Local government

Situation before 1861

• Provinces largely under jurisdiction of noble landowners

• Village issues discussed by the mir → group of elders

• Local nobility → bridge between central government + outreaches of empire

Emancipation of the serfs → local government

• Nobility ceased to play a political role

• Management of local affairs in hands of police constables appointed by the interior ministry

Zemstva when

1864

Zemstva what

• Regional council

• Elected membership → voted in by landowners, urban dwellers and peasants

• Located only in areas part of Great Russia

Duma when and what

• 1870

• Urban equivalent of zemstva

• Even higher property qualifications for it than zemstva → excluded the urban proletariat

Contributions of zemstva and duma before October 1917

Important services in fields of education, public health and transport

The Third Element

• Central government finding Zemstva increasingly irritating → by end of 19th century, councils in some provinces dominated by teachers, lawyers and doctors

• They demanded that central government should be remodelled on the lines of the Zemstva and Duma

• Liberal voce → the ‘third element’

• Other elements were those employed in the ‘administration’ (government) and nobility

• Third element not very successful as zemstva and duma abolished after 1917 + gov would be restructured by Lenin and Stalin later on (not very democratic in the end)

Local government after 1917 dominated by

Soviets, as zemstva and duma seen as bourgeois and counter-revolutionary

Soviets when and where emerged

First wokers’ council/soviet in St Petersburg at the time of the October Manifesto (1905)

Aim of first soviet

To coordinate strikes and protect factory workers

What did SRs and SDs then seek to do

Gain representation on the executive committee and influence how the soviet was run

In 1917 what was the soviet referred to and who began to dominate it

The Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, Bolsheviks began to dominate the executive committee

Order no. 1

March 1917

Placed ultimate authority over soldiers in hands of soviets, undermined PG’s power

Soviets ended up having no choice but to yield authority to the Bolsheviks

• Bolsheviks had so many members → April 1917 had 80,000, July had risen to 200,000

• Mensheviks had around 8000, party that had been favoured by the soviets → clear who had more power

• March-October 1917 dictated when, where and how strikes occur → Bolshevik role

1864 legal reforms

Introduction of jury system for criminal cases

Hierarchy of courts for different cases

Better pay for judges; less corruption hopefully

Public attendance at courts

1877

• Following assassination attempt Alex II

• New department of the Senate set up to try political cases

• Vera Zasulich case and murder of tsar 1881 → new policies of Senate did fail (though Vera’s actions were considered just, Trepov was a tyrant)

1881 legal reforms

• Alexander III moved away from ‘liberal’ approach to law and order that had been characteristic to Alex II

• Police centralised under the minister for the interior, special. courts designed for political cases

• Justices of the peace replaced by land captains

1917 onwards legal

• Communist rule dominated by idea of ‘revolutionary justice’

• New criminal code of 1921 → legalised use of terror to deter crime (ie counterrevolutionary behaviour)