Tsarist Russia

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Tsarist Russia
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• One-sixth of the worlds land surface
• Unprotected by natural boundaries
• Poor climate
• Poor infrastructure
• Extensive ethnic, religious, and cultural
  diversity held together by force.
• The great movements in Europe the Renaissance,
  the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, the
  Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolutionhad
  barely touched Russia.

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Growth of the Russian Empire Ancient Slavic
Centers 800s - 1200s
Novgorod
Moscow
Kiev
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Growth of the Russian Empire Under Mongol Rule
1200s - 1400s
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Peter the Great (1689-1725)

• .
• Traveled to W. Europe to study technology
• Westernization
• Fought Wars/Gained Territory
• Put down revolts w/ Cossacks
• Created city St. Petersburg-Baltic Access

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Catherine the Great (1762-1796)

• Enlightened Despot
• Introduces reforms in healthcare, taxes, built
  model villages
• Gained first Warm Water Sea Port
• Expands to Pacific/ Alaska

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Alexander I (1801-1825)

• Grandson of Catherine the Great
• Indecisive man
• Admired Napoleon, but broke with him over
  Continental System
• Burned Moscow rather than let Napoleon take it in
  1812
• Influenced by Metternich at the Congress of
  Vienna
• Championed idea of Christian Concert of Europe
• Wanted to remove all memory of the nationalism,
  liberty, equality and fraternity spread by
  Napoleons army.

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The 1825 Decembrist Uprising

• Some Russian Army officers try to keep Nicholas I
  from coming to power.
• Demanded that the tsar give up autocratic power
  and give some rights to the people
• Nicholas crushes the revolt

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Nicholas I (1825-1855)

• Put down Decembrist Revolt
• Responded with executions, deportations to
  Siberia, and a feared secret police force (Third
  Section)
• Military build-up
• Russification program
• Won land from Ottomans, but
• Ignites Crimean War

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Nicholas I (1825-1855)

• primary schools focused on ideals of Russian
  nationalism, orthodoxy, autocracy
• willing to send troops to suppress liberal
  nationalistic movements anywhere
• repressed Polish, Jewish, Moslem minorities,
  forcing Jewish children to be baptized into the
  Russian Orthodox Church
• secret police had unlimited authority

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Intelligentsia

• Westernizers
• Extend the policies of Peter the Great
• Slavophiles
• Romantic nationalism
• Russian Orthodox Church
• Pan-Slavism

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Crimean War (1854-1856)

• Russia vs. France, the Great Britain, Sardinia
  and the Ottoman Empire
• Russia crushed
• Loses access to Black Sea, proves that Russia is
  behind the industrial world.

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Alexander II 1855-1881

• Wanted to modernize Russia
• Worked on strengthening defenses/consolidating
  territory
• Push to East completed with founding of
  Vladivostok on the Pacific
• Tolerant of Minority Groups including Jews

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Edict of Emancipation 1861

• Freed about 30 million privately held serfs
• The serfs were granted full rights of free
  citizens including the right to buy the land from
  the landlords.
• While the serfs were technically free, they were
  never given real opportunity to buy enough of
  their own land in order to leave poverty or the
  control of their landlords.
• Communities of peasants (mirs), rather than
  individuals, were loaned about half of Russias
  farmland
• Mirs had 49 years to make redemption payments to
  the government for the land

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Effects of Emancipation

• Peasants but trapped by debt.
• The emancipation imposed harsh economic
  conditions on the peasants and did not satisfy
  their need for farmland.

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Other Reforms

• Westernized legal codes (ex. Trial by jury)
  instituted
• Established local assemblies (zemestvos)
• Secondary school reform
• Relaxed censorship newspapers
• Military reforms -- conscription

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Opposition Frustrated Liberals

• Populists
• Nihilists
• Anarchists
• Terrorists

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Alexander II

• The Zemstvos called for a central Zemstvo
• Alexander rejected the idea then
• The intelligentsia had no outlet for their ideas
  in practical politics had no influence
• Many of them would have supported the Tsar
• Now they became underground fanatics
• Attempts on Alexander's life 1866 and 1867 made
  him more reactionary

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Assassination of the Tsar (1881)

• Freeing of the serfs did not end the calls for
  change
• Russia remained repressive and backward
• Growing opposition
• Professional revolutionaries
• Alexander II was assassinated by a bomb in St.
  Petersburg

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Alexander III (1881-1894)

• Autocracy, Orthodox, Nationality
• Attempted to reinstate the influence of the
  nobility and attack the Zemstvos
• Strengthened the central bureaucracy
• Gave more power to the secret police
• He sent the secret police to watch universities
  and made teachers report upon the activities of
  their students
• Increased censorship

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Orthodoxy

• He believed in a strong connection between
  autocracy, nationality, and
• Anyone worshipping outside the Orthodox Church or
  speaking anything but Russian was considered
  dangerous
• Other national groups within Russia were
  oppressed
• The Jews were treated the most harshly

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Policy of Russification

• Alexander increased the repression of subject
  nationalities.
• All subjects should be Russian in language,
  culture
• Tried to stamp out nationalism
• Russia official language
• Forced conversion to Orthodoxy

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Pogroms

• Jews forced to live in the Pale
• blamed for Alexander IIs assassination
• Quotas in universities
• All Jews disenfranchised
• Pogroms (riots against Jews)
• Jewish homes, stores, and synagogues were looted
  and destroyed

