Repression and Reform

Countryside Disorder

1906 - over 1,000 people killed in terrorist attacks

1907 - over 3,000

Interior Minister in 1905

P.N. Durnovo

Army action in countryside

Over 6 months killed 15,000, wounded 20,000

However this did not stop peasant discontent

May 1906

Durnovo replaced by Stolypin

Principle of ‘Suppression first and then, only then, reform’.

State of Emergency

Declared in August 1906

Gave government power to imprison people without trial

Field Court Martials

Courts composed of 5 army officers to impose punishments on peasants

Stolypin’s Necktie

1906-07 - 1,000 people sentenced to death

Stolypin’s carriages

Nearly 60,000 political detainees were executed or sent to exile

Arrest and Exile of Political Leaders

Trotsky and other St. Petersburg leaders were sentenced to lifetime exile in Siberia

Dissolution of 2nd Duma

Arrest of Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and SRs around the country

2,000 in Black Earth region alone.

Expropriation

Bolsheviks and SRs on trial for robbing banks

Problems faced by peasants

Poor pay and working conditions

Conscription

Poor Education

Wanted to own their land

Stolypin’s Economic Aims

Feed rapidly growing population

Break up village communes and get rid of strip-farming

Increase agricultural production

Stolypin’s Political Aims

Create a strong, prosperous and politically conservative peasantry

Peasant interest in regime

Strip Farming

Stolypin urged farmers to abandon strip farming with fenced fields

Offered free conversion

Commune System

Stolypin discouraged communes and gave incentives to peasants to return to individual farming

Peasant Debt

Special Land Bank established to provide funds to peasants to buy land

Relaxed bank that meant peasants could borrow easily

Land Hunger

Large-scale schemes for voluntary resettlement in mineral rich Siberia

Offered free land, interest free loans and reduced railway fares

Impact of Reforms - 1

1914 - 20% peasants left village commune but around half still owned strips

Only 10% of all peasant households owned seperate farms

Impact of Reforms - 2

Sharp increase in agricultural production in years before 1914

Not necessarily Land reform though

Impact of Reforms - 3

1906-1913 - 3.5 million peasants emigrated to Siberia. 20% failed to settle

End of Stolypin

Assassinated in 1911

Difficulties facing Stolypin

Unenthusiastic peasantry

Opposition from conservative forces

Lack of Time