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Theme 1 : The nature of autocratic rule: the Tsarist principles of autocracy, nationality and orthodoxy; the oppression of nationalities; anti-semitism; the Okhrana.

Activity 1 The nature of autocratic rule: the Tsarist principles of autocracy, nationality and orthodoxy; p284-286..

Role 1: Textbook Researcher and scribe.

Developments Explanation and Analysis

Autocracy In early 1917, more than 300 years of Tsarist rule in Russia came to an abrupt end when Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate. Nine months later. after a turbulent intervening period, the Bolsheviks - soon to rename themselves the Communists - seized power. The events of 1917 were to have momentous consequences in both Russia and the wider world. Within Russia, the revolution led first to civil war and then to economic transformation and brutal dictatorship under Josef Stalin. In the wider world, the events of 1917 inspired communists in other countries, notably China, and left anti Communists deeply alarmed. The revolution gave rise to tensions and conflicts between Russia and the major capitalist powers. which persisted until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. The Russian Revolution is unquestionably one of the most important events of modern world history.

Autocracy is a form of government in which one person possesses unlimited power. Nicholas II's commitment to the principle of autocracy, like that of his predecessors, was rigid and unwavering. He believed that his right to wield unlimited power derived from the will of God and was therefore beyond challenge. He further believed that his diverse and unruly empire could not survive without the firm hand that an autocratic system could provide. Unsurprisingly, he viewed with contempt calls for reform that involved diluting the autocratic principle: early in his reign he dismissed them as 'senseless dreams'.

Late 19th-century Russia was the most autocratic state in Europe. There were no formal checks of any kind on the Tsar's power. Russia did not have a constitution setting out what the tsar could and could not do. There was no parliament -laws in Tsarist Russia were made by the tsar issuing decrees.• There were no legal safeguards protecting the rights of individuals.• Russia was governed on a day-to-day basis by ministers who were appointed by, and accountable to, the tsar.As a ruler, Nicholas II's main strength was his sense of duty. Set against this were many weaknesses. He was naive (he believed until the end that the vast majority of his people were devoted to him) and indecisive. He fussed over trivialities and failed to address bigger issues. In addition, he distrusted many of the politicians and officials with whom he had to deal, regarding them as devious and self seeking. Lacking drive and imagination, Nicholas II failed to offer Russia effective leadership

The Tsar's power In the late 19th century, Tsarism was being undermined by a number of long-term developments. The preconditions of revolution in Russia were in place before Nicholas II became tsar in 1894. The legacy of Alexander ll's 'Great Reforms' intended to strengthen Tsarism, the 'Great Reforms' (the most important of which was the abolition of serfdom in 1861) had the opposite effect. In key respects, they failed to live up to the hopes and expectations of the Russian people: the result was disillusionment with the Tsarist regime. Disillusionment with the regime was nowhere stronger than in the Russian countryside. It arose out of the land settlement that accompanied the abolition of serfdom. Before 1861, serf-owners typically made some of the land on their estates available to their serfs to cultivate for subsistence purposes. Over time, serfs came to regard this land as theirs by right. In 1861, they expected to acquire it free of charge. Instead they were made to pay for it.


The terms were harsh and the repayment period long (49 years): bitterness in rural Russia over the 1861 land settlement therefore persisted into the reign of Nicholas II.

IndustrialisationStarting from a low base, the industrial sector of the Russian economy developed rapidly in the later 19th century. The Tsarist regime actively promoted industrial development, fearing that without it Russia would lose its Great Power status. By doing so, however. it stored up trouble for itself In Russia, as elsewhere, industrialisation led to the emergence of an urban working class. Tsarist Russia's working class, wrestling with harsh living and working conditions, was sullen, resentful and volatile. It was small in number -around three million, or just over two percent of the total population, by the 1890s - but its influence in Tsarism's crisis years was out of all proportion to its size because it was concentrated in the major cities alongside the nerve centres of government and administration.

Population explosionAt the time of the abolition of serfdom, the population of the Russian Empire was 74 million. !3y 1914, it was 164 million. One consequence of this population explosion was to add to tensions in the countryside. With more mouths to feed, peasants, who made up more than 80 percent of the population, desperately wanted to acquire extra land, but they lacked the financial means to do so. Some government help was made available through the Peasant Land Bank, founded in the 1880s, but it was not enough to satisfy peasant 'land hunger'. 'Land hunger' was one of the main drivers of peasant discontent during the revolutionary era.

NationalismThe Russian Empire was a multi-national state - that is, a country containing people of many different nationalities. Russians were the dominant nationality and the others were subject nationalities. In some parts of the Empire there was intense hostility to what was seen as alien Russian rule. This was true of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and, above all, Poland. The level of support in these places for national independence posed a serious threat to the Empire's stability

Weaknesses of the Tsar and the crisis of modernity

In the late 19th century the Tsarist regime found itself confronted with a disaffected peasantry, aggrieved urban workers and an educated middle class calling for political change. This situation arose in no small part out of its own urge to modernise Russia, to equip it with the kind of institutions and economy that would enable it to keep abreast of the advanced countries of western Europe. What Tsarism faced, says one historian (S.A. Smith), was 'a crisis of modernisation'. It was a crisis with which it proved unable to cope. The first ten years of Tsar Nicholas II's rule were less turbulent than those which followed. There were, however, clear signs during these relatively quiet years that Russia's 'crisis of modernisation' was intensifying.

