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

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?

-The liberals, SRs, and Bolsheviks rose up

-Mutinies on Battleship Potemkin

-Moscow garrison couldn’t be trusted

-1/2 of all workers on strike'

-Bolsheviks organized violent resistance through Trotsky and stockpiled weapons

-Soviets were formed and landowners massacred

-St. Petersburg soldiers had to attack Moscow

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

-Marches and strikes in January

-Strikes spread in February

-Duma refused to disband

-soldiers joined protests

-Petrograd steelworks joined marchers on International Women’s Day

-Soldiers refused to attack protesters and killed officers instead also begged Duma to become government

-Petrograd Soviet reborn and others formed

-Tsar abdicated and brother refused to take over