Fall of Imperial

Russia
 Post-Napoleon:
Tzar Alexander I. (1777 – 1825)
Confident foreign policy
Rise of nationalism
Growing influence of new social classes
that contravened the feudal order
But because of a relative absence of
a bourgeoisie and capitalism 
life of the masses largely unchanged
The only agent of progress =
= intelligentsia / military
(officers who had witnessed victorious
battles at Leipzig, Borodino)
By contrast, the Tzarist elite considered
its military success as a proof of
the legitimacy of imperial power
 The Decemberists
November 1825: Tzar Alexander I. dies
December 14, 1825: the Decemberist Uprising
Army officers leading troops to Senate Square
in St. Petersburg
Pressuring the Senate to adopt a constitution
and political freedoms
Uprising quickly put down by new Tzar Nicholas I.
500 people tried; 5 executed; 100 banished
 The Reaction
Tzar Nicholas I. (1796 – 1855)
Reactionary, anti-modernization
Virtually no government reform during
Nicholas’s 30 years on the throne
“I need loyal subjects, not educated people.”
An absolute, ‘God-like’ monarch
Russia’s Orthodox Church in a subordinated
position
An age of militarism in Russian history
Of 52 government ministers, 32 were army
generals
Reaction (antithesis) to the Decembrists’
movement:
Stronger powers given to secret police;
tougher censorship laws; more pervasive state
ideology
Russia: “A colossus with feet of
clay”
Russia’s reputation in Europe:
Expansionist, aggressive, culturally backward,
‘Asiatic’ country
Anti-Russian revolts in Poland (1830), Caucasus
(Chechnya, Dagestan; 1845 – 1859)
A major, unresolved issue: peasantry
Unlike in Europe, Russia perpetuated serfdom
and forced labour
1845 – 1858: 348 peasant uprisings
Social trends in 1840s’ Russia:
Tension between proponents of Western vs. Slavic
culture
Western = European-style liberalism
Slavic = nationalist conservatism
 Crimean War
To camouflage the failures of domestic policy, the
Tzarist government set its sights on territorial
expansion, particularly in the Ottoman-occupied regions
of southern Europe
 Crimean War
Broke out 1853
Unexpectedly, 1854 France and England joined the
war
Russia economically and politically
unprepared to withstand the Allies
August 1855: fall of Sevastopol, the Black Sea
stronghold
March 1856: peace treaty
Russia forced to relinquish its claims over
the Danube river estuary
Banned from maintaining naval presence
on the Black Sea
 a de facto end of Russia’s position as
one of Europe’s great powers
 Alexander II.’s reforms
Alexander II. ascended throne in 1855
Saw serfdom as incongruous with political
trends in Europe
1861 manifest
Russia’s peasants granted personal freedoms,
some of them land; BUT land provided for a
payment; many peasants fell into debt; for
the next 44 years, state demanded debt
repayments
1861: new system of local government;
greatly curtailing the power of the
aristocracy
Effectively an end to an administrative
system that had been in place since
Catherine II.
Peasants free to own land, engage in trade,
set up businesses; Response lukewarm
Alexander II.’s reforms (cont’d)
Reforms half-hearted, not putting an end to
real power held by landowners, state
bureaucracy
Political amnesty
More autonomy to universities, literary
circles, the press
Hundreds of Russian students enrolled in
western European universities 
Import of foreign literature, culture,
and liberal/libertarian ideas
From 1874 onwards: student activist
subjected to massive repression,
imprisonment, indefinite detention without
trial
Russia’s export: Anarchists

1862 Zemlya i Volya

(Land and Liberty):
Russia might be able to
bypass capitalism
and draw on its rural
communal traditions to
establish a socialist
regime
Illegal, samizdat
publications
 Anarchist leader: Bakunin
M. A. Bakunin (1814 – 1876)
Came from an aristocratic family; abandoned a military
career to pursue philosophy studies in Moscow, Berlin
Stripped of noble title and possessions
Actively involved in 1848 revolutions all over Europe
1851 arrested and extradited to Russia; imprisoned,
banished to Siberia; 1861 fled to England via Japan,
USA
Idealist, anti-Marx leader of the workers’ movement
in western Europe
Died 1876 in Geneva
Main tenets of anarchism: revolt (against state, church)

