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EARLY RULE OF NICHOLAS - 1894-1905 - Coggle Diagram

EARLY RULE OF NICHOLAS - 1894-1905

THE NATURE OF ROMANOV AUTOCRACY

Autocracy

Autocracy→divine right to wield unlimited power beyond challenge - autocratic system was the only way to rule a strong empire.

Checks on Power

  - No consitution
  - No parliament - laws made by the Tsar
  - No legal safeguards protecting the rights of individuals
  - Governed on a day-to-day basis by ministers who were appointed by and accountable to the tsar.

Orthodoxy

Russian Orthodox church→religion of tsars, spiritual wing of Tsarist regime

Control→under state control, run by government department with minister, preached for the Tsar

Diminishing power→by the end of the 19th cent institution in decline, struggling to control Russias fast growing cities.

Nationality

Key claims

  - Domination of tsar's multi-national Empire by Russia and teh Russians was right and proper. Russians had built the empire and therefore entitled to control.
  - Russia and Russians were Unique separated from Europe by distinctive language, religion and culture. Any liberal, socialist ideas were un-Russian
  - Russification→nationality came to justify this policy.

Levels of Power

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The Tsar
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Council of State and Imperial Chancellery

Central Government departments (Interior, Finance, War, Navy Foreign Affairs, Holy Synod, Eudcation, Agricluture, Trade, Transport etc.

Local Government (Provincial Governors, Zemstva, Land Captains

Challenges of Russia

Largest state in world, expanding rapidly - therefore multi-national, cultural and religious - more than 100 languages spoken.

80% of the economy are working on the land

Moscow and St Petersburg are in the top 10 largest cities in the world.

THE NATURE OF AUTOCRACY

The oppression of Nationalities

Russification→oppression nationalities during 19th -20th cent. launched by Alexander III and continued by Nicholas II

Attempted to impose→Russia's language, culture and religion on non-russian minorities. Implemented agressively where nationalist feeling was strongest (Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland)

Examples

  - Poland and Baltic Provenances→use of Russian lang in court and school lessons became compulsory
  - Orthodox Church
      - given money to support efforts to convert non-Russians to Orthodoxy. 
      - In Baltic provenances no new Protestant church could be built without government permission
      - Armenia - government in 1903 issued a decree confiscating property of Armenian church - resulted in demonstrations that led to open fire killing 10.

Anti-Semitism

Acquiring of Jewish Population→occurred when Russia seized Poland in late 18th cent. by 1900 there were five million Jews in Russia.

Management→virtually all Jews had to live within the Pale of Settlement

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Result→pogroms 
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ALLIES OF THE REGIME

The Okhrana

Repression→censored newspapers to halt subversive idea e.g. system of surveillance in most institutions and factories.

Role→to infiltrate and destroy revolutionary and terroists networks.

Statistics→1900 - 2500 full-time Okhrana's agents - one-third stationed in St Petersburg.

Success→due to use of informants, in early 1900s leadership of Social democrats and revolutionaries contained Okhrana agents

Exiled→by 1898 nearly 300,000 to Siberia

Orthodox Church

Largely a relationship of interdependence→despite views that it was subordinate to the state.

Orthodoxy and Russia inextricably intertwined→"one of the pillars of state" - Figes. Relied on spread of official propaganda especially in countryside where population was illiterate.

Governing body of church→Holy Synod - controlled by Tsar

Church relied on state funding→100,000 parish clergy and familes. 18th cent. Church lost a lot of its funding.- Collapse of Church

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Priests relied on Peasant fees.
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Church attendance failing
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Military

Largest in Europe→crucial to survival.

Make-up of society→Most officers from Nobility Soldiers from villages (peasants). Had no rights.

Conditions of Pay→Pay was poor and was use to suppress mutiny. 10 years before WW1 Russia was spending a tenth of what Germany was spending on the army.

Problems→Hard to put down peasant riots as soldiers were peasants

Cossacks→were highly loyal to the Tsar - brutal and ruthless.

Figes→"nothing was closer or more important to the romanov court than the military, yet they were underpaid, badly led and technologically backwards."

Nicholas→romanticised the army - whole house was run like a royal guard.

Growing discontent (Military)

Series of defeats in Crimean War (1853-6), Turkey, Japan. Due to economic imbalance, lack of modernisation.

Spending dropped from 1881-1903 from 30%-18% share of budget.

Civilian uprisings - used the army 1500 times form 1883-1903 and used Jan-Oct 1905 2700 times.

Nobility

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Russian imperial Bureaucracy
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Noblemen accounted for 71% of top four civil service ranks

Noble state fell into decline in the later 19th cent.

