Chapter 6
The political situations in both China and Russia before their revolutions were much the same. Both had weak rulers and discontented people. In China, a succession of dynasties had ruled since ancient times. At the beginning of 1909, the Chinese emperor Kuang-Hsu had recently died. He left behind three-year-old nephew PuYi to rule the throne with the baby's father, Prince Chun, as regent. Kuang-Hsu's aunt had great power over the rule of her nephew, and she prevented him from taking measures toward the modernizing that China badly needed. China needed a strong, modern monarch to rule and not a three-year-old.
Mother Russia had also hosted an absolute monarchy for centuries. By the 1900's, Nicholas II ruled all of Russia's vast territory. His father, Alexander III, ruled strictly but ended up stirring the kettle of discontent before passing the throne to his son. Nicholas ruled about one hundred years too late. Part of the problem was that he came after a series of rulers also in the wrong time. By the time he inherited the throne, there was little hope for Russia's monarchy.
Nicholas II further destroyed that hope through extensive war and political entanglements with religious leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church. He participated in several wars despite the fact that his country could not really handle it. This destroyed the trust the masses of peasants and workers had in him, in the church he controlled, and in the government as a whole. Similarly, in China, war raged almost constantly from 1910 to 1949. During this time Chinese political parties fought civil wars against each other as well as against the Japanese in World War II. After the monarchy fell in 1911, it was a fight over what form of government would rule next. Another factor most certainly affecting both countries was the size of their territory. St. Petersburg might exile