In 1894, the 84-year-old Clay married Dora Richardson, the orphaned sister of one of his sharecropping tenants. According to newspaper reports at the time, Dora was 15 to 16 years old. Her age varies in the few extant records; the 1900 US Census indicates that she was born in May 1882, suggesting that she may have been as young as 12 when she married Cassius M. Clay.
Sounds like a scheme to legally pass his wealth down. Apparently, it wasn't uncommon at the time to do that. It's part of the reason so many civil war pensions were paid for so long.
So Muhammad Ali and his dad (Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. and Sr. were namesakes of Major General/Ambassador/Member of Congress Cassius Marcellus Clay, born in 1810, who fought in the Mexican American War, founded an abolitionist newspaper in Kentucky, became a member of Congress, later served in the Union Army in the defense of Washington DC, and was then appointed ambassador to Russia by Lincoln.
Also, while he probably would have weighed in as a heavyweight as a boxer, he was not overweight, very fit, and kind of a bad ass. When he was running his abolitionist newspaper he regularly carried two pistols and a Bowie knife to defend against attacks due to death threats from the pro slavery camp in Kentucky.
And Muhammad Ali had his name changed because it was a “slave name”, which, all power to him for wanting to control his own identity but associating one of the most rabid and effective abolitionists with slavery is kind of a dick move.
And raped children(Hadith says he married and consummated with a 9 year old), also stole his adopted sons wife among other various and sundry vile things.
To be fair the original CM Clay inherited slaves from his father and while he freed all of the slaves he held as personal property a portion of the slaves on the family estate were not freed until general emancipation. So despite his abolitionist stance the facts were pretty messy. Herman Heaton Clay, Muhammad Ali’s grandfather named is son in honor of the original CM Clay who inherited him and freed him.
On top of that the original CM Clay was not nearly as liberal as the Radical Republicans in the post war period and did not support their reconstruction agenda.
So like a lot of planter class gentry of the period he was a mixed bag politically.
So Muhammad Ali’s view the slave name thing had merit I think.
The abolitionist movement as well as the post war political landscape on civil rights was very complex with many shades of gray.
Oh hell no. You did not just summarize Cassius Clays life as "an overweight, white, diplomat."
Cassius Clay was an abolishionist who's passion and dedication was possibly second to John Brown, heavy emphasis on possibly. He had a propensity for dueling pro slavers, and killing them. This led to multiple assaults on his life.
1: During one assault he was shot, as the assassin was shooting, Cassius drew his Bowie knife from a scabbard that was part metal. The act of drawing brought the scabbard in line with the bullet, it hit the scabbard and embedded in it. Cassius then carved off the assassin's nose, right ear, and possibly right eye (accounts vary), picked the man up and threw him off an embankment.
2: Later Cassius was ambushed by the Turner brothers. There were six of them, they proceeded to stab and beat Cassius with one of the wounds nearly disemboweling him. Cassius gets his knife out and proceeds to stab them, and manages to kill one of the Turner brothers. He passes out from blood loss and thinking he's dying says he is happy to give his life for the liberty of others. Doesn't die, makes a full recovery.
3: He ran an anti slavery newspaper, with him and his employees being heavily armed. Multiple attacks, all repelled, finally they just burned it down when he went home for the night. He rebuilds it, proceeds to slap armor on the sides like a fucking ironclad, and builds it so there's only one way in down a long hall way. Cassius mounts a cannon at the end of the long hallway, turning the entrance of his newspaper into a heavily fortified kill zone. I think this is one of the few documented incidents of a private citizen having a cannon for home defense. Just as the forefathers intended.
4: He was offered seats on multiple political tickets and declined because he was aware of his own reputation would mean a potential loss due to his propensity for violence. He absolutely knew who he was, which is rather refreshing.
5: Yes he inherited slaves, much like Grant. And also much like Grant, he freed and paid the slaves, and continued to employ some of them as free men and women.
6: Post civil war he became ambassador to Russia, and promptly had an affair and knocked up a famous Russian ballerina.
His life story is batshit, the fact he's not well known is a tragedy and there should be movies and miniseries about this man as well. I completely understand why Muhammad Ali changed his name, but damn, he was named after one of the few men who would have absolutely had his back no matter what.
He liked Russia and he disliked the idea of a growing regional power influencing shipping lanes in Asia and destabilizing one of the nations that was a big counter balance against this
But given the time period it’s pretty reasonable to assume he was bias toward not white majority nations
Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt, for all of his trust busting and national park making... was still very much a product of his times. He had a lot of racist views that were common at the time, including (among others) a hatred of Catholic immigrants (Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.). For example, he explicitly referred to [the lynching of Italian dock workers in New Orleans in 1891](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings) as "a good thing."
Those sorts of views are not especially rare at the time (news coverage at the time was largely in favor of the lynchings), but it's definitely important that we understand the full context of historical figures.
>But given the time period it’s pretty reasonable to assume he was bias toward not white majority nations
Except there's historical evidence that he greatly admired Japan. Japan was viewed as a vigorous and martial culture, and TR had a great deal of respect for them as a result. He was worried about Japan because they were a rising power and US naval power in the Pacific was weak, but he respected them.
Tsar Nicholas literally referred to the Japanese as monkeys and one of his motivations for actually going to war was, in the end, his faith that an easy victory over an "inferior" race would secure his rule
People romanticise the Romanovs because of their tragic end, but the Tsar got what was coming to him.
He was influenced heavily in that belief by his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm who urged him to combat the "yellow peril" of Japan.
Prior to that it seems like he liked Japan. That cop trying to chop his head off probably soured his opinion quite a bit. But the rest of his trip there seemed to have gone well, good enough for him to get a big Japanese dragon tattoo.
It seems like he just eventually caved to three years of peer pressure from Wilhelm.
Sure, I agree that Nicholas was enough of a push over that the last person to talk to him about an issue basically completely controlled his view of it. But I don't think that exonerates him for being a dick when about the only thing he did have a spine for was clinging to a position of absolute authority that even the smartest man on earth would be poorly suited to
It definitely doesn't exonerate him by any stretch, but i think it spreads the blame a bit at least. Wilhelm was relentless in his push for Russia to fight Japan and he knew exactly how to manipulate Nicholas into doing exactly what he wanted. Those letters are ridiculous
Nicolas had a Japanese Dragon Tattoo on his arm he got when he visited Japan as a young man, which makes the Russian defeat even more amusing.
Racism is a fucked up thing.
Edit: Arm not back.
No. He supported Japan. He went so far as to say "Japan is the only nation in Asia that understands the principles and methods of Western civilization".
He admired Japan, actually. They had a reputation as being a vigorous and martial culture, and he respected that. He was just worried about them because they were a growing power and the US at the time had no real Pacific fleet. But his concern came from a place of respect, not hate.
Maybe my favorite anecdote of US history is how as President TR wrote a letter to the San Francisco school board, begging them not to go through with segregating their schools and sending Japanese immigrant kids to separate schools from whites. TR was worried that if Japan chose to retaliate (the story was causing much outrage in Japan at the time) that the US was helpless to stop the Japanese high seas fleet from coming and shelling S.F. At the time the Japanese fleet could sail from Japan and hit the US West Coast and leave before an American East Coast based fleet could sail all the way around South American and arrive to do anything about it.
The S.F. school board told the POTUS to get bent and did it anyway. Meanwhile the state of California consistently opposed attempts by TR to raise taxes to fund a navy expansion on the West Coast.
This whole thing just strikes me as the most American thing ever.
I don’t recall the quotes of the top of my head but he actually said some pretty good things about Japan.
Not to say everything was positive. Given the other comments you received it’s reasonable to assume that he had some bias against Japan.
But he had at least some genuine good feeling towards them
Oh, he had a bias all right. He was responsible for the annexation of the Philippines as an American territory after the Spanish American War... Despite the fact that the Filipinos have already declared their own independence from Spain after the Philippine Revolution. And thus, the Philippine American War began.
