Alexander III introduction (1881-1894)

Social Policies

-1881 - Statute of State Security introduced - led to the banning of all kinds of meetings and dismissed trial by jury - also a clampdown on publications with official censoring written material before it was published

-1881 - Russification - policy of transforming the different peoples of the Russian Empire into ‘pure’ Rus - all schools taught in Russian - launched pogroms against Jews

-1882 - Factory inspectors introduced to improve health and safety - especially for women and children - however, only around 200 inspectors for whole of Russia - were mistrusted

-1883 - Peasant Land Bank - introduced by Bunge - domestic policy to provide cheap loans for the purchase of land - all peasants forced to pay redemption payments - brought down the amount paid by those already involved

-1891 - adverse weather → famine - resulted in 350,000 deaths - some blamed central govt. - finance minister raised tax on consumer goods - meant the population had to pay more for everyday items

-Orthodox and non-Orthodox religion remained under state control across the period - Orthodox church important to the tsars as it acted as a form of social control

-In education, Alexander III took the exclusion policy further by banning lower-class children from attending secondary schools - in universities, autonomy was chipped away at with elections to councils scrapped and replaced with an appointment system

1891 Famine

-Caused by adverse weather, and worsened by outbreaks of cholera and typhus

-350,000 deaths

-Blame placed on central govt., who coped very well compared to peasants - govt. accused of holding back grain from the bulk of the population - situation worsened by finance minister’s decision to raise taxes on consumer goods

-Peasants resorted to selling off surplus grain to attempt to cope with inflated food prices

-Tsar banned grain exports and set up a special committee on famine relief, and funded emergency help - too little too late

-More people joining revolutionary groups as a result - wanted to replace tsar with democratic govt.

-Govt. called on public to help - opened the door for new wave of public activity and debate which the govt. could not control

-Russian society politicised by the famine - became more organised in opposition to the govt.

-Zemstvos expanded activities to revive rural economy - doctors, teachers and engineers formed professional bodies - began to demand more influence over public policy

Industrial Reforms (Alexander III and Nicholas II)

-1886 - Poll Tax - based on number of people in a household

-1883 - Peasant Land Bank introduced

-Move towards greater state ownership of railways

-Witte’s Great Spurt

• Went back to idea of taking out foreign loans, raising taxes and interest rates to boost available capital for industry investment

• Resurrected Reutern’s idea of encouraging foreign experts coming to Russia

• 1897 - placemen of the rouble on the gold standard to give potential investors confidence in Russian currency

• Insisted that most investment went on heavy industry and railways - this had worked for Britain, France, Germany and somewhat Russia

• Further state-planned industrialisation - move away from private enterprise

• Led to: coal production doubling, iron/steel production increasing 7-fold, stimulus provided to development in ‘new’ technologies in oil and chemical industries, amount of railway track open increased 17k miles → 31k miles between 1891-1901, income earned from industry rose from 42 million roubles → 161 million from 1893-1897

• Criticisms: -neglected other parts of the industrial sector such as engineering and textiles, which was short sighted as the demand for metals came from these other industries -reliance on foreign capital has been criticised as dangerous as loans could be recalled and reliance on foreign tech experts stunted the emergence of home-grown talent

Agricultural Reforms (Alexander III and Nicholas II)

-Alexander III blames rural problems on poor farming techniques deployed by peasants, and so introduced a ministry of agriculture - Historian J.N Westwood blames rural troubles on the character of peasants, as they were resentful, indolent, disrespectful, unruly and intoxicated

-Nicholas II in 1906 instructed Stolypin, as a result of rural unrest 1905-7, to revamp govt. policy over land distribution - aim was to use land distribution to build and strengthen the class of more able, educated and ‘best’ peasants, in hopes they’d act as a role model for peasants to follow, and a force against the mir

-Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ involved:

• Unused/poorly utilised land made available to the Peasant Land Bank - forward-looking peasants could then buy the land from the bank on favourable terms

• Peasants still farming strips, due to the strength of the mir, given the right to consolidate their land into smallholdings - hereditary household plots not affected by this - land could not be immediately sold on to non-peasants - designed to ensure the mainstay of the Russian rural economy became the small peasant farm run independently by peasants

-Wager on the Strong backfired for the following reasons:

• Process led to an expansion in the numbers joining the wealthier class of peasants who in theory would be more loyal to the tsar - were not totally satisfied with the stipulations of the Stolypin reform as they believed that the best land was still inaccessible to peasants

• By 1914 - about 2 million peasants had left the village communes - left some regions short of rural labour - WW1 accelerated this - such an exodus added to the challenge of keeping supplies of food going to the growing urban population