The Russian Revolution

A5: Reform and Reaction in Russia, 1855-1917

Reform

What was Russia like in 1855

·  Russia was the largest of the Great Powers in the nineteenth century.

·  The government of Russia was in the hands of the Tsar. He was an autocrat, which meant that he had complete power. The only way to oppose him was by a revolt or demonstrations.

·  The Tsar expected complete loyalty from all of his subjects. The Russian people referred to him as ‘Father’ and he tended to treat them as his children

·  Russia was also a very backward country. There was very little industry and transport was very slow.

·  All over Russia peasants worked on the land as they had for hundreds of years. Russian peasants were serfs.

·  Peasants had small plots of land that they worked for themselves, but also had to work on the rest of the land for the landlord.

·  Serfdom meant that Russian peasants were desperately poor and had very little freedom.

·  The Tsar and the members of his court were fabulously wealthy, so that the differences between rich and poor were greater than in any other country in Europe.

Why were changes made after 1855?

·  The Crimean had been a disaster. The Russian railways and roads were just not good enough to move large numbers of men and convoys of goods.

·  At the Treaty of Paris in 1856, Russia was forced to give up land on the west coast of the Black Sea and had to agree to withdraw all of its warships from the Black Sea.

·  Alexander II was well aware that Russia was in crisis and wanted to act quickly. He believed that failing to introduce reforms could well lead to a revolution.

What was the Emancipation of the Serfs?

·  The Tsar’s plan was that serfs should be given their freedom with land and he offered landowners compensation from the state if they agreed to end their rights. Most landowners were completely against this.

·  Most landowners were in debt and the money they received from the government would just be used to pay off what they owed.

·  Alexander set up a government committee to plan the overall changes. Eventually figures for compensation were worked out.

·  Each landowner would receive 80 percent of his compensation from the government and the peasants would become free men with land.

Why was emancipation unpopular?

·  Under the Edict, peasants were given the small plots of land that they had worked for themselves in the past.

·  Peasants had to repay the government for the cost of compensation. The payments would last for forty-nine years.

·  The local village commune (mir) had to collect dues, taxes and repayments, but also controlled crop rotations and the use of fields.

·  Communes controlled the movement of people. Peasants had little more freedom than they had had before emancipation.

·  Emancipation did little to free the peasants from the control of their landlords.

What happened in the reform of Local Government and Central Government

·  In January 1864 Alexander set up district councils (zemstva). The councils were supposed to look after road-building, education and medical services.

·  Alexander set up new courts which used trial by jury. Judges were paid salaries, which meant that they were not likely to be bribed.

·  In 1870 municipal government was reformed. Towns were allowed self-government through councils elected by people owning property.

·  In 1874 the army was reformed. In future all people would be treated equally as far as recruitment was concerned. All conscripts would have to serve six years in the army and nine years in the reserve.

What was not changed?

·  Power remained in the hands of the Tsar. He alone could appoint ministers and announce laws.

·  Although Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861, he never believed that they should have any real say in the way that Russia was governed.

How did Alexander II’s policies change in 1870-81

·  As Alexander got older became less inclined to introduce reforms.

·  He wanted to retain all of the power that he had inherited as Tsar, but at the same time allow his subjects a little more freedom of action. F

·  For the ordinary people of Russia, little actually changed.

·  Alexander became very involved in the ideas of Pan-Slavism. He came to believe that Russia should put itself forward as the protector of all of the Slavs in eastern Europe and in particular in Bulgaria.

·  The threats from revolutionary groups meant that the role of the secret police, the Okhrana, became more and more important.

·  Alexander himself was assassinated in 1881 by a terrorist bomb.

·  Alexander III abolished many of the reforms introduced by his father and began a policy of repression.

·  He also began to try to ‘Russify’ border provinces. This meant forcing them to adopt Russian customs and the Russian language.

·  Alexander III’s reign encouraged Russians who distrusted western ideas to believe that Russian traditions were better. This in turn meant that they rejected democracy and clung to autocracy.

What attempts at change were there in 1906-14?

·  Nicholas II was weak willed and easily led. Ho governed with a small group of advisers at court.

·  Nicholas took little notice of the revolutionary groups that began to attack and murder members of the royal family in the early 1900s.

·  Any proposals by representatives of the zemstva were immediately rejected.

·  In 1904 the Union of Liberation was created by lawyers and businessmen. It called for a constitution in Russia. Nicholas took no notice of the protests until, in 1905, protest boiled over into revolution.

What was the 1905 Revolution?

·  The 1905 revolution was a protest against the Tsar’s autocratic government. Trade unions, the middle class, zemstva and workers in the big cities all joined the movement.

·  Nicholas survived because the army remained loyal.

·  In October 1905 he was forced to announce the October Manifesto. He promised to set up a constitution and create a parliament (Duma).

·  The Duma met in 1906 but was closed by Nicholas after seventy-two days. Three more Dumas met in the next ten years, but each had fewer powers and was elected on a narrower franchise.

·  Laws continued to be promulgated by the government without reference to the Duma.

·  Nicholas had probably never intended to honour his promises. He had been forced to agree to the Manifesto under threat of force. In it he deliberately omitted any reference to the word 'constitution' and retained the word 'Autocrat'.

What changes were made from 1906 to 1914?

