Your opinion of the Russian Empire?

[poiuytrewq0987]

Do you believe that the empire was benevolent, built civilization, spread technology, etc or was the empire evil, destroyer of civilizations, made people backwards?

[Wulfhere]

Do you believe that the empire was benevolent, built civilization, spread technology, etc or was the empire evil, destroyer of civilizations, made people backwards?

Neither really, but it was certainly quite backward.

[Osweo]

The Tsarist Empire had other objectives than those that most of us would judge it by. Orthodoxy was its mission, and it stuck to this many times when a more pragmatic policy would have prompted more self-interested responses.

It should perhaps be stressed, that of all the 200+ nations within it, it was consistently the Russian peasants themselves that were the least privileged, and this was its ultimate downfall. Quite sad, and a result of the 'deviation' initiated by the Westernising Pyotr I that took Russia away from its distinct cultural pathway and imposed foreign forms upon the Empire that it often chafed in. This tended to interfere with the sense of Mission I allude to above, which the common people still identified with, but which the elites were distracted from. When the natural drives were properly harnessed, the Imperiya was a great engine of expansion...

Pretty damn glorious as Empires go, of course!

[Osweo]

Special mention should be made of the Russians' liberation of Caucasian and Balkan Christians from the Turkish yoke. The Ottoman Empire was far worse a place to live in, after all. And the Russians were relatively lenient with non-Christian subjects, to the extent that most of their Muslim subjects became very moderate in their religion, lasting until the present day in Central Asia and the Volga.

The Tsars withstood the machinations of international finance too, though their clumsiness in this cause, and their expressing of it in simplistic anti-semitism were ultimately unsuccessful.

[Pallantides]

Orcs are always evil

[poiuytrewq0987]

Orcs are always evil

All a matter of perception. You see us as orcs, we see you as orcs too.

[Guapo]

They should have never ever sold Aljaska.

[Pallantides]

All a matter of perception. You see us as orcs, we see you as orcs too.

I'm no Orc ... people say I look like an elf.
But what have Norwegians ever done to be seen as Orcs?(maybe apart for some harmless fun/raiding in the viking age, the prosecution of Saami and Finnish miniorites and sterilizing tatere in the early modern period... we have not been very Orcish compared to the Russians)



I was joking anyway... I was going to vote 'both' but accedantaly selected 'evil'.

[Guapo]

You make orc mad!

[Devils Advocate]

They were evil. They were all Hors.