Chapter 1.4 - Methods of Repression and Enforcement Flashcards
Chapter 1.4 - methods of repression and enforcement
chapter 1.4
What are the 4 different ways repression was used in Russia?
- Secret Police
- Army
- Censorship
- Propaganda
The Secret Police: Alexander II
What was the secret police called under A2?
The Third Section of the Imperial Chancellery
What was the role of the Third Section?
To catch dissidents
When was the Third Section replaced by the Okhrana?
1880
How many unsuccessful assassination attempts on A2 were there?
5
How many people died when a bomb at the Winter Palace exploded in 1880?
11
When and where was A2 assassinated?
Assassinated on the 13th March 1881 in St Petersburg
The Secret Police: Alexander III
What did the Okhrana have the power to do after their power was increased by A3?
Infiltrate dissident groups
What opposition group was disbanded by the Okhrana in 1884?
The ‘People’s Will’
Who did the Okhrana execute in 1887 along with 4 others for plotting to assassinate the tsar?
Lenin’s brother
Why did the Okhrana become less prominent in the 1890s?
There was a lack of opposition
The Secret Police: Nicholas II
How many dissidents were murdered between 1905 and 1907?
3000
When was Prime Minister Stolypin assassinated?
18th September 1911
Why was the assassination of Grand Duke Sergi in 1905 important?
He was the tsar’s uncle
When could the Okhrana execute without trial?
After 1905
The Secret Police: Provisional Government
When was the Okhrana abolished?
February 1917
What did the provisional government replace the Okhrana with?
Nothing - no secret police
What did the provisional government set up to arrest people undermining the war effort?
The Counter Espionage Bureau of the Petrograd Military District
The Secret Police: Lenin
What was the secret police called under Lenin and when was it established?
The Cheka - established by the Bolsheviks in December 1917
Why was the Cheka’s victimisation of people unfair?
The Cheka victimised people on who they were and not what they had done
What was the role of the Cheka?
To deal with ‘counter-revolutionaries’
What did the head of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, instruct members?
‘Your first duty is to ask him to which class he belongs, what are his origins, his education, and his occupation. These questions should decide the fate of the prisoner’
What did the Cheka implementing Red Terror involve? 3 things
- Implementing War Communism
- Elimination of kulaks
- Enforcement of conscription
How many people did the Cheka execute per year from 1917 to 1922?
28,000
When was the Cheka disbanded and what replaced it?
Replaced in 1922 by the GPU
What did the GPU become in 1924?
OGPU
The Secret Police: Stalin
What was set up to combat opposition to Stalin’s personal dictatorship? in 1934?
The NKVD
What 3 high-ranking communists were executed by the NKVD?
- Trotsky
- Kamenev
- Zinoviev
Who was the first head of the NKVD and when was he executed?
Yagoda - executed in 1938
When was Yagoda’s replacement, Yezhov, executed?
1940
What did the NKVD create in Russia?
A permanent form of terror
How many people did the NKVD send to the gulags under the Stalinist regime?
Over 40 million people
How many members of the NKVD had been purged by the start of WW2?
Around 20,000 people
After the NKVD became the NKGB in 1943, what were the two groups it split into?
MGB and MVD
When was Beria head of secret police?
1938 to 1953
What happened to Beria after Stalin’s death?
He was executed in December 1953 under the orders of Khrushchev
The Secret Police: Khrushchev
What did Khrushchev replace the MVD with in 1954?
The KGB
How was secret police under Khrushchev different to how it was under Stalin?
The KGB was under party control rather than individual control
When were the gulags shut down?
1955
How many political prisoners were there by 1960?
11,000
The Army: Alexander II
What did Alexander II use the army for in 1863?
To put down the Polish Revolt
The Army: Alexander III
What did Alexander III use the army for?
Enforcing Russification
The Army: Nicholas II
What did the army do on Bloody Sunday in 1905?
Opened fire on protesters
What did the army crush under Nicholas II?
The 1905 revolution
What was the role of the army from 1905 to 1917?
To dismantle strikes, protests and riots
How many members of the Petrograd Garrison supported the February 1917 revolution?
150,000 members
What did Lenin and Trotsky encourage soldiers to form?
The Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC)
What did the MRC become?
The vanguard of the revolution
The Army: Lenin
How many conscripts were there in the Red Army by 1922?