·  In 1906, Nicholas II appointed Peter Stolypin as Prime Minster. He tried to modernise Russia. In November 1906 he abolished the landholding system of the commune.

·  Stolypin was murdered in 1911 and Nicholas did not continue his policies. He thought that Russia had turned the corner and allowed himself to be influenced by conservatives.

·  From 1912 unrest in Russia began to grow alarmingly. Strikes became more and more common and the police and army had to be called in to keep order.

·  The growing influence of Rasputin also made Nicholas unpopular. He became very important after the Tsar made himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1915. Nicholas left Petrograd and never returned.

Reaction

Why did opposition to Tsarist rule develop in the 1870s-80s?

·  Autocracy did not allow people any legal way of complaining or protesting.

·  Many people had had high hopes that Alexander’s reforms would lead to some form of democracy in Russia, but when the changes dried up in the 1870s they began to turn to other forms of protest.

·  In 1876, a secret society called ‘Land and Liberty’ was formed. It tried to encourage the peasants to rebel against the communes, but was not particularly successful.

·  The ‘People’s Will’ was a terrorist movement which was prepared to use violence against the government. It began to plan to assassinate government ministers and even the Tsar himself.

·  During the reign of Alexander III opposition groups were suppressed. This continued during the reign of his son Nicholas II.

·  In 1898 the Social Democratic Party was set up in Russia by Georgi Plekhanov. The Social Democrats were Marxists. They tried to gain support from the workers in Russia’s industrial cities.

·  In 1901 the Socialist Revolutionaries were founded. They were also Marxists, but believed that the key to success was winning the support of the peasants. They assassinated the Grand Duke Sergei, the uncle of Nicholas II, and Plehve, the Minister of the Interior.

·  Nicholas II showed no intention of taking any notice of all of these protests. He was not prepared to listen to reason, so violence would have to be used.

Why did opposition become more important?

·  In 1903 the Social Democrats met at a congress in London. There were two main leaders of the Party. Georgi Plekhanov, the founder of the Party, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the more radical wing.

·  Vladimir Lenin was the son of a schoolmaster and was determined to overthrow the Tsar by any means.

·  Plekhanov believed that the Social Democrats should win power peacefully.

·  When the members of the Party assembled in London there were more supporters of Lenin than there were of Plekhanov. But in the Party as a whole, there were many more people who supported Plekhanov.

·  Lenin wanted a small Party of people who were totally committed to the idea of revolution. Plekhanov on the other hand was prepared to allow any one into the Party who opposed the Tsar.

·  The result was a split. The majority of the people at the London Congress supported Lenin and broke away from the rest to form the Bolsheviks (the majority). The remainder supported Plekhanov and became known as the Mensheviks (the minority).

·  Lenin now had a party that was completely loyal to himself. When the opportunity arose, he would be able to use that support in any way that he wanted.

What was Russia like under Nicholas II?

·  At the beginning of the twentieth century Russia was a very backward country. Only 2 percent of the population worked in industry.

·  80 percent worked in agriculture, which was often very primitive, and there was 80 percent illiteracy.

·  In Russia there were extremes of wealth and poverty, far greater than in any other European country.

·  The number of people living in the cities of St Petersburg and Moscow nearly doubled between 1880 and 1914. This led to overcrowding, shortages of food and unrest.

·  Tsar Nicholas II was weak and easily influenced by others. Even when he took the right decision, for example after the 1905 Revolution, he changed his mind later on.

·  In the 1880s, Sergei Witte encouraged Russian industry to develop for almost the first time. Witte began to borrow money from French banks to pay for new factories in the big cities. The city that was affected most of all was St Petersburg, the capital.

·  The factories which were built in areas near the centre of St Petersburg attracted thousands of industrial workers.

·  As more and more workers flooded in to find work in St Petersburg, they found themselves living squashed together in crowded blocks of flats

·  The result was more strikes, rising food prices and unrest. These were just the conditions were going to encourage people to support Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Why was there a revolution in 1905?

·  In 1904 Russia went to war with Japan. The result was a humiliating defeat, which led the protests in 1905. The first, and in many ways the most important was ‘Bloody Sunday’.

·  On 9 January 1905 a procession of Russian workers marched on the Winter Palace, the residence of the Tsar in St Petersburg.

·  Tsar Nicholas II was not in the Winter Palace at the time, but his troops opened fire on the crowd. It is difficult to be certain about the number of casualties. At least 200 were killed and 800 wounded.

·  Bloody Sunday was the first of a series of events, which led to the 1905 Revolution. It seemed to show that the Tsar had little or no interest in the lives of his people, and it led to an outbreak of terrorism and unrest.

·  In March 1905, 89,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the battle of Mukden with the Japanese.

·  In May 1905, the Russian Baltic Fleet was destroyed by the Japanese navy at the battle of Tsushima.

The Russian Revolution of 1905

·  The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a spontaneous protest at the rule of Nicholas II.

·  The Union of Unions demanded parliamentary government and universal suffrage. This was followed by widespread unrest throughout Russia from June to August.

·  20 October a general strike began, which rapidly spread throughout the country.

·  26 October the St Petersburg Soviet was formed.

·  The Tsar acted and on 30 October published the October Manifesto.

What was the October Manifesto?

·  Civil liberties for all people, including freedom from arrest and freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association