Tsar Quotes
Ivan the Terrible. He was referring to himself as God’s Chosen One. He and the Church were aligned against the Nobles, whose lands Ivan wanted. He would execute hundreds of “traitors” every month. He even executed the families of his enemies in very cruel ways. He claimed to be “cleansing” the land of sinners in preparation for the coming judgment day, and the church backed him up on this. The Church gave him carte blanche to “punish” all sinners and his paranoia eventually got around to the church fathers themselves who became the final victims.
America initially withheld recognition of the 1917 Russian revolutionary government and joined a number of other nations in stationing troops around Russia. The fear of Marxism was the beginning of the Red Scare in America. Ironically, in the early years after the Russian revolution, Russia had a relatively democratic government. The dictatorship of a few at the head of the Communist Party had not yet evolved. Ironically, when we did recognize Russia again it was after it had gone through a short lived democratic period, and was in the hands of a dictatorial few. America and many other nations valued stability and predictability more so than democracy. Hearst was one of the few American notables who saw the hypocrisy of this.
