However backward, reactionary, and ineffectual the monarchy was, longevity had provided Nicholas II’s royal line with legitimacy, allowing him to rule without the sharpened steel of any of the extreme ideologies of the 20th century, with all their frightening isms. This is why, as explained by the philosopher Daniel Mahoney, Solzhenitsyn came to see the often forgotten February Revolution that brought the democrat Alexander Kerensky to power as “the true revolution and the enduring disaster,” because of the utter illusion it presented of a stable middle ground, since it toppled the monarchical
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