CIE IGCSE DEPTH STUDY RUSSIA 1905-1941 A

CIE IGCSE HISTORY RUSSIA DEPTH STUDY RUSSIA 7A

How was the government organized in 1905?

-It was an autocracy

-Tsar Nicholas II was an absolute monarch

-This was in an era with many parliamentary monarchies

What were the flaws specific to Tsar Nicholas II?

-Refused to delegate often dealing with small inconsequential issues personally

-Threatened by talented ministers and encourage conflict between them

What were the main ways the Tsar held control?

-The Army, Church, Okhrana, media control, and Bureaucracy

• Okhrana were 10,00 secret police in charge of dealing dissidents by imprisonment or murder

• The Cossack regiment often backed them up and crushed opposition

• The Tsar often censored Newspapers

How were Russian villages/ rural areas Organized?

-Ran through a village commune called a Mir

-Usually in control of an often Noble land captain which were sometimes appointed by the Tsar

-Usually ran regimes like police states: crushed, censored, and arrested opposition

How were larger towns ran in Tsarist Russia?

-Ran through an elected Zemstva (council) dominated by professionals and nobles

-Usually improved living conditions

-People wanted a national Zemstva

What were the ethnic and national make-up of the Russian Empire?

-40% spoke Russian as a first language

-Many were other nationalities and ethnicities

-Other minorities were sometimes loyal like the Cossacks

-Others despised the Tsar like the Fins and Poles

-Jews faced extreme prejudice

What were the peasants like in 1905?

-80% of Russians were peasants

-Extremely poor, uneducated, and starving

-Recently freed Serfs (1861)

-Strictly controlled by the Church

What was the wealth disparity like in Tsarist Russia?

-4% of former serfs were kulaks by 1900

-Kulaks were well off landowners and controlled the majority of good farmland

-Peasants had limited technology such as machines and fertilizer

-many serfs owed redemption taxes to their former owners

-1901-2 and 1906-8 famine destroyed mostly peasant’s lives

-Many peasants did not have enough food

-Revolts and land seizures occurred throughout the early 1900s

How were capitalists in the early 1900s Russia?

-Emerged though industrialization

-Had large influence in Governance

-Clashed with workers

How were the lives of workers in early Russia?

-Horrid working conditions

• poisonous substances were rampant

• 11.5 hour work days

• lived in slums tenements

• little pay

• starving

• had to sleep in factories

-Made up 4% of population

-Were growing due to booming industries

-Trade Unions and striking were illegal

-Cossacks regular crushed riots

-Many supported political opposition

What were the different political parties opposed to the Tsar?

-The Liberals

-The Socialist Revolutionaries

-The Social Democratic Party

• Mensheviks

• Bolsheviks

What were the Liberals like?

-made up of middle class, professionals, and university educated people

-Wanted a Duma/ Parliamentary monarchy

Explain the Socialist Revolutionaries

-Wanted to carve up estates and redistribute land

-Believed in violent struggles

-responsible for assassinations of two officials and many Okhrana police

What were the Social Democratic Party like?

-Marxist

-Smaller but more disciplined

-Split in 1903

-Mensheviks believed they weren’t ready for revolution

-Bolsheviks-led by Vladimir Ilych Lenin and believed they needed to form a revolution and not wait

-Often persecuted: exiled, killed, or imprisoned

What were the 3 main contributors to the 1905 revolution?

-Russo-Japanese War

-Economic Problems

-Bloody Sunday January 22 1905

Explain the Russo-Japanese War’s effects on the 1905 revolution

-Tsar wanted to use the war to rally populous behind him

-Unexpected defeats led Russians to sea him as incompetent

• Loss of Baltic Fleet at Tsushima

• 50,000 dead

• Surrender at Port Arthur

Explain how Bloody Sunday contributed to the 1905 revolution?

