Solzhenitsyn demonstrates—rather than merely states—the need for order above all else. Order in pre-revolutionary Russia constituted a medieval totality, represented by the absolutism of the Romanov dynasty. Czar Nicholas II was stupid, indecisive, and self-destructive. He had no judgment. But as much as Nicholas retreated into a reactionary past—even as Russian society was experiencing the painful birth pangs of modernization—there could simply be no Russia without the monarchy.
