THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION



A5: Reform and Reaction in Russia, 1855-1917

Reform

What was Russia like in 1855

• Russia was the largest of the Great Powers in the nineteenth century.

• The government of Russia was in the hands of the Tsar. He was an autocrat, which meant that he had complete power. The only way to oppose him was by a revolt or demonstrations.

• The Tsar expected complete loyalty from all of his subjects. The Russian people referred to him as ‘Father’ and he tended to treat them as his children

• Russia was also a very backward country. There was very little industry and transport was very slow.

• All over Russia peasants worked on the land as they had for hundreds of years. Russian peasants were serfs.

• Peasants had small plots of land that they worked for themselves, but also had to work on the rest of the land for the landlord.

• Serfdom meant that Russian peasants were desperately poor and had very little freedom.

• The Tsar and the members of his court were fabulously wealthy, so that the differences between rich and poor were greater than in any other country in Europe.

Why were changes made after 1855?

• The Crimean had been a disaster. The Russian railways and roads were just not good enough to move large numbers of men and convoys of goods.

• At the Treaty of Paris in 1856, Russia was forced to give up land on the west coast of the Black Sea and had to agree to withdraw all of its warships from the Black Sea.

• Alexander II was well aware that Russia was in crisis and wanted to act quickly. He believed that failing to introduce reforms could well lead to a revolution.

What was the Emancipation of the Serfs?

• The Tsar’s plan was that serfs should be given their freedom with land and he offered landowners compensation from the state if they agreed to end their rights. Most landowners were completely against this.

• Most landowners were in debt and the money they received from the government would just be used to pay off what they owed.

• Alexander set up a government committee to plan the overall changes. Eventually figures for compensation were worked out.

• Each landowner would receive 80 percent of his compensation from the government and the peasants would become free men with land.

Why was emancipation unpopular?

• Under the Edict, peasants were given the small plots of land that they had worked for themselves in the past.

• Peasants had to repay the government for the cost of compensation. The payments would last for forty-nine years.

• The local village commune (mir) had to collect dues, taxes and repayments, but also controlled crop rotations and the use of fields.

• Communes controlled the movement of people. Peasants had little more freedom than they had had before emancipation.

• Emancipation did little to free the peasants from the control of their landlords.

What happened in the reform of Local Government and Central Government

• In January 1864 Alexander set up district councils (zemstva). The councils were supposed to look after road-building, education and medical services.

• Alexander set up new courts which used trial by jury. Judges were paid salaries, which meant that they were not likely to be bribed.

• In 1870 municipal government was reformed. Towns were allowed self-government through councils elected by people owning property.

• In 1874 the army was reformed. In future all people would be treated equally as far as recruitment was concerned. All conscripts would have to serve six years in the army and nine years in the reserve.

What was not changed?

• Power remained in the hands of the Tsar. He alone could appoint ministers and announce laws.

• Although Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861, he never believed that they should have any real say in the way that Russia was governed.

How did Alexander II’s policies change in 1870-81

• As Alexander got older became less inclined to introduce reforms.

• He wanted to retain all of the power that he had inherited as Tsar, but at the same time allow his subjects a little more freedom of action. F

• For the ordinary people of Russia, little actually changed.

• Alexander became very involved in the ideas of Pan-Slavism. He came to believe that Russia should put itself forward as the protector of all of the Slavs in eastern Europe and in particular in Bulgaria.

• The threats from revolutionary groups meant that the role of the secret police, the Okhrana, became more and more important.

• Alexander himself was assassinated in 1881 by a terrorist bomb.

• Alexander III abolished many of the reforms introduced by his father and began a policy of repression.

• He also began to try to ‘Russify’ border provinces. This meant forcing them to adopt Russian customs and the Russian language.

• Alexander III’s reign encouraged Russians who distrusted western ideas to believe that Russian traditions were better. This in turn meant that they rejected democracy and clung to autocracy.

What attempts at change were there in 1906-14?

• Nicholas II was weak willed and easily led. Ho governed with a small group of advisers at court.

• Nicholas took little notice of the revolutionary groups that began to attack and murder members of the royal family in the early 1900s.

• Any proposals by representatives of the zemstva were immediately rejected.

• In 1904 the Union of Liberation was created by lawyers and businessmen. It called for a constitution in Russia. Nicholas took no notice of the protests until, in 1905, protest boiled over into revolution.

What was the 1905 Revolution?

