Evidence: Unit 3 History Revolutions

L1: What are Revolutions?

• 1801: Tbilsi (capital of Georgia) was annexed to the Russian Empire

• 1800: Total Siberian population was only half a million

• 1800-1897: Over 5 million Russians crossed the Ural into Siberia

• 1897-1911: A further 3.5 million Russians crossed into Siberia

• 1891: Trans-Siberian railway construction begun to challenge Japanese expansion in Manchuria.

• Railroad truss bridges, which supported the Trans-Siberian Railway, spanned over 6000 miles from centural European Russia to the Pacific Ocean

• 1903: Traffic from Moscow to Vladivostok via Harbin opened, which took 13 days (4388 mile journey) to travel through

• 1903-1913: 1 million Russians used the railway to migrate to Siberia, and were offered quarter fares, but supply of good farming land was limited

• 1914: Of the total nine million inhabitants in Siberia, as many as a million were criminals and political exiles

• 1917: The single-track all-Russian route to Vladivostok was completed

• In many townships, these people in Siberia could earn a living and fully participate in local affairs

• The gold mines at Kara were worked by convict labour, with 1000 convicts being in close confinement, and 1000 in barracks/cabins around the mines.

• To be sent to Kara was one of the most feared threats of the Tsarist regime

• 1897 census showed 82% of Russians being peasants

- Subsistence farmers

- Land controlled by the village commune (mir), which allocated strips, settled disputes, maaged taxes and redistributed land according to family size

- Economic disparity was worsened by redemption payments following emancipation, resulting in intergenerational debt

• 4% were part of the industrial working class

• 1.5% were in middle class (expanding group)

• 12% were upper class

• 0.5% were part of the ruling class

• The town of Borzhomi became a destination for Russia’s elites

• 1910: Kasil Iron Works plant had a workforce of over 3000 people

L2: Institutional Weaknesses and Tensions

• Autocracy: All political power held by the Tsar, who possessed unlimited executive, legislative and judicial authority

• Romanovs (ruling imperial house of Russia) have ruled from 1613 to 1917

• Official advisory bodies include the State Council, Imperial Council, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Senate (however the Tsar had no obligation to accept their advice).

• 1894: Imperial Russia covered the equivalent to 2.5 of the size of USA

• 1815-1914: European Russia was greater, with population quadrupling from 40 to 165 million

• 1897 census: Only 55.6 million of the Russian Empire were Russian (Slav) based on mother tongue, compared to the 63.5 million who were other nationalities (21 nationalities)

• 1832: Article 1 of the Fundamental Laws of the Empire (issued by Nicholas I) stated that “The Emperor of all the Russias is an autocratic and unlimited monarch. God himself ordains that all must bow to his supreme power, not only out of fear but also out of conscience.”

• Beginning of the 1900s: All major western-European countries had a democratic or representative government, but Russia did not.

• Reforming tsars had only improved practical areas, they had not included the extension of political rights

• 1881: In Russia, it was still a criminal offence to oppose the tsar/government. No parliament, political parties had no legal right to exist.

• 1881: Tsar Alexander II was blown to bits by a bomb thrown by ‘The People’s Will’ (terroris group)

• 1800s: A wide variety of secret societies that were dedicated to political reform/revolution were formed, however they were frequently infiltrated by agents of the Okhrana (secret police force)

• Russian Orthodox Church was detached from foreign influence (giving it a Russian character) since the 15th century as it was entirely independant of any outside authority

- By the late 1800s it had become a deeply conservative body

- Lacked support in the growing industrial population as a Moscow suburb with 40,000 people only had one church and one priest (1900)

- The catechism of the Church stated that “God commands us to love and obey from the inmost recesses of our heart every authority, and particularly the tsar.”

• Absence of effective banking system, which made it hard for Russia to raise capital on a large scale, discouraging entrepreneurialism

• Arable farming was restricted mainly to the Black Earth region

• Under the terms of the Emancipation Decree of 1861, ex-serfs were entitled to buy land, but prices were too high. This resulted to shortage of farming territory and government taxes to make a peasant’s life worse finacially

• Conscription was a way to keep ‘dark masses’ (peasants) in check, as well as a form of punishment for law-breakers.

• 1825-55: Service life had accounted for the deaths of over 1 million soldiers in peacetime during the reign of Nicholas I

• 1800s: Imperial forces were kept at a strength of around 1.5 million men

• Cost of maintaining the army and navy accounted for 45% (on average) of the government’s annual expenditure, which contrasts to the 4% devoted for education

• Russia wasn’t engaged in a major conflict with a western European power for a whole century after 1815

• Peter I’s (1683-1725) attempt to modernise Russia (by establishing a full-scale civil service) was condemned as a corrupt bureaucracy

• 1868: Alexander Herzen (leading revolutionary thinker) claimed that the bureaucracy had become “a kind of civilian priesthood” and that the officals running Russia were “sucking the blood of people”

L3: Role of Tsar Nicholas II

• Tsar Nicholas II (1868-1918) was coronated on 18 May 1896 when his father (Alexander III) died aged only 49

• 18 May 1896 (coronation): Khodynka Disaster occurred out in a field near Moscow, resulting in 1389 people killed in a stampede

• 500,000 people arrived for free gifts, resulting in the crowd surging and the stampede. This was seen as a bad omen, leaving a bad impression on Tsar Nicholas II.