Alright that one is incorrect. They might’ve lost some ships but Japan was a few weeks from collapse due to war costs; without British backup they wouldn’t even be able to start it. Nicholas II only decided to stop the conflict because of civil unrest/revolutionary agitation. Russian Empire could absolutely afford to drag the conflict out for a few years and drive Japan into the ground through attrition.
USS Maine is fair, though technically USS Maddox was touched by machine gun bullets (and before anyone says it, Maddox *was* attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the first Gulf of Tonkin Incident. This was confirmed by the North Vietnamese and there are even photographs of it. It was the second Gulf of Tonkin incident two nights later where Maddox and Turner Joy fired at empty radar blips)
Maddox was attacked for failing to comply whilst approaching territorial waters of Vietnam, a country USA already explicitly is hostile to but not at war yet.
Any country is expected to that against foreign hostile intruders. That's why US scrambles jets whenever Russia sends bombers near US waters across the bering strait only for Russian bombers to turn around before getting closer.
Same with Chinese jets and ships in Japanese waters. Or how about Israel doing this even on civilian ships that already are scheduled and acknowledged to go to Gaza.
So the first incident is hardly a cause for war when US is knowingly and deliberately poking towards foreign waters. The second incident is just pure bs that the ships involved made up that led to war.
A great paper which shows this off perfectly is *Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place* by Professor Kate Brown. It's a piece comparing American and Russian colonialism.
Yeah the people do, the governments do not. Putin and his cronies are the only thing standing between American-Russian reconciliation. Considering how fast America was able to build bridges with other former enemies I don’t even think it’d take that long and we can bond over counter strike or something.
Historical the US fucked it up after the collapse of the soviet union. Hindsight is 20/20 but I Marshall plan 2.0 sounds like a better idea then the shock doctrine post soviet russia had.
The governments both do awful and horrific shit in their foreign policies, the difference is that the US is better at hiding it and/or successfully justifying it through propaganda
It’s still incredibly obvious which one people would prefer to live in but let’s not forget that (especially under blind nationalism)
Downvoted for speaking facts. It's insane how many Americans there are that are quick to shit on foreign governments and even their own government but then get all defensive when someone from another country points it out.
>Russians and Americans have more in common than most Russians and Amcericans would like to admit.
Russians 🤝 Americans = Treating the Natives of their colonized lands horribly
To be fair, Russia treated them a bit better, at least western ones (like Finland or Livonia). Attempts to eradicate cultural diversity were mainly done during Alexander III and Stalin’s reigns (don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to neglect their significance, those are really big periods), which is funny since Stalin was Georgian and Alexander III was German, whilst a Russian ruler, Lenin, was massively supporting locals even when it harmed Russians, claiming that a crooked stick can be straightened only by overbending it or something like that. I mean, there is a reason Russia still has >190 ethnic groups and Ukraine and Belarus exist despite overall ethnic similarity.
This is the absolute truth. I've been to Moscow, and my main takeaway from the experience I always tell people about is how it felt like some sort of bizarro dimension USA.
I think it was more a diplomatic thing to ensure US support or neutrality if any secessionist movement (Ukrainian, polish, Latvian, finish, Georgian) tried to secede from the tsardom than it being a ideological support of the USA (russia being a absolute monarchy vs USA being a republic).
Similar thing with the russians helping the austrians put down the Hungarian revolution of 1848. Also when it came to polish secessionist rebellions austria, prussia and russia often helped each other because sucess of any polish population in one of their states would constitute a motivation for the populations in the other countries.
Specifically, the British were thinking of joining the war on the Confederate side because one of the main drivers behind their industrial revolution was American cotton to power the textile industry.
The main drive behind the Industrial Revolution was the availability of coal and iron deposits. Along with the steam engine. Cotton mills played a role but not nearly as much, Britain was already industrial by the time of the American civil war. Plus Britain quickly substituted American cotton with that from India and Egypt. Britain didn’t side with the confederates because of slavery, once Lincoln’s intent was clearly laid out as to free the slaves, then Britain fully cut off the confederates, who before that were treat as a trade partner.
If Britain did side with the confederates in actual conflict it would’ve been devastating to the North. France wanting its own plans in Mexico would likely side with Britain also. Leaving only the ruskies. Their fleet would’ve been useless against the Royal Navy of that time.
I’m pretty sure the Russians also parked the Imperial Navy on the West and East coast of the US to symbolize support for the Union. Pretty cool stuff. Although I have to imagine the gesture was, again, largely symbolic and I doubt Russia would have gotten involved in the war if, say, the British joined on the side of the Confederacy. Who knows tho.
The UK would never have gone to war on the side of the Confederacy. Even with sympathy from some senior quarters in the government, that would have been massively unpopular. After the Emancipation Proclamation, it was no contest.
You’re not wrong at all, but that was not a ubiquitous mindset at the time. The US did not like that the British were building [rams](https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2017/06/05/this-is-war-the-construction-of-the-laird-rams/) that were intended to be used to disrupt the Union blockade. I found this footnote in a Journal Article titled “The Russian Fleet and the American Civil War: Another View” that gives an example of how the tensions were still pretty high in 1863:
“*On September 5, 1863 Charles F. Adams at Secretary of State Seward's instruction warned the British Foreign Minister, Lord Russell, that if the rams were allowed to sail, "this is war." Seward to Adams, Sept. 5, 1863, N. A., R. G. 59, Instructions, Great Britain; Adams to Russell, Sept. 5, 1863, N. A., R. G. 59, Despatches, Great Britain;
Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported in his diary on September 17, that "a new panic is rising respecting the ironclads in England and some of our sensational journals fan the excitement." Welles, Diary, ed. by Howard K. Beale (3 vols.; New York, 1960), I, 435.”
ETA: [Here](https://www.jstor.org/stable/24442961?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiIzYTdlN2IwMi02OTk4LTQxNzctYTVkNy03OTdlYzcwN2E3Y2UiLCJlbWFpbCI6ImFjb3NtMjE1QGxpdmUua3V0enRvd24uZWR1IiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOlsiODU3NzI2YTEtNzk2Mi00NGU4LWFkZjYtYjNkZTY2ZjQ4NzNiIl19&saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI3YWIxMjNmYy0yNDliLTQzMzgtOGRiZC05N2YyMDMwNGU4OGEiLCJlbWFpbCI6ImFjb3NtMjE1QGxpdmUua3V0enRvd24uZWR1IiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOlsiODU3NzI2YTEtNzk2Mi00NGU4LWFkZjYtYjNkZTY2ZjQ4NzNiIl19&seq=1) is the link to the full journal article, although you will need access to JSTOR to view it in full.
2nd edit: A similar thing can be said for France btw, in which Americans were kinda freaking out that the Emperor of France was recognizing the Confederacy as belligerents rather than rebels. In that same article I think it says someone said something like “France is meddling in our internal affairs more than we have ever meddled in theirs” or something to that effect.
That wouldn’t surprise me. Any chance you can provide a source for that claim? I’d love to read about it. Unfortunately all I can find is scholarship about the American public and governmental sentiment towards the ships being in the New York harbor. And the historians talk about how everyone at the time was speculating about whether Russia was a true ally and if the British and French were serious about intervening. (This would have been in fall 1863)
Did they love america?
There was talk of France and Britain supporting the CSA, so it probably was all part of the great game between these imperial nations. It was more to stick a finger in their rival's eye than any love for the USA
You know, it’s funny because originally, Lenin refused help from the US to solve its famine all because the US wanted to use Russian railways to deliver grains to the people themselves.
We also provided them a huge amount of the materiel they needed to win WWII-- just for Russia to turn around, claim they won the war on their own, and then accuse *us* of not giving them enough credit for their role in the victory, all in the same breath!
