Essay - achievement of opposition to autocracy

Question 1

Question

Answer 1

‘Opposition to the Tsarist regime achieved nothing in the years 1866-1894.’ Assess the validity of this view.

Question 2

Factors to consider?

Answer 2

• Liberals: intelligentsia, professional classes, westernisers and Slavophiles.
• Radical opposition: extremists groups
• Radical thinkers.

Question 3

Evidence for the argument the liberals achieved something.

Answer 3

→ Land & Liberty:
- Set up in 1877 continued the populist traditions.
- Its members sough 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.
- There were some talks between ‘Land and Liberty’ and the zemstvos to place more pressure on the tsarist autocracy for constitutional reform.

→ The Narodiks:
- In 1874 Pytor Lavrov encouraged a group of around 2000 young people mainly from the nobility and intelligentsia to travel into the countryside to persuade the peasants that the future of Russia lay in the development of the peasant commune.
- They aimed to exaggerate the resentment felt since Emancipation about the peasants’ lack of land and heavy tax burdens.

Question 4

Evidence for the argument the liberals achieved nothing.

Answer 4

→ Land & Liberty:
- Talks between ‘Land and Liberty’ and the zemstvos to place more pressure on the tsarist autocracy were unsuccessful - the tsar refused to make any of the changes suggested by the groups.
- In 1879 Land and Liberty split into two different groups: Black Repartition and The People’s Will.

→ The Narodiks:
- However, the peasants’ ignorance and loyalty to the Tsar meant that around 1600 of the 2000 were arrested.

Question 5

Evidence for the argument the radical opposition achieved something.

Answer 5

→ The People’s Will:
- Successfully planted a spy in the Tsar’s Third Section to keep the groups informed of the Secret Police’s activities so they could evade arrest and harassment.
- The group advocated violent methods, undermining the government by assassinating officials.
- In 1879 it declared that the Tsar had to be removed – assassinated Alexander II in March 1881.

Question 6

Evidence for the argument the radical opposition achieved nothing.

Answer 6

→ Encouraged Alexander III’s reactionary policies:
- Public hanging of conspirators involved in his father’s assassination.
- Issued the 1881 ‘Manifesto of Unshakeable Autocracy’
- In 1882 the Statute on Police Surveillance meant that any area in Russia could be subject to search by the police.
→ In 1887 the Ministry was grant powers to hold closed court sessions.
→ In 1889 the volost courts were put under the jurisdiction of the Land Captains in the countryside and judges in the towns.
→ Censors became more active: all literary publication had to be officially approved and libraries and reading rooms were restricted.

Question 7

Evidence for the argument that radical thinkers achieved something.

Answer 7

→ Radical thinkers:
- Nikolai Chernshevsky was the author of a radical journal “The Contemporary” – he suggested that peasants had to be made leaders of revolutionary change.
- Aleksandr Herzen was the editor of the radical journal “The Bell” – he advocated a new peasant-based social structure.
- Mikhail Bakunin put forward the view that private ownership of land should be replaced by collective ownership. He helped to introduce Marxism into Russia.
- In 1869, Bakunin and Sergei Nechaev wrote a manifesto “Catechism of a Revolutionary”. This was published in Switzerland and secretly smuggled into Russia.
- In the 1890s the country moved towards a Western-style socialism and some of the intelligentsia were attracted to it by the Marxist theory.

Question 8

Evidence for the argument that radical thinkers achieved nothing.

Answer 8

→ Radical thinkers:
- In 1871 Nechaev used underground contacts to return to Russia determined to ‘go to the people’ and carry out a revolution – he was soon forced to flee again.
- The Tchaikovsky Circle was set up in 1868 in St Petersburg – it was primarily a literary society that organised the printing, publishing and distribution of revolutionary literature, but the circle was never more than 100 people.
→ Normal people didn’t understand the ideas of the radical thinkers - as many of them were illiterate they couldn’t read the ideas. Peasants were incredibly loyal to the Tsarist regime because they had been indoctrinated by the Church and therefore were unwilling to listen to radical ideas.