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Did Moscow Order the Death of the Romanovs or the local Soviet? (hexbear.net)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by SevenSkalls@hexbear.net to c/history@hexbear.net

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I got to the part of the Revolutions podcast where the royal family died. He said the consensus is that Moscow ordered the death of the whole family. Is that pretty much agreed on by serious historians nowadays or is that Cold War historiagraphy?

It seemed kind of split when I looked in some Ask Historians thread on Reddit from years ago, but I also might just be seeing what I want to see. What do historians think? What do you think? If Lenin and company in Moscow ordered it, why?

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[–] TheMadPhilosopher@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think what gets missed here is that in the context of revolution, executing the monarch isn’t shocking—it’s standard. Historically, revolutionaries don’t leave kings alive. So whether Moscow directly ordered it or not almost doesn’t matter—it was a move to secure the revolution, and everyone complicit probably knew it had to happen.

What bothers me more is how much the narrative around this moment was shaped by the Cold War and the Red Scare. Lenin gets turned into this cartoon villain in Western historiography, like this was a uniquely cruel act, when in reality? Monarchs fall in revolutions. That’s not a Lenin thing—it’s a history thing.

I just think we’ve been fed a really distorted lens for so long that people forget how common this is in global uprisings. It’s not a morality play—it’s a power shift.

Stuff like this is what I get stuck in for days—I’m deep into exploring how narratives get shaped after the fact. Especially how power rewrites history to serve itself.

[–] SevenSkalls@hexbear.net 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think the thing that people usually frown on is the death of the kids, at least on the left side. Personally, I don't even blame them that much for that either because it was during a Civil War, at the beginning of a delicate time in the new government's period of rule. It's hard to tell what decisions will come back to you bite you or not in that kind of environment, plus fog of war and all that. Wish they did the trial like planned, or even better some sort of reformation like the last Chinese emperor, but oh well, that's real life history for you. It's messy sometimes.