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Explanatory Notes
Social discontentment
For most of 1905, the Tsar was 'at war with his own people' - an
endless series of strikes, demonstrations, barricades, petitions and
political meetings. All groups joined in the protests: workers,
students, civil servants, teachers, doctors and even imperial ballet
dancers went on strike. The liberals, who were the most powerful
political opposition force at this time, demanded reforms in the
light of the shameful way the Tsar and his government had handled
the war and the economy. They demanded representative government and
elections. In addition, the national minorities, such as the Finns
and the Poles, demanded independence, while the Jews demanded equal
civil rights.
In many towns and cities, the workers started to form new
organisations, called soviets, to co-ordinate strikes. They were
loose organisations - workers' councils - to which workers were sent
to represent their factories. The most important was the St
Petersburg Soviet, which soon became an influential and powerful
body which threatened the government. By October, matters reached a
head as a general strike spread throughout major cities in Russia,
bringing the country to a standstill.
Letts Study aids
Long Term causes of the 1905 Revolution
Alexander III and Nicholas II ruled Russia with very conservative
political and social policies. They instituted a programme of rapid
state-led industrialisation. However they failed to solve the land
question at a time of rapidly increasing population. The social
changes brought about by rapid industrialization contributed to the
outbreak of revolution in 1905. This was aggravated by Russia's
humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
What you should include in your essay
Weak leadership of the Tsarist regime
„X Weak, indecisive tsar
„X Repressive government
„X No moves towards Constitutional government
„X Denied basic freedoms, e.g. free press, freedom to form
political parties
„X No concessions to nationalities - any protests repressed
1 The nature of Russian society
- The sheer backwardness of the society as revealed by the
defeat in the Crimean War
- The Emancipation Edict failed the question of the land -the
continuance of the 'mir' (commune) and burdensome redemption
payments for the peasants.
- The Zemstvo Law, the reform of the judiciary, of municipal
government, of the Army and of education Alexander II was not
appreciated by the Russian society. The reforms were obstructed by
a bureaucracy increasingly staffed with conservative noblemen.
Alexander's 'revolution from above' was only, at the very most, a
half-revolution because of his unwillingness to provide a proper
liberal regime with a representative parliament. He had refused to
introduce a national assembly to Russia. (He did not think it was
possible to apply Western liberal ideas in Russian society.)
- The assassination of Alexander II had a great impact on
Tsar Alexander III, who continued to rule Russia in the style of his
father, a government characterized by bureaucratic paternalism and
a strenuous upholding of the principles of Russian autocracy
- Censorship of the Orthodox religion, Russification, pogroms
against the Jews; the banning of opposition political groups, curbs
on education; the Land Captains were all examples of his repressive
policy
- There was a period of economic development and
industrialization under Sergei Witte. However he was assassinated
in 1911.
- In the f political opposition to the tsarist order grew
under Nicholas II
- Address the demands of the Social Revolutionaries, Liberals
and Social Democrats here. Explain the popularity of the Marxist
ideas in Russia during this period
Notes: One element of the anti-tsarist movement was the liberals.
The liberals were against the arbitrariness practiced by the tsar's
government with abandon. They demanded economic and social reforms.
The liberals working within the zemstvo institutions called for a
representative assembly. However their attempt to form a central
zemstvo organization was prohibited by the government. In a sense
the Russian government contributed to its problems by eliminating
the very groups on which it could have relied to reinvigorate its
administration and the people's loyalty.
Short Term Causes
- The impact of the Russo-Japanese War
- Note the role in it of the peasants, industrial workers and
the national minorities; the massacre of 'Bloody Sunday', the
October Manifesto, the soviets and the Fundamental Laws.
The ills of the Russian Agrarain Society
By the mid 19th century, 1855, the agrarian economy of Russia was
not able to sustain its state expenditure nor to provide the new
technology necessary to maintain its great power status. Russian
grain could not compete in its traditional European markets against
the new, highly productive agriculture being introduced in the
West. This was due in part to the the poor means of transportation
in Russia. As a result the income of the landed nobility declined
sharply and their indebtedness to the state reached crisis
proportions by 1855. The economic bases of the traditional
autocracy were disappearing.
Alexander II who became tsar in 1855, emancipated the serfs with
1861 Statute of Emancipation. It gave the peasants legal
emancipation and also the right to own their own land. But there
were notable drawbacks: the peasants were forced to make very large
redemption payments for any land other than their own personal
allotments; this was in the interest of the debtor nobility.
Secondly the new administrative system, the 'volost' courts etc.,
were still dominated by the land-holding nobility and was not
integrated with the national judicial system. The system of land
tenure remained communal. Thus the most serious obstacle to a
liberal/capitalist agricultural system was retained in the new
order. The result was the continued backwardness of agriculture.
The series of reforms after 1861, hailed as 'a revolution
from above', really only amounted to half-measures, because
Liberalism could not accomplish the task of bolstering up the
tsarist regime while modernizing society; and Russian society
reacted poorly to the reforms, or at least to many of them. For
instance, the increase in political terrorism after the reforms
dimmed liberal prospects.