at the core of freedom

Freedom without socialism = injustice;
socialism without freedom = slavery
Faith in the masses’ preparedness for violent action;
tradition of peasant rebellion
Idealism; going among the people
(i.e. peasants rather than urban workers )
 Russia’s economy in the 19th
century
Industrialization / urbanization
1860: 800,000 industrial workers
1863: out of a population of 50 million,
6.15 million lived in the cities
But industrial development falling
behind other European countries
Partly because of continued under-investment in
education (0.8% of government budget in 1857)
 Russia’s foreign policy
1867, Russia sold Alaska to USA for 7.2 million dollars
30 years later: Gold Rush
View of Klondike
 Russia’s foreign policy (cont’d)
Trying to offset the Crimean War fiasco by forging closer
links with Bismarck’s Prussia
(Russia adopting a neutral stand during Europe’s 1860s
wars)
To reciprocate, Germany endorsed Russia’s territorial
claims in the Balkans
Russia’s goals: negate the outcomes of the Crimean peace
settlement; renew its geopolitical prestige; recapture the
Danube region; penetrate the territory surrounding Istanbul
Leveraging the Slavic peoples’ anti-Ottoman struggle
some success in Serbia, Bulgaria
But Bosnia awarded to Austria-Hungary; Cyprus to Britain
200,000 Russian troops dead; 2 billion roubles in damages
 RUSSIAN
Classical
LITERATURE reflecting
social and political trends
Tolstoy Tchekhov Turgenev Dostoyevsky
 Alexander III.
1881, Tzar Alexander II.
Assassinated in a bombing attack
One of the masterminds:
Sofia Perovskaya, a woman anarchist
Hanged at age 28
 Alexander III.:
Rise of civic society
Alexander II. succeeded by his son
Alexander III. (1845 – 1894)
New Tzar repulsed by his late father’s
liberalism, judiciary and press freedom
Centralized government, militarization
Political opponents expelled from Russia
without trial
Pro-German policy replaced by
Francophile diplomacy
Restrictions on academic freedom /
education for women / scholarships
for lower-class students
 Alexander III.:
Russia’s economy
Two periods of economic growth: 1890s
and 1906 – 1914 (GDP growth of 10% p.a.)
Finance Minister Count Sergei Witte;
autocratic, top-down development, without
a concurrent liberalization of society /
government
Economic protectionism; influx of foreign
capital; currency stabilization; modern
technologies; high taxation
 corruption, cronyism,
inflation, rise of cartels,
industrial strikes
 Nicholas II.:
Empire in crisis
1894: sudden death of Alexander III.
Succeeded by eldest son Nicholas II.
(1868 – 1918)
10 years without government reform
Repression of evolution produced
a revolution:
1903: Social-Democratic congress in
Brussels/London
Bolsheviks led by Lenin; a group of
‘professional revolutionaries’ rather than a
mass movement
Prague 1912: Bolsheviks established as a
political party; partly took over Russia’s
Social-Democratic press, finances and
membership
 Nicholas II.: Russia in the Far
Nicholas I.: attempts toEast
compensate for Russia’s loss of
prestige in Europe by asserting itself in the Far East
Facing up to a fast-modernizing Japan
Deployment of strategic communications:
Trans-Siberian Railway (1891 – 1901)
Russia’s military strength: an army 10 x the size of
Japan’s; a navy 3x bigger than Japan’s
 Russo-Japanese War
Nonetheless: February 1904: Japan
vanquished Russia’s Far East naval
fleet; occupied Korea; pushed
Russian forces into Manchuria and
conquered Port Arthur
Another fleet obliterated at
Tsushima in May 1905
(out of 38 ships, 35 destroyed)
US-brokered peace treaty signed in
Portsmouth:
Russia ceded to Japan the southern
part of Sakhalin island,
the coastal cities of Port Arthur
and Dalny, part of the Manchurian
railway
Political consequences of the war
January 1905: St. Petersburg workers staged a march
towards Winter Palace, seeking Tzar’s protection from
poverty and hardship.
Sunday, January 22, 1905
Military opened fire; 130 dead, countless wounded
BLOODY SUNDAY
Political consequences of the war
(cont’d)
A wave of protests, strikes; universities turned into
debate forums, articulating and consolidating demands
put forward by democratic intellectuals:
to create a legislative assembly; general elections, a
democratic political system or at least a constitutional
monarchy
Mutiny on battleship Potemkin
 Afermath of the war
Late October 1905: concessions by the Tzar;
promise of liberal freedoms, right to vote, setting up
a Duma (parliament); legalization of political parties
few of these reform promises materialized
July 1906: Prime Minister Stolypin (1862 – 1911)
Country on the verge of civil war
Martial law
A wave of assassinations
Trials by tribunal (within 48 hours)
1908 – 1909: 3,682 death sentences; 4,517 persons
sentenced to forced labour
Government reforms resulted in a Duma dominated
by the Tzar’s nominees
 Stolypin’s Russia
Also promoted primary education,
emancipation of peasants
Hoping for a natural, non-violent
‘graduation’ of Russian peasants into
American-style, individual farmers
Partial success: Wheat production up
20%
50,000 new schools
Inauguration of 5,000 new Orthodox
churches
Stolypin assassinated in September 1911
1910
 A fragmented reform movement
Voicing partisan interests rather than
demands of the masses
Right-wing nationalists representing businessmen,
landowner classes
Octoberists – defended the status quo
Progressivists advocated industrial reform
Cadets called for non-violent democratization
Trudoviki (Labourists) = left of the middle
Esers (Socialist Revolutionary Party: [P]SR) =
left-wing
Marxists (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) = extreme
left
 Lenin (1870 – 1924)