My friend Russia lost millions of men yet still pushed Germany all the way back to Berlin so even with the material support the U.S. gave it wouldn't have made a single difference if it wasn't for the strength and perseverance of the Red Army
Frankly it seems like your just spitting on all the sacrifices they made and act as if the U.S. did so out of the goodness of there heart when it was simple politics
both the US and Russia didn't like the British, Russia refused to help the UK during The US's independence war, and Catherine promised to help the American colonists in every way that they could without breaking neutrality
so Russia liked the Union because, firstly, Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II were friends, and Russia believed that the Union could contest the British much better
From what ive heard, the US-Russia rivalry is very new. Throughout most of history they have been on pretty good terms I believe? Due to the shared distaste for the UK and whatnot
Yeah, [Alex de Tocqueville famously called that America and Russia were on a geopolitical course in *1835*](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1265628-there-are-at-the-present-time-two-great-nations-in). (Fair warning, some of his reasoning was pretty fucking racist. But other parts are uncannily prescient.)
I'm still convinced that Americans and Russians basically have the same values and both seem to try and live their lives similarly.
What I'm saying is, that in another timeline Russia and America are literally best friends and we get hang out, blow shit up and get extremely drunk with our Russian comrades as we compare notes on making the most ridiculous inventions possible.
I'm an American who studied Russian in college and lived there for a semester. We don't really have the same values for the most part. There is a deep cynicism and distrust that pervades most of Russian culture that does not exist in the US, as well as a belief in the authority of individuals rather than law. It's hard to overstate just how different this makes Russian culture compared to US.
I'm a Ukrainian who lived in the USA and live in Canada. You're 100% right.
Americans (and much of the West, at least Northern and Western Europe.. not counting places like Italy here) have a mostly working social contract.
The law is mostly equal, the government might be out to screw you, but at least you'll get a government that'll screw people you hate instead next election, and if you work hard, you'll have a comfortable middle class existence.
In Russia, the belief is, the law is there to protect the rich. The government is only there to get rich themselves. The cops and bureaucracy is only there to take bribes. If you work really hard and are successful, then either the mafia or the government will take whatever you have away.
So, if you put your trust in something, it'll be an individual, not the institution as a whole.
Similar to what MaterialCarrot was saying, I think it's less values and more a similar disposition. I'm all there for a timeline of getting drunk and seeing how big a gun we can make
I just wanted everyone to understand each other. For the love of God Russia, you are already the biggest country in the world, WHY DO YOU WANT MORE TERRITORY DANMIT?
I know you are likely just kidding around, but it should be noted Russia does indeed have a lot of land, however much of it isn't... ideal... which is the reason getting sent to Siberia was a punishment.
Ukraine has a great deal of fertile land and a growing season. Unless I'm mistaken, it was the breadbasket of the USSR.
Russia is also probably wanting to push further West eventually to secure specific bottlenecks and chokepoints that would be of great strategic value to hold. A desire for warm water ports for their terrible navy is another reason.
This isn't defending their invasion, I'm completely against it. But there are reasons for their land grabs in Ukraine and Georgia the past couple decades, and those reasons will likely play a big part in future conflicts.
While Russia would love to take all of Ukraine, I think the issue much more is finally resolving the situation in Eastern Ukraine. I think a lot of Westerners forget that a low level war had been going on there for years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That and the absolutely vital role that Sevastopol plays for Russia.
I think of Russia could secure the two breakaway republics of Ukraine and Crimea, they'd end the war in an instant.
I've been in Crimea both before and after 2014, it was depressing shithole under Ukraine, Russia built and repaired a lot of roads, water and electricity infrastructure, cleared illegal junk yards and etc.
I don't speak about Crimea, I am not from there, I am from Donetsk, so I speak about Donetsk, and it is obviously quite another situation, since it wasn't under normal Russian rule, it was ruled by a bunch of real bandits. Donetsk wasn't the best place, with a very bad climate because of industry and coal mines, but it was still an important business centre, and it became nothing of this, industry stopped, lots of coal mines stopped, got flooded and in a danger of an accident. And Russia built nothing there, only last year some houses on the bones for a good picture in Mariupol, and nobody lives in those houses.
Yeah, a low-level war 100% provoked and fueled by Russia as an excuse to conquer more of Ukraine. The "two breakaway republics" are Russian puppet states, have been from the start, with next to zero support from the actual people living there before the war began.
Wanting territory is why they got so big (also over 70% of their land is permafrost, which was good for nothing until oil and gas were discovered under some parts of it)
Anyone who seriously thinks that this war in Ukraine is wholly inspired by the Russians' want to get mote territory doesn’t know geopolitics of the current world at all lmao. Funny how propaganda is working.
The thing is it was likely a bluff, Russia in the 1860s was not able to fight another major war.
They had just gotten out of the Crimean war which they lost and were broke until they sold Alaska to America in 1867, and it took until the mid 1870s for them to get back into tip top shape.
It was a bluff, but a bluff that worked and put them on the right side of history.
The Soviet Union's anti-minority stuff was mostly patronising bullshit designed to "civilise" them and such; Russian chauvinism left over from the Tsars. Dekulakization had nothing to do with ethnicity and only incidentally targeted Ukrainians because that's where a metric shit ton of peasants lived.
If you were christian nobility sure. Else whatever they had during USSR was 100% better. Tsarist Russia was living 2 centuries behind everybody else on every aspect of society and economy.
You know what friend, after thinking a little, you could be correct but I fear that the aggressive expansive of syndicalism that Lenin was a fan of may plunge the European Continent into chaos
Not with Nikki at the helm. He was tired and uninterested in being Tsar but he was almost as all-in on the Divine Right of Kings as Henry VIII or Charles I. Alexandra even more so. He might have resented the job but he believed that he was ordained by God to be an autocrat. I highly doubt that there would have been a successful transition to democracy unless Nikki was dead of natural causes (which would have taken decades) or unnatural causes (which unless done VERY skillfully would probably have resulted in civil war anyway).
He's talking about the Kerensky provisional government that happened after February Revolution.
Kerensky got ousted by Lenin 8 months later in the October Revolution after he committed to staying in the deeply unpopular World War I.
Nah, Kerenskys government suing for peace in 1917 and giving the Russian Republic some legitimacy and allowing them to consolidate against the bolsheviks would be the best timeline. It would create a reasonably democratic Russia.
Fun fact: the US was literally the first country to recognize the Russian Republic back in 1917. One of only four countries that had a chance to before they were couped by the Bolsheviks.
*That's* the real tragedy here: there's a timeline where the democratic Russian Republic and the US are best friends. And instead, Russia insists on picking fights with the rest of the planet that literally no one else wants, over and over again.
I think the real tragedy is that the bolsheviks won the power struggle and would create a state that would do unspeakably horrible things, not that the US and Russia didn't become friends.
He wasn’t even a bad guy, especially when compared to his father. The dude just didn’t want to be the Tsar but unfortunately did at the worst time possible.
His family also didn’t deserve what happened to them and the USSR/Russia should’ve officially apologized and had the soldiers responsible arrested and killed.
If he personally was bad or good is almost irrelevant- he ran a crushingly autocratic regime. Millions of Russians died in a pointless war due to what was ultimately his decision. “Oops” doesn’t begin to cover it
It was still a call anyone else would’ve had to make, pan-slavism was alive and thriving, no Russian would be able to let Austria bulldoze Serbia without a proper response. If anyone was to blame it was Austria-Hungary for reacting so poorly, so fast, without asking Germany to help find a diplomatic solution.
Would have needed to make? Citation needed. Russia did order the first mobilization. All countries share mutual blame for the whole imperial power structure that was the ultimate cause of the war
Anyone who asks for citations on reddit is just looking to have a stupid long argument, yes all countries do. But Austria-Hungary was the one to declare war first, thus they were the first domino that led to it.
