Before I get into it, I promise I will not hound my mother with information that she does not want nor will my resources be unprompted. I only ever talk to her about this stuff when she brings it up herself.
For a while now I have noticed my mother becoming more and more… based? As in I do not even have to say anything explicitly and she will just do it herself. For example, a few days ago when we were heading to her place (as I was housesitting for the weekend) we were talking about how scared I was to cross a particular street for my bus due to the traffic being a nightmare in my city (it is a light-less crosswalk which means cars can do whatever they want and are very impatient, thus it is very anxiety inducing). She affirmed my fears and began to talk about how if our public transit system was more efficient and better funded then the roads would be way less congested and many people wouldn’t feel the need to drive, she even brought up fifteen minute cities! All of this was done without my guidance.
She under values her own intelligence a lot, and jokes that I have to “dumb down” information for her (I do not, I just use words that she would understand) but she is absorbing what I say and is applying it without my aid. I am incredibly proud of her, but she does have a weak point: the Tsar.
While I was at her house and talking about history she brought up how she loves history too. She always had ever since I could remember, but her interest purely lies in that of royalty. She mainly watches TV shows and dramatized movies that centre on European monarchs. For the most part she feels little to no sympathy for their fates as they really had it coming, what with the extreme wealth inequality. But she told me that the one that really sticks with her is the Tsar, it was so tragic.
I made a face and she pointed it out so I just told her that what the Tsar did was worse than his own fate, and that they deserved it. I wasn’t aggressive in my tone either. She pushed back that her sympathy mostly lied with the children, I countered that most of them were already adults at the time. She responded that most of them were women and thus had no power so their deaths were pointless.
The conversation kind of ended there and we moved on to something else. This was not an argument and our tones were light. But this is something I have heard her repeat a lot and I do not know how to go about it when it comes up again. My mom is not one for reading historical books, she just doesn’t really have the time to sit and read novels, even the dramatized ones. But she likes TV shows and movies.
Are there any that can tell a more accurate story of the Tsar, something that is less documentary-like and more narrative? I do not know the names of the movies and shows she watches but I know they act like fictional media while telling a “true” story, if that makes sense. I just want something to recommend to her that will be entertaining and also enlightening. I wish the history she watched focused on the people rather than the rulers of the time, but thats where we are right now and I have to work with it.
Is your family Russian and inclined toward Tsarism? Because if not then i don’t think that there is much point in going down the rabbit hole of trying to delve into century old historical events and explaining the whole history of the Tsarist regime. It feels like a distraction and a waste of time when you could be talking about practical issues that are relevant for your family and your community in the here and now. Issues which communism addresses.
When i think a conversation risks being derailed into such a huge and mostly unproductive tangent i try to steer the conversation back to the basics, back to the topic at hand and what people really care about in their day to day lives. I doubt that almost anyone considers it a pressing issue to engage in hours of debate hashing out the fate of the Tsars.
One of the worst things we can do as communists when trying to reach people is allow ourselves to get dragged into drawn out debates and complicated historical arguments that both bore and fly over the heads of most regular people. Simplify and shorten as much as possible. And avoid allowing yourself to be put on the defensive, having to justify things. Go on the attack, denounce the injustice and violence of monarchic and bourgeois systems.
The fact is that the Tsarist regime was brutal and autocratic and its overthrow was a good thing. End of story. That is all you need to say. In conversations with “newbies” you don’t need to take a position on whether what happened to the Romanovs was justified or not. It happened. Sometimes things happen during wartime that are not ideal. Leave it at that.
(If they still keep bringing it up you can point to how China’s last emperor was re-educated and given the chance to contribute to the new society. This is an example how there are also other ways that this type of situation can play out, depending on the historical context. The implied message being: “we don’t have to do everything the way past communists did it”.)
