The religious absolutism of 19th- and early 20th-century Russia was deeply entrenched as a result of a variety of complex intersecting cultural, social, economic, and political forces. The Revolutions of 1917 were highly unlikely to happen and could have easily been prevented with some mild constitutional reforms on the part of the Tsar. But these numerous forces - perhaps chief among them the personality of the Tsar himself and the entrenched conservative aristocracy that benefited greatly from the Tsarist system - prevented them from happening.

A comprehensive analysis of the interconnected dysfunctional forces that kept Russia mired in economic and political backwardness cannot be confined to a reddit post, or a series of reddit post. The source I am drawing from - A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, by Orlando Figes - takes 300-400 pages to outline the forces and events that led up to the communist revolution and the civil war. No series of reddit posts can substitute for this. I highly recommend seeking out the literature itself.

Tsarist Russia had a cultural fixation on the divinity of the Tsar. The superstitious and illiterate peasants were encouraged to and largely did view the Tsar as a benevolent paternal figure, divinely ordained by God to watch over and provide for them. Russia by the time of WWI was an extremely backwards semi-feudal society and economy. Its economy was largely agricultural, and a vast amount of land was privately owned in large estates controlled by aristocrats and government bureaucrats. There was simmering discontent among the peasantry that gradually grew over time as economic conditions worsened. As a whole, the peasantry was extremely suspicious and hostile to meddling from central authorities, and by and large most of rural Russia carried out their affairs autonomously until the rare occasion when a provincial governor would send a land captain and a gang of thugs to a village to extract extra taxes or some other concession from them. This hostility to central authority was only really kept in check by the cultural idolization of the "benevolent Tsar". When the image of the "benevolent Tsar" was dispelled by later events such as the Revolution of 1905, this hostility intensified and became extremely dangerous. But the monarchist and bourgeois parties generally ignored these signs, and frequently doubled down on their ideological dogma. Even during the period of the Provisional Government in 1917, the moderate socialist parties - the SRs and Mensheviks - refused to acknowledge the increasingly hostile demands of the rural peasantry for a withdrawal from WWI and comprehensive land reform. Thus, when the Bolsheviks became the party to recognize that they could adopt these causes superficially and win the support of the enormous peasant population, their seizure of power became assured.

Some excerpts:

The Romanov dynasty presented to the world a brilliant image of monarchical power and opulence during its tercentenary. This was no simple propaganda exercise. The rituals of homage to the dynasty and the glorification of its history were, to be sure, meant to inspire reverence and popular support for the principle of autocracy. But their aim was also to reinvent the past, to recount the epic of the 'popular Tsar', so as to invest the monarchy with a mythical historical legitimacy and an image of enduring permanence at this anxious time when its right to rule was being challenged by Russia's emerging democracy. The Romanovs were retreating into the past, hoping it would save them from the future.

The cult of seventeenth-century Muscovy was the key to this self-reinvention, and the leitmotiv of the jubilee. 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 personal fiefdom (votchina) in the manner of a medieval lord...The second principle from 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.

Nicholas II's personal attitudes and (in)competence play a central role in such a cultural environment. For one, he was quite obsessed with this cult of old Muscovy, and sought to roll back the clock and take Russia back to perceived Asiatic, Slavophilic roots - a rejection of modernity and "European" ideas of liberal democracy. For two, he was quite personally incompetent as an absolute autocrat. He was obsessed with trivial minutiae, indecisive, and easily influenced by certain members of his inner circle (chiefly his wife, who later was in turn heavily influenced by Rasputin).

Throughout his reign Nicholas gave the impression of being unable to cope with the task of ruling a cast Empire in the grips of a deepening revolutionary crisis. True, only a genius could have coped with it. And Nicholas was certainly no genius. Had circumstances and his own inclinations been different, he might have saved his dynasty by moving away from autocratic rule towards a constitutional regime during the first decade of his reign, while there was still hope of appeasing the liberals and isolating the revolutionary movement. Nicholas had many of the personal qualities required to be a good constitutional monarch.

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But Nicholas had been blessed with neither his father's strength of character nor his intelligence. That was Nicholas's tragedy. With his limitations, he could only play at the part of an autocrat, meddling in (and, in the process, disrupting) the work of government without bringing to it any leadership. He was far too mild-mannered and shy to command any real authority among his subordinate.

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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...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.

As a result of this attitude, Nicholas increasingly relied upon reactionary and conservative advisers who shared his views of how Russia should be run. These courtiers and politicians played a major role in sabotaging the numerous attempts at reform that took place chiefly between 1905-1917. The Revolution of 1905 was a hugely significant event. For the peasantry and the urban proletariat, it finally dispelled the mythical image of the 'benevolent Tsar'; for the entrenched aristocracy and the urban capitalists, it was a warning klaxon of the growing revolutionary sentiment that needed to be addressed with reforms. But Nicholas and his allies didn't want reform, enacting them only with extreme reluctance and determined to undermine and sabotage them by any means necessary. They were extremely suspicious of even the most mild-mannered and limited reformers and their efforts. They were hoping that the old submissive order would simply reassert itself once they shoved the reformers into the metaphorical closet - but 1905 was a turning point, and after that the cat was out of the bag. The clock could no longer be turned back, and the choice became reform or revolution.

To defend his autocratic prerogatives Nicholas believed that he needed to keep his officials weak and divided. The more powerful a minister became, the more Nicholas grew jealous of his powers. Able prime ministers, such as Count Witte and Petr Stolypin, who alone could have saved the tsarist regime, were forced out in this fog of mistrust. Only grey mediocrities, such as the 'old man' Ivan Goremykin, survived long in the highest office.

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Nicholas exploited the rivalries and divisions between his different ministries. He would balance the views of one against the other in order to retain the upper hand. Apart from a short time in 1901, Nicolas consistently refused to coordinate the work of the different meetings by chairing meetings of the Council of Ministers: it seems he was afraid that powerful factions might be formed there which would force him to adopt policies of which he disapproved.

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To Be Continued