Author Topic: Kerensky was kind of a selfish dude. (Read 14505 times)

ColBosch · « **Reply #60 on:** 14 May 2016, 22:27:59 »

Saying Kerensky led a mutiny is ridiculous. The Star League was dissolved, meaning the SLDF was free to do as it pleased. Furthermore, the Terran Hegemony was effectively destroyed, meaning the THAF was free to do as it pleased. There was literally no government for the armed forces to answer to. I believe they should have stayed due to simple morality, but there was no legal requirement.

SteveRestless · « **Reply #61 on:** 15 May 2016, 00:04:58 »

Quote from: Foxx Ital on 14 May 2016, 19:36:11

I think the Great Father was correct in his decision for leaving those tainted freebirths to wallow in their own filth.

I like that we have more information on him and hes not some mythical being who can and did no wrong. I like this version of kerensky!

I concur, trothkin.

There are no surviving worlds we are aware of that maintained the ways and culture of the Terran Hegemony. They were all either conquered and subsumed into the successor states or scoured like New Dallas. The weak were conquered and the strong were destroyed. It would have gone much the same for the hegemony as a whole.

Aleksandr Kerensky was not a head of state. He was a military man, and he knew that was all that he was suited for. It should be respected, to know what you CAN do as well as what you CANNOT. I also respect that he knew that staying would require him to become something he could not stomach becoming, and chose not to.

Might his staying have preserved the hegemony? perhaps. But it is by no means guaranteed. He made a decision and tried to do what he thought was right. Even THAT did not work out well. Staying, and trying to lead, without his heart in it? History would regard him as a monster, and might not even be wrong to.

MarikMilitaMan · « **Reply #62 on:** 15 May 2016, 05:48:58 »

Quote from: sillybrit on 11 May 2016, 13:35:17

Basically Kerensky was just a massive fan of The Clash and he simply took their lyrics too much to heart... and Terra just didn't let him know.

Class [applause]

abou · « **Reply #63 on:** 15 May 2016, 11:04:08 »

Quote from: SteveRestless on 15 May 2016, 00:04:58

Might his staying have preserved the hegemony? perhaps. But it is by no means guaranteed. He made a decision and tried to do what he thought was right. Even THAT did not work out well. Staying, and trying to lead, without his heart in it? History would regard him as a monster, and might not even be wrong to.

But was establishing the Star League-in-Exile any more guaranteed? In hind sight, yes, but from the fiction in sourcebooks and what has been published on BattleCorps it does not seem as though Kerensky had a destination in mind. I cannot remember if anything was said specifically, but it is clear that the Exodus was not smooth sailing. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth could have been saved if Kerensky had said, "We'll reach our destination in 2 years +/- a few weeks."

But he couldn't say that because it appears he didn't even know. And then of all the planets to pick he had to choose some of the worst he could find. Without the benefit of hindsight, I don't see how the trials of the Exodus were any better than staying.

marauder648 · « **Reply #64 on:** 16 May 2016, 06:18:32 »

The thing is did Kerensky have a plan other than 'head north'. We know they ignored habitable worlds on the route to the cluster, possibly because they might have been viewed as being too close to the Inner Sphere and found again. But there was clearly no destination/plan in mind other than 'head north, cross fingers REALLY hard...?????? Profit!'

Maingunnery · « **Reply #65 on:** 16 May 2016, 07:23:23 »

Quote from: marauder648 on 16 May 2016, 06:18:32

The thing is did Kerensky have a plan other than 'head north'. We know they ignored habitable worlds on the route to the cluster, possibly because they might have been viewed as being too close to the Inner Sphere and found again. But there was clearly no destination/plan in mind other than 'head north, cross fingers REALLY hard...?????? Profit!'

Well there were several established colonies nearby, maybe he heard of them but didn't know their exact location?

ANS Kamas P81 · « **Reply #66 on:** 16 May 2016, 08:41:24 »

I think the two big question for Kerensky was, could the SLDF have survived the first three claimants to First Lord via invasion of the Hegemony, and held off the next two challenges? And, prior to that, could he have kept the SLDF/THDF together?

I don't know on the first, but it's been argued it would have been a case of 'simply too many enemies' and the only question being who could hold off the longest. For the second...considering there were desertions to the Houses in small numbers, it was clear the SLDF wasn't going to stay around completely. When the Fed Suns got their hands on an entire Royal assault regiment wholesale, it was clear there was going to be much more, and that's when he said Nope.

Did he make the Succession Wars easier? Maybe. A lot of high-end tech and warships didn't get involved that could have. In retrospect to the scale of things, though, I think that's the equivalent of taking the third stage off a thermonuclear warhead. Sure, dropping 2 or 3 megatons from a 5 MT warhead is a big reduction in damage...but you're still talking a multimegaton bomb going off.

