Russia 18811921: Overview

1
Russia 1881-1921 Overview

• The forces which challenged, identity and
  authority of the Tsarist state.
• The influence of revolutionary ideology
• The 1905 revolution and the modification of
  autocracy
• The Dumas and the work of Stolypin.
• The conflicts of ideology,identity and authority
  in Russia during the period 1917-21

2
Russia 1881-1921 Overview

• The disintegration of the Tsarist state by 1917
• Russias experiment with democracy after the
  February Revolution
• The Bolshevik Revolution
• The Civil War
• The establishment of the Soviet State

3
The Tsarist Government and Autocracy

• People of the Russian empire were governed by one
  person, the Tsar
• Since 1613, the Russian Tsars were from the
  Romanov dynasty.
• The Tsar was the absolute ruler

Alexander III
Nicholas II
4
The Tsarist Government and Autocracy

• The Tsar had complete power over the country, he
  ruled Russia as an autocrat
• This meant that he ruled on his own without a
  Duma (parliament)
• Tsar Nicholas II had ministers chosen from the
  nobles to help him rule, the peasants and workers
  did not have a vote
• About 125 million people lived in Russia, less
  than half were Russian

5
Nicholas and Alexandra

• Nicholas became the Tsar after the death of his
  father, Alexander III in 1894, the day after he
  had this to say
• What is going to happen to me, to all Russia? I
  am not ready to be the Tsar. I never wanted to
  become one. I know nothing of the business of
  ruling
• His German wife Alexandra was a German princess,
  she was confident and strong willed
• From the start of his reign she encouraged
  Nicholas to rule as an autocrat and to ignore new
  ideas about sharing power with the people

6
Nicholas and Alexandra

• They were happily married and had five children
• Their only son and heir to the throne had
  haemophilia
• They were deeply religious and spent hours in the
  royal chapel praying for the recovery of their
  son
• No one was allowed to discuss his illness

7
Russian Society

• From 1897 census
• Ruling class (0.5)
• Upper class (12)
• Commercial class
• (1.5)
• Working class (4)
• Peasants (82)

• The fact that there was comparatively small
  commercial and working classes show how backwards
  Russia was at this time

8
The Rich

• Not all Russians were poor, Russian nobility were
  fabulously rich with the Tsar owning 8 different
  palaces and 15,000 servants
• Although only 1 of the population they owned 25
  of the land
• By 1900 the capitalists who made money from
  banking, industry and trade were also rich
• Hatred of capitalists grew in the slums and
  boarding houses of Russias cities.

9
The town workers

• The lack of economic development illustrates a
  critical aspect of imperial Russia
• Russia had not experienced the major industrial
  expansion occurring in other countries in the
  19th century

10
The town workers

• However there was industry in certain parts of
  Russia e.g. The Urals regions which produced iron
  and Moscow and St Petersburg had textile
  factories
• However small scale

• The Sheer size of Russia and the undeveloped
  railways and roads, the absence of an effective
  banking system had discouraged the rise of an
  entrepreneurial spirit

11
The town workers

• Many peasants tried to improve their lives by
  going to work in the nearest city in factories or
  mines until harvest time
• Nearly 1 million went to St Petersburg in 1900 in
  search of work
• They were unable to improve their conditions as
  TUs were not allowed by law, going on strike was
  illegal and there was always long queues of
  unemployed people anyway

12
Extract from Father Georgei Gapon in 1905, a
priest in St Petersburg

• They receive miserable wages and generally live
  in
• an overcrowded state, very commonly in special
• lodging houses. A woman takes several rooms in
  her
• own name, subletting each one and it is common
  to
• see ten or more persons living in one room and
  four
• sleeping in one bed. The normal working day is
• eleven and a half hours of work, exclusive of
  meal
• Times. I often watched the crowds of poorly clad
  and
• emaciated (very thin) figures of men and girls
  returning
• from the mills. Why do they agree to work
  overtime? They
• have to because they are paid by the piece and
  the rate is
• very low

13
Peasants

• In 1900 four out of every five citizens were
  peasants
• However a thriving economy had not risen, land in
  Russia was a national weakness as Russia lay too
  far North to enjoy a climate or soil conducive to
  farming
• Also there was not enough land to go round

14
Peasants

• Until 1861 the peasants had been serfs, slaves of
  their landlords with no rights
• They were poor, uneducated, resistant to change
  and used inefficient methods incapable of
  producing surplus food
• In 1861, Tsar Alexander III freed the peasants
  from serfdom and allowed them to own the land on
  which they grew their food
• There was strings attached to this deal which
  freed 50 million peasants

15
Peasants emancipation of the serfs

• First of all the land on which the peasants grew
  their food was not given to them as individuals
• It was given to the village commune, or mir in
  which they lived the small tracts were often less
  than they had been working before

• Secondly the peasants had to pay for the land
  given to the commune in yearly instalments called
  redemption payments when 49 instalments were paid
  the peasant owned the land
• The mir had to agree if a peasant wanted to leave

16
Peasants After emancipation

• Being freed from serfdom did not improve the
  lives of the peasants
• Peasants had less land and money than before due
  to redemption payments
• As each year went by and the population grew, the
  plots got smaller and the peasants found it
  harder to support their families
• Primitive methods continued as they could not
  afford new technology

17
Peasants After emancipation

• There were over 600 riots in the aftermath of the
  emancipation
• Life was hard, nearly half of all new born
  children died before the age of 5 and life
  expectancy was 50
• The best the peasants could hope for was a good
  harvest to eat and sell their surplus to pay
  their taxes

• Peasants continued to resent the vast estates of
  the rich
• Russia had to import machinery they paid for this
  by imposing high taxes on the peasants
• The peasants had to sell their grain to pay their
  taxes at a time when grain prices in the world
  were low