THE OPPONENTS OF THE REGIME

Peasants

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Population→80% of the population
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Peasant Unrest pre 1905↓

  - Frequent but loalised
  - Blamed local landowners (but had bad conditions due to government policies e.g. Redemption Payments and High indirect taxes)

Reasons for unrest

  - Environmental factors→soil was poor and growing season short in north, climate erratic in the south leading to crop failure and famine
  - Methods of Production→strip farming wasted time moving from strip to strip, left land wasted, crop rotation involved a third of fields being left fallow.

Peasant unrest during 1905

  - Red Cockerel→1903-4 violence towards landlords (red cockerel, summers)
  - Reasons for 
      - Population→growth (50-79 million 1861-97), geographical variations
      - Modern agriculture→Unable to adapt to modern agriculture - grain levels barely half the level of western europe - lack of modernisation.
      - Depression→Global agricultural depression
      - Economic reform→Over exportation of growth due to economic reform leads to wide spread famine in 1901.
  - Serfdom→Centuries of serfdom led to mistrust to anyone outside the commune. Developed a dual structure where commune leaders deliberately chosen for their incompetence "highly unreliable" according to government.

Post emancipation of 1861

  - Peasants were better off finacialy
  - By 1905 arable land owned by nobles had decreased to 22% from one third

Workers

Population→By 1900 only 3 million workers (2.5% of whole population) many were ex-peasants

Examples of Unrest

  - Strikes - army called to deal with strikes 300 times in 1901 increased to over 500 in the following year

Reasons for Worker unrest

  - Low wages (not enough to live on) 
  - Long hours (11 plus)
  - Bad conditions
  - Banned trade unions
  - High indirect taxes with low wages

Rapid industrialisation→Under Witte and Vsynegradsky led to high urbanisation (population of towns and cities increased by 11-fold)

Economic slump - after 1900 led to unemployment and social tension.

Threat to the regime

  - High literacy rate of 57.8 compared to peasants
  - Concentrated in communicative factories of over 1000s

Middle class opposition

beliefs

  - fast expanding group dedicated to liberalism 
  - to end autocracy through a constitution, and have an economic system based on private enterprise, 
  - non-violent methods of political change. 
  - Wanted nationally elected assembly and to participate in government.

University→became a hub for liberal ideas - one clash left 13 student protestors dead.

Zemstva

Demands→wanted voice in national affairs

Liberation→created newspaper liberation in 1902 printed in germany and smuggled into Russia.

League of Liberation→formally established in 1904 in a secret meeting in St Petersburg. Hosted Public Banquets in order to mobilise liberal opinion in support of change. Pushed for male suffrage and a constitutional monarchy.

Social Revolutionaries

Background

  - populist movement of the 1860s that failed  
  - Leaders Chernov, Gots, Gershuni all middle or upper-class

Aim→to win peasant support but also attracted worker support as the line between the two groups was blurred (workers returned home to help families during harvest season for example)

Organisation→had a range of views, loosely organised, undisciplined, no uniform ideology.

Ideas

  - Argued that revolution needed to come from the Peasants 
  - thought that Russia would consist of self-governing village communities
  - wanted decentralised political power

Methods

  - Use of violence→Assassination of government ministers and officials - 2000 assassinations pre 1905.

Social Democrats

Background

  - Lenin and Martov who took on the ideas of Marx wanting working classes to stage a revolt and create a capitalist state - then communism.

The Split→1903 into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

Bolsheviks→Lenin believed that Russia was a capitalist country and he argued that a close-knit hard core professional revolutionary party was needed under centralised leadership. Adapted Marx's ideas to suit their own purpose.

Mensheviks→favoured short term focus, promoting developments of trade unions and co-operation with non-marxists. More inclusive party.

Reasons for Limited Opposition

Social Factors

Working class→was numerically small - Democrats had little to work with

Location of Peasantry→spread acorss the country, living in 3/4 of a million rural settlements. Transport was poor, as was communication

Literacy Levels→Very low - 1897 census suggested that only 21% of the population could read. Propoganda phamplets had little effect.

Leaders of socialist groups→middle or upper-class not easy to bridge class divide to win over workers and peasants. Membership was also low with less that 40-50,000 members in Bolsheviks and Mensheviks each.

Repression

Illegality→Before 1905 opposition parties were illegal, had to operate underground. Were further restricted by freedom of speech and assembly.

Okhrana→adept at infiltration and destruction of revolutionary networks. Cold blooded - definitely allowed some SR terrorist attacks to go ahead in order to not risk exposure.

Exile/Imprisonment→virtually of Russia's leading socialist were forced to live abroad due to exile - difficult for influence and the Okhrana had a foreign Bureau based in Paris.