• The 1890s saw a quickening in the pace of industrial growth in Russia. One historian (Hans Rogger) has spoken of 'the great industrial spurt of the 1890s'. The main growth hubs were Baku on the Caspian Sea (oil), the eastern Ukraine (coal, iron and steel), Moscow (textiles and engineering) and St Petersburg (also textiles and engineering). Total industrial output doubled in Nicolas II's first ten years as tsar.

• The industrial boom was accompanied by fast-paced urbanisation. The populations of St Petersburg and Moscow increased by 25 percent in the 1890s. Most of the new city-dwellers were industrial workers.

• Disaffected urban workers resorted to strike action with increasing frequency in the 1890s and early 1900s, despite the fact that, under Russia's harsh Penal Code, strikes and trade unions were illegal. The highest-profile individual stoppages were the 1896 and 1897 textile workers.


• Unrest was not confined to the cities. The early 1900s saw outbreaks of serious peasant rioting in the fertile 'Black Earth' region in the southern part of European Russia. Landowners' estates were attacked, looted and burned. The government bore at least some of the responsibility for these disturbances. Its policy, in effect, was to make the peasantry pay for its industrialisation programme by imposing higher taxes on basic consumer items such as alcohol, sugar, tea, heating oil and matches. Some government officials feared that this squeeze on an already hard-pressed peasantry would lead to trouble, and they were proved right. The assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 by the 'People's Will' terrorist organisation was followed by a ferocious government crackdown on radicals and agitators. Tsarism's opponents were scattered and driven underground. In the 1890s, however, they began to regroup and re organise. The Bund, a Jewish socialist party based in Poland, was established in 1897, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1898 and the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1902. In 1902, the Combat Organisation, a terrorist group linked with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, launched an assassination campaign targeting senior government officials. Its most prominent early victims were Drnitry Sipyagin, the minister of the interior, in 1902 and Sipyagin's successor, Vyacheslav von Plehve, in 1904.

Orthodoxy Orthodoxy in this case refers to the Russian Orthodox Church and its role and status within the Russian Empire. Orthodoxy was the religion of the tsars and the Orthodox Church was the spiritual wing of the Tsarist regime. The Orthodox Church was firmly under state control: it was run by a government department headed by a minister whose title was Procurator of the Holy Synod. As a state-controlled institution, it did the state's bidding: in its various pronouncements it preached the need for obedience to the tsar's authority. At the end of the 19th century, the Church's value to the Tsarist regime was diminishing. It was an institution in decline: the reputation of its priests, often drunken and corrupt, was low and it was struggling to get a hearing in Russia's fast-growing towns and cities.

Nationality Nationality was a doctrine about Russia and its place within the tsar's Empire. It made two key claims. The domination of the tsar's multi-national Empire by Russia and the Russians was an entirely right and proper state of affairs. Russians, it was argued, had built the Empire and were therefore entitled to control it. Russia and the Russians were unique, separated from the peoples of Western Europe by a distinctive language, religion and culture. As a result, claimed supporters of Tsarism, liberal and socialist ideas had no place in Russia because they were un-Russian. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the doctrine of Nationality provided a justification for the regime's 'Russification' policies.


Activity 2 The nature of autocratic rule: the oppression of nationalities; p290



What was Russification? The oppression of nationalities in late 19th and early 20th-century Russia took the form of Russification. Russification was a policy launched by Alexander III {1881-94) and continued under Nicholas II.

Russification was an attempt to impose Russia's language, culture and religion or1 the Empire'snon-Russian minorities. It was implemented most aggressively in those parts of the Empire where nationalist feeling was strong. This was in the north-western borderlands (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland) and, to a lesser extent, the Caucasus region.

Poland and the Baltic States In Poland and the Baltic provinces, the use of the Russian language in court proceedings and in school lessons became compulsory, despite the fact that it was not the native language of most people in these places.

The Role of the Orthodox Church The Orthodox Church was given government money to support its efforts to convert non-Russians to Orthodoxy. Meanwhile, churches that had deep roots in non-Russian areas were bullied and harassed. In the Baltic provinces, no new Protestant church could be built without government permission. In Armenia, the government in 1903 issued a decree confiscating the property of the Armenian Church, provoking demonstrations that culminated in troops opening fire on a crowd at Gandzak, killing 10 and wounding 70.

Limitations to Russification Russification was a counter-productive policy. Its aim was to halt the growth of nationalist movements in non-Russian areas. Instead, it aroused resentment within minority nationalities and stimulated the growth of nationalism.


Activity 3 The nature of autocratic rule: anti-semitism; p290-291



Acquisition of Poland The Russian Empire acquired its Jewish population when Russia seized control of large parts of the previously independent Kingdom of Poland in the late 18th century. By 1900, there were nearly five million Jews in Russia. Virtually all of them (there were a few exceptions, including Jewish university graduates) were compelled by law to live within what was known as the Pale of Settlement, a demarcated zone stretching along Russia's western border.

Pale of Settlement No minority suffered more at the hands of the Tsarist regime than Russia's Jews. Anti-Semitic prejudice was endemic in government circles and gave rise to harsh discriminatory policies, especially in the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II. In the 1880s, Jewish access to higher education was severely restricted and Jews were banned from living in the Pale of Settlement's rural areas, forcing them into its towns and larger villages.

Tsar’s and anti-semitism and Pogroms A hostile government was not the only thing the Russian Empire's Jews had to fear. They also had to

contend with popular, grassroots anti-Semitism and the pogroms that, from time to time, a rose out of it.


Activity 4 The nature of autocratic rule: the Okhrana. p291



Tsar’s instruments of repression Tsarism had a number of instruments of repression at its disposal. It censored newspapers and other publications in an attempt to halt the spread of subversive ideas. In the event of large-scale disorder, it could turn to the army. At the forefront of its struggle against its internal enemies. however, was the Okhrana, Tsarism's political police force.