5 million conscripts in the Red Army by 1922
How many troops were in the Whites opposition?
500,000 troops
What did the Red Army impose with the Cheka?
War Communism
How many troops did Trotsky send to recapture the island where there was a mutiny at the Kronstadt naval base in February 1921?
50,000
The Army: Stalin
What economic policy did Stalin use the military to implement?
Collectivisation
During the great purge from 1936-38, what % of the top echelon of the military had disappeared?
40%
Why was purging the top officers in the military illogical?
At the time there were rising international tensions following Hitler’s expansionist foreign policy
What did Stalin order Russian troops to do in WW2?
Fight ‘to the last drop of blood’
What was successfully defended in WW2?
Moscow and Stalingrad
The Army: Khrushchev
What did Khrushchev use the army to crush?
The Hungarian Uprising in 1956
What was the size of the army in 1955 and 1964?
1955 - 3.6 million
1964 - 2.4 million
Censorship: Alexander II
What was experienced for the first time in Russia during the rule of Alexander II?
Glasnost (openness)
When was censorship relaxed?
1865
What did the government have the right to do despite censorship being relaxed?
The government had the right to withdraw publications of a ‘dangerous orientation’
What newspaper did the government publish?
Ruskii
How many books were published in 1855?
1020 books published
How many books were published in 1864?
1836 books published
What was published in Russian in 1872?
Volume 1 of Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’
Censorship: Alexander III
What did the government have the right to do under A3?
The government was allowed to censor written material before it was published
What happened to newspapers the government didn’t agree with?
They were shut down
Censorship: Nicholas II pre-WW1
What did Nicholas II do in regards to censorship?
Nicholas II reverted to the glasnost of Alexander II
How much did the circulation of periodicals increase from 1900 to 1914?
Increased three-fold
What happened to prepublication censorship?
It disappeared
What newspaper emerged that was aimed at the proletariat under Nicholas II?
‘Kopek’ (penny)
What began to be reported in print?
Political matters discussed in the Duma
Censorship: Nicholas II during WW2
What happened to censorship during WW1?
It increased dramatically
How did most people get their news?
From troops listening to foreign broadcasts
Censorship: Lenin
Why did the Bolsheviks abolish press freedom?
In order to suppress ‘counter-revolutionaries’
What department was set up in 1921 with the aim of promoting an idealised picture of Russian life?
Agitation and Propaganda department (Agitprop)
What was put under surveillance by the Bolsheviks?
Schools, cinema, radio and libraries
What writers were given gifts form promoting the new government?
Gorky and Zemyatin
Censorship: Stalin
By when were all literary groups shut down?
1932
What did writers in the Soviet Union have to join?
The Union of Soviet Writers (USW)
What did members of the Union of Soviet Writers have to produce material under the banner of?
Socialist realism
How many writers were put on trial for treason in August 1952 and how many were executed?
15 put on trial - 13 executed
Censorship: Khrushchev
What happened to censorship under Khrushchev?
Censorship was eased
How many books were published per year by the late 1950s?
65,000 books - 2x as many as in the 1920s
How many libraries were there by 1959 and how many books did they contain?
135,000 libraries containing around 8 billion books
How many more books were there in 1959 than there were in 1913?
10x more books
What was the readership of newspapers by the early 1960s?
Nearly 60 million
How many films were made in 1959?
145
Propaganda: Nicholas II
What was distributed after the 1905 revolution?
Photos of the royal family
Propaganda: Lenin
What was set up in 1921 to distribute propaganda?
Agitprop
What slogans did the Bolsheviks use to communicate their message to the population?
- ‘Peace, Bread and Land’
- ‘All Power to the Soviets’
What was Petrograd renamed in 1924?
Leningrad
What newspaper did the Bolsheviks set up?
Pravda (truth)
Propaganda: Stalin
What did Stalin create around himself and Lenin?
A cult of personality
What was a Stalin slogan in 1924?
‘Stalin is the Lenin of Today’
How much did membership to the youth group Komsomol increase from 1929 to 1941?
Increased five-fold
What type of music was banned?
Jazz music
What did the Stakhanovite movement encourage?
People to work harder
What did movies depict?
‘Socialist realism’
How many directors of the movie industry were executed between 1948 and 1953?
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