• The 1905 revolution was a protest against the Tsar’s autocratic government. Trade unions, the middle class, zemstva and workers in the big cities all joined the movement.

• Nicholas survived because the army remained loyal.

• In October 1905 he was forced to announce the October Manifesto. He promised to set up a constitution and create a parliament (Duma).

• The Duma met in 1906 but was closed by Nicholas after seventy-two days. Three more Dumas met in the next ten years, but each had fewer powers and was elected on a narrower franchise.

• Laws continued to be promulgated by the government without reference to the Duma.

• Nicholas had probably never intended to honour his promises. He had been forced to agree to the Manifesto under threat of force. In it he deliberately omitted any reference to the word 'constitution' and retained the word 'Autocrat'.

What changes were made from 1906 to 1914?

• In 1906, Nicholas II appointed Peter Stolypin as Prime Minster. He tried to modernise Russia. In November 1906 he abolished the landholding system of the commune.

• Stolypin was murdered in 1911 and Nicholas did not continue his policies. He thought that Russia had turned the corner and allowed himself to be influenced by conservatives.

• From 1912 unrest in Russia began to grow alarmingly. Strikes became more and more common and the police and army had to be called in to keep order.

• The growing influence of Rasputin also made Nicholas unpopular. He became very important after the Tsar made himself Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1915. Nicholas left Petrograd and never returned.

Reaction

Why did opposition to Tsarist rule develop in the 1870s-80s?

• Autocracy did not allow people any legal way of complaining or protesting.

• Many people had had high hopes that Alexander’s reforms would lead to some form of democracy in Russia, but when the changes dried up in the 1870s they began to turn to other forms of protest.

• In 1876, a secret society called ‘Land and Liberty’ was formed. It tried to encourage the peasants to rebel against the communes, but was not particularly successful.

• The ‘People’s Will’ was a terrorist movement which was prepared to use violence against the government. It began to plan to assassinate government ministers and even the Tsar himself.

• During the reign of Alexander III opposition groups were suppressed. This continued during the reign of his son Nicholas II.

• In 1898 the Social Democratic Party was set up in Russia by Georgi Plekhanov. The Social Democrats were Marxists. They tried to gain support from the workers in Russia’s industrial cities.

• In 1901 the Socialist Revolutionaries were founded. They were also Marxists, but believed that the key to success was winning the support of the peasants. They assassinated the Grand Duke Sergei, the uncle of Nicholas II, and Plehve, the Minister of the Interior.

• Nicholas II showed no intention of taking any notice of all of these protests. He was not prepared to listen to reason, so violence would have to be used.

Why did opposition become more important?

• In 1903 the Social Democrats met at a congress in London. There were two main leaders of the Party. Georgi Plekhanov, the founder of the Party, and Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the more radical wing.

• Vladimir Lenin was the son of a schoolmaster and was determined to overthrow the Tsar by any means.

• Plekhanov believed that the Social Democrats should win power peacefully.

• When the members of the Party assembled in London there were more supporters of Lenin than there were of Plekhanov. But in the Party as a whole, there were many more people who supported Plekhanov.

• Lenin wanted a small Party of people who were totally committed to the idea of revolution. Plekhanov on the other hand was prepared to allow any one into the Party who opposed the Tsar.

• The result was a split. The majority of the people at the London Congress supported Lenin and broke away from the rest to form the Bolsheviks (the majority). The remainder supported Plekhanov and became known as the Mensheviks (the minority).

• Lenin now had a party that was completely loyal to himself. When the opportunity arose, he would be able to use that support in any way that he wanted.

What was Russia like under Nicholas II?

• At the beginning of the twentieth century Russia was a very backward country. Only 2 percent of the population worked in industry.

• 80 percent worked in agriculture, which was often very primitive, and there was 80 percent illiteracy.

• In Russia there were extremes of wealth and poverty, far greater than in any other European country.

• The number of people living in the cities of St Petersburg and Moscow nearly doubled between 1880 and 1914. This led to overcrowding, shortages of food and unrest.

• Tsar Nicholas II was weak and easily influenced by others. Even when he took the right decision, for example after the 1905 Revolution, he changed his mind later on.

• In the 1880s, Sergei Witte encouraged Russian industry to develop for almost the first time. Witte began to borrow money from French banks to pay for new factories in the big cities. The city that was affected most of all was St Petersburg, the capital.

• The factories which were built in areas near the centre of St Petersburg attracted thousands of industrial workers.