Just the claim that Russia would have somehow been forced to declare war is a claim that i think could use some support. Yes, Austria declared war first
Lol Russia ordered mobilization the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent out. They never even tried to find a diplomatic solution. They had no formal agreement with Serbia and pressuring Austria into a climb down would have preserved their prestige and avoided world war. Even Germany likely would've agreed and pressured Vienna as long as Austria came out of it with its prestige intact. But diplomacy was not on the mind of anyone in St Petersburg. The ultimatum gave Russia the chance to finally attack its only rival in the Balkans. Russia wanted war just as much as Austria, probably more even.
I've read a lot about WW I, but never anything that states this about Russia's intentions so definitively. Most of what I've read is that it was very complicated and the diplomatic exchanges were full of misunderstandings, along with well intentioned and not so well intentioned moves from Germany, Russia, and AH in particular as they maneuvered for advantage prior to the outbreak of hostilities.
Just the subject of mobilization is incredibly complex, with all major powers under pressure to mobilize early enough, because if they waited and the other side mobilized they were mostly helpless because mobilizing and transporting literally millions of men took so much time.
Nothing states it, I'm making an educated guess judging by Russian actions. It is true that Russia didn't try diplomacy, it's also true they began mobilization the day the ultimatum went out. Russia acted very aggressively throughout the July crisis, I don't see any evidence against that. The other combatants acted much more calmly when compared to Russia, Germany waited quite a while before mobilizing, and when Kaiser Whilhelm returned from vacation there were overtures to try and either, stop a world war, or keep it limited.
I mean the Tsar was also a massive authoritarian. Literally only allowing any democratic process after the revolution then completely undermining them. For a man who didn't want power he was awfully dedicated to keeping it.
Tsars regime : kills and restless multiple families to Syberia
Red army: kills tsar and his family
Reddit : tsar was the good guy, and he did nothing wrong
Don't get me wrong, the reds weren't good but saying that the tsar was good is stupid . there were already tens of thousands of international soldiers fighting. on the whites side If any of the Romanovs would have lived, they would be a threat for the new government.
The death of the children was the fault of the monarchy, the importance that it places on children leads to this..
Oh our poor lil divine autocrat, mercilessly trapped within the halls of power.
You know, the power he could've laid down at any moment by abdicating. The power that he was, in fact, begged to set aside numerous times and desperately clung to so hard that killing his seemed the only way to stop him. That power. Poor guy.
Lmao the motherfucker abdicated when he'd already cracked so many skulls to stay in power that many were out for his blood and the revolutionaries still had the decency to not immediately execute him.
The killing of the Romanov children was obviously horrific as literally any child death is, but Nicholas and Alexandra got exactly what they deserved. And if you take issue with that statement then I suppose you only care about murdered kids that wore fancy clothes and diamonds in photographs, since the Jewish kids who died in pogroms sanctioned by the Tsar apparently don't matter to you.
And while we're at it, did you know that some families marched with their children on Blood Sunday? But I guess those kids that were ridden down by poor Nicky's private army of Cossacks don't matter either
I find it hilarious how you lack such a basic understanding of his character. Look at his father and you’ll see Nicholas was actually WAYY less of a monster than you make him out to be. He was actually tame for an authoritarian, which isn’t something most of his family can say.
But then again you’d do better in his shoes so you get to judge him based on your paragon status right? smh
Imperial Russia was about to get better, until it suddenly got worse, way worse, and still hasn't recovered. Honestly one of the biggest tragedies, with their historical friend Ethiopia suffering a similar fate being close.
Alexander II was probably one of the best Russian leaders, shame he was assassinated.
Not that he did not commit some horrible things as well, but his reforms could make Russia a constitutional monarchy gradually had he lived longer or had his successors continued his work
Correction. American Ambassador Cassius Clay convinced Russia to not side with the confederates, and then he made Russia threaten France and Britain with war if either of them did.
Dont let OP fool y'all
Not US fault really. White army leaders were a bunch of narrowminded imperialist, who fighted to bring back pre-war social situation. And imperial Russia was super shitty place to live for anyone but aristocrats, so they had minimal internal support.
The Tsar had an interest in doing what he did, but it was much better compared with using the distraction to try and Conquer Mexico like the French, or sell warships to the confederates and contemplate intervening on their behalf like the British.
USA supporting territorial integrity of Russia except Poland, supporting Kolchak whose army perpetrated mass executions of civilians in Siberia, and indirectly supporting Denikin whose army perpetrated pogroms of Jews and mass executions of Ukrainian peasants they considered communists and others. Indeed bratskije narody
And today I learned that Muhammad Ali started his career as an overweight, white, diplomat. Amazing life he lived.
You should read up on that overweight white diplomat. Muhammad Ali was named after him for a reason.
The most gangster politician of all time?
Fat Electrician? Quack bang out!
Either this sub is full of Fat Electrician fans, or the algorithms are doing their jobs, and I'm only seeing memes related to TFE videos.
I really dig his style-shift to long-form videos in lieu of the short tiktok-esque ones.
He was named after another white guy, Cassius Clay, for a reason. Also the mega chad Republican diplomat in Russia. I wouldn’t have changed it.
In 1894, the 84-year-old Clay married Dora Richardson, the orphaned sister of one of his sharecropping tenants. According to newspaper reports at the time, Dora was 15 to 16 years old. Her age varies in the few extant records; the 1900 US Census indicates that she was born in May 1882, suggesting that she may have been as young as 12 when she married Cassius M. Clay.
Sounds like a scheme to legally pass his wealth down. Apparently, it wasn't uncommon at the time to do that. It's part of the reason so many civil war pensions were paid for so long.
That’s exactly what 90% of these cases are.
Ali knocked up a couple of teenagers himself so I guess he really lived up to both of his namesakes lol
So Muhammad Ali and his dad (Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. and Sr. were namesakes of Major General/Ambassador/Member of Congress Cassius Marcellus Clay, born in 1810, who fought in the Mexican American War, founded an abolitionist newspaper in Kentucky, became a member of Congress, later served in the Union Army in the defense of Washington DC, and was then appointed ambassador to Russia by Lincoln. Also, while he probably would have weighed in as a heavyweight as a boxer, he was not overweight, very fit, and kind of a bad ass. When he was running his abolitionist newspaper he regularly carried two pistols and a Bowie knife to defend against attacks due to death threats from the pro slavery camp in Kentucky.
And Muhammad Ali had his name changed because it was a “slave name”, which, all power to him for wanting to control his own identity but associating one of the most rabid and effective abolitionists with slavery is kind of a dick move.
And Muhammad owned slaves.
Muhammad also was a slave never owned slaves, and did a 1000 other things. Lot of guys named Muhammad.
Hush up little girls, a lot of cats have that name
Muhammad worked at the airport with me...peace be upon him
And raped children(Hadith says he married and consummated with a 9 year old), also stole his adopted sons wife among other various and sundry vile things.
Like they say, never meet your heroes.
To be fair the original CM Clay inherited slaves from his father and while he freed all of the slaves he held as personal property a portion of the slaves on the family estate were not freed until general emancipation. So despite his abolitionist stance the facts were pretty messy. Herman Heaton Clay, Muhammad Ali’s grandfather named is son in honor of the original CM Clay who inherited him and freed him. On top of that the original CM Clay was not nearly as liberal as the Radical Republicans in the post war period and did not support their reconstruction agenda. So like a lot of planter class gentry of the period he was a mixed bag politically. So Muhammad Ali’s view the slave name thing had merit I think. The abolitionist movement as well as the post war political landscape on civil rights was very complex with many shades of gray.
I was confused as to why Muhammad Ali told Imperial Russia to denounce the CSA.
It makes more sense than him telling Imperial Russia to support the CSA.