Future = dictatorship led by

workers, peasants
A centralized, military-style,
hierarchical Party
A proponent of revolution
Optimistic about revolution
taking place in Russia as the
weakest link in the global
capitalist system
 1905 - 1907
Marginalization of foreign policy
Tensions with Austria-Hungary over the Balkans
Tensions with Britain over Persia, Afghanistan
No diplomatic solution  preparations for war
1913: a French-supported armament programme

Logic of history:
the war would uncover Tzarism’s
weaknesses
and set in motion its final collapse
 WWI
WWI brought about widespread demoralization,
economic disintegration
February 25, 1917: general strike
February 27: fall of Tzarism and absolute
monarchy; establishing a Republic; democratic
freedoms; independence for Poland; autonomy
granted to Finland, Estonia
February – July 1917: two government systems:
Interim government
the Soviets (workers’, peasants’, and military
councils)
 Interim gov’t failed to secure peace and
an economic upturn
May 1917: anti-war demonstrations
Kerensky (an Eser) heading a new government
April 1917: with German support,
Lenin returns to Russia
(Germany stood to benefit from the Bolsheviks’
pacifism)
April 3, 1917: Lenin promulgated his “April
Theses”:
Revolution to shift from bourgeois-democratic to
a socialist characteristics
Slogan: All Power to the Soviets! (= no power to
be retained by the Interim Gov’t)
the Soviets to be dominated by Bolsheviks
 July 1917: a failed offensive seeking to end WWI
July 1917: gov’t clampdown on Bolsheviks;
Lenin fled to Finland
Bolsheviks ceased to hold shadow government
September 1917: Military putsch
General Kornilov conspired with Kerensky
to install a military dictatorship
Failed, partly because of Bolshevik propaganda
among troops
Red Guards springing up across the country
Lenin preparing a violent coup d’etat
Growing Bolshevik influence in the Soviets, among
military, within the Baltic navy (Kronstadt, Petrograd)
Interim Gov’t issues arrest warrants, outlaws Bolshevik
press, calls for Cossacks and junkers to defend
Petrograd  radicalization of the situation
 OCTOBER
REVOLUTION
 October/November 1917
Red Guards taking control of Petrograd’s railways,
bridges, banks, telegraph installations, power
stations, communications
Lenin arrives at the Smolny Palace
City conquered by revolutionaries
(rallying signal: gunshot from the Aurora)
Incl. Winter Palace, seat of the Interim Gov’t
Government minister arrested; Kerensky, with US
support, fled the country (died in California in
1970)
AURORA
Smolny Palace, Petrograd
Winter Palace, Petrograd
 October/November 1917 (cont’d)
Immediately, a session of All-Russian Soviet
Congress
900 delegates (mainly Bolsheviks but also
Mensheviks and Esers); adoption of revolutionary
decrees, legitimizing the new distribution of
power:
Government Decree:
a government by People’s Commissars
Decree on Peace: all warring parties to cease
hostilities; a peace solution with no reparations
and/or annexations
Decree on Land (land to belong to those who work
on it; confiscated from rich landowners)
Decree on National Self-Determination –
independence granted to Finland, Baltic states
DECREE ON LAND
 1918 – 1921: Russian Civil War
Formation of the Red Army, fighting the White
Guards
Allies supplying arms, funds
Still, the Reds faced 14 enemy countries
including USA and Czechoslovak Legions
(originally siding
with Russia against the Central Powers)
The Romanovs