• As more and more workers flooded in to find work in St Petersburg, they found themselves living squashed together in crowded blocks of flats

• The result was more strikes, rising food prices and unrest. These were just the conditions were going to encourage people to support Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Why was there a revolution in 1905?

• In 1904 Russia went to war with Japan. The result was a humiliating defeat, which led the protests in 1905. The first, and in many ways the most important was ‘Bloody Sunday’.

• On 9 January 1905 a procession of Russian workers marched on the Winter Palace, the residence of the Tsar in St Petersburg.

• Tsar Nicholas II was not in the Winter Palace at the time, but his troops opened fire on the crowd. It is difficult to be certain about the number of casualties. At least 200 were killed and 800 wounded.

• Bloody Sunday was the first of a series of events, which led to the 1905 Revolution. It seemed to show that the Tsar had little or no interest in the lives of his people, and it led to an outbreak of terrorism and unrest.

• In March 1905, 89,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the battle of Mukden with the Japanese.

• In May 1905, the Russian Baltic Fleet was destroyed by the Japanese navy at the battle of Tsushima.

The Russian Revolution of 1905

• The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a spontaneous protest at the rule of Nicholas II.

• The Union of Unions demanded parliamentary government and universal suffrage. This was followed by widespread unrest throughout Russia from June to August.

• 20 October a general strike began, which rapidly spread throughout the country.

• 26 October the St Petersburg Soviet was formed.

• The Tsar acted and on 30 October published the October Manifesto.

What was the October Manifesto?

• Civil liberties for all people, including freedom from arrest and freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association

• The creation of a State Duma, which would have to agree to all laws and universal suffrage for the election of the Duma

• Nicholas does not appear to have intended to keep his promises. Although he set up a Duma in 1906, he tried to ignore it as much as possible and closed it down after a few weeks.

• There were three more Dumas before 1914, but each one had less power than the one before.

• Nicholas had no intention of sharing power with anybody. That meant that the only way of bringing about change in Russia was to use force.

The impact of the First World War

• Russia declared war on Austria and Germany in the summer of 1914. The Russian army was poorly equipped and old-fashioned.

• In August all messages were sent by radio. The Russians suffered a series of disastrous defeats at the hands of the German army

• The Russian army had few machine-guns and most of the soldiers were poorly trained. Russian industry was not able to keep the army supplied.

• There were 6,000,000 men in the army, but only 4,500,000 rifles

• The railway network was inadequate and soon broke down. There was plenty of food about not enough locomotives to pull the trains.

• There were severe shortages of food. Food shortages led to inflation.

• In Petrograd prices rose by 300 percent because the war meant that more and more people flocked into the city to work in the munitions factories.

• Nicholas appointed himself Commander-in-Chief in 1915. This meant that he was now directly responsible, before he was able to blame his generals.

• He also left Petrograd for the army headquarters, which allowed Rasputin to influence him through the Tsarina. Rumours spread about the influence of Rasputin.

• Alexandra, Nicholas’s wife, also became very unpopular during the war. She was stupid and short-sighted and German. She was suspected of being a German spy.

• Alexandra gave Nicholas a very misleading picture of events in Petrograd in 1916 and 1917. He relied on letters and telegrams from her to tell him what was going on in the capital.

B6: Russia in Revolution, 1914-1924

What impact did the First World War have on Russia?

• The war was greeted with more celebrations than in any other country in Europe. The Russians were so keen to get at the Germans that they actually had armies advancing into Germany after only two weeks.

• This took the Germans by surprise. The Germans had to move reinforcements from France to help their armies in the east.

• But many Russian units were poorly prepared. They did not have enough rifles or ammunition and their equipment was out of date. Many officers had maps that were completely useless.

• The two Russian generals, Samsonov and Rennenkampf did not work together. They actually competed with each other to be the first to defeat the Germans.

• All radio contact was un-coded, as a result, the Germans were able to discover exactly where the Russian were and what they planned to do.

• The Russian armies had suffered two massive defeats. At Tannenberg, 130,000 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously wounded and 100,000 were captured. At the Masurian Lakes there was a similar story.

Why did the Russian armies do so badly?

• Industry could not supply enough weapons and the railway network could not get supplies moved.

• Many new recruits had little training and were told to pick up rifles from men who had been killed as they advanced.

• Britain and France sent supplies to the port of Archangel in northern Russia, but there was only a single track railway line from there to St Petersburg. Many of the supplies never got through.