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The Witte Era 1892-1903

• Sergei Witte Russian Finance Minister
• Attempts industrialize Russia by foreign loans
  export of grain through collection of surplus
  (indirect taxation)
• 1890-1900 coal production increased 5.9 million
  to 16.1 million ton/year
• 1880-1913 grain production increased 34 million
  to 90 million tons/year
• Encouraged migration from countryside to towns

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Industrialization

• Russian cities were growing (rapid urbanization)
• This was encouraged by government loans to local
  businesses
• Tariffs protected Russian goods from foreign
  competition
• Forced industrialization, however, created a
  discontented working class.
• Nevertheless, Russia lagged behind in industrial
  development
• Working conditions were poor but unions were
  outlawed
• The gap between rich and poor grew
• And the world was headed into turmoil which
  prevented slow change and improvement

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First Stages of Industrialization
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Extensive Foreign Investments Influence

• With help from French and British investors,
  Russian began work on the Trans-Siberian Railroad
  in 1891
• Designed to connect European Russia with Pacific
  ports
• Economic benefits only in a few regions

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The Witte Era 1892-1903

• Strain on population through
• Taxation
• Urbanization bad sanitation, housing, working
  conditions
• After 1900 widespread unemployment
• Beginnings of social unrest

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Impact of Industrialization

• 1898 Foundation of the Russian Social Democratic
  Workers Party and Socialist Revolutionary Party
• Bolsheviks (the radical wing of the Social
  Democratics) see industrialization as the
  necessary Marxist stage preceding revolution

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Nicholas II (1894-1917)

• Continued his fathers policies of protecting the
  autocracy, not as strong as his father
• Outlawed the Russian Social Democratic Party
  (Marxists), so it operated underground or in
  exile
• Vladimir Lenin exiled to Siberia then went to
  Switzerland where he conducted revolutionary
  activities until 1917

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The Tsar His Family
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Alexandra The Power Behind the Throne

• Even more blindly committed to autocracy than her
  husband
• Alexandra was influenced by Rasputin, a monk who
  healed her son Alexis Hemophilia
• Scandals surrounding Rasputin served to discredit
  the monarchy

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Hemophilia the Tsarevich
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1892 Famine

• Devastating famine 1892
• Approximately 36 million affected starvation
  and disease
• Government blamed for policy and poor response
• Pressure applied through taxation to force
  peasants to market grain at low prices
• Images of poor peasants victimized by the rich
  provides fuel for revolutionary intelligentsia
• High protective tariffs on imports made it
  impossible to import machinery and fertilizers
  the rich also alienated

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Growing Unrest

• 1895 the new Czar, Nicholas II, rejects appeals
  from zemstvos to include them in policy
  deliberations (autocratic rule)
• Throughout 1890s rapid industrial growth sees
  rise in numbers of urban working class and labour
  unrest
• 1896-7 city wide strikes in the textile industry
  in St. Petersburg

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Russo-Japanese War 1904-1905
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Russia Is Humiliated
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Russian loss in the Russo-Japanese War

• Increased criticism of the Tsar, raised food
  prices, saw many strikes by angry workers
• large, peaceful demonstration of workers marching
  toward the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to
  present a petition for better working conditions
• Tsars troops fired on them, killing 100 or so
  (Bloody Sunday)
• news of massacre spread through Russia, workers
  struck, mutinied, engaged in violence for the
  next 10 months

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The 1905 Revolution

• Workers procession in St. Petersburg in January
  leads to confrontation with government and to a
  nationwide strike in September led by Moscow
  printers
• Demands
• Liberals want national parliament with
  democratic elections, constitution, freedom of
  speech, political amnesty
• Peasants want food and end to redemption
  payments
• Workers want trade unions, better working
  conditions

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Bloody Sunday

• Unarmed peasants, led by Father Gapon, marched to
  Winter Palace singing, God Save the Czar
  carrying petition requesting shorter work days,
  minimum wage, calling of a constituent assembly
  to create a constitution for Russia.
• Palace Guards fired upon crowd killing hundreds,
  injuring thousands (without orders)
• Bond between Czar and his people broken forever

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Bloody Sunday - January 22, 1905
The Czars Winter Palace in St. Petersburg
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Russian Cossacks Slaughter People in Odessa
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The Revolution Spreads

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The 1905 Revolution

• Peasants in mid year the peasants form a union
  and in late September after the harvest,
  widespread unrest breaks out
• Liberal Professionals in May create the union
  of unions, join the workers in strike action in
  September
• Government issues the OCTOBER MANIFESTO makes
  vague promises to grant an elected legislature
  (Duma) and the right to organize unions and
  political parties
• December government puts down an uprising of
  workers in Moscow using the military

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The Battleship Potemkin Mutiny June, 1905
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The Tsars October Manifesto
October 30, 1905

• Promised Full Civil Rights to People
• Established Duma
• Result Constitutional Monarchy with an
  uncooperative Despot

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The Opening of the Duma

• The first two tries were too radical.
• The third duma was elected by the richest people
  in Russia in 1907.

1906
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The Revolution of 1905

• The creation of a discontented working class
• Vast majority of workers concentrated in St.
  Petersburg and Moscow
• Help from the countryside poor peasants
• No individual land ownership
• Russia industrialized on the backs of the
  peasants
• Tremendous historic land hunger among peasants
• Real winners of the 1905 Revolution Middle Class
• --Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets)
• --Duma

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The Russian Constitution of 1906

• Known as the Fundamental Laws April 23, 1906.
• The autocracy of the Russian Tsar was declared.
• The Tsar was supreme over the law, the church,
  and the Duma.
• It confirmed the basic human rights granted by
  the October Manifesto, BUT made them subordinate
  to the supremacy of the law.