Why was Tsarist Russia such a hotbed for radicalism in the late 1890's and early 1910's...

>full Hitler
>people like Stalin escaped exile like dozens of times
Sure.

Oh, and "evil Tsarist regime" executed lile 2500 people in it's last century.

Because the Tsarist regime wasn't only tyrannical, it was incompetent and was running the country into the ground. If you're going to have an authoritarian state, AT LEAST take measures to actually fix things in the country, and I don't mean baby-steps, genuinely start improving shit. Nicholas did none of that. Late Tsarist Russia was practically a South American tier tinpot kleptocracy. Soviets then proceeded to turn it into the second most powerful superpower within a few decades. That's how you do authoritarianism, if you do it, at least get shit done, don't use the country as your personal autism playground.

>Tsarist regime
>Tyrannical

Also, your statement that Nicholas did nothing to try and improve things is blatantly wrong. It's true that he made mistakes, but he wasn't as buffoonish as people make him out to be.

>Soviets then proceeded to turn it into the second most powerful superpower

Russia was already very powerful in the early 1900's, so that's really not very impressive.

>lose to the Japanese
>powerful
>barely last in WW1

No it really isn't and Tsarwanks are as bad as Wehraboos. If Nicholas wanted to do something, he could've directly went against the aristocracy, but no he continued the old mode of kleptocracy. Covered for his brother's fag adventures in St Petersburg, and had the Church turn a blind eye (one of the reasons in the initial USSR years there was anti-Church sentiment was because the Patriarchate of Moscow was under the Tsar's thumb so did whatever the Tsar asked, rather than whatever Christian values demanded)

russians drink a lot

people talk when they drink, and often they talk shit about the state of things, and this articulates frustration into a discourse

you cant prevent that

>losing 1 war means you're not powerful

So I guess the US isn't powerful because it lost a war against fucking Vietnam. Obviously the Russo-Japanese war was an embarrassment, but Russia was still very much a great power after 1905.

Vietnam wasn't even an actual war. It was a military occupation that the US didn't have the balls to finish off. It was great power due to territorial and army size, nothing else.

>Vietnam wasn't even an actual war.

So America lost over 2,200 aircraft and 58,000 soldiers in something that wasn't an "actual war"? That's quite remarkable.

>It was great power due to territorial and army size, nothing else.

What else do you need to be considered a great power? In objective terms, Russia was very powerful in 1907. To suggest otherwise is simply a lie. I would also like to point out that in 1907, Russia had the world's third largest population.

Famine
Slow pace of industrialization
Refusal to grant democratic concessions
Lack of a middle class

To add to this, the main reason revolution occurred was because Alexander III's successor Nicholas resisted reform and alienated the army through the war, the liberals through the failure of the Duma, and the elites through his conduct of the war and the influence of individuals like the Tsarina and Rasputin

Nobles didn't give a damn about the people and state started to russify the non-russian areas. Nicky 2 fucked up things so bad that Grand Duchy of Finland which had been the model subject of the crown until then started doing massive draft dodging, murders and muggings or crown officials, strikes and all kinds of other crap. The elite ruling Russia just didn't have a clue what they were doing.

>be serbian nationalists
>Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria more liberal, wants to give more autonomy to slavs
>assassinate him anyways
its almost like giving shitty reforms when you have a history of autocratic tendencies does nothing to please those suffering under you

Authoritanism is not enough, they also had to be competent to squash dissent. And they weren't.
Democratic countries succeded because they were democratic. People could voice their grievances, organize into unions, and later elect their representatives. Russia had none of that.

>while comparatively democratic regimes in Britain and the United States, France, etc. were able to stop or pre-emptively destroy radical movements before they had a chance to take root
Russia was simply behind the times. Britain had its violent liberal revolutions in the 17th century. France in 1789 and sporadic revolts for decades afterwards. America fought a war of independence and then a brutal civil war to ensure it became a modern, united nation. Perhaps if the Decemberists had taken power in the 1820s, then things wouldn't have bubbled up so much later on.

Democratic societies can more elegantly secure the consent of the governed

>it's the 'autocracy means stability" meme again

Violent revolutions only happen in autocracies (whether communist, monarchist, fascist, etc.). Liberal democracies also tend to have much less corruption and less violent crime.

>They lived upon grease; eat it, drank it, slept in the midst of it, and their clothes were covered with it. To a Russian, grease is the greatest luxury. They looked with greedy eyes upon the tallow-bags as they were taken into the vessel, and, no doubt, would have eaten one up whole, had not the officer kept watch over it. The grease seemed actually coming through their pores, and out in their hair, and on their faces. It seems as if it were this saturation which makes them stand cold and rain so well. If they were to go into a warm climate, they would all die of the scurvy.

not an argument

The revolutionaries in russia had an easier life since they received money from german and other places
That money could do a lot of things since russia was a very poor country and you could hire and pay more soldiers(and military equipment) than you could in germany or france
Besides the Tsarist police wasn't ready to deal with 5 or 10 thousand revolutionaries.
Lenin orchestrated much of the revolution outside of Russia

Democracy is just a weak hedge against radicalism

>Lenin and Stalin not Jews

Autocracy CAN mean stability, it just takes will to maintain the regime. Very few have it when it stops being profitable. Also there was no violent revolution against Hitler in Germany, I hate cringeworthy polfags but Germans fought for Hitler to the end in Berlin. USSR also didn't fall from the bottom, it fell from the top. People still want a return to autocracy, as an example there's Putin. He's an autocrat, people support him in Russia BECAUSE he's an autocrat, not in spite of it.

Lenin was less than half Jewish, and therefore wouldn't be Jewish even under the Nuremberg laws

Millions of people were starving, none wanted to fight in ww1 and Tsar literally had the worst PR

>none wanted to fight in ww1

That's not true. When war was first declared it was very popular. There was a wave of patriotic sentiment. People were proud to be defending their slavic brothers in Serbia. It was only after the war started to drag on without victory that people started to get upset about it. The fact that the Germans were blockading the Baltic Sea while the Ottomans were doing the same thing to the Black Sea made it extremely difficult for Russia to conduct trade however, and the food shortages that resulted from this contributed to social unrest.

>Doesn't it seem strange that such an authoritarian was unable to prevent all these radical groups from forming

You would be surprised what can happen when you systematically slaughter, cripple and maim your most loyal and powerful fighters.

>were able to stop or pre-emptively destroy radical movements before they had a chance to take root?

Democracy is a known as a a pressure valve for a reason
>Would a tougher leader like Alexander III have been able to prevent the Fall of Russia in 1917?

Alexander Kerensky crushed them en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Days had he not fucked up things with Kornilov or even just get Russia out of the war it would have been fine.

>The loss of Pyotr Stolypin was even worse.
What was worse was the fact the establishment opposed him so heavily that he effectively had to become a one man army.

Even the SR assassin that killed him was on the Secret Police payroll

Starvation, stagnating backwater, and a brutal world war making the final blow.

on another note, why was nicky so short?