The Uses of History, 24 – Russia the Long-Suffering, 6 – Revolution 1917, 1

The reformists and revolutionaries had never ruled anything, and that indeed would engender the only possible outcome, disintegration of all cohesion and orderly rule into anarchy that could only be remedied by imposition of another absolutism. That eventually emerged, as quoted above, in the form of “a fearsome set of internationalists and logicians buil[ding] a sub-human structure upon the ruins of Christian civilization”.

The Uses of History, 22 – Russia the Long-Suffering, 4 – 1905-1914

In mid-summer 1914, the Great Tempest slammed into the ship, seemingly very suddenly. This typhoon of typhoons was unlooked for in a year which, internationally, seemed to at last promise a respite from the litany of major European crises which had beset the continent almost continually since 1907.

What would this mean for autocratic Imperial Russia under a weak Tsar and an uncertain administration? Could it weather the storm?