The role of the Okhrana The role of the Okhrana was to infiltrate and destroy revolutionary and terrorist networks. In this role it was generally effective, despite being a relatively small organisation: in 1900 there were only 2,500 full-time Okhrana agents in the whole of the Empire, one-third of them stationed in St Petersburg.

The use of informants The key to the Okhrana's success was its use of informants: in the early 1900s, the leadership of both the Socialist Revolutionary and the Social Democratic Parties were riddled with Okhrana agents.

Success of the Okhrana The Okhrana had a fearsome reputation, but it was nothing like as monstrous as the secret police forces of Stalin's Russia or Hitler's Germany: it was, for example, sparing in its use of torture.


Theme 2 : Opposition to Tsarism: unrest among peasants and workers; middle-class opposition and the League of Liberation; the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats; reasons for the lack of success of opposition groups.

Activity 1 Opposition to Tsarism: unrest among peasants and workers; p292



Outbreaks of peasant unrest PeasantsOutbreaks of peasant unrest in late 19th-century Russia were frequent but localised. They were not explicitly anti-government in character, even though government policies (redemption payments and high indirect taxes) were partly to blame for worsening conditions in the countryside. Usually it was local landowners who were targeted.

Causes of peasants unrest The underlying cause of peasant unrest was poverty and desperation. Environmental factors were one reason for rural poverty: in the northern districts of European Russia, the soil was poor and the growing season short, while in the 'Black Earth' region to the south the climate was erratic, leading to periodic crop failures and famine.

Agricultural inefficiency Another reason was methods of production. The norm in the villages of European Russia was strip farming where the land available was divided into three large open fields, with each household being allocated a number of strips in each of the fields by the village commune or mir. Periodically (every 10-15 years) strips were reallocated between households to ensure fairness. Strip farming was inefficient for a number of reasons.• Time was wasted moving from strip to strip.• Some land was wasted because it was left uncultivated to mark the borders between strips.

• Periodic reallocation of strips meant that households had no strong incentive to improve their land.• Crop rotation arrangements involved one of the three fields being left fallow each year, with the result

that only two-thirds of a village's land was under cultivation at any one time.Crop yields in Russia were very low by western European standards.

Workers Working class unrest at the turn of the century mostly took the form of strikes. These were often brutal affairs: the army was called out to deal with strikers almost 300 times in 1901, a figure that increased to over 500 the following year. The willingness of workers to strike was the result of their grim living and working conditions. Pay was low; hours were long, averaging around 60 a week; factory discipline was harsh, usually enforced with a system of fines; and, with scant provision being made for health and safety, workplace injuries were frequent. Nor was there much to look forward to outside the factory gates: workers were housed in overcrowded slums, which were breeding grounds for diseases like cholera and typhus.


Activity 2 Opposition to Tsarism: middle-class opposition and the League of Liberation; 293-294



Who were the Middle classes? Late 19th-century Russia's middle class -industrialists, businessmen and educated professionals such as doctors and lawyers- was small but fast-expanding.

What was the middle classes opinion of the Tsar?

Middle-class Russians were, broadly speaking, hostile to Tsarism. Their hostility had its roots in their attachment to liberal ideas. The educated middle class or 'intelligentsia' was strongly liberal in outlook: industrialists and businessmen tended to be more moderate.

Liberalism: Two core principles Liberalism in turn-of-the-century Russia had two core principles:

• A belief in ending autocracy through the adoption of a constitution that transferred power to democratically elected institutions and guaranteed basic rights such as freedom of speech.

• A belief in an economic system based on private enterprise rather than public ownership: liberals were often enthusiastic social reformers, but they were not socialists who wanted to see most or all economic activity controlled by the state.

Views of the Liberals on government

In addition, liberals had a strong preference for non-violent methods of bringing about political change. Moderate liberals usually saw a continuing role for the tsar as a British-style constitutional (or figurehead) monarch, but radical liberals often wanted Russia to become a republic.

Universities One stronghold of liberalism in the Russian Empire was its university system, which in the late 19th century was expanding fast in order to supply the developing Russian economy with the higher- level skilled personnel it needed. University expansion brought an increasing number of students into contact with liberal ideas. This in tum led to conflict between liberal-minded students and officialdom. The years 1899-1901 saw a series of clashes between university students and the Tsarist authorities, one of which left 13 student protestors dead. These events had a radicalising effect on a generation of students.

Zemstvos A second major stronghold of liberalism was the zemstva, Russia's elected local councils. In the 1890s the confidence of those associated with them was boosted by the contribution they made to relief efforts when famine struck southern Russia in 1891-92. Elected zemstvo members and technical experts, such as doctors and teachers who were employed by zemstva, began to call openly for a zemstvo voice in national affairs. They were left angry and frustrated by the government's refusal to enter into any sort of dialogue with them.

Union of Liberation In the early 1900s, left-wing elements among the zemstvo liberals joined forces with radicalised students and others in the Liberation Movement. A newspaper, Liberation, was founded in 1902: it was printed in Germany and smuggled into Russia. In 1904, at a secret meeting i n St Petersburg, the League (or Union) of Liberation was formally established. Paul Milyukov quickly emerged asits leading figure. In late 1904, with Russia at war with Japan, the League of Liberation launched its 'banquet campaign', hosting a series of public banquets in order, it claimed, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the introduction of trial by jury in Russia. In practice, the object of the 'banquet campaign' was to mobilise liberal opinion in support of political change. Even before the shooting of demonstrators by the army on 'Bloody Sunday' in January 1905, the political temperature was rising.