Para-military Corps of Gendarmes, Regular police and army

  - During 1894-1905 the army was called 33 times in 1900 and 271 in 1901 and more than 500 times in 1903.

Division

Political divisions→made hard to form a united front, liberals and socialist wanted end to tsarism but socialist wanted to overthrow capitalism, socialist groups willing to use force, liberals not.

Division within groups→RSDLP split, Zemstov over disagreements with outspoken Milyukov and favoured Shipov

THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 1904-5

Path to war

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under-prepared, over-confident. 
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NIcholas 11 and advisers viewed Japanese as racially inferior

Plehve claimed 'a short victorious war' would overcome problems at home - was later killed by a terrorist bomb.

Events

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Feb 1905 - Russian loss at Mukden
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Defeat May 1905 at Tsushima due to russia trapped naval force

Treaty of Portsmouth - led to loss of territory.

Effects

First defeat of european power by an asiatic power

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Liberal opinon angered by mishandling
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Economic life disrupted - food prices rose, deepened working-class discontent

Mutiny on Battle ship Pometkin - leading to 1000s of deaths.

BLOODY SUNDAY- Events

- 9th Jan 1905 - 120,000 unarmed demonstrators (workers and peasants) gather around St Petersburg to present petition (signed by 150,000) to Nicholas for higher wages, eight-hour day, nothing against the regime.

Actions of Army→200 killed and 800 wounded by open fire from army and cossacks
Gapon→allowed to set up legal union via Phleve to stop economic discontent

Effects

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Collapse of censorship
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Strikes sweep across russia - half a million workers on strike (led to the closure of universities)

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Trigger in the revolution
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EVENTS OF 1605-6

Spread of Revolutionary activity

Peasants

Peasant disturbances in the countryside.

General demands end of redemption payments and reduction in rent

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No united movement.
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All Russia Peasants Union - July by the SRs as a counterpart to the Union of Unions

Workers

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Bloody Sunday
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Workers formed factory groups for representation - demands mainly economic

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May - Union of Unions
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Sep/Oct workers strike - 2 million from every area of employment - General strike calling for eight-hour day

Armed uprising in December crushed in Moscow

National Minorities

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Took advantage of government dissary.
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Poles and Fins demanded independence - Poland 93 killed when protestors clashed with troops, further 30 killed in May

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Jews wanted civil rights.
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Unrest was frequent. 300,000 soldiers kept in Poland which was badly needed for the War.

Latvia - general strike 70 killed when strikers clashed with troops in Riga

Middle Class

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Zemstvo congress to demand reform
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Union of Unions formed
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League of Liberation and Union of Unions form Constitutional Democratic Party (The Kadets)

Armed forces

Potemkin join striking workers in Odessa - over 1000 killed.

Localised army mutinies in Moscow, St Petersburg and Kronstadt

SURVIVAL OF THE TSARIST REGIME

The August Manifesto

Actions of Government in January

  - Promised inquiry into grievances of St Petersburg factory workers

Actions of Government in February

  - An elected assembly was to be established - which which would be consulted

August Manifesto

  - New elected assembly was to be called the DUma
  - Assembly was to be advisory or consultive (would have no power)
  - To be a complex electoral system which would favour peasants and landowners. Jews and Intelligentsia without the votes

Response

  - Boycotted by socialist parties to push for further concessions
  - Deemed 6 months too late.

October Manifesto

General strike→left Russia paralysed Nicholas II turned to Witte - advised concession

Included

  - Guaranteed basic freedoms - freedom of speech, assembly, association.
  - Duma with real political power
  - Extension of the right to vote in Duma elections to all classes of the population.

Response

  - Greeted with enthusiasm - strike wall called off.
  - Divided the opposition - moderate liberals and business leaders welcomed - the Octoberists others rejected it the Kadets

The Moscow Uprising

Moscow Soviet→general strike calling to overthrow the government in Dec. Distributed Weapons.

Government response→cleared barricades, used artillery fire, mass arrests, beatings, executions without trial. More than 1000 people died.

Recovery of Tsarist Power

October Manifesto→divided Liberals into Octoberists and Kadets

Working class militancy→had crushed the soviets through violence.

Armed forces→remained loyal to the regime - stabilised regime after receiving pay and changes to conditions of service.

Witte→arranged a loan from France which stabilised the economy

Repression

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15,000 executed
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20,000 wounded
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45,000 exiled 
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Between mid Oct-April
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Partial Recovery of Power

October Manifesto→did not quell countryside situation - levels of peasant disorder in late 1905 remained high. Continuing problems with minorities.

Legalisation of trade unions→meant regime had to contend with criticism and opposition which it was not used to.