. And exile usually meant temporary assignment to posts in Yemen or Libya. Not even the most ardent Islamophobe in the 19th c would claim that Ottoman rule was harsher than Russian. This point was brought up regularly at the time, in fact. Ethnicity and religion were a far lesser impediment to holding government posistions than in any European nation. The Treaty of Berlin required Rumania to grant total religious equality, but its 300,000 Jews contunued to be classified as foreigners, with no right to vote or hold office, but still liable for conscription and taxation. I don't need to point out the suffering of Jews and Muslims in Russia.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

it was such a liberal body that within 3 years it had its first debate on the danger of zionism (1911).

You can whitewash Zionism all you want, but the fact remains that it WAS a danger, regarded as such most stongly by the Ottoman parliament's JEWISH representatives, who represented the empires overwhelmingly Sephardic and anti-Zionist population. Large-scale immigration anywhere is always destabilizing, and the Zionists OPENLY advocated creating a Jewish state on Ottoman territory, some factions by ANY means. I don't see how that could NOT be viewed as a threat.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

It's difficult to come to any conclusions about the Ottoman economy yet, but government revenue was roughly equivalent to Belgium's with a rate of taxation that was considerably lower. While it's certainly true that the Ottoman economy was much smaller than Russia's, it's population was also much smaller (23 M v 180 M), so per capita it was no "SO" much behind. The reason many of us have postulated the empire becoming a major power (not superpower, except in fantasy scenarios) is because it would control most of the world's oil reserves, and be in a good posistion to take advantage of the Russian Revolution if one still happend. It was also a far more stable polity than Russia, having engaged in 12 years of continuous warfare without any revolution - and that with the military not being paid for that entire time, and barely fed.

I dont get why you are whinning. Last time i checked there was a Jewish state in the Middle east.
The issue has nothing to do with the desirability of a Jewish state, rather the whiff of intolerance associated with this debate

Russia in 1914 had the same GDP as the UK and Germany
(obviously not on a per capita basis)

Could you cite this?
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/broadberry/wp/wwibarcelona.pdf

Fortunately I found the above, p17
Russian per head GDP is clearly lower, and so I concede level of development
but it is far ahead of the Ottoman empire and not that bad compared to Austria Hungary

NB
the same source provides figures for Ottoman GDP, 10% the size of the Russian or German. There was a thread here recently arguing that the Ottomans could have become a superpower by staying out of WW1. This data suggests not simply because they were SO far behind.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

No where in the challenge did it state that Russia had to maintain its terrirtorial integrity.

LOL, that's true, but if it splits up it sort of defeats the purpose.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Your obssession with Zionism is slightly disturbing.
You are also imposing a modern perspective. zionism in 1911 meant mad conspiracy theories about the "elders." Not Jewish territorial settlement. The debate was in response to a Jewish land purchase, but one wonders if the content was more along the Jews rules the world lines.

That is absolutely not true. Zionist settlement first began in the 19th c and began to accellerate from there. The Zionists tended to live in isolation as opposed to the native Jews and were a somewhat disruptive element (but less so than the German Templars, who were just awful).

The Zionists were both well-organized and well-funded, at one point even offering to pay off the entire Ottoman debt and build a the Ottomans a modern navy in exchange for Palestine. The Sultan found the offer "a bit rude".

There was nothing inherently wrong with Zionism - it was no different morally than any other nationalist movement - but it was certainly a threat to Ottoman territorial integrity. I don't see how bringing this up is somehow a disturbing obsession - you're the one who first raised the point after all.

 

[MarkA]

Getting back to the point of this discussion - Russia with Nicholas II as Tsar would be in no position to liberalise. He was a dunderhead and a ditherer just like most of his royal relatives and aristocratic contemporaries, both within Russia and all over Europe. Perhaps Michael would be a better bet but how do you get him to be Tsar?

I think the war is inevitable to pressure the Russians to undertake some mild democratic reforms. But they would be too little too late as in OTL.

Alexander II lives? Would he carry through with more reforms? This may be the best POD to have Russia reform and avoid revolution. Still WWI is still going to be tough for them.

 

[Nicole]

Getting back to the point of this discussion - Russia with Nicholas II as Tsar would be in no position to liberalise. He was a dunderhead and a ditherer just like most of his royal relatives and aristocratic contemporaries, both within Russia and all over Europe. Perhaps Michael would be a better bet but how do you get him to be Tsar?

Kill off Nicholas II on his trip to the Far East, I started a TL where this happens but gave up due to the fact that I really didn't know enough about the time period...