How effective were the reforms made in Russia by Stolypin during the period of 1905 to 1914?

How effective were the reforms made during the period of 1905 to 1914?

During this period of nine years, many people had the power to make reforms in which would change the country for the better. With the combination of the Tsar, Stolypin and the four Duma’s appointed, none of these were successful in setting up an effective reform, as none of them were either not given much of a chance or they required to long of a period to settle in to a make a difference, which would benefit the country.

        After the devastating actions of Bloody Sunday, the tsar had been given two choices, which was to repress or reform. To stay in control, he had chose to reform, as he thought that he could control the situation by creating useful reforms. He had started of with the October Manifesto, a legislation which consisted of a number of points, one of which were that, the all mighty tsar gave the people of Russia freedom of speech, religion and assembly along with freedom of organisation. It also had promised an elected assembly, very much like the Houses Of Parliament, though this had been given the name of the Duma. The last aspect of the legislation was that all redemption fees’ to be paid would now be cancelled. The reform on paper look’s quite successful and effective due to that it applied to all classes in the Russian ranking. Though the picture that people fail to see is that it did not really have much of an effect or an achievable outcome, or as Trotsky put it “… was a whip wrapped in parchment of a constitution.” This reform proved to be so ineffective due to the fact that it had clearly contradicted itself and was proved by the actions of Stolypin when he had organised the arrest of the members of the St Petersburg, in the following month after the reform was made. It was also ineffective due to the fact that it had now given many minor groups the freedom to talk against the tsar, which could have proved costly for him-self. The reform also is known for its weakness because of the Duma. The fact that it was promised to the people was fulfilled, however after four tries was a duma there for a long period. Even though it was there, they were put into strict limitations for what they were able to do. For instance, they were stopped passing religious laws related to toleration. Therefore, in that sense the idea of introducing a duma, the lower house of the assembly, was not really an effective reform for they were not given much of a say in how the country should be run. Though obviously the duma are not to blame for this due to the limitations that they had by the tsar. The last intention of the October manifesto was to cancel the redemption fees. Tsar knew that there was only a short period left to pay these fees of, therefore he decided to end them. This was a pointless and unmeaning reform due to the fact that the fee’s for the land that was introduced in 1855 and mostly the entire amount had been paid off. The Manifesto failed as an attempt of an effective reform because not enough time had gone into the planning of the manifesto and it was made up of contradictions, which had made the whole reform meaningless.