-200,000 protesters led by Father Gapon came to petition the Tsar at the Winter palace

• held pictures of him to show respect

• wanted an 8 hour workday and minimum wage

• peaceful

-Cossacks attacked without warning

• Tsar wasn’t there

• Led to mass strikes and disturbances throughout Russia

Explain how economic problems contributed to the 1905 revolution

-Cities grew too fast leading to overcrowding and appalling conditions

-Economic depression led to low wages, strikes, and unrest

-Legalizing unions and strikes led to more strikes

-compounded with 1901-2 famine

wealthier peasants (Kulaks) owned land but at the expense of poor peasants → majority of poorer peasants were landless (no way of improving their situation)

-Grain Seizures

Why didn’t the 1905 revolution succeed?

-Lack of a united front

• the SRs, Liberals, and Bolsheviks were divided by ideology

• Lacked leadership

-October Manifesto

• Gave what the liberals wanted and made them stand down

• conceded to the ideas of the Duma, free speech, and the right to form political parties

• offered land buying support through bank

-Army crushed Leaders

• Destroyed the St. Petersburg and Moscow Soviets by capturing leaders

-Brutal force

• Cossacks and soldiers used rape, beatings, and mass executions in the countryside as a threat to all peasants

-Army returning

• A peace with Japan allowed for many soldiers to return

• More well trained than the rioters

• Loyal due to more promised pay

Explain what happened to threaten the Tsar’s rule in 1905?

• Strikes and violent riots spread all over the country.over + the Tsar was close to losing control 

• The Tsar's uncle was assas sinated 

• Different groups joined the workers in demanding change:

  • liberals + middle classes → wanted civil rights and a say in Govt

  • students → wanted freedom in the universities 

  • nationalities → wanted independence

• But these groups did not combine to form a united opposition, weren’t coordinated, fighting for different causes

• June 1905: sailors on Battleship Potemkin mutinied → bad for the Tsar who needed the army to remain loyal

• In the countryside, peasants attacked landlords and seized land

• Soviets (Workers' councils) were formed, becoming especially strong in St Petersburg + Moscow

• Revolutionaries like Trotsky returned from exile to join the protests

• September: General Strike (workers refused to work) began which paralyzed the Russian industry. 

How was the situation after the end of 1905 revolution?

-Dissolved all three Dumas

-Needed to satisfy many different groups

-changed voting rules to prevent opposition from winning

How did Stolypin’s reform affect the Tsarist rule?

-His policy of the Carrot and the Stick positively impacted Russia but mostly helped the rich

-He was a tough Prime Minister

-The Carrot

• Agricultural reforms allowed for Kulaks to leave the Mir system

• Gave kulaks 600 million rubles through Peasant’s bank

• Most poor people did not benefit

-The Stick

• 20,00 strikers, protesters, and revolutionaries exiled and 1,000 executed (So infamous it was known as Stolypin’s necktie)

• Murdered Opposition

-benefit to industries

• boosted industry through 1908-11 however still lagged behind USA, UK, and Germany

-Killed in 1911

-Tsar was planning on sacking him anyways since he was influenced by the elite and though Stolypin was changing too many things

Describe the rising discontent between 1905 and 1917

-300th year of the Romanov dynasty was barely celebrated

-Strikes rose from 222 in 1910 to 3534 in 1914

-Money didn’t make it to the people

• pocketed by capitalists

• or paid debts to French Banks

• Conditions still horrible

• Lena gold field strike massacre

• brutal surppression

Explain Rasputin’s Role in the rising discontent

-Advised the Tsar and Tsaritsa

-Son needed treatment

-Seen as untrustworthy

-The influence Rasputin had was seen as weakness

-Mystical drinker and womanizer

What were the different demographics who opposed the Tsar?

-Army

-Peasants

-Workers

-The middle class

-Aristocracy

Explain the Army’s grievances in 1917

-Mostly enthusiastic for the war at first

-However

• unprepared and badly supplied/ armed

• horribly commanded

• Treated horribly by aristocrat commanders

-Nicholas II assumes command in 1915

• losses continued

• Held personally responsible

• 9.5/13 million died

Explain the Peasants’ grievances in 1917

-Many widowed and orphaned by the war

-government couldn’t pay for their them

-Tsar almost took food by force

Explain the worker’s grievances in 1917

• War created 3.5 million jobs

• Overcrowding got worse

• Wages stagnated

• Couldn’t pay for food and had massive food shortages due to rail networks being unable to provide food

• 1916-17 massive bread lines

Explain the grievances of the middle class?