Activity 3 Opposition to Tsarism: the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats; page 298-301.



The Social Revolutionaries(SR’s)

FoundationThe Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) were the heirs of an ill-fated populist movement of the 1860s and 1870s. The populists were middle-class idealists who had aimed to form a political alliance with the peasantry in order to overthrow Tsarism and build a new democratic order in Russia on the basis of the village commune or mir. Internal divisions, peasant indifference and government repression put paid to the original populist movement. Many on the political left nevertheless remained wedded to the idea of a distinctly Russian and largely peasant-based form of socialism. This encouraged a new generation of would-be leaders to form the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1902.

The SRs' principal founders were Victor Chernov (1873-1952), Mikhail Gats (1866-1906), Grigory Gershuni (1870-1908} and Catherine Breshko-Breshovskaya (1844-1934), a veteran of the original populist movement who later became known as 'the little grandmother of the Russian Revolution'.

All of them were middle- or upper-class in background: Chernov was a qualified lawyer; Gots was the son of a prosperous Jewish merchant; Gershuni was a pharmacist, though his father had been a serf; and Breshko-Breshovskaya was the daughter of a wealthy landowner.

IdeasVictor Chernov was the Socialist Revolutionaries' leading theoretician. His ideas represented what might be called mainstream SR thinking.• Chernov was a socialist, but his socialism was of a distinctive kind. Russia's uniqueness as a country, he maintained, meant that it had to take its own special path towards socialism.• What was unique about Russia, said Chernov, was its vast peasant population and its peasant institutions, notably the mir. Expecting, and wanting, Russia to remain a largely peasant country, Chernov argued that Russian socialism had to be peasant-based and built around peasant institutions rather than worker-based as suggested by the philosopher Karl Marx.• Chernov envisaged a Russia that consisted of a vast number of largely self-governing village communities. These communities would own the land they farmed collectively. This belief in communal, rather than individual, ownership of land was a key feature of the SRs' socialism.• Chernov did not want political life in Russia to be dominated by an immensely powerful central government. Instead, he wanted to see the decentralisation of political power. There was more than a tinge of anarchism in the mainstream SR outlook.

MethodsThe Socialist Revolutionary Party saw the use of violence as a legitimate political weapon. Its leadership and rank-and-file were in principle united in their readiness to use force to overthrow Tsarism. In practice, however, there were differences of view about the circumstances in which the use of force was appropriate. Most mainstream SRs recognised that there was little chanceof a bloodless revolution in Russia and accepted, without relish, that violence would have to be used in the course of a revolutionary uprising. Others were prepared to see violence used prior to a revolution for the purpose of raising the SRs' profile and spreading fear and alarm within the governing class. This was the position of the extremist SRs who formed the SR Combat Organisation in 1902. Their preferred tactic was the assassination of government ministers and officials, carried out using either firearms or dynamite. 'An SR without a bomb is not an SR', claimed one Combat Organisation leader. The attacks his colleagues carried out in the early 1900s left the government unmoved, but did win the SRs some


support: in some quarters, the Combat Organisation's assassins were admired as selfless revolutionary heroes.

• Divisions within the SRs' ranks on the Combat Organisation's assassination campaign became apparent in 1906. A number of moderates who rejected the assassination campaign split from the SRs and established the Popular Socialist Party. At the other end of the spectrum, militants who advocated attacks, not only on government ministers and officials, but also on landowners and capitalists broke away from the main body of the SRs to form the SR Maximalists.

• In 1908, the SRs were rocked by scandal when the head of the Combat Organisation. Yevno Azef, was unmasked as an Okhrana spy. Following this revelation, the assassination campaign was suspended but the SRs did not renounce the use of violence as a political weapon.

The Social Democrats FoundationKarl Marx (1818-83} was a philosopher and economist of German descent whose ideas had, by the late 19th century, attracted a significant following in many European countries, Russia among them.Organised Russian Marxism made its first appearance with the establishment of the Liberation of Labour Group in 1883 by a group of political exiles, G.K. Plekhanov chief among them. In 1895, it merged with another exile group, the Union of Russian Social Democrats Abroad. Also in 1895, but inside Russia, Marxists in St Petersburg founded the Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class with the aim of radicalising the city's industrial workers. Its leaders were VI. Lenin (1870-1924), the son of a high-ranking civil servant, and Yuli Martov (1873-1923), who was brought up in a middle-class Jewish family. In 1898, representatives of these separate Marxist groups came together to form the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Lenin became active in the RSDLP's affairs on his return from a period of exile in Siberia in 1900 and, along with Martov, quickly took charge. In 1900, they started an underground newspaper, Iskra ('The Spark'), to disseminate their views.

IdeasMarxism is at root a theory about history and human progress. For Marx, history was driven by economic change and the conflict between social classes that arose out of it All societies, he maintained, passed through a series of stages, each with its own distinctive economic system and class structure. One stage gave way to another, said Marx, when new social classes were formed as a result of economic change and proceeded to challenge, and defeat, the existing ruling class. This process was not in any way dependent on chance or human agency: it was, in Marx's view, inevitable that history would unfold in this way. In his writings, Marx focused on three of these stages - feudalism, capitalism and communism- and on the transition from one to the other. Two revolutions were involved: a bourgeois revolution, which marked the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and a proletarian revolution, which saw the destruction of capitalism and ushered in the communist era.

The infant RSDLP quickly became mired in a bitter internal dispute about political strategy. One school of thought, taking the view that proletarian revolution in Russia was a long way off because it had yet to enter the capitalist stage of its development, argued that the party should in the interim focus on trying to bring about improvements in working-class conditions. Lenin took a different view. The outcome was the split of 1903.