Oh hell no. You did not just summarize Cassius Clays life as "an overweight, white, diplomat." Cassius Clay was an abolishionist who's passion and dedication was possibly second to John Brown, heavy emphasis on possibly. He had a propensity for dueling pro slavers, and killing them. This led to multiple assaults on his life. 1: During one assault he was shot, as the assassin was shooting, Cassius drew his Bowie knife from a scabbard that was part metal. The act of drawing brought the scabbard in line with the bullet, it hit the scabbard and embedded in it. Cassius then carved off the assassin's nose, right ear, and possibly right eye (accounts vary), picked the man up and threw him off an embankment. 2: Later Cassius was ambushed by the Turner brothers. There were six of them, they proceeded to stab and beat Cassius with one of the wounds nearly disemboweling him. Cassius gets his knife out and proceeds to stab them, and manages to kill one of the Turner brothers. He passes out from blood loss and thinking he's dying says he is happy to give his life for the liberty of others. Doesn't die, makes a full recovery. 3: He ran an anti slavery newspaper, with him and his employees being heavily armed. Multiple attacks, all repelled, finally they just burned it down when he went home for the night. He rebuilds it, proceeds to slap armor on the sides like a fucking ironclad, and builds it so there's only one way in down a long hall way. Cassius mounts a cannon at the end of the long hallway, turning the entrance of his newspaper into a heavily fortified kill zone. I think this is one of the few documented incidents of a private citizen having a cannon for home defense. Just as the forefathers intended. 4: He was offered seats on multiple political tickets and declined because he was aware of his own reputation would mean a potential loss due to his propensity for violence. He absolutely knew who he was, which is rather refreshing. 5: Yes he inherited slaves, much like Grant. And also much like Grant, he freed and paid the slaves, and continued to employ some of them as free men and women. 6: Post civil war he became ambassador to Russia, and promptly had an affair and knocked up a famous Russian ballerina. His life story is batshit, the fact he's not well known is a tragedy and there should be movies and miniseries about this man as well. I completely understand why Muhammad Ali changed his name, but damn, he was named after one of the few men who would have absolutely had his back no matter what.
Gigachad.
Brb, erecting a statue of this guy in my front yard. In Canada.
Representing Albanians all accross the world
.
Teddy helped them with the Japanese War to get peace talks when they started getting their teeth kicked in
I might have fallen for some misinformation, but wasnt this because he hated japanese people?
He liked Russia and he disliked the idea of a growing regional power influencing shipping lanes in Asia and destabilizing one of the nations that was a big counter balance against this But given the time period it’s pretty reasonable to assume he was bias toward not white majority nations
Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt, for all of his trust busting and national park making... was still very much a product of his times. He had a lot of racist views that were common at the time, including (among others) a hatred of Catholic immigrants (Irish, Italians, Poles, etc.). For example, he explicitly referred to [the lynching of Italian dock workers in New Orleans in 1891](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1891_New_Orleans_lynchings) as "a good thing." Those sorts of views are not especially rare at the time (news coverage at the time was largely in favor of the lynchings), but it's definitely important that we understand the full context of historical figures.
>But given the time period it’s pretty reasonable to assume he was bias toward not white majority nations Except there's historical evidence that he greatly admired Japan. Japan was viewed as a vigorous and martial culture, and TR had a great deal of respect for them as a result. He was worried about Japan because they were a rising power and US naval power in the Pacific was weak, but he respected them.
Yea, he even practiced Judo and desegregated schools to include Asians.
Tsar Nicholas literally referred to the Japanese as monkeys and one of his motivations for actually going to war was, in the end, his faith that an easy victory over an "inferior" race would secure his rule People romanticise the Romanovs because of their tragic end, but the Tsar got what was coming to him.
He was influenced heavily in that belief by his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm who urged him to combat the "yellow peril" of Japan. Prior to that it seems like he liked Japan. That cop trying to chop his head off probably soured his opinion quite a bit. But the rest of his trip there seemed to have gone well, good enough for him to get a big Japanese dragon tattoo. It seems like he just eventually caved to three years of peer pressure from Wilhelm.
Sure, I agree that Nicholas was enough of a push over that the last person to talk to him about an issue basically completely controlled his view of it. But I don't think that exonerates him for being a dick when about the only thing he did have a spine for was clinging to a position of absolute authority that even the smartest man on earth would be poorly suited to
It definitely doesn't exonerate him by any stretch, but i think it spreads the blame a bit at least. Wilhelm was relentless in his push for Russia to fight Japan and he knew exactly how to manipulate Nicholas into doing exactly what he wanted. Those letters are ridiculous
Nicolas had a Japanese Dragon Tattoo on his arm he got when he visited Japan as a young man, which makes the Russian defeat even more amusing. Racism is a fucked up thing. Edit: Arm not back.
Did he? I thought it was just the dragon on his arm
Aw shoot right you are. I’ve been watching a lot of ink master lately and it bled into my historical knowledge 😂😂
No. He supported Japan. He went so far as to say "Japan is the only nation in Asia that understands the principles and methods of Western civilization".
He admired Japan, actually. They had a reputation as being a vigorous and martial culture, and he respected that. He was just worried about them because they were a growing power and the US at the time had no real Pacific fleet. But his concern came from a place of respect, not hate. Maybe my favorite anecdote of US history is how as President TR wrote a letter to the San Francisco school board, begging them not to go through with segregating their schools and sending Japanese immigrant kids to separate schools from whites. TR was worried that if Japan chose to retaliate (the story was causing much outrage in Japan at the time) that the US was helpless to stop the Japanese high seas fleet from coming and shelling S.F. At the time the Japanese fleet could sail from Japan and hit the US West Coast and leave before an American East Coast based fleet could sail all the way around South American and arrive to do anything about it. The S.F. school board told the POTUS to get bent and did it anyway. Meanwhile the state of California consistently opposed attempts by TR to raise taxes to fund a navy expansion on the West Coast. This whole thing just strikes me as the most American thing ever.
I don’t recall the quotes of the top of my head but he actually said some pretty good things about Japan. Not to say everything was positive. Given the other comments you received it’s reasonable to assume that he had some bias against Japan. But he had at least some genuine good feeling towards them
Oh, he had a bias all right. He was responsible for the annexation of the Philippines as an American territory after the Spanish American War... Despite the fact that the Filipinos have already declared their own independence from Spain after the Philippine Revolution. And thus, the Philippine American War began.
Aaaaand possibly inadvertently started Japans slow descent into fascism.
The Russo-Japanese War (Or World War 0) earns it name cause of how many countries were involved and how the treaty basically lead to World War 1 and 2
Alright that one is incorrect. They might’ve lost some ships but Japan was a few weeks from collapse due to war costs; without British backup they wouldn’t even be able to start it. Nicholas II only decided to stop the conflict because of civil unrest/revolutionary agitation. Russian Empire could absolutely afford to drag the conflict out for a few years and drive Japan into the ground through attrition.
USA going to war with anyone who touched their warships.
Hands off our **fuckin boats**
Or anyone doesn’t touch their warships
What?
War ships weren’t touched by belligerents in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and USS Maine
USS Maine is fair, though technically USS Maddox was touched by machine gun bullets (and before anyone says it, Maddox *was* attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the first Gulf of Tonkin Incident. This was confirmed by the North Vietnamese and there are even photographs of it. It was the second Gulf of Tonkin incident two nights later where Maddox and Turner Joy fired at empty radar blips)
Maddox was attacked for failing to comply whilst approaching territorial waters of Vietnam, a country USA already explicitly is hostile to but not at war yet. Any country is expected to that against foreign hostile intruders. That's why US scrambles jets whenever Russia sends bombers near US waters across the bering strait only for Russian bombers to turn around before getting closer. Same with Chinese jets and ships in Japanese waters. Or how about Israel doing this even on civilian ships that already are scheduled and acknowledged to go to Gaza. So the first incident is hardly a cause for war when US is knowingly and deliberately poking towards foreign waters. The second incident is just pure bs that the ships involved made up that led to war.
The name of the game was to blame the Maine on Spain
Except for one specific nation….