• “I will devote all my strength to maintain, for the good of the whole nation, the principle of absolute autocracy.” - Nicholas II (1894)

• “[Nicholas II] was a man of weakness and limited outlook” – Michael Lynch

• ‘It was not a “weakness of will” that was the undoing of the last tsar but… a wilful determination to rule from the throne, despite the fact that he clearly lacked the necessary qualities to do so.’ - Orlando Figes

• Nicholas was education by his tutor Konstantin Pobedonostev, who was well known for his reactionary and bigoted views.

• Nicholas’ inability to address conflicts and social unrest contributed to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917

• March 1917: Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne

• July 1918: Nicholas and his family were executed by their Bolshevik guards

• Tsar Alexander III (1845-1894): Presided over a period known as ‘The Reaction', where he strengthened the autocratic and authoritarian nature of the tsarist regime.

• Alexander found the political police (Okhrana) and persued the ‘Russification’ of national minority groups which only agitated nationalist groups into taking revolutionary action

• Tsar Nicholas’ wife (Tsarina Alexandra) was German, becoming a point of ridicule

• By the 1890s, the zemstvos (elected local government bodies) were becoming a forum where the need for economic/political reform was discussed, however he had no interest in reform

• Nicholas’ ancestors “did not bequeath him one quality which would have made him capable of governing… a country.” - Leon Trotsky (1934)

• Nicholas was “a tsar determined to rule from the throne yet quite incapable of exercising power.” - Olando Figes (1996)

L4: Economic + Social Inequalities for Workers

• Sergei Witte (1849-1915) was Nicholas II’s financial minister and he helped improve Russia’s military and economy

• He issued the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, connecting Russia’s far east with its European heartland

• As a result of his actions, industrial output increased by 96.8% from 1898 to 1913

• 1881-1914: Population grew in Moscow from 753,500 to 1.763 million and in St Petersburg from 928,000 to 2.218 million

• Russia’s urban population grew from 7 to 28 million from 1877 to 1917

• 1893-1903: a time nicknamed the ‘Great Spurt’ due to the expansion of infrastructure and industrialisation under Witte’s guidance (successful economic reforms)

• 1897: Stability of the Russian currency was made safe as the rouble was fixed to the gold standard (monetary system that defines currency to an amount in line with its gold reserves), encouraging foreign investment.

• 1891: construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway began to connect isolated regions of central/eastern Russia (rich in resources) with industrial centres in the west.

• Until the railway was completed (1916), ferries and sleighs were required to connect goods + passengers

• Witte’s reforms relied on foreign investment, made little for Russian consumers, led to high interest rates + indirect taxes on everyday goods, as well as neglecting agriculture

• Industrial labour force trebled (tripled) in between 1860-1905, providing a cheap and abundant supply of factory workers.

• Workers did 12 hour shifts, and sometimes 14/16 hour shifts, with no legislated workplace protections and trade unions being illegal.

• On average, 16 people lived in 1 apartment, with 6 people sharing one room. Some workers shared a single bed, breeding disease and psychological distress

• An international recession at the turn on the 20th century led to businesses cutting wages and reducing the number of workers

• The number of industrial strikes suppressed by military force increased from 19 to 522 (1893-1902)

• Industrial output increased by 63.6% between 1900 to 1913

• 1898-1913: Russia’s growth in national product was at 96.8%

• Sergei Witte was appointed Minister of Finance in 1893 (a role he kept for 10 years) until Witte was made Chairman of the Committee of Ministers in 1903, reducing his influence in policy-making.

• However, Tsar Nicholas requested that Witte head peace treaty negotiations with Japan following Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese WAr

• 1905: Witte persuaded the tsar to accept democratic reforms, resulting in the October Manifesto

• His unpopularity resulted in his resignation as prime minister in April 1906

• 1885: Law was created prohibiting the night-time employment of women and children but was wrenched by the government (lots of difficulty to create this law)

• 1897: Law was created restricting the working day to eleven and a half hours but was wrenched by the government

• Small workshops were excluded from the legislation, although they employed most of the female workforce

• Most workers were denied a legal right to insurance and losing an eye/limb would only result in a few roubles’ compensation

• Workers’ strikes were illegal

• There were no legal trade unions until 1905

• 1905-1906: ¾ of the factory workforce went on strike on these revolutionary years

L.5: Marxism, the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks

• 1848: Marx and Engels wrote ‘The Communist Manifesto’

• 1867: Marx produced the first volume of his monumental work ‘Capital’

• Dialectical materialism: A thesis (given state of things) and antithesis (opposing force) clashing, resulting in a synthesis (resolution)

• Historical materialism: History is driven by economic changes, which shapes everything else

• In the 1900s, Russia was in a mix between feudalism and early capitalism

• 1893: The first Marxist group of Russia was formed by Georgi Plakhanov (known as the ‘father of Russian Marxism’)

• 1898: Smaller Russian Marxist groups joined with Plakhanov’s group to form the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

• Lenin (1870-1924)

• 1887: Lenin’s brother was killed for attempting to assassinating Nicholas’ II father Alexander III, resulting in his revolutionary mind-set

• Lenin was put on the Tsarist government’s dangerous persons list at age 17

• Lenin was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1895-1889 along with other Marxists.

• Lenin wrote ‘What is to be done?’ in 1902

• 1903: The Bolshevik Party emerged as a result of the split of the Russian Social Democratic

• Split into the Bolsheviks (the majority) and Mensheviks (the minority) due to the difference in interpretation of Karl Marx’s views

• Julius Martov to the minority (Mensheviks) of the RSDLP’s membership, while Lein founded the Bolsheviks

• Bolsheviks were minor players in the revolution movements before 1914