• The wounded were left lying in fields or in railway stations because there was nobody to look after them and no medical supplies to treat their wounds.

• St Petersburg was renamed Petrograd in 1914 and here more and more people had crowded in to find work in the munitions factories.

• By early 1917 food prices had risen 300 percent since the beginning of the war.

• The most important change took place in August 1915, when Nicholas II dismissed his senior commanders and took over himself.

• He was now responsible for all the failures in the Russian war effort. Increasingly people began to blame him in person when things went wrong.

• Rumours about Rasputin and the Tsarina Alexandra only served to make the situation worse and the Imperial family more unpopular.

Why was there a February Revolution?

• The main centre of unrest in Russia was Petrograd. It was here that inflation was at its worst.

• By January 1917 people were forced to queue for hours to get bread. There were demonstrations against food shortages.

• On 22 February, the temperature improved by 20 degrees Celsius and crowds of people came out onto the streets. 23 February was International Women’s Day. There were parades and demonstrations all over Petrograd.

• By 25 February half the industrial workers, about 250,000 men, were on strike.

• From 24 February there were reports that soldiers and protesters were beginning to mix together.

• Many new recruits saw little reason to fight and be killed. Nicholas needed to act quickly to sort the situation out, but he was away commanding the army and could not see what was happening in Petrograd for himself.

• The Tsar was kept informed of events in Petrograd by two people, his wife Alexandra and Mikhail Rodzianko, the Chairman of the Duma. The Tsarina told him that all was well. Rodzianko said that there was a serious crisis. The Tsar believed his wife

• By 27 and 28 February there were many demonstrations by workers and the Garrison of Petrograd supported the strikers.

• On 1 March the Tsar attempted to return to Petrograd. But it was too late. Nicholas was forced to abdicate on 2 March.

Why were the Bolsheviks able to seize power in October 1917?

• After the abdication of Nicholas a Provisional Government was set up. The Provisional Government was a temporary government created by members of the Duma until a general election could be held.

• The members believed that they could take no major decisions until a proper government had been elected, so they continued the war against Germany.

• The Petrograd Soviet was elected by the soldiers and workers of Petrograd, so it had far more authority than the Provisional Government. It issued Military Order Number One; this stated that orders from the Provisional Government were only to be obeyed if they were approved by the Soviet.

• The Provisional Government became more and more unpopular because it did not end the war.

• The Provisional Government made no attempt to introduce land reform, which many peasants wanted.

• The Provisional Government did try to tackle the problems of shortages and inflation, but, during the summer of 1917, the amount of rations handed out in Petrograd actually fell.

What was the role of Lenin?

• In March 1917 Lenin was living in Switzerland. He was sent back to Russia by the Germans to undermine the Russian war effort.

• Lenin believed that he could take advantage of the chaos caused by the February Revolution to seize power in Russia.

• Lenin published the ‘April Theses’. He demanded an end to the war with Germany, the abolition of the Provisional Government, all power to the Soviets, all property and land to be taken over by the state.

• The Bolsheviks tried to seize power in Petrograd in May, but failed. In July they tried again after an army offensive failed. This became known as the ‘July Days'.

• The Provisional Government was saved by the army. The Bolshevik leaders were all either arrested and put in jail, or they fled to Finland.

• Alexander Kerensky became prime minister. He had been a Social Revolutionary before becoming Minister for War in the Provisional Government.

• In August, the army commander-in-chief, General Kornilov, believed that Kerensky was about to make himself dictator and ordered his arrest.

• As the army marched on Petrograd, Kerensky asked the Bolsheviks to save him. Lenin agreed if they were let out of jail and given weapons

• In September Leon Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks and soon became Lenin's right hand man. In September and October, when Lenin was in still in hiding in Finland, Trotsky became the most important Bolshevik in Petrograd.

• Trotsky organised the seizure of power and carried it out. He planned the events of 24-25 October, cutting telephone wires, seizing control of the post office, railway stations and other key buildings and isolating the Winter Palace.

• He moved army units loyal to the Provisional Government out of Petrograd and ordered them to defend the city from an advance by the Germans.

• The Bolsheviks seized power by driving the Provisional Government out of the Winter Palace. Kerensky appealed for help, but only a few hundred troops turned up.

• Lenin was now the ruler of Russia. He immediately issued the Peace Decree and the Land Decree. The Peace Decree declared that the war with Germany was over. The Land Decree declared that land belonged to the peasants who farmed it.

