To my never-taught-history western schooled brain cell (which fires but occasionally, which even that some doubt) the following is simply interesting. Trigger warning, the interview is with a historian who has strong Orthodox Christian beliefs and comes across as proselytizing at times, but the depth of anecdotes may be considered worthwhile, even for existentialists among us - bloody motley lot we all are :D PS, on pasting in the title and byline, I note that the interview is not an interview, but is a series of written 'answers' to reader questions, by one Father Andrew Phillips, so I should be worried if he were not staunch in his Christianity :) :) It's quite a long read... Everything You Know About The Last Russian Tsar Is a Massive Lie. Here’s The Truth "These members of the upper classes (and not all were traitors) were sponsored from the beginning by the West. The West considered that once its values of parliamentary democracy, republicanism or constitutional monarchy were introduced into Russia, it would become just another bourgeois Western country." Father Andrew Phillips (Orthodox England) Father Andrew Phillips, is a long-serving priest in the ROCOR Orthodox church in Essex, UK. http://www.events.orthodoxengland.org.uk/the-glimmer-of-light-on-the-road-ah... In this January 2013 article, he answers readers’ questions about the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas II, debunking decades of deliberate, slanderous lies coming from the media, academia, and governments of the UK, Germany, and America, but mostly from the UK.