The experience of Russian agriculture after Emancipation was
varied. In the Ukraine, and in the east, the Emancipation combined
with easier transport, did lead to increased grain production.
Grain exports went up steeply. But generally speaking, agriculture
remained backward, tied down by the communal system and the lack of
capitalist enterprise amongst the nobility. The result was the
continued impoverishment of a growing peasant population. Large
numbers of landed nobility became bankrupt. They gave up their land
in droves and became officials in the vastly expanded bureaucracy.
Liberals were thus swamped by this gentry-bureaucracy.
Examples of repression in Russia, 1881-1905
The regimes of Alexander III and Nicholas II was a combination of
the repression of political opposition, conservative social policy
and a state-led, forced industrialization. The bureaucracy became
jealous of any power base but itself. Soon enough, the Zemstvos
came under attack. In 1889 their contact with the peasants, the
Justices of the Peace, were abolished and replaced by a Land
Commandant who had to be a noble.
The universities were brought under the control of
inspectors once more (1884). Censorship was increased. All other
nationalities in the tsarist empire were subjected to Russification.
The first pogrom was in 1881. All political parties in opposition to
the regime were banned.
The regime, especially the Ministry of the Interior, followed a very
paternalist path in the interests of preserving the traditional
social hierarchy; there was no attempt made to abolish communal
tenure, in spite of arguments from the Ministry of Finance, because
Tolstoy at the Ministry of the Interior felt it was a major agent
for social peace. In the field of education, similar arguments
justified the refusal to institute a classless educational system.
In secondary education the raising of fees to keep out lower-class
pupils in 1887 had the result that there were fewer pupils at this
level in 1895 than there had been in 1882. At the elementary level,
education was left to the Church. By 1900 only a quarter of the
population was literate.
State capitalism
When Sergei Witte became Minister of Finance, state expenditure and
capital investment was paid for partly by a large inflow of foreign
loans, made easier after 1897 by putting the Rouble on the Gold
Standard. These loans were serviced by revenue from tariffs, but
also from the heavy indirect taxes on the urban poor and the
peasants, which provided the foreign-currency earner of grain
exports. This economic programme produced a dramatic expansion of 8%
per annum in the 1890s, but it did not stimulate the internal
market. Demand was state-led and dependent on taking money from the
peasants. Thus grain exports were coupled with famines, because the
agrarian economy of Russia could not accommodate, Witte's programme.
From 1900-05 the economy stagnated, as the state ran into financial
difficulties. State capitalism left Russia with a more advanced
economic structure, but also with a financially oppressed peasantry
and a discontented urban proletariat, the product of a continuing
population increase among the peasantry. It was clear by 1905 that
something had to change.
The revolution of 1905
Opposition to the autocracy
The growing social turmoil caused by the effects of the
modernisation programme found expression in three, illegal,
political parties:
a. The Social Revolutionaries (1901), whose main political aim
was to get land for the peasants. Its roots lay with the peasantry
and their interest in land redistribution to solve the problem of
land hunger, but by 1901 under Chernov, the party began to attract
the support of the industrial working class (the proletariats). The
terrorist left of the party (Left SRs) assassinated over 2,000
ministers, bureaucrats and officers between 1901 and 1905.
b. The Liberals (1903), whose main aim was to create a
democratic constitutional government to match Russia's newly
emerging society
c. The Social Democrats (1903), who voiced the growing
frustration of the new urban proletariat through the language of
Marxism. It was made up 2 main groups which split in 1903 into the
Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.
The Tsarist Government in the face of a broad range of opposition
tried repression with them all. It set up a great network of spies
to infiltrate the organizations. But this was often
counterproductive. By 1905, most sectors of Russian society
opposed to the government. Only the noble bureaucrats, the state-
dependent industrialists and the Army supported the regime. And even
before the Russo-Japanese War broke out in January, 1904, the regime
was in a very poor situation. When war resulted in abject defeat,
Russia experienced a massive upheaval.
The elements in the 1905 revolution
There were really four uprisings involved:
(I) the rising of the national minorities against Russification,
especially in Poland and the Baltic provinces, coupled with demands
for political and economic reforms;
(2) the seizure by the peasants of what they saw as their land i.e.
the nobles', Church's and state lands-due to the pressures of over-
population;
(3) the rising of the urban proletariat - through illegal strikes
and demonstrations - against their employers and the autocracy; and
(4) a campaign by the Union of Liberation based on the French
banquet campaign of 1848 to force the regime to liberalize.
The events of 1905
On the 9 January workers demonstrating against conditions were fired
on by troops outside the Winter Palace. 'Bloody Sunday' was a
tremendous blow to the Tsar's prestige and uprisings spread. In
February decrees were issued by Nicholas II to try to quell
opposition: they promised 'participation' by the people in
government. In October there was a general strike by the railwaymen.
The regime was now paralysed.
On 17 October the Tsar issued the 'October Manifesto' which promised
an elected Duma with legislative powers and civil liberties.
Soviets (workers' councils) were formed in St. Petersburg and
Moscow. During October- November there were large-scale peasant
riots. In December the St. Petersburg Soviet was dispersed and
Moscow street risings were put down by the Tsarist forces.
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