The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks 'The RSDLP debated the issue of political strategy at its Second Congress, held in 1903 in Brussels and then, following police intervention, London. The Congress was attended by a mere 43 delegates.

'The specific issue on which the RSDLP split was a narrow one about the definition of a party member. Lenin wanted to restrict RSDLP membership to those committed to 'personal participation' in its work. His opponents, headed by Martov, called for membership to be open to anyone undertaking 'regular work' for the RSDLP or its associated organisations. Behind these rival formulas, though, lay more profound differences.


• Unlike his critics, Lenin believed that Russia was no longer a feudal country but a capitalist one, making out a case for this viewpoint in his book The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1896). It followed, said Lenin, that there was a realistic prospect of a proletarian revolution in Russia in the near future. In these circumstances, he argued, the RSDLP had to concentrate on making itself ready to seize the revolutionary moment For Lenin, this meant creating a close-knit party made up of hard-core professional revolutionaries operating under centralised leadership.

• Lenin's opponents, unpersuaded of the imminence of revolution, favoured a short-term RSDLP focus on promoting the development of trade unions in Russia. They were also open to the idea of co-operating with non-Marxists. In consequence, they wanted to see an RSDLP that was more inclusive and less highly centralised than anything Lenin could accept

Lenin won the day at the 1903 Congress. His followers became known as Bolsheviks (meaning majority), while Martov's were called Mensheviks (meaning minority). After 1903, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks developed as separate parties. The Mensheviks interpreted Marx's ideas in a rigid,orthodox fashion: the Bolsheviks, under Lenin's leadership, were more flexible, adapting Marx's ideasto suit their own purposes.


Activity 4 Opposition to Tsarism: reasons for the lack of success of opposition groups; page 301-302.



Social Factors Social factors• Russia's working class, upon whom Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and, to a lesser extent, the SRs, pinned their hopes, was numerically small (just over two percent of the population in the 1890s).• The obstacles in the way of organising the peasantry politically and welding it into a coherent political force were immense. Russia's peasantry (over 80 percent of the population) was scattered thinly across a vast land area, living in three-quarters of a million rural settlements. In addition, the country's transport network was primitive and communication between settlements was poor.• Levels of literacy in Russia were low. The 1897 census suggested that only 21 percent of the population could read. In these circumstances, one standard technique of political agitation - the distribution of pamphlets, newspapers and other forms of written propaganda - was of limited value.• The leaders of the socialist groups were middle- or upper-class intellectuals. It was not easy for them to reach across the class divide and win the confidence of workers and peasants whose way of life was utterly different from their own. The socialist groups were certainly not mass membership organisations in the early 1900s: estimates suggest that at this time the SRs, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks had at most no more than 40-50,000 full members apiece.

Repression Before 1905, opposition parties were illegal organisations that had to operate underground. They were further handicapped by laws restricting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. This inhospitable legal climate made it difficult for opposition groups to win support. The Okhrana was adept at infiltrating and destroying revolutionary networks. It was also cold blooded in the pursuit of its objectives: it almost certainly allowed some SR terrorist attacks that it could have prevented to go ahead in order not to blow the cover of its agents and informants.

Repression cut revolutionary leaders off from their followers. Virtually all of Russia's leading socialists were forced to live abroad following periods of imprisonment or internal exile to Siberia. In the early 1900s, Lenin, Martov, Chernov and Gots were living in western Europe, while Gershuni and Breshko-Breshovskaya were in the USA In these circumstances, it was difficult for opposition leaders to influence events in Russia. Note too that Okhrana surveillance and harassment of revolutionary leaders did not stop when they left Russia: the Okhrana had a Foreign Bureau based in Paris that kept tabs on those living in western Europe.

Repression did not begin and end with the political police. Also active in defending Tsarism against its opponents were the para-military Corps of Gendarmes (of which the Okhrana was nominally a part), the regular police and the army. In the years between 1894 and 1905, the army was frequently called in to break up strikes and demonstrations: 33 times in 1900, 271 times in 1901 and more than 500 times in 1902. There was more than one incident in which unarmed demonstrators were killed. In 1901, for example, 13 people died when mounted soldiers charged into a crowd of student demonstrators in St Petersburg

Lack of unity The differences between liberals and socialists were of a kind that made the formation of any kind of united front between them virtually impossible. Liberals and socialists were united in wanting to overthrow Tsarism, but the socialists wanted to overthrow capitalism as well. In addition, socialist groups were willing to use force to achieve their goals, whereas liberals disliked political violence, fearing that its use could open the way to lawlessness and anarchy in Russia.

The very different conceptions of socialism to which SRs and Marxists were committed was a


formidable barrier to co-operation between them.

There were divisions within each of the opposition groups that also limited their effectiveness. Some zemstvo liberals regarded Milyukov as too outspoken and preferred to follow the lead of the ultra-moderate Dmitrii Shipov; there were differences of opinion within the SRs on a range of issues, including the legitimacy of terrorist methods; and the RSDLP split into two more or less irreconcilable factions only five years after its establishment. These disputes within parties could be vicious and personalised: the terms Lenin used to describe fellow-socialists included 'cretins', bloodsuckers' and 'scum'.


Theme 3 : The 1905 Revolution: the impact of the Russo-Japanese war; Bloody Sunday; the spread of revolutionary activity among peasants, workers and national minorities; the St. Petersburg Soviet.

Activity 1 The 1905 Revolution: the impact of the Russo-Japanese war; page 303.



