ALEXANDER II OPPOSITION

Question 1

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Both the hope and disappointment brought by Alexander IIs reforms stimulated opposition to the tsarist regime. The initial relaxation in censorship encouraged

Answer 1

the spread of radical literature, while the relaxation of controls in higher education increased the number of independently minded students.

Question 2

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The creation of the zemtsva and dumas also provided a platform for the educated intellectuals to challenge tsarist policies, while reform to the judicial system produced

Answer 2

professionally trained lawyers skilled in the art of persuasion and ready to question and challenge autocratic practices.

Question 3

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The more repressive atmosphere which existed in Alexander II’s later years, and continued through

Answer 3

the reign of Alexander III, only served to reinforce the demands for change.

Question 4

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Although a relatively small group, since there were comparatively few literate and educated Russians, the size and influence of the

Moderate liberal opposition

Answer 4

liberal intelligentsia grew with the reforms and economic changes of the later nineteenth century. Liberal intellectuals not only had the benefit of education, but possessed the wealth, time and interest to reflect on political matters.

Question 5

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Many had travelled abroad and despaired at the political and social stagnation in their country.
Some of the intelligentsia sought the truth’ via philosophical ideas such as nihilism or anarchism.
However most fell into one of two broad categories:

Moderate liberal opposition

Answer 5

the Westernisers who wanted to catch up with the West’ by copying Western ways, and the Slavophiles who favoured a superior Russian’ path to a better future. The writer Ivan Turgenev was a Westerniser, while Leo Tolstoy was a Slavophile.

Question 6

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Slavophiles and Westernisers

Moderate liberal opposition

Answer 6

• Slavophiles believed Russia had a unique culture and heritage centred on the prevailing peasant society and the principles of the Orthodox Church, which should be preserved as the country modernised.
• The Westernisers thought that Russia should abandon Slavic traditions and adopt modern Western values. This included not only economic and military reform but also reforms to civilise society by providing representative assemblies, reducing the authority of the Orthodox Church, and establishing civil liberties.

Question 7

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The zemstva provided a natural home for Westernising liberal opposition voices, as local decision-making encouraged members to think more nationally. Their members’ hope was to

Moderate liberal opposition

Answer 7

reform the autocracy, so that the Tsar would listen to and rule in conjunction with his subjects.

Question 8

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

However, although Alexander II had created the representative zemstva, he was not prepared to give them national influence. When the St Petersburg zemstvo demanded

Answer 8

a central body to coordinate the regional councils, the Tsar stood firm against the proposal.

Moderate liberal opposition

Question 9

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

He did, at least partly, change his mind at the end of the 1870s and, had the Loris-Melikov proposals taken effect, they would have increased representation. However, the restriction of the zemstva powers by

Answer 9

Alexander III in 1889-90 bitterly disappointed the zemstva liberals.

Question 10

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

After peaking in 1881, the attractions of the Slavophiles diminished in the 1890s, as the country moved forward in its march towards industrialisation, creating conditions in which Western-style socialism began to take root. This split the intelligentsia. Some were attracted by

Moderate liberal opposition

Answer 10

Marxist theory and were drawn to socialism, others maintained a more moderate liberal stance and continued to pin their hopes on a reform of tsardom.

Question 11

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Another, far more radical strand of opposition developed among the younger generation who, although often the children of liberals, wanted to go further than their parents.
In June 1862,

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 11

a series of fires in St Petersburg destroyed over 2000 shops.
Young Russia was immediately held responsible and a commission was appointed to investigate, but little came of this.

Question 12

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

In 1863, ‘The Organisation’ was set up by students at Moscow University and more calls for reform were made. Student idealism and determination were heightened

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 12

by the increased repression of the later 1860s and the influence of radical socialist writers.

Question 13

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

RADICAL THINKERS
Chernyshevsky was the author of a radical journal, The Contemporary, and the book, What is to be done?, which he wrote in 1862.
His writings suggested that the peasants had to be made leaders of revolutionary change.