Idly, there's a thought - what if the SLN had, horrible pun intended, jumped ship to serve with the House fleets? Double those across the board and suddenly the 1st SW's naval battles and bombardment tactics might leave us with a planetary headcount equal to the Inner Sphere from the first Mechwarrior RPG...

Maingunnery · « **Reply #67 on:** 16 May 2016, 09:17:41 »

Quote from: ANS Kamas P81 on 16 May 2016, 08:41:24

Idly, there's a thought - what if the SLN had, horrible pun intended, jumped ship to serve with the House fleets? Double those across the board and suddenly the 1st SW's naval battles and bombardment tactics might leave us with a planetary headcount equal to the Inner Sphere from the first Mechwarrior RPG...

Warships were primary targets during the SWs, so the rate in which Warships are lost might just have been higher, as you get WS hunting WS.

ColBosch · « **Reply #68 on:** 16 May 2016, 10:55:05 »

Quote from: Maingunnery on 16 May 2016, 09:17:41

Warships were primary targets during the SWs, so the rate in which Warships are lost might just have been higher, as you get WS hunting WS.

That's his point. Some early sources had a far smaller Inner Sphere.

Rtifs · « **Reply #69 on:** 16 May 2016, 11:23:09 »

I would answer the question with another question. To what end would he have stayed?

I have always viewed Kerensky as an idealist. He dedicated his whole life to the Star League and its ideals. He fought for it. Sacrificed countless lives for it. And in the end it was for nothing. Everything he dedicated himself to and fought for was being destroyed.

What was the point of staying? To press his own claim as First Lord? In staying in the IS I’m certain that he could have held out and preserved the Hegemony as a political entity. So what would having a sixth successor state accomplish? Even if he sat out the first succession war, one of his descendants would have eventually used the vast military power of the SLDF to try and conquer the IS. In the end the IS would be effectively no different even if the names of the power brokers were.

In leaving the IS, he had a chance to set up a society where the ideals of the SL could be preserved and lived out. But this is Battletech not Peacetech, so we know how that went down.

Decoy · « **Reply #70 on:** 16 May 2016, 11:57:43 »

This is a strange way to put things, but in the Clans, the ideal of the Star League survived at least. You may not agree with what form those ideals took, but they survived. Furthermore, the Star League was revived for a short time by the great houses willingly. It took the Clans attacking to do it, but they figured it out for it to work for a decade.

In the Empire of Flames universe people seem to point to, the Star League died with Kerensky. The Terran Supremacy is just as it sounds. It is an entity driven to crush and oppress all who are not Terran. It's no revival of the Star League. It's barely different from the Draconis Combine.

DarthRads · « **Reply #71 on:** 17 May 2016, 01:18:02 »

Quote from: Maingunnery on 16 May 2016, 07:23:23

Well there were several established colonies nearby, maybe he heard of them but didn't know their exact location?

Given proximity, the Tanite system might have been his goal, but he turned right instead of left at that last intersection...

Vition2 · « **Reply #72 on:** 17 May 2016, 01:33:17 »

I always got the impression that Kerensky had a general idea of where he wanted to go, but the exact distance was somewhat in flux. The Pentagon worlds happened to be one of the locations he may have known about but may only have become his primary choice as the dissatisfaction of ship life began to seriously grate on the fleet. From what I can recall, the Pentagon worlds had been discovered previously and known to be "livable" but only the most preliminary of information about the worlds had been attained.

ANS Kamas P81 · « **Reply #73 on:** 17 May 2016, 08:04:44 »

Now there's a whif for you. Instead of going to the Pentagon, the Fleet finds Strana Mechty first and decides to colonize it alone. One world for 3 million people is much, much more than enough - and instead of barely hospitable hellholes, it's a paradise.

What then?

False Son · « **Reply #74 on:** 17 May 2016, 08:20:03 »

Quote from: ANS Kamas P81 on 17 May 2016, 08:04:44

What then?

A somewhat similar mess, as far as i can see it. Ethnic divisions, mass demobilization and Kerensky's inability to run a civilian government were the main contributors to the Second Exodus. But, if conditions on Strana Mechty were better than the Pentagon Worlds and the Second Exodus either delayed or avoided altogether there would be no Clans. Keresnky Sr had to die after he made the case for the Second Exodus, but before he could found a second society.

Maingunnery · « **Reply #75 on:** 17 May 2016, 11:56:13 »

Quote from: False Son on 17 May 2016, 08:20:03

A somewhat similar mess, as far as i can see it. Ethnic divisions, mass demobilization and Kerensky's inability to run a civilian government were the main contributors to the Second Exodus. But, if conditions on Strana Mechty were better than the Pentagon Worlds and the Second Exodus either delayed or avoided altogether there would be no Clans. Keresnky Sr had to die after he made the case for the Second Exodus, but before he could found a second society.