• These were attempts to win the support of the Russian people before the general election, which the Provisional Government had planned, was held. But when it was held in November it was won by the Social Revolutionaries.

• The Constituent Assembly met on 5 January 1918, but was immediately crushed by Lenin. He now began to rule as a dictator and set up a secret police force, the CHEKA, to enforce his policies.

How did the Bolsheviks change Russia?

• All businesses were taken over and at first workers were allowed to elect the managers.

• All ranks in the Army were abolished and soldiers were allowed to elect their officers.

• The lands and wealth of the Russian Orthodox Church were confiscated.

• In January 1918, Lenin sent Trotsky to try to negotiate a peace treaty with Germany. The terms were so harsh that Trotsky refused to sign, but Lenin was determined to accept the treat, however harsh it was.

• In March the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed with Germany. Russia lost 25 percent of its population, 25 percent of its iron and wheat and had to pay 300,000 gold roubles.

• Lenin was convinced that civil war was about to break out in Russia. He did not believe that the Bolsheviks would be able to fight both the Germans and the Whites at the same time.

• Lenin had promised 'Peace, Bread and Land' in April 1917. He was determined to keep his promises in order to convince the Russian people that he could be trusted.

Who were the Whites?

• Army commanders fought the Bolsheviks because they opposed Lenin's decision to end the war with Germany.

• In the Ukraine, the Crimea and Poland, there were attempts to break away from Russian rule.

• The Allies sent aid in an effort to get Russia back into the war and to recover equipment and loans that had been provided for the Tsarist government.

• Lenin's political and economic changes also persuaded many Russians to oppose him.

Why did the Bolsheviks win the Civil War?

• The Bolsheviks’ opponents were divided and never worked together. They were fighting for different purposes.

• The Bolsheviks’ controlled the centre and the railway network. Based in Petrograd and Moscow, they also had most of the industry.

• The White armies were separated by hundreds even thousands of miles.

• The Bolsheviks were able to pick off their enemies one by one.

• The total forces of the Whites were also much smaller than the Bolsheviks and numbered only about 250,000.

• The Red Army eventually had 2,000,000 men. Trotsky recruited many officers from the Imperial Russian Army and made them join the Red Army.

• The Whites were often more brutal than the Bolsheviks. To most Russians the Reds were a slightly better bet.

• The key factor was Leon Trotsky. He was a good organiser and travelled around the battlefields urging the Red forces to fight. He had a war train to take him from front to front.

• Lenin introduced War Communism in 1918 to take supplies from the peasants and give them to the Army.

What was War Communism?

• The Bolsheviks had attempted to abolish all private trading and put control of distribution and labour in the hands of the state.

• They nationalised all large scale industry and replaced money with a form of rationing controlled by the state.

• Whatever was produced was taken by the state and the workers were given rations in return. Workers were also controlled by being prevented from moving from one job to another without approval.

• In May 1918 Lenin introduced the grain monopoly, this stated that all surplus grain would now become the property of the state.

• Food brigades were set up that roamed the countryside terrorising villages and searching for hoards of food. Anyone suspected of concealing food could be shot on sight.

• At least 50,000 Russians were murdered in the years from 1918 to 1921, usually without a trial. The favourite method was to shoot the victim in the back of the neck.

• The most serious result was a major famine in which 5,000,000 people died. Peasants refused to hand over food and simply destroyed it instead.

• Even when the Civil War ended, the situation did not improve. There was a mutiny at the naval base of Kronstadt in February 1921.

• Trotsky ordered the Red Army to attack the base and crush the rebellion and 10,0000 sailors were killed. But the rebellion made Lenin realise that things had gone too far too quickly.

Why did Lenin introduce the New Economic Policy?

• It marked a reversal of the policy of War Communism that Lenin had begun in 1918.

• Lenin was forced to introduce the NEP because the period from 1913 to 1921 had seen a collapse of the Russian economy.

• Under NEP, the buying and selling of goods was allowed once more. Soon markets developed and private trade reappeared.

• People were allowed to own small businesses with up to 25 employees. This led to the emergence of the Kulaks and NEPmen. Kulaks were richer peasants who employed workers and made profits from their farms.

• People were allowed to make a profit and then pay taxes, instead of having goods confiscated by the state.

• From 1921 to 1928 the Russian economy began to recover and food production rose. By 1928 production figures were back where they had been in 1913.

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