10 key moments for the Russian Revolution (Part 2 - The monk and the German)

(In this 10-part series we discuss the different situational and historic catalysts that converged to give Russians their October revolution. If you are new to this series, please read the introduction here.)

One of the quickest ways to have an entire nation turn on a ruler is to show its incompetence or illegitimacy. When Nicolas left to fight in the front lines during WWI,  he left his wife in charge. For numerous reasons, she was viewed as incompetent and a traitor (she was said to be German). Her decision making, her advisors, and those she surrounded herself with left a lot to be desired. The lack of leadership at the top while the country was being ravished by war gave the enemies of the Tsar- and Lenin in particular - plenty of ammunition to take him down.

Today, no nation is immune to this. In democracies, where freedom of speech is valued, anyone with an outlet - and in today social media connected world it's pretty much everyone - can push a narrative that can either support or destroy a government. Those seeking to gain power will diminish the accomplishments of their enemies, augment the failures, and spin lies with half-truths with the sole purpose of rising to power.

No government is immune to the incompetence and illegitimacy narrative. It is the core strategy of everyone attempting to replace it.

2. The monk and the German

(Original article translated from Lavanguardia.com)

When Nicolás left for the front, he left his wife , Alexandra Fiódorovna Románova, in charge of the government . It was a mistake. From September 1915 to February 1917, four prime ministers succeeded each other, five from the Interior, three from the War ... The tsarina changed them capriciously. Alejandra was 43 years old, had four daughters and a frail son, Alekséi, the Zarévich. The boy's hemophilia had led the tsarina to host three sinister-looking Siberian monks, Rasputin, at court three years earlier . 

Alejandra was contemptuously called German (she was born as Princess Dagmar of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg), but she had been raised English. When she was six years old, her grandmother, Queen Victoria, took over her education. However, she failed to prepare her to reign.

The Russian people believed that the disaster on the front was due to the fact that the German revealed the movements of the Russian troops to the Kaiser and that she gave herself to Grigori Rasputin in orgies. Rasputin had so much power over the empress that he even proposed who should be a minister.

In December 1916, Prince Yusupov , the heir to Russia's greatest fortune, invited him to spend an evening at his palace. He wanted to kill the monk . During the party, Rasputin had several glasses of a poisoned Madeira, but the cyanide had no effect. In the end, Oswald Rayner - a friend of Yusupov, a British spy - shot Rasputin and threw his body into the Neva River, where, as the autopsy showed, he drowned.

Rasputin was assassinated in a city that was experiencing its third winter of war. In 1916, the situation in the rear was disastrous. The front devoured everything. A polar cold snap paralyzed a rail system on the brink of collapse. Even the capital did not receive the supplies it needed, more and more expensive.

Since the summer of 1914, the Russian government had not stopped printing banknotes to pay for war expenses. The measure increased the prices of basic products, which were getting scarcer every day. In February 1917, the capital was on the edge. "A spark," predicted an agent of the Okhrana, the Czarist secret police, "will be enough for a revolt to break out."

Next:  10 key moments for the Russian Revolution (Part 3)

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