Chapter 1

Question 1

What does autocracy mean?

Answer 1

Autocracy - no limits on a ruler’s power, the Tsars would be considered autocrats

Question 2

What other roles did the Tsar have?

Answer 2

As well as the Tsar, he was also the head of the Russian Orthodox Church and was considered God on earth

Question 3

What was the Holy Synod?

Answer 3

It was established in 1721 and was a group of bishops that formed the ruling body of the Orthodox Church

Question 4

What were the main advisory bodies of the Tsar?

Answer 4

The Imperial Council of Chancellery, consisting of 35-60 nobles, the Council of Ministers and the Senate (basically redundant)

Question 5

How were the nobles obligated to the Tsar?

Answer 5

They were expected to keep order on their estates and may serve as a provincial governor

Question 6

What was the bureaucracy?

Answer 6

Paid noble officials, selected from a ‘table of ranks’ that controlled all state positions

Question 7

What were the most serious problems of the bureaucracy?

Answer 7

Riddled with internal corruption, incompetence and no social mobility

Question 8

What was the size and nature of the Tsar’s army?

Answer 8

1.5 million conscripted serfs who were forced into service for 25 years

Question 9

What were the elite regiments of soldiers from the Ukraine and Southern Russia known as?

Answer 9

Cossacks

Question 10

How was Russia considered a police state?

Answer 10

Police prevented freedom of speech, press and travel, political meetings and strikes were forbidden and censorship existed at every level

Question 11

What was the secret state network known as under Nicholas I?

Answer 11

The Third Section

Question 12

What was Russia’s ration of village to town dwellers, and what was Britain’s?

Answer 12

11:1 and 2:1

Question 13

Why was Russia economically backwards?

Answer 13

Territory was inhospitable, size and climate was difficult, resources such as coal and oil remained untapped, relied on a serf-based economy

Question 14

Why did serfs struggle in the Russian economy?

Answer 14

They starved in the winter, mirs meant they worked in scattered strips, little incentive to become wage-earners

Question 15

What were the two different types of serfs?

Answer 15

Privately-owned serfs (obroks) which were around 30% and those providing labour (barshchina) which were around 70%

Question 16

What were the problems of the landowning elite?

Answer 16

Generally reliant on the serfs, uninterested in their estates, and suffered due to the increasingly competitive nature of Western economies

Question 17

What did the land-owning elite consist of?

Answer 17

Clergy, nobility, civil service, army, naval officers and the royal court

Question 18

Why did the divisions between the serfs and the elites seem so stark?

Answer 18

There was a lack of a middle class in Russia in 1855

Question 19

How did legal barriers limit social mobility?

Answer 19

Serfs paid dues to their masters and also paid direct and indirect taxes to the government

Question 20

What were the three largest ethnic groups within the Russian Empire?

Answer 20

Russians (55.6 million) Ukrainians (22.4 million) and Polish (7.9 million)

Question 21

How did Nicholas I provoke the British and French into joining the Crimean War?

Answer 21

He sank a squadron of the Turkish Black Sea Fleet, which made the two countries anxious to protect their own interests

Question 22

What was Russia’s numerous flaws during the Crimean War?

Answer 22

Outdated technology, poor transport, inadequate leadership and lack of morale within troops

Question 23

What was the impact of the Crimean War for Russia?

Answer 23

Trade was disrupted, peasant uprisings escalated and renewed cries from the Russian intelligentsia

Question 24

What did the Treaty of Paris (1856) do?

Answer 24

It prevented Russian warships from using the Black Sea in times of peace