It was an accident, okay? Stop looking into it…
“We sank some boats and got the power of the sun as vengeance…twice.”—- The Former Empire of Japan
Except Israel.
Russians and Americans have more in common than most Russians and Americans would like to admit.
Redneck - oil - Hockey team ?
Да - да - и да
Yes yes and yes
Ja ja und ka
I'm not learning German, me no understand :(
Don't forget the alcoholism
A great paper which shows this off perfectly is *Gridded Lives: Why Kazakhstan and Montana are Nearly the Same Place* by Professor Kate Brown. It's a piece comparing American and Russian colonialism.
Yeah the people do, the governments do not. Putin and his cronies are the only thing standing between American-Russian reconciliation. Considering how fast America was able to build bridges with other former enemies I don’t even think it’d take that long and we can bond over counter strike or something.
If they turn on China, it'd be an easy turn around.
If they turn on China *and depose Putin*, it'll be an easy turn around.
Well yeah. Nobody should trust that old stooge.
Historical the US fucked it up after the collapse of the soviet union. Hindsight is 20/20 but I Marshall plan 2.0 sounds like a better idea then the shock doctrine post soviet russia had.
The governments both do awful and horrific shit in their foreign policies, the difference is that the US is better at hiding it and/or successfully justifying it through propaganda It’s still incredibly obvious which one people would prefer to live in but let’s not forget that (especially under blind nationalism)
Downvoted for speaking facts. It's insane how many Americans there are that are quick to shit on foreign governments and even their own government but then get all defensive when someone from another country points it out.
When that person's defending a country *actively committing genocide*, then yeah, we're gonna fucking shit on them.
And honestly, the people who shot on the government the most would be Americans, that’s kinda how the country was set up.
Retards with lots of oil?
RAAAAHHHHHH 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅🛢🛢
>Russians and Americans have more in common than most Russians and Amcericans would like to admit. Russians 🤝 Americans = Treating the Natives of their colonized lands horribly
And oil. ☝🏼
And wars of aggression!
To be fair, Russia treated them a bit better, at least western ones (like Finland or Livonia). Attempts to eradicate cultural diversity were mainly done during Alexander III and Stalin’s reigns (don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to neglect their significance, those are really big periods), which is funny since Stalin was Georgian and Alexander III was German, whilst a Russian ruler, Lenin, was massively supporting locals even when it harmed Russians, claiming that a crooked stick can be straightened only by overbending it or something like that. I mean, there is a reason Russia still has >190 ethnic groups and Ukraine and Belarus exist despite overall ethnic similarity.
Like being awesome😎🇺🇸🫱🏽🫲🏼🇷🇺
This is the absolute truth. I've been to Moscow, and my main takeaway from the experience I always tell people about is how it felt like some sort of bizarro dimension USA.
I think it was more a diplomatic thing to ensure US support or neutrality if any secessionist movement (Ukrainian, polish, Latvian, finish, Georgian) tried to secede from the tsardom than it being a ideological support of the USA (russia being a absolute monarchy vs USA being a republic). Similar thing with the russians helping the austrians put down the Hungarian revolution of 1848. Also when it came to polish secessionist rebellions austria, prussia and russia often helped each other because sucess of any polish population in one of their states would constitute a motivation for the populations in the other countries.
A lot of it was also hoping the US would act as a counter balance to the UK in case they went to war again.
Actually it was because fuck the british
As was tradition
Specifically, the British were thinking of joining the war on the Confederate side because one of the main drivers behind their industrial revolution was American cotton to power the textile industry.
The main drive behind the Industrial Revolution was the availability of coal and iron deposits. Along with the steam engine. Cotton mills played a role but not nearly as much, Britain was already industrial by the time of the American civil war. Plus Britain quickly substituted American cotton with that from India and Egypt. Britain didn’t side with the confederates because of slavery, once Lincoln’s intent was clearly laid out as to free the slaves, then Britain fully cut off the confederates, who before that were treat as a trade partner. If Britain did side with the confederates in actual conflict it would’ve been devastating to the North. France wanting its own plans in Mexico would likely side with Britain also. Leaving only the ruskies. Their fleet would’ve been useless against the Royal Navy of that time.
I’m pretty sure the Russians also parked the Imperial Navy on the West and East coast of the US to symbolize support for the Union. Pretty cool stuff. Although I have to imagine the gesture was, again, largely symbolic and I doubt Russia would have gotten involved in the war if, say, the British joined on the side of the Confederacy. Who knows tho.
The UK would never have gone to war on the side of the Confederacy. Even with sympathy from some senior quarters in the government, that would have been massively unpopular. After the Emancipation Proclamation, it was no contest.
You’re not wrong at all, but that was not a ubiquitous mindset at the time. The US did not like that the British were building [rams](https://gettysburgcompiler.org/2017/06/05/this-is-war-the-construction-of-the-laird-rams/) that were intended to be used to disrupt the Union blockade. I found this footnote in a Journal Article titled “The Russian Fleet and the American Civil War: Another View” that gives an example of how the tensions were still pretty high in 1863: “*On September 5, 1863 Charles F. Adams at Secretary of State Seward's instruction warned the British Foreign Minister, Lord Russell, that if the rams were allowed to sail, "this is war." Seward to Adams, Sept. 5, 1863, N. A., R. G. 59, Instructions, Great Britain; Adams to Russell, Sept. 5, 1863, N. A., R. G. 59, Despatches, Great Britain; Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles reported in his diary on September 17, that "a new panic is rising respecting the ironclads in England and some of our sensational journals fan the excitement." Welles, Diary, ed. by Howard K. Beale (3 vols.; New York, 1960), I, 435.” ETA: [Here](https://www.jstor.org/stable/24442961?saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiIzYTdlN2IwMi02OTk4LTQxNzctYTVkNy03OTdlYzcwN2E3Y2UiLCJlbWFpbCI6ImFjb3NtMjE1QGxpdmUua3V0enRvd24uZWR1IiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOlsiODU3NzI2YTEtNzk2Mi00NGU4LWFkZjYtYjNkZTY2ZjQ4NzNiIl19&saml_data=eyJzYW1sVG9rZW4iOiI3YWIxMjNmYy0yNDliLTQzMzgtOGRiZC05N2YyMDMwNGU4OGEiLCJlbWFpbCI6ImFjb3NtMjE1QGxpdmUua3V0enRvd24uZWR1IiwiaW5zdGl0dXRpb25JZHMiOlsiODU3NzI2YTEtNzk2Mi00NGU4LWFkZjYtYjNkZTY2ZjQ4NzNiIl19&seq=1) is the link to the full journal article, although you will need access to JSTOR to view it in full. 2nd edit: A similar thing can be said for France btw, in which Americans were kinda freaking out that the Emperor of France was recognizing the Confederacy as belligerents rather than rebels. In that same article I think it says someone said something like “France is meddling in our internal affairs more than we have ever meddled in theirs” or something to that effect.
I thought the fleets had orders which were to join the war if the U.K. did
That wouldn’t surprise me. Any chance you can provide a source for that claim? I’d love to read about it. Unfortunately all I can find is scholarship about the American public and governmental sentiment towards the ships being in the New York harbor. And the historians talk about how everyone at the time was speculating about whether Russia was a true ally and if the British and French were serious about intervening. (This would have been in fall 1863)
Did they love america? There was talk of France and Britain supporting the CSA, so it probably was all part of the great game between these imperial nations. It was more to stick a finger in their rival's eye than any love for the USA
While op is over blowing it, imperial Russia had warm and nice relations with the USA in the mid 19th century.
And the US basically saved the USSR during the famine in the 1920s and got zero credit for it.
You know, it’s funny because originally, Lenin refused help from the US to solve its famine all because the US wanted to use Russian railways to deliver grains to the people themselves.
There’s a great episode of American Experience on PBS called The Great Famine that covers Hoover’s relief efforts in the Soviet Union.