Poor conditions fuel ethnic conflicts, so I would expect a more general rebellion against the local government.

glitterboy2098 · « **Reply #76 on:** 17 May 2016, 22:19:13 »

Quote from: DarthRads on 17 May 2016, 01:18:02

Given proximity, the Tanite system might have been his goal, but he turned right instead of left at that last intersection...

which for some reason was labelled "Albuquerque" on the charts

Quote from: Rtifs on 16 May 2016, 11:23:09

What was the point of staying? To press his own claim as First Lord?

actually there were surviving members of the McKenna family, the descendants of the first Director-general of the TH and cousins to the Cameron royal line. with all the Cameron's gone, the surviving TH/SLDF units could have championed on of the McKenna's to be the new leader of the Terran Hegemony. alternately, he could have done like what happened to set the Cameron's on the throne in the first place.. declared a military emergency to secure the borders, and buy time for a council to be formed to select eligible candidates, then hold a general election.

pushing for anyone in first lordship would have had to wait till the succession crisis for the Hegemony was ironed out. and to be fair.. Kerensky had no real claim to the TH's throne.. and to be First Lord you had to be the leader of a nation, so he couldn't legally push for First Lordship himself. not without having to fight more than half his own troops as well as the successor states. though had a Mckenna or other successor to the TH throne been sorted out, he could have used the TH's greater technological edge to help that new leader negotiate who would get the first lordship, and other adjustments to the star league organization.

marauder648 · « **Reply #77 on:** 17 May 2016, 23:26:16 »

I know that Kerensky took the families of those who came with him, but did he take along any administrators or anything like that or was it all soldiers/military personnel and their dependents?

solmanian · « **Reply #78 on:** 18 May 2016, 06:08:04 »

Quote from: ColBosch on 11 May 2016, 19:43:08

I am firmly behind the hypothesis that Kerensky acted selfishly at the end. If he couldn't save the Star League, he at least could've acted to protect the Terran Hegemony and Rim Worlds Republic. History is often kind to those who assume tyrannical powers to preserve their nations, as with Caesar, Lincoln, and McKenna. His forces - even those technically on loan from the other Great Houses - were loyal enough to follow him into the Deep Periphery, so I don't doubt that he would've had their support to preserve the Hegemony, perhaps by declaring a "Star League-in-abstentia." Davion, Steiner, and Liao wouldn't have pushed him, Marik really wasn't that strong at the time, and Kurita wasn't so stupid as to invade against overwhelming odds.

But Kerensky was tired of fighting, and he would have had to fight. That he would've won is irrelevant to him. Look at his overreactions to the Prinz Eugen mutiny and the outbreak of civil unrest in the Pentagon cluster, or even how he condoned crippling the THAF bureaucracy after the Amaris Civil War. Those were not the actions of the once-great general and student of history, but instead those of a tired, frustrated old man. I have nothing against a combat-weary veteran wishing for nothing more than to retire, but when the lives of trillions are at stake, one should show more intestinal fortitude. He didn't even appoint someone to represent the Terran Hegemony at the final Star League conferences!

No, when history demanded more from him than an ability to lead troops in battle, he folded and ran away.

While the name is not in front of me, IIRC Kerensky did try to reinstall the geriatric former director general of the TH, as well as recommending him as a candidate as the new first lord. The house lord had a good laugh and flat out turned him down, even refusing to recognize the guy as director general, let soon first lord...

Kit deSummersville · « **Reply #79 on:** 18 May 2016, 07:45:31 »

Quote from: marauder648 on 17 May 2016, 23:26:16

I know that Kerensky took the families of those who came with him, but did he take along any administrators or anything like that or was it all soldiers/military personnel and their dependents?

Armies have a whole bunch of administrators who have a rank and can use a gun.

marauder648 · « **Reply #80 on:** 18 May 2016, 15:43:26 »

Quote from: Kit deSummersville on 18 May 2016, 07:45:31

Armies have a whole bunch of administrators who have a rank and can use a gun.

Oh I know, I was one :p But what i'm talking about is proper administrators from the civil sector and the like.

ColBosch · « **Reply #81 on:** 18 May 2016, 15:47:39 »

Quote from: marauder648 on 18 May 2016, 15:43:26

Oh I know, I was one :p But what i'm talking about is proper administrators from the civil sector and the like.

Not many. Most bureaucrats were driven out of office, if not arrested or lynched, for being "collaborators" with Amaris. It's a huge part of why the Terran Hegemony collapsed.