Alexander III And Russification

Question 1

What were Racial and Religious groups like before Russification?

Answer 1

• over 100 different ethnic groups
• Slavs made up 2/3 of population
• rest had different nationality and cultures
• Catholicism, Protestantism, islam and Judaism all significant community
• Nationalism was strong with some areas (Poland - long history of independence that had been absorbed by Russia)
• continuous challenge for autocracy as development of national ideology in 19th century encouraged groups to assert identities (Poland’s brought rebellion in 1830)
• Population in 1894 - 117 million Russians, 42 million Ukrainian, 2 million Latvian, 8 million Belorussian

Question 2

How did Alexander II respond to ethnic minorities?

Answer 2

• sent his brother to defeat to deal with the rebels from Poland in 1863 where over 200,000 Poles created an underground National Government for Poland using guerrilla warfare
• minorities faced little persecution and some concessions given to minorities
• Finland allowed to have its own Parliament
• 1864 and 1875 Latvians and Estonians allowed to convert to Lutheranism
• by the end of rule, national differences were viewed with suspicion and led to things like Ukrainian works no longer allowed to be published and language no longer allowed in performances in 1876

Question 3

How did Alexander III react to racial minorities?

Answer 3

• believed a unified country would be easier to rule - Russification = sought to merge all the Tsar’s subjects into a single nation with a shared feeling of identity
• this wasn’t dissimilar to what had happened in Italy and Germany in the 1860s and early 1870s where lots of small states united to form a new country

Question 4

What did Russification mean?

Answer 4

• Russian was to be official language
• Only language used in courts
• Any regional cultures and traditions banned
• Education system forced children across the empire to speak and read only in Russian
• Russian Orthodox Church became only approved religion
• Any western influence discouraged
• strengthen regime!

Question 5

What affect did Russification have on Poland and Finland?

Answer 5

Finland:
- Parliament (diet) was reorganised in 1892 to weaken political influence
- had to use Russian language
- independent postal service was scrapped and Russian coinage replaced currency
Poland
- Polish National Bank closed in 1885
- schools and unis could only teach Polish language in polish
- religion had to be Russian
- Polish literature had to be translated
- Administration of Poland also changed to curb any independence
- Catholic monasteries shut down

Question 6

What affect did Russification had on the Baltic Germans?

Answer 6

• had enjoyed special protection
• 1885-1889 enforced use of Russian in all state offices, primary and secondary schools, police and courts
• German university of Dorpar was Russified to become Iurev University (1889-93)
• 37000 Lutherans covert to orthodoxy

Question 7

How did Russification affect Belorussia, Georgia and Ukraine?

Answer 7

• Ukraine - limited use of language in 1883 and in 1884, all the theatres in the five Ukrainian provinces closed
• military service arrangements were extended into areas previously exempt and conscripts from national area were dispersed to previous national groupings developing in the army where business was entirely conducted in Russia

Question 8

How did Russification affect Serbians?

Answer 8

• Uprisings of ethnic peoples were mercilessly suppressed in Guriya in Georgia in 1892, Bashkira in 1884, Uzbek district of Fergana and Armenia in 1886

Question 9

What were the results of Russification?

Answer 9

• met with resistance
• June 1888, Department of Police estimated around 332 cases of mass disturbance including 43 disturbances in 9 of 12 central provinces. Military was used in 51 of these cases
• Much resentment amongst wealthy and well-educated minorities in the west of empire e.g. Baltic Germans, Poles
• Local language books secretly published
• some ethnic schools survived
• rising nationalism in Europe
• led to more opposition
• Ultimately didn’t work - 1905-6 rebellion broke out again in Poland - Russia had to deploy 300000

Question 10

What is anti-semitism?

Answer 10

• Persecution of Jews
• Long history of it in Europe
• Tensions rose of the Jews were believed to have a role in killing Jesus so suspicions (xenophobia) and resentment
• 1190- Jewish population of York massacred at Clifford’s Tower
• All Jews expelled from England in 1290 and no record until 1655
• Pale of Settlement - area that compromised 20% of European part of Russian Empire was where Jews were allowed to live

Question 11

What was anti-semitism like under Alexander II?

Answer 11

• made some concessions as Jews were ‘useful’
• Jewish merchants of the first guild (paying more than 1000 roubles in taxes each year) were allowed to reside anywhere in empire
• university graduates could enter government service
• could work and live outside the Pale but after Polish rebellion of 1863 liberalisation was halted

Question 12

What was anti-semitism like under Alexander III?

Answer 12

• Pob taught Alexander that they were ‘Christ killers’ and to ‘Beat the Yids - Save Russia’
• believed that ‘one third should emigrate, one third die and one third assimilate’
• right wing Russian press helped to encourage the belief that Jews had orchestrated Alexander II assassination
• feared Jewish were involved in opposition groups - many Marxists came from Jewish backgrounds (e.g. Trotsky)