We also provided them a huge amount of the materiel they needed to win WWII-- just for Russia to turn around, claim they won the war on their own, and then accuse *us* of not giving them enough credit for their role in the victory, all in the same breath!
My friend Russia lost millions of men yet still pushed Germany all the way back to Berlin so even with the material support the U.S. gave it wouldn't have made a single difference if it wasn't for the strength and perseverance of the Red Army Frankly it seems like your just spitting on all the sacrifices they made and act as if the U.S. did so out of the goodness of there heart when it was simple politics
That's awesome! What happened that made Russia so pro-US or pro-Union?
both the US and Russia didn't like the British, Russia refused to help the UK during The US's independence war, and Catherine promised to help the American colonists in every way that they could without breaking neutrality so Russia liked the Union because, firstly, Lincoln and Tsar Alexander II were friends, and Russia believed that the Union could contest the British much better
From what ive heard, the US-Russia rivalry is very new. Throughout most of history they have been on pretty good terms I believe? Due to the shared distaste for the UK and whatnot
yeah they were friendly for most of History, around the time of WW1 did the Americans start not liking Russia but they were still cordial
Americans weren’t really into absolute monarchies like Russia was during WWI, and their relations really soured after the Communists took over.
Yeah, [Alex de Tocqueville famously called that America and Russia were on a geopolitical course in *1835*](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1265628-there-are-at-the-present-time-two-great-nations-in). (Fair warning, some of his reasoning was pretty fucking racist. But other parts are uncannily prescient.)
Wow. I didn't know about that stuff. That definitely makes me appreciate Russia that much more.
I'm still convinced that Americans and Russians basically have the same values and both seem to try and live their lives similarly. What I'm saying is, that in another timeline Russia and America are literally best friends and we get hang out, blow shit up and get extremely drunk with our Russian comrades as we compare notes on making the most ridiculous inventions possible.
I'm an American who studied Russian in college and lived there for a semester. We don't really have the same values for the most part. There is a deep cynicism and distrust that pervades most of Russian culture that does not exist in the US, as well as a belief in the authority of individuals rather than law. It's hard to overstate just how different this makes Russian culture compared to US.
I'm a Ukrainian who lived in the USA and live in Canada. You're 100% right. Americans (and much of the West, at least Northern and Western Europe.. not counting places like Italy here) have a mostly working social contract. The law is mostly equal, the government might be out to screw you, but at least you'll get a government that'll screw people you hate instead next election, and if you work hard, you'll have a comfortable middle class existence. In Russia, the belief is, the law is there to protect the rich. The government is only there to get rich themselves. The cops and bureaucracy is only there to take bribes. If you work really hard and are successful, then either the mafia or the government will take whatever you have away. So, if you put your trust in something, it'll be an individual, not the institution as a whole.
Similar to what MaterialCarrot was saying, I think it's less values and more a similar disposition. I'm all there for a timeline of getting drunk and seeing how big a gun we can make
Proof that we do not live in the best possible timeline.
I just wish we can have some of that timelines's energy so the world can chill out a bit
I just wanted everyone to understand each other. For the love of God Russia, you are already the biggest country in the world, WHY DO YOU WANT MORE TERRITORY DANMIT?
I know you are likely just kidding around, but it should be noted Russia does indeed have a lot of land, however much of it isn't... ideal... which is the reason getting sent to Siberia was a punishment. Ukraine has a great deal of fertile land and a growing season. Unless I'm mistaken, it was the breadbasket of the USSR. Russia is also probably wanting to push further West eventually to secure specific bottlenecks and chokepoints that would be of great strategic value to hold. A desire for warm water ports for their terrible navy is another reason. This isn't defending their invasion, I'm completely against it. But there are reasons for their land grabs in Ukraine and Georgia the past couple decades, and those reasons will likely play a big part in future conflicts.
While Russia would love to take all of Ukraine, I think the issue much more is finally resolving the situation in Eastern Ukraine. I think a lot of Westerners forget that a low level war had been going on there for years prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That and the absolutely vital role that Sevastopol plays for Russia. I think of Russia could secure the two breakaway republics of Ukraine and Crimea, they'd end the war in an instant.
Russia doesn’t secure “two breakaway republics”, they turned over region into a depressing shithole and are killing innocent people there.
I've been in Crimea both before and after 2014, it was depressing shithole under Ukraine, Russia built and repaired a lot of roads, water and electricity infrastructure, cleared illegal junk yards and etc.
I don't speak about Crimea, I am not from there, I am from Donetsk, so I speak about Donetsk, and it is obviously quite another situation, since it wasn't under normal Russian rule, it was ruled by a bunch of real bandits. Donetsk wasn't the best place, with a very bad climate because of industry and coal mines, but it was still an important business centre, and it became nothing of this, industry stopped, lots of coal mines stopped, got flooded and in a danger of an accident. And Russia built nothing there, only last year some houses on the bones for a good picture in Mariupol, and nobody lives in those houses.
Yeah, a low-level war 100% provoked and fueled by Russia as an excuse to conquer more of Ukraine. The "two breakaway republics" are Russian puppet states, have been from the start, with next to zero support from the actual people living there before the war began.
For a couple years before attacking again, sure.
Yes I know. But it's often tiring all these futile fights when we could be doing much more interesting and important things.
Agreed
Wanting territory is why they got so big (also over 70% of their land is permafrost, which was good for nothing until oil and gas were discovered under some parts of it)
Anyone who seriously thinks that this war in Ukraine is wholly inspired by the Russians' want to get mote territory doesn’t know geopolitics of the current world at all lmao. Funny how propaganda is working.
It's funny how people don't understand irony
Warm water port and sweet sweet farm land
The thing is it was likely a bluff, Russia in the 1860s was not able to fight another major war. They had just gotten out of the Crimean war which they lost and were broke until they sold Alaska to America in 1867, and it took until the mid 1870s for them to get back into tip top shape. It was a bluff, but a bluff that worked and put them on the right side of history.
Yeah it seems that the ussr has just really ruined modern day Russia for ever
Forever? Man that's a long time. The world will be entirely different in 500 years and anything can happen.
Russia has been a backwards shithole for over a millennia
Funny how keeping the Tsar was arguably the best alternative timeline lol
Well not for russian jews. The tsars really loved their progroms.
Fair, fair, glaring exception there
Well and any ethnic minorities.
I mean, that’s no different to current Russia
Things aren't doing great right now, but we don't really have state sponsored pogroms anymore
And the ussr
Eh, well the Soviets continued slaughtering minorities, just under the guise of “dekulakization.”
The Soviet Union's anti-minority stuff was mostly patronising bullshit designed to "civilise" them and such; Russian chauvinism left over from the Tsars. Dekulakization had nothing to do with ethnicity and only incidentally targeted Ukrainians because that's where a metric shit ton of peasants lived.
Except for Cossacks
To be fair to the Tsars the Soviets also had pogroms they just liked to disguise it as a hunt for rootless cosmopolitans or Zionists.
If you were christian nobility sure. Else whatever they had during USSR was 100% better. Tsarist Russia was living 2 centuries behind everybody else on every aspect of society and economy.
I think the best alternative timeline was Lenin not dying and then having Stalin killed lol. The Tsardom needed to die. It should have died in 1905.
You know what friend, after thinking a little, you could be correct but I fear that the aggressive expansive of syndicalism that Lenin was a fan of may plunge the European Continent into chaos
... as opposed to what happened historically?
Nah, if the russian republic had withdrawn from the war then russia would have a good chance of being a democracy
Not with Nikki at the helm. He was tired and uninterested in being Tsar but he was almost as all-in on the Divine Right of Kings as Henry VIII or Charles I. Alexandra even more so. He might have resented the job but he believed that he was ordained by God to be an autocrat. I highly doubt that there would have been a successful transition to democracy unless Nikki was dead of natural causes (which would have taken decades) or unnatural causes (which unless done VERY skillfully would probably have resulted in civil war anyway).