The Tsars aim for the Empire In one respect, the term '1905 revolution' is misleading. The turmoil that began in Russia in 1905 did not end within the year, but continued on into 1906 and beyond. Also, there is a case for arguing that the revolution began not in 1905, but in 1904 with the League of Liberation's 'banquet campaign' for constitutional reform. It was, however, during 1905 that the Tsarist regime found itself engaged in a fight for its life. By late 1905, its survival was more or less assured. What the regime had to contend with after 1905 was unco-ordinated rural protest, which, though serious, was not life-threatening.

Nicholas II's Russia was an expansionist power. It sought to extend its influence in south-eastern Europe at the expense of the declining Turkish Empire and, in the Far East, aimed to exploit the weakness of the ramshackle Chinese Empire. In particular, Russia had designs on the Chinese province of Manchuria. The attractions of Manchuria were its mineral wealth and the 'warm water' seaport at Port Arthur, which was open all year round (Vladivostok, Russia's main Pacific seaport, was iced over in winter).

Russia rivalry over Manchuria Russia's rival for influence in Manchuria was Japan, a rising military and industrial power. In the 1890s, relations between the two countries became increasingly tense. In 1895, following its victory over China in the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese war, Japan looked set to seize Port Arthur, but was forced to back-pedal by pressure from Russia and other European powers. In 1898, Russia arm-twisted China into giving it control of Port Arthur, infuriating Japan further. Attempts by the two countries in the early 1900s to settle their differences by negotiation failed. In early 1904, without warning, Japan attacked

The war Russia went to war i n 1904 under-prepared and over-confident. Nicholas II and his advisers viewed the Japanese as racial inferiors who would be easily swatted aside. Interior Minister Plehve reputedly claimed that a 'short, victorious war' would help the regime overcome its problems at home. In the event. Russia suffered a series of humiliating reverses.

• Japan laid siege to Port Arthur early in the war: in January 1905, it surrendered.• In February 1905, Russian land forces lost a hard-fought major battle at Mukden.• The greatest humiliation of all was Russia's defeat at the naval battle of Tsushima in May 1905.

With Russia's main naval force in the Pacific trapped in Port Arthur, Nicholas II ordered Russia's Baltic Fleet to sail round the world to do battle with the Japanese. After an eight-month voyage, it was annihilated, with only a handful of its 52 warships escaping sinking or capture.

Evaluation of the outcome of the war

The war was ended by the Treaty of Portsmouth, USA (September 1905), under which Russia agreed to abandon Port Arthur and its ambitions in Manchuria. Russia's military defeats, and the stories of bungling and incompetence that accompanied them, affected the domestic political situation in a number of ways.

• Liberal opinion was angered by the mishandling of the war and its hostility towards the regime intensified. Liberal leaders were aware that military setbacks aided their cause. 'The worse, the better', said more radical liberals.


• Aware that military failure left the regime wounded and vulnerable, liberals challenged it more boldly. The League of Liberation's banquet campaign, launched in late 1904, reflected this new assertiveness.• Economic life was disrupted. Unemployment and food prices rose, deepening working-class discontent


Activity 2 The 1905 Revolution: Bloody Sunday; Page 304.



What happened? In Russia, 1905 was a year packed with incident. Revolutionary episodes of one kind or another took place on a near-daily basis. These occurred in many different places.

Who were the people involved? In Russia, 1905 was a year packed with incident. Revolutionary episodes of one kind or another took place on a near-daily basis. These occurred in many different places. There is no one single thread of events that can be followed. Some generalisations are nevertheless possible.

• All of the main disaffected groups in Russian society (middle-class liberals, industrial workers. peasants) were involved. In addition, there were localised mutinies in the armed forces, notably on the battleship Potemkin in June 1905.• For the most part, these disaffected groups acted not in concert but in isolation from one another.'It seemed as though Russia was undergoing not one revolution but a series of parallel revolutions' one historian (Abraham Ascher) has stated. '

The role of Father Gapon

Impact of Bloody Sunday


Activity 3 The 1905 Revolution: the spread of revolutionary activity among peasants, workers and national minorities; pages 306-307.



Disaffected groups In Russia, 1905 was a year packed with incident. Revolutionary episodes of one kind or another took place on a near-daily basis. These occurred in many different places. There is no one single thread of events that can be followed. Some generalisations are nevertheless possible.

• All of the main disaffected groups in Russian society (middle-class liberals, industrial workers. peasants) were involved. In addition, there were localised mutinies in the armed forces, notably on the battleship Potemkin in June 1905.• For the most part, these disaffected groups acted not in concert but in isolation from one another.'It seemed as though Russia was undergoing not one revolution but a series of parallel revolutions' one historian (Abraham Ascher) has stated. '

Middle class Liberals Until the autumn of 1905, it was the middle-class liberals who were the dominant revolutionary force. They kept a shaken and uncertain government under continuous pressure until concessions were made, holding conferences, drafting petitions and forming new organisations, notably the Union of Unions, an association of groups representing different professions (including lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers). Once concessions were offered, middle-class liberalism lost some momentum - partly because some liberals thought they had won, but also because liberals began to fear that Russia was starting to slide into disorder and anarchy.

General Strike and role of Lenin In the latter part of 1905, the labour movement came to the fore. In October, a general strike broke out. It began with a walk-out by Moscow printers, spread to the railways and mushroomed from there. The general strike was initiated and dominated by industrial workers, although students and middle-class liberals involved themselves in it as well. The strike threw the government into crisis.

It also saw the rise to prominence of the St Petersburg Soviet, which for a short time had a higher profile than any other workers' organisation in Russia.

