By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 17 January 2022
Al-Naba 320
Islamic State’s War With Christianity in Africa
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The Bolshevik Assassination Campaign Against the Russian Royal Family
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 January 2022
The Russian Imperial Family: Olga, Maria, Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, Anastasia, Tsesarevich Alexei, and Tatiana. Taken in Crimea, 1913.
The Last Tsar and the Duty of Monarchy
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 30 December 2021
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich in exile in France, February 1929
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich (1866-1933), the brother-in-law of Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894-1917), gives an interesting anecdote in the second volume of his memoirs, Always a Grand Duke, published in the year he died, 1933, showing how the last Russian Emperor conceived of the duties of his office. Continue reading
The February Revolution: The End of the Russian Monarchy
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 19 December 2021
Skobelev Square during the February Revolution, painting by Aleksandr Gerasimov, 1917
The “February Revolution” is so-called because Russia at the time was on the Julian (Old Style (O.S.)) calendar. By the Gregorian (New Style (N.S.)) calendar, which Russia adopted in February 1918, these events take place in March 1917. And momentous events they were, leading to the abdication of the last Tsar, the end of a monarchy and an entire system of power and authority that dated back more than 350 years. For eight months in 1917, Russia struggled to extend the constitutionalist reforms that had begun under the Tsardom within a more liberal framework. The liberals never did gain the upper hand over the radicals, not even after the September 1917 de facto return to autocracy. In November 1917, a coup by the most extreme Leftist faction, the Bolsheviks, terminated the experiment, burying for seven decades even the aspirations in Russia for liberalism and democracy. Continue reading
Russia and the Outbreak of the Great War
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 15 December 2021
Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II aboard a ship in the Gulf of Finland, 1905
In the early historiography of the Great War, it was accepted that Germany was chiefly responsible, with debates on the margins about the degree of intentionality and premeditation. Of late, however, “It has become fashionable to spread the guilt of the First World War liberally around Europe”, as one prominent historian noted.[1] Some revisionists go even further and try to find another state that is not only equally as culpable as Germany but more so. In this post, I want to, without in any way pretending to be comprehensive, deal with the argument that blames Russia for the 1914-18 War. Continue reading
Rasputin and the Empress
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 13 December 2021
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin, a Siberian peasant holy man, was a presence at the Russian Court between 1908 and his murder in 1916. Even so, Rasputin would only have been one figure among many and not be so notable in history, except for the fact that he gained significant political influence in his last couple of years due to his friendship with the Tsar’s wife. The degree of influence Rasputin exerted and the stories of his debauched behaviour have often been wildly exaggerated—at the time and since. But the stories did have a basis in fact—the Tsarina had fused together her personal forays in mysticism with her political role—and the stories themselves, lurid and defamatory as many of them were, had a concrete effect in damaging the monarchy as Revolution loomed. Continue reading
Russian Influence on the Nazis
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 10 December 2021
Michael Kellogg’s 2005 book, The Russian Roots of Nazism, argues that Russian “White émigrés” exerted financial, political-military, and ideological influences that “contributed extensively to the making of German National Socialism”. As such, argues Kellogg, Nazism “did not develop merely as a peculiarly German phenomenon”, but within an “international radical right milieu”. The book is interesting but deeply flawed, overstating its case by failing to set the facts it gathers in a proper context and for similar reasons misunderstanding where some of the Russian elements under discussion fit within the politics of the revolutionary upheaval after 1917, both within the borders of Russia and in exile in Europe. Continue reading
Unravelling the “Kornilov Affair”: The Last Stop Before the Bolshevik Takeover of Russia
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 8 December 2021
General Lavr Kornilov, 27 August 1917
The final key event on the road to the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in November 1917 was the “Kornilov Affair” that took place about two months earlier. Alexander Kerensky had become Prime Minister of the Provisional Government in July 1917 and around the same time General Lavr Kornilov had become Commander-in-Chief. A lot of accounts portray the “Kornilov Affair” as a “reactionary” coup attempt by Kornilov against Kerensky. The reality is very nearly the exact opposite. As historian Robert Pipes summarises: “All the available evidence, rather, points to a ‘Kerensky plot’ engineered to discredit the general as the ringleader of an imaginary but widely anticipated counterrevolution, the suppression of which would elevate the Prime Minister to a position of unrivaled popularity and power, enabling him to meet the growing threat from the Bolsheviks.”[1] Continue reading
The Taliban Supreme Leader Emerges—Maybe
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 1 November 2021
Hibatullah Akhundzada
A ten-minute audio tape attributed to the Taliban’s Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada appeared on 30 October, the first such communication since the jihadist takeover of Afghanistan in August. Hailed as Akhundzada’s “first public appearance” or his decision to step into “the limelight”, the reality is more complicated. Continue reading
The Capture of the Islamic State “Finance Minister” and the Impact of Leadership Losses
By Kyle Orton (@KyleWOrton) on 22 October 2021
Sami Jassim al-Jaburi (Haji Hamid) | IMAGE SOURCE
Mustafa al-Khadhemi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, announced on the morning of 11 October that the Iraqi National Intelligence Service (INIS) had arrested Sami Jassim al-Jaburi (Haji Hamid), the effective finance emir of the Islamic State (ISIS), in “a complex external operation”. Continue reading