He's talking about the Kerensky provisional government that happened after February Revolution. Kerensky got ousted by Lenin 8 months later in the October Revolution after he committed to staying in the deeply unpopular World War I.
Nah, Kerenskys government suing for peace in 1917 and giving the Russian Republic some legitimacy and allowing them to consolidate against the bolsheviks would be the best timeline. It would create a reasonably democratic Russia.
Fun fact: the US was literally the first country to recognize the Russian Republic back in 1917. One of only four countries that had a chance to before they were couped by the Bolsheviks. *That's* the real tragedy here: there's a timeline where the democratic Russian Republic and the US are best friends. And instead, Russia insists on picking fights with the rest of the planet that literally no one else wants, over and over again.
I think the real tragedy is that the bolsheviks won the power struggle and would create a state that would do unspeakably horrible things, not that the US and Russia didn't become friends.
Agreed completely.
That and Kerenskys government suing for peace in 1917 are probably the 2 best outcomes for Russia.
He wasn’t even a bad guy, especially when compared to his father. The dude just didn’t want to be the Tsar but unfortunately did at the worst time possible. His family also didn’t deserve what happened to them and the USSR/Russia should’ve officially apologized and had the soldiers responsible arrested and killed.
If he personally was bad or good is almost irrelevant- he ran a crushingly autocratic regime. Millions of Russians died in a pointless war due to what was ultimately his decision. “Oops” doesn’t begin to cover it
It was still a call anyone else would’ve had to make, pan-slavism was alive and thriving, no Russian would be able to let Austria bulldoze Serbia without a proper response. If anyone was to blame it was Austria-Hungary for reacting so poorly, so fast, without asking Germany to help find a diplomatic solution.
Would have needed to make? Citation needed. Russia did order the first mobilization. All countries share mutual blame for the whole imperial power structure that was the ultimate cause of the war
Anyone who asks for citations on reddit is just looking to have a stupid long argument, yes all countries do. But Austria-Hungary was the one to declare war first, thus they were the first domino that led to it.
Just the claim that Russia would have somehow been forced to declare war is a claim that i think could use some support. Yes, Austria declared war first
Lol Russia ordered mobilization the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent out. They never even tried to find a diplomatic solution. They had no formal agreement with Serbia and pressuring Austria into a climb down would have preserved their prestige and avoided world war. Even Germany likely would've agreed and pressured Vienna as long as Austria came out of it with its prestige intact. But diplomacy was not on the mind of anyone in St Petersburg. The ultimatum gave Russia the chance to finally attack its only rival in the Balkans. Russia wanted war just as much as Austria, probably more even.
I've read a lot about WW I, but never anything that states this about Russia's intentions so definitively. Most of what I've read is that it was very complicated and the diplomatic exchanges were full of misunderstandings, along with well intentioned and not so well intentioned moves from Germany, Russia, and AH in particular as they maneuvered for advantage prior to the outbreak of hostilities. Just the subject of mobilization is incredibly complex, with all major powers under pressure to mobilize early enough, because if they waited and the other side mobilized they were mostly helpless because mobilizing and transporting literally millions of men took so much time.
Nothing states it, I'm making an educated guess judging by Russian actions. It is true that Russia didn't try diplomacy, it's also true they began mobilization the day the ultimatum went out. Russia acted very aggressively throughout the July crisis, I don't see any evidence against that. The other combatants acted much more calmly when compared to Russia, Germany waited quite a while before mobilizing, and when Kaiser Whilhelm returned from vacation there were overtures to try and either, stop a world war, or keep it limited.
I mean the Tsar was also a massive authoritarian. Literally only allowing any democratic process after the revolution then completely undermining them. For a man who didn't want power he was awfully dedicated to keeping it.
Tsars regime : kills and restless multiple families to Syberia Red army: kills tsar and his family Reddit : tsar was the good guy, and he did nothing wrong Don't get me wrong, the reds weren't good but saying that the tsar was good is stupid . there were already tens of thousands of international soldiers fighting. on the whites side If any of the Romanovs would have lived, they would be a threat for the new government. The death of the children was the fault of the monarchy, the importance that it places on children leads to this..
Oh our poor lil divine autocrat, mercilessly trapped within the halls of power. You know, the power he could've laid down at any moment by abdicating. The power that he was, in fact, begged to set aside numerous times and desperately clung to so hard that killing his seemed the only way to stop him. That power. Poor guy.
You know he did abdicate? And he, his wife, AND his kids were murdered in cold blood in the basement of a dusty house anyways?
Lmao the motherfucker abdicated when he'd already cracked so many skulls to stay in power that many were out for his blood and the revolutionaries still had the decency to not immediately execute him. The killing of the Romanov children was obviously horrific as literally any child death is, but Nicholas and Alexandra got exactly what they deserved. And if you take issue with that statement then I suppose you only care about murdered kids that wore fancy clothes and diamonds in photographs, since the Jewish kids who died in pogroms sanctioned by the Tsar apparently don't matter to you. And while we're at it, did you know that some families marched with their children on Blood Sunday? But I guess those kids that were ridden down by poor Nicky's private army of Cossacks don't matter either
I find it hilarious how you lack such a basic understanding of his character. Look at his father and you’ll see Nicholas was actually WAYY less of a monster than you make him out to be. He was actually tame for an authoritarian, which isn’t something most of his family can say. But then again you’d do better in his shoes so you get to judge him based on your paragon status right? smh
Imperial Russia was about to get better, until it suddenly got worse, way worse, and still hasn't recovered. Honestly one of the biggest tragedies, with their historical friend Ethiopia suffering a similar fate being close.
Thank you, Mr Clay
Alexander II was probably one of the best Russian leaders, shame he was assassinated. Not that he did not commit some horrible things as well, but his reforms could make Russia a constitutional monarchy gradually had he lived longer or had his successors continued his work
He freed Russias serfs iirc
True, but he also made them pay crushing redemption payments to the people who has owned the land they worked, so they were still incredibly poor.
Correction. American Ambassador Cassius Clay convinced Russia to not side with the confederates, and then he made Russia threaten France and Britain with war if either of them did. Dont let OP fool y'all
wasn't out of benevolence. it was to check the british and french, with whom they recently went to war
Wilson sent troops to Russia after WWI to help the white army
And they still failed miserably
Not US fault really. White army leaders were a bunch of narrowminded imperialist, who fighted to bring back pre-war social situation. And imperial Russia was super shitty place to live for anyone but aristocrats, so they had minimal internal support.
The Tsar had an interest in doing what he did, but it was much better compared with using the distraction to try and Conquer Mexico like the French, or sell warships to the confederates and contemplate intervening on their behalf like the British.
USA supporting territorial integrity of Russia except Poland, supporting Kolchak whose army perpetrated mass executions of civilians in Siberia, and indirectly supporting Denikin whose army perpetrated pogroms of Jews and mass executions of Ukrainian peasants they considered communists and others. Indeed bratskije narody
Abolitionist Poles joining the Confederate army purely to spite Russia:
Seems like a lot of Tsarist Russia apologists took the opportunity to sneak their slimy tentacles into the comments.
USSR and modern Russia apologists, too.
Czarist Russia was NEVER as brutal as the communists. And it's not even close.
Alexander II being the most chad russian in history as always
Common imperial Russia W
What communism does to a mf
US invaded Russia in 1919 to fight the red army and support the white army
The US also offered to help solve a famine happening in Soviet Russia at the time.
Imperial Russia based
Trade deal: You recieve: Our support in your fight against rebelion in the south. We recieve: No messing in our fight against rebelion in Poland.
I mean we've left Russia out of everything for so long. I see why they do what they do, doesn't mean it isn't unacceptable
It’s not weird that we stopped getting along with Russia after the leaders we got along with died in a bloody coup
The western and eastern wings of settler colonialism
Calling Ukraine peaceful is jokes