• The socialist parties and their leaders played a relatively small part in the events of 1905. Only Leon Trotsky, who became a leading figure in the St Petersburg Soviet, enhanced his reputation.

The countryside and Poland The countryside remained relatively quiet until the autumn of 1905. Large-scale disorder began only when peasants sensed that the Tsarist regime had lost its nerve. Disturbances in rural areas peaked in November and December, but were still going on in 1906 and even later. Peasant disorder mostly took the form of attacks on landowners' property. Land hunger lay behind these attacks: peasants aimed to drive landowners out of the countryside in the hope of gaining possession of their land.

Trouble in the Empire's north-western border areas, where nationalistic, anti-Russian feeling was intense, began early and continued throughout 1905. Poland, in particular, was a hotbed of revolutionary activity. Demonstrators clashed repeatedly with the Russian army and, on several occasions, lives were lost. The situation in Poland was so tense that over 250,000 Russian troops had to be deployed there to maintain order.


Activity 4 The 1905 Revolution: the St. Petersburg Soviet. Page 307



What was it? The St Petersburg Soviet was a council of elected representatives of the city's industrial workers. Members of the Soviet each represented around 500 workers. In October 1905, soon after its formation, the St Petersburg Soviet consisted of 562 representatives from 14 7 factories, 34 shops and 16 trade unions. Because the full Soviet was an unwieldy body, the decision was soon taken to form a 30-member Executive Committee. Nine of these people were nominees of the Mensheviks, Bolsheviks and SRs: the Soviet allocated each party three seats on the Executive Committee.

Its origins and changing role The St Petersburg Soviet began life as a strike committee. Its role was to organise and direct the October general strike in the capital. It quickly spawned imitators: within weeks of its formation, 50 other towns and cities in Russia had their own soviets.

When the general strike ended, the St Petersburg Soviet not only stayed in business but diversified. It published a newspaper. Izvestia; it established an armed militia to protect the city against counter revolutionaries; and it acted as a kind of unofficial local government body, distributing food and money to those in need. Above all, it engaged in political campaigning.

An armed force made up of ordinary citizens rather than trained professional soldiers.

Type of organisation The St Petersburg Soviet was an authentic working-class organisation, founded not by middle-class leaders of opposition groups but by grassroots activists. It ensured too that it retained its class identity: an attempt by the middle-class Union of Unions to affiliate with it was rebuffed. It was. however, increasingly dominated by the Menshevik faction on its Executive Committee and, in particular, by Trotsky.

The role of Trotsky and evaluation of the Soviet

Under Trotsky's influence, the St Petersburg Soviet campaigned for an eight-hour day and proclaimed its support for Polish rebels and mutineers in the Russian navy. In December 1905, the government, its confidence restored, hit back. The St Petersburg Soviet was disbanded following the arrest and imprisonment of its entire membership.


Theme 4 : Nicholas II’s response: the failure of the August Manifesto; the October Manifesto and the response of opposition groups; the crushing of the Moscow Uprising; the extent of the recovery of Tsarist power.

Activity 1 Nicholas II’s response: the failure of the August Manifesto; page 308.



Nicolas II reaction In the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Nicholas II was unperturbed, failing entirely to appreciate the seriousness of the situation that was developing around him. It required some straight talking by certain of his ministers to persuade him that Russia was on the brink of full-blown revolution. In these circumstances, Nicholas' first instinct was to rely on force to suppress agitation - an instinct reinforced by the murder in February of his uncle, Grand Duke Sergei, Governor of Moscow, by the SRs Combat Organisation. Reliance on force alone, however, was not a realistic option: agitation was too widespread to be easily contained and a large part of the army was engaged in fighting the Japanese. Grudgingly, Nicholas agreed to make concessions, if only to buy time

Government Promises In January. the government promised that an inquiry would be held into the grievances of St Petersburg's factory workers - a promise that it failed to keep. More importantly, it was announced in February that an elected assembly was to be established, which would be consulted before new laws were introduced. The interior minister, Alexander Bulygin, was given the task of drawing updetailed arrangements. Liberals were unimpressed: the tsar's concessions fell a long way short of the parliament and constitution they were demanding

Bulgyin’s Constitution Bulygin's detailed plan was set out in the 'August Manifesto', or 'Bulygin Constitution', published in August 1905. It had three key elements. The new elected assembly was to be called the Duma (a name deriving from the Russian verb

meaning to think or consider). The assembly was to be purely advisory or consultative: it would be given the opportunity to

discuss proposed new laws. but would have no power. There was to be a complex electoral system favouring peasants (reflecting the regime's belief in

their fundamental loyalty) and landowners. Urban workers, the national minorities, Jews and much of the intelligentsia were to be left without the vote.

Impact of the manifesto Some ultra-moderate liberals thought that the August Manifesto offered a basis for further negotiation, but almost everyone else on the opposition side dismissed it as totally inadequate. It was seen for what it was: a cosmetic proposal that left the essentials of Tsarism intact


Activity 2 Nicholas II’s response: the October Manifesto and the response of opposition groups; pages 308-309.



The General Strike The August Manifesto was quickly overtaken by events. In October, Russia was paralysed by a general strike. In desperation, Nicholas II turned to Witte, recently back from the USA, where he had negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth with Japan.

Role of Witte- two options! With the title of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Witte was now effectively Russia's prime minister. He advised Nicholas II that he had two choices: military rule or significant concessions. Reluctantly, Nicholas opted for concessions. 'There was no other way out than to cross oneself and give what everyone was asking for', he wrote to his mother.

