2022 Exam: How, and how oppressively, was Russia governed before 1905?

Question 1

What were the three core beliefs of the Tsarist regime,?

Answer 1

Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality.

Question 2

Who coined these three core beliefs, and when?

Answer 2

Sergei Uvarov, minister for education under Nicholas I, in 1833.

Question 3

Which belief out of the three was the most important?

Answer 3

Autocracy.

Question 4

What is autocracy?

Answer 4

A form of government in which one person possesses unlimited power.

Question 5

Where did Tsar Nicholas II believe his right to wield unlimited power derived from?

Answer 5

The will of God - it was therefore beyond challenge.

Question 6

What did Tsar Nicholas II dismiss reforms as, early in his reign?

Answer 6

‘Senseless dreams’.

Question 7

What were the main ways in Russia could be determined as an autocratic state, in the late 19th Century?

Answer 7

There was no constitution. There was no parliament - laws were made by the Tsar issuing decrees. There were no legal safeguards protecting the rights of individuals.

Question 8

The Tsar’s main strength was his sense of duty. What were the his main weaknesses?

Answer 8

• He was naïve - he believed that the vast majority of his people were devoted to him
• He fussed over trivialities and failed to address bigger issues
• He distrusted many of the politicians and officials with whom he had to deal, regarding them as devious and self-seeking drive and imagination
• He failed to offer effective leadership, lacking drive and imagination

Question 9

How was the Orthodox Church firmly under state control?

Answer 9

• It was run by a government department headed by a minister whose title was procurator of the Holy Synod

Question 10

Why, by the end of the 19th century, was the Orthodox Church’s value to the Tsarist regime diminishing, and an institution in decline?

Answer 10

• The reputation of its priests, often drunken and corrupt, was low and it was struggling to get a hearing in Russia’s fast-growing towns and cities

Question 11

What two claims did the doctrine of Nationality make?

Answer 11

• The domination of the tsar’s multi-national Empire by Russia and the Russians was an entirely right and proper state of affairs. Russians, it was argued, had built the Empire and were therefore entitled to control it
• Russia and Russians were unique; separated from the peoples of Western Europe by a distinctive language, religion and culture. As a result, claimed supporters of Tsarist, liberal and socialist ideas had no place in Russia because they were unRussian

Question 12

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, what did the doctrine of Nationality provide a justification for?

Answer 12

The Tsarist regime’s ‘Russification’ policies (the oppression of nationalities).

Question 13

What was Russification, and where was it implemented most aggressively?

Answer 13

Russification was an attempt to impose Russia’s language, culture and religion on the Empire’s non-Russian minorities. It was implemented most aggressively in those parts of the Empire where nationalist feeling was strong - Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and, to a lesser extent, the Caucasus region.

Question 14

What happened to Poland and Baltic provinces, in relation to Russification?

Answer 14

• The use of the Russian language in court proceedings and in school lessons became compulsory, despite the fact that it was not the native language of most people in these places

Question 15

How was the Orthodox Church involved with Russification?

Answer 15

• It was given government money to support its efforts to convert non-Russians to Orthodoxy
• Churches that had deep roots in non-Russian areas were bullied and harassed
• In the Baltic provinces, no new Protestant church could be built without government permission

Question 16

Why was Russification a counter-productive policy?

Answer 16

Its aim was to halt the growth of nationalist movements in non-Russian areas. Instead, it aroused resentment within minority nationalities and stimulated the growth of nationalism.

Question 17

When did the Russian Empire acquire its Jewish population?

Answer 17

When Russia seized control of large parts of the previously independent Kingdom of Poland in the late 18th century. By 1900, there were nearly five million Jews in Russia.

Question 18

Why did the Jewish population of Russia suffer more than any minority, at the hands of the Tsarist regime?

Answer 18

• Discriminatory, anti-semitic policies especially in the reigns of Alexander III and Nicholas II
• In the 1880s, Jewish access to higher education was severely restricted and Jews were banned from living in the Pale of Settlement’s rural areas, forcing them into towns and larger villages

Question 19

What instruments of repression did Tsarist have at their disposal?

Answer 19

• It censored newspapers and other publications in an attempt to halt the spread of subversive ideas
• It the event of large-scale disorder, it could turn to the army
• At the forefront of its struggle against its internal enemies, however, was the Okhrana, the Tsarist police force

Question 20

What was the role of the Okhrana?

Answer 20

To infiltrate and destroy revolutionary and terrorist networks - it was generally effective, despite being a relatively small organisation.

Question 21

How many full-time Okhrana’s agents were there, in 1900?

Answer 21

There were only 2,500 full-time Okhrana agents in the whole of the Empire, one-third of them stationed in St Petersburg.

Question 22

What was the key to the Okhrana’s success?

Answer 22

The use of informants: in the early 1900s, the leadership of both the Socialist Revolutionary and the Socialist Democratic Parties were riddled with Okhrana agents