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PRO PATRIA
211
over. Moreover, superstition saw in the tragic occurrence
an omen foreboding evil. The Tsar was, therefore, strongly
advised to attend the Court ball and not to break off the
festivities planned for the hundred thousands who had
flocked together from all ends of the Empire. Under these
circumstances the monarch was not free to act as he would
have liked to act if reasons of State had not compelled him
to hide his grief at the disaster. His first duty was to hide
an aching heart and not to cast a gloom over the coronation.
It must be left to the judgment of all fair-minded people
to decide whether a pure accident of crushing people to
death, such as may happen in the overcrowding of any
circumscribed area, could lend colour to a comparison of
Nicholas II with a monster of cruelty like Nero.
But the adverse judgment on the late ex-Tsar is
chiefly based on his autocratic tendencies. People are
wont to forget that berries of more than one kind cannot
be gathered from one and the same bush. Nicholas II had
before him the example of his enlightened grandfather,
Alexander II, murdered after having introduced great
liberal reforms, and that of his frankly reactionary father,
Alexander III, who died a natural death after a reign of
stagnation and repression. The natural tendency which
Nicholas II derived from these lessons of history was a
leaning towards his father’s methods of rule, and he left
no doubt about it that he was resolved to follow in the
latter’s footsteps. The answer he gave on January 30, 1895,
to the representatives of the Zemstvo of Tver, who ventured
to hope that representatives of the people would be allowed
to participate in public affairs, was merely a reiterating of
his intention of " maintaining the principle of autocracy as
firmly as his never-to-be-forgotten parent had done." He
cannot be blamed for holding views which he inherited from
his father as autocrat. He was crowned and anointed, and
his life was declared " sacrosanct," according to the teaching
of the Russian Orthodox Church. This must have further
confirmed him in the belief that his actions were guided by
divine inspiration.
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