Concessions The concessions took the form of the October Manifesto. It promisedguaranteed basic freedoms, notably1 freedom of speech, assembly and association. Freedom of association meant that trade unions and political parties were legalised2 a Duma with real power in that new laws could only come into force with the Duma's approval3 the extension of the right to vote in Duma elections to all classes of the population

Reaction to the October Manifesto

On the streets, the October Manifesto was greeted with enthusiasm. Crowds gathered to celebrate what appeared to be a great victory. The general strike was called off. Opposition leaders were left to ponder their next move.

Moderate liberals and business leaders welcomed the October Manifesto. It offered the kind of balance between monarchy and democracy they favoured: they disliked autocracy, but they also feared mob rule. Their willingness to work with the government to turn its promises into detailed arrangements found expression in the formation of a new political party, the Union of 17 October. At this point, the Octobrists (as they became known) and radical liberals parted company.

Radical liberals rejected the October Manifesto, claiming that it did not go far enough. What was required, they said, was the establishment of an elected assembly to draw up a constitution for a democratic Russia. Another reason for radical hostility to the October Manifesto was distrust of the government. As soon as calm returned, radicals predicted, the government would go back on its promises. In October 1905, radical liberals formed the Constitutional Democratic or Kadet Party. It effectively replaced the League of Liberation and the Union of Unions. Its leader was Paul Milyukov.

To the left of the radicals, the socialist parties denounced the October Manifesto even more strongly than the liberals. Trotsky was the Manifesto's most eloquent socialist critic.


Activity 3 Nicholas II’s response: the failure of the August Manifesto; the October Manifesto and the response of opposition groups; the crushing of the Moscow Uprising; Page 310.



Tsar divides and stops opposition In the autumn of 1905, by means of the October Manifesto, the Tsarist regime split middle- class liberalism and blunted the opposition - and bought itself some breathing space. A further development that cheered it was the emergence of an aggressive right-wing movement keen to take on the radicals and socialists.

The Union of Russian People The Union of Russian People was a political party founded in October1905 to defend the principles of 'Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality'. Closely linked with the

The role and impact of the Black Hundred

Union were para-military gangs known as the Black Hundreds. The Black Hundreds' main target was Russia's Jews, seen as plotting the Empire's downfall. In 1905-06, the Black Hundreds were heavily involved in organising anti-Jewish pogroms. The worst single pogrom took place in late 1905 at Odessa, where 800 Jews were murdered. There were close links between the Black Hundreds and the Tsarist regime. They were subsidised and supplied with weaponry by the Interior Ministry. At the local level, some police chiefs were involved in planning Black Hund red violence. Nicholas II made no secret of his support for the Union of Russian People

The crushing of the Moscow Uprising

By late 1905, the government felt strong enough to silence the increasingly belligerent St Petersburg Soviet. The capital's Soviet went down without a fight. Its counterpart in Moscow did not. In early December, urged on by its militant Bolshevik members, the Moscow Soviet called for a general strike to overthrow what it called 'the criminal Tsarist government'. It went on to distribute weapons to the city's workers. An armed uprising was clearly in the making.

The government's response was savage. Army units cleared the barricades that had been erected on Moscow's streets and used artillery fire to regain control of its working-class districts. When the street battles were over, the army engaged in reprisals: mass arrests, beatings and executions without trial. More than 1,000 people died in the Moscow Uprising.


Activity 5 Nicholas II’s response:the extent of the recovery of Tsarist power. Pages 311-312.



Tsar’s power by the end of 1905. By the end of 1905, the Tsarist regime was in a much stronger position than it had been during the 12-day general strike in October.

• Through the October Manifesto, it had won the qualified support of a section of the educated middle class (the Octobrists) and, by doing so, had divided Russia's liberals.• Working-class militancy and the soviets which arose out of it, arguably the biggest threat toTsarism in the autumn of 1905, had been crushed.• The armed forces, the nobility and the Orthodox Church had, for the most part, remained loyal to the regime.• Elements of the propertied classes had rallied to Tsarism's defence, forming the Union of Russian People and the Black Hundreds

The Electoral Law The regime had regained its confidence. One sign of its renewed confidence was the ruthlessness with which the Moscow Uprising was put down. Another was the electoral law, published in December 1905, which set out voting arrangements for the forthcoming Duma elections. The regime kept the promise made in the October Manifesto to extend the right to vote to classes of people denied it under the August Manifesto; but it also ensured that the electoral system would not be fully democratic. Under the new law, women, those under 25, soldiers and casual labourers had no voting rights. In addition, the complex system of indirect election that was adopted gave a hugely disproportionate amount of influence to landowners.

Limitations to the Tsar’s recovery Tsarism's recovery of power by the end of 1905 was, however, partial rather than complete.

• The October Manifesto made no difference to the situation in the countryside. Levels of peasant disorder in late 1905 remained high. The authorities were not in full control of large parts of rural Russia. There were also continuing problems with national minorities, especially the Poles.• Before the October general strike, Nicholas II's power was in theory unlimited. This was no longer the case after the publication of the October Manifesto. The promise to establish a Duma with a role in the law-making process diluted the autocratic principle. It was a promise Nicholas II bitterly regretted making but, in 1905, he did not feel himself to be in a strong enough position to go back on it.• The legalisation of trade unions and political parties promised by the October Manifesto meant that the regime now had to contend with open criticism and opposition, something to which it was not accustomed and certainly did not welcome

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Role 1: Textbook Researcher and scribe. - History at …historyattallis.weebly.com/uploads/4/5/7/9/4579542/to… · Web viewThe underlying cause of peasant unrest was poverty and