-appalled by incompetence

-shortages prevent their contracts from being fulfilled

-Duma dismissed after calling for more representative government

What were the Aristocracy’s grievances in 1917?

-Many aristocrat officers killed

-Many peasants had to leave to join the war or find jobs in the city leaving no workforce

-Tsar’s wife in charge

• German

• Affair with Rasputin rumor

• Rasputin killed 1916

Explain the events of the March revolution

• By 1917: majority of the empire was discontented 

• January: strikes broke out all over 

• February: strikes spread and were supported + joined by soldiers who had mutinied (recent conscripts had more in common with the strikers than their officers)

• Tsar's best troops lay dead on the battlefields + nobody to defend the monarchy 

• 7 March (23 Feb): bread riots broke out in Petrograd → thousands of women marched and demanded bread + peace (calling for the end of the war)

• Quickly joined by thousands of workers of Putilov steelworks (nearby armament factory) who had gone on strike 

• Tsar sent his troops who opened fire on the protestors → killed 40 

• 7-10 March: striking workers rose to 250,000 + industry came to a standstill

• Protestors seized Govt buildings and police stations + released political prisoners (mostly Bolsheviks)

• Duma advised Tsar to set up a Constitutional Monarchy but he refused + sent more troops

• Duma (high ranking officials, army generals, nobles) were convinced by all this that the Tsar had to go 

• Senior generals told Nicholas that the only way to save the monarchy was by abdicating 

• Duma set up a Provisional Committee in preparation of taking over the Govt

• The Tsar ordered them to disband but they refused

• 12 March: Tsar ordered the army to put down the revolt by force but they refused to shoot at unarmed crowds 

• Soon the whole Petrograd garrison mutinied → some soldiers shot their own officers + joined demonstrators

• They marched to the Duma demanding that they take over the Govt

• Duma leaders reluctantly accepted (wanted reform rather than revolution but there was no choice)

• Revolutionaries set up the Petrograd Soviet again + began taking control of food supplies 

  • Soviets → elected committee/organization of workers + soldiers who give themselves charge to govern the city. Every city had its own soviet + they were very popular. Not government affiliated

• They set up soldiers' committees → undermining the authority of the officers

• Soviets were set up in other towns + cities too which looked to the Petrograd Soviet for leadership + guidance

• 15 March (2 March): Tsar issued a statement that he was abdicating

• His brother Grand Duke Michael was supposed to take over, but he refused, leaving the Duma in power 

• Significance → Ended 300 years of Romanov rule + the monarchy system 

The Carrot explained

• Abolished Redemption Payments (peasants encouraged to buy land now)

• Set up banks to give loans to peasants to buy land 600 million gold rubles

• Allowed wealthier peasants (kulaks) to opt out of the communes (Mir) and buy land

• These kulaks prospered and created larger, more efficient farms → Production increased 

• 1916: 2 million peasants owned land + 3.5 million peasants emigrated to Siberia where they had their own farms → class of comfortably-off peasants (Kulaks) emerged on whom the government thought they could rely on for support 

• But, 90% of the land in the fertile west was still run by inefficient communes 

• Farm sizes stayed small even in Ukraine (best farmland) 

• Most peasants still lived in poor conditions + were discontented.

• 50,000 primary schools opened to increase education

• workers sickness and insurance scheme

Strengths and weaknesses of the years between 1905 and 1917?

Strengths	Weakness
1. Land Reforms	1. Failure of Stolypin’s land reforms
2. Educational Reforms	2. Industrial Unrest
3. Industrial Reforms	3. Govt repression
4. Revolutionary parties lost heart	4. Revival of Revolutionary parties
	5. Royal family discredited by scandals
	6. Russian Involvement in WW1

Why did 1917 succeed?

soldiers assisted & WW1