then he died and the reforms necessary were done by communists
Duchess of Marlborough asked Czar Nicholas II why Russia wasn't a democracy. His reply:
There is nothing I would like better, but Russia is not ready for democratic government. We are two hundred years behind Europe in the development of our national political institutions. Russia is still more Asiatic than European and must therefore be governed by an autocratic government.
He went on to explain his absolute power, his daily separate audiences with ministers (no cabinet), and his fears about Russia’s vast, ignorant, superstitious, and fatalistic population.
Source: The Glitter and the Gold (a 1953 memoir)