Mikhail Bakunin was both an anarchist and a socialist. He put forward the view that private ownership of land should be replaced by collective ownership and that income should be based on the number of hours worked. Bakunin had been forced to live in exile, but he helped to introduce Marxism into Russia by

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 13

translating Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto into Russian in 1869. The first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital was subsequently published in Russia in 1872.

Question 14

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

In 1869, Bakunin and Nechaev, a student radical activist who had fled from Russia illegally after calling on St Petersburg students to assassinate the Tsar, wrote a manifesto. This was published in Switzerland and secretly smuggled into Russia. It exhorted opponents of autocracy to be merciless in their pursuit of revolution, laying aside all other attachments - family, friends, love, gratitude and even honour - in order to find the steely resolve required to pursue a revolutionary path.
In 1871, Nechaev used underground contacts to return to Russia, determined to

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 14

‘go to the people and carry out a revolution. However, he was soon forced to flee again, after the murder of a student who disagreed with him.

Question 15

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The Tchaikovsky Circle, named after its most prominent member, Nikolai Tchaikovsky, was set up in 1868-69 in St Petersburg. It was primarily a literary society that organised the printing, publishing, and distribution of scientific and revolutionary literature, including the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital. The circle was never large; probably no more than 100 people spread between St Petersburg and other major cities, but it sought social (although not political) revolution. From 1872, the Tchaikovsky Circle began

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 15

organising workers with the intention of sending them to work among the peasants in the countryside.

Question 16

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The idea of going to the people became known as Narodnyism (Populism) and in 1874

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 16

Lavrov encouraged a group of around 2000 young men and women, mainly from the nobility and intelligentsia, to travel to the countryside in order to persuade the peasantry that the future of Russia depended on the development of the peasant commune.
They aimed to exploit the resentment felt since Emancipation about the peasants’ lack of land and the heavy tax burden they still carried.

Question 17

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Some Narodniks even tried dressing and talking like peasants but the romantic-illusions of the young were soon shattered by peasant hostility. The peasants’

second attempt

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 17

ignorance, superstition, prejudice and deep-rooted loyalty to the Tsar ensured that the incomers were reported to the authorities. Around 1600 of them were arrested.
There was a second attempt to go to the people in 1876, but this proved no more successful than the first. More arrests followed and a series of show trials were held in 1877-78.

Question 18

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

‘LAND AND LIBERTY’
‘Land and Liberty (Zemlya i Volya in Russian), set up in 1877, continued the populist tradition.

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 18

its members sought work within the peasant communes - as doctors, teachers or workmen - but in a less obtrusive manner. Some carried out political assassinations, including that of General Mezemtsev, head of the Third Section, in 1878.
They elicited considerable public sympathy.

Question 19

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

There were even some talks between zemstva and the Land and Liberty organisation to try to place more pressure on the autocracy for constitutional reform.
The tsarist government, however, failed to respond. Although Milyutin, Minister of War, saw

RADICAL OPPOSITION

Answer 19

all too clearly the state of the country, none within court circles seemed willing to listen to the growing pressure for change.

Question 20

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

In 1879 Land and Liberty split into two different groups:

Answer 20

• Black Repartition
• The People’s Will

Question 21

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

Black Repartition organised from St Petersburg by Georgi Plekhanov and other colleagues

Answer 21

It was so called because it wanted to share or partition the black soil provinces of Russia among the peasants. It continued to work peacefully among the peasantry, developing ties with students and workers and publishing radical materials in the hope of stimulating social change without resorting to violence. However, it was severely weakened by arrests in 1880-81, when it ceased to exist as a separate organisation. Plekhanov and some of the early leaders turned instead to Marxism.

Question 22

Opposition: ideas, ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups

The People’s Will was ably led by Aleksandr Mikhailov who successfully planted a spy in the Tsar’s Third Section, to keep the group informed of the Secret Police’s activities and so evade harassment and arrest

Answer 22

This was a bigger group than Black Repartition and it advocated violent methods, undermining government by assassinating officials. In 1879, it declared that the Tsar had to be removed - although it did offer to withdraw the threat if the Tsar agreed to a constitution, which, of course, he did not. After a number of unsuccessful attempts against Tsar Alexander Il’s life, their aim was finally achieved in March 1881.