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Tsar Nicholas II And The Russo-Japanese War

Decent Essays

The two essays I have selected take different approaches concerning Tsar Nicholas II and his decision making process. The two men take not only different approaches to the tsar but arrive at different conclusions. Rotem Kowner’s essay, Nicholas II and the Japanese body: Images and decision-making on the eve of the Russo-Japanese War, examines Nicholas’s attitude toward the Japanese and how it affected his decision. Raymond Esthus’s essay, Nicholas II and the Russo-Japanese War, shows Nicholas’s commitment to autocracy and a stubborn resolve to defend Russia’s honor. Ethmus dismisses the idea of Nicholas being weak minded and easily led. It was the mismanagement of the administration that caused Nicholas to misread the political realities the Russian nation was encountering. The Russians were not aware of the threat they were to the Japanese, as the Russians pushed for the completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia’s management of the situation was an idea of avoiding a conflict Kowner sees the increasing strain on the relationship between Japan and Russia as the tsar “meddled with the work of the ministries in the capital.” While Ethmus sees the administration as mismanaging the situation, Kowner would agree with the tsar misreading the crisis but not where the mismanagement came from. He places the blame directly on the tsar. “Had the tsar realized the full military potential of his enemy, Russia could have prepared better for war, and strategic decisions, such

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