Of course, after you’ve won them over as communists, then there is nothing wrong with having educated conversations about history with comrades who have a particular interest in studying these events more in depth. Then you can delve into detail about the concrete situation in late Tsarist Russia, what the regime was doing, how the royals lived vs the common people, why the revolutionaries felt they needed to do what they did given the civil war that was raging, etc.
My family is Portuguese, not Russian and my mother is not inclined towards Tsarism, and she is also not an anti-communist as she is supportive of me, my values, and the idea of communism as a whole in her own understanding of it. She’s even called herself a communist because of equality. She has not and probably never will read theory but she listens to me. I honestly do talk about practical issues a lot, but when it comes to the topic of history, which is what I am studying in school, she brings up her fascination with the royals and her sympathies with what happened to the Tsar and his family.
While my conversation with my mom was incredibly light in tone, I am quick to go on the defensive with others even if it is just internally so I will take your advice. I will instead “attack” in the best way possible for whatever situation I am put in. The matter-of-fact way you put the tsar’s fate in is probably how I will say it to my mom the next time it comes up. I will also add in that the conditions at the time dictated what needed to be done and there’s no changing it. The information about China’s last emperor is also very useful as it was something I thought about.
Thank you for the detailed reply, it is very helpful.
There should be a historical textbook in Western countries that state that the last Russian Tsar lure a crowd of civilians into a plaza under the pretense of announcing a reform and then massacring the crowd to kill a few rebel suspects. This massacre of innocent civilians had started the Russian civil war.
I did know about this event, I will make sure to mention it in a nice way the next time she talks about it. Thank you for the reminder!
Frankly, I don’t think you can say much about the Tsar that will convince her. For context my own mother has a similar hang up on this issue.
My mother will say, “kill Nicholas, he deserved it” but still feels sympathy for the children, or young people in general. She’s a mother, and she has a son (myself) whose in his 20s. I’d imagine many mothers nay be able relate to not wanting young people to die regardless of their background.
The only thing I can say is have a conversation when it arises. Perhaps touch on topics she has a soft spot for and speak on how the tsar exacerbated those issues.
Though, my mom hates monarchies in general (grew up during the Islamic revolution) so its not that hard for her to connect them together. The opulence of the nobility contrasted by the squalor of the poor is often a good way to deromanticize people from monarchal imagery in my experience.
also, this is just what it means to be royalty. you live like kings (literally) while your rule lasts, but if a usurper or a revolution comes, you’ll probably die. them’s the breaks. if you didnt want that, maybe you should’ve stepped down.
Yeah, you have a point. As a parent and a woman she feels like Nicholas could have been killed while sparing his wife and children. Although it is still frustrating for me, but I will try my best to meet her where she’s at. I have done so before so I should be able to do it again. If she cares about the Tsar’s family then she would probably care about the families of the Bolsheviks too. But it is hard considering the movies and shows she watches give more focus to the royals, and thus they can be empathized with more than a faceless mass of starving, abused people.
It is so interesting how our mothers reflect the same values. Thank you for you comment, it helped give me some clarity.
‘Dead Souls’ by Nikolai Gogol.
I honestly do not think she would read this, but I definitely will and talk to her about it if it comes up. Thank you for the recommendation!
Even just getting through the general setting of the book will be enough, its about a lord going around buying up dead slaves titles so they can then use the uncollected tax and insurance to profit, quite literally a debt collector scheme in a feudal serf society - they do this during a famine and right after a land invasion.
Its the conditions that caused the revolution - widespread famines, pointless wars to stroke the monarchies egos and boost their tax revenues by expanding borders and a tiny middle class of lords that basically get to act as the taxman for the above, completely above the law.
It is a character, but it is also real.
Do you have a preferred translation of the book? I’d like to get the audiobook with the matching physical text.
Honestly I just read an English translation that I found in a charity store, its got a rad red leather bound on it, that was good enough although reading it in Russian will deffo be better, I just cant read it. I’ve heard quite a bit is lost in translation with Gogol, but I also think its just a lot to do with sort of ‘in jokes’ for the historical time period.
