Glossary Flashcards
Who were the Serfs? What could happen to them?
Labour workers owned by masters
Bought or sold
What were Mirs?
Village communes where peasants lived and worked
What is autocracy?
Total power by one person
What is a Tsar?
Emperor of Russia
What was the Orthodox Church?
Official state religion of Tsarist Russia
What was conscription?
Forced service, usually for 25 years
What was Serfdom?
Where peasants are property of their masters
What is Emancipation?
Freedom
What was the Bureaucracy?
Civil servants who undertake administrative tasks
What is a Mortgage?
Money borrowed against a form of security
Who were the Westernisers?
Russian intellectuals who believed Russia should follow Western lines
Who were the Slavophiles?
Russian intellectuals who believe Russia should seek a basis under tradition
Who were the Intellectuals?
Educated elite often critical of the Tsarist regime
What/When was the Crimean War?
Where Russia were up against Britain, France and Turkey
1853-56
What does radical mean?
Fundamental change
What is the Zemstva? When were they set up?
Elected local government assemblies
1864
What is a Liberal?
Someone who wanted more personal and economic freedom
What was St Petersburg?
Capital of Russia (later Petrograd and Leningrad)
What was the Ohkrana?
Third Section replacement
What was reaction?
Backwards behaviour returning to former ways
Who were the Land Captains?
Nobles with extensive local powers
What is a pogrom?
Attack on Jews
What is Russification?
Imposing Russian culture and language on ethnic minorities
What is anti-semitism?
Hatred towards Jews
Who were the ethnic minorities?
Primarily Poles, Finns, Ukrainians and Jews
What are Import Tariffs?
Money paid when goods are brought into Russia
Who were Kadets?
Constitutional Democratic Party members
What was universal suffrage?
Vote for all people
Who were Octobrists?
Moderate Conservative party
Who were the Bolshevik Party? Who led them?
A faction broken away from the Social Democratic Working Party
Lenin
What were “civil rights”?
Personal rights
What was the Socialist Revolutionary Party? What did it support?
Populist party founded in 1901
Land redistribution
What was the Social Democratic Workers’ Party? What 2 factions did this party later split into?
Marxist party founded in 1898
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
What does “proletarian” mean?
Exploited working-class member
What were Mensheviks?
Marxists
What was the Central Committee?
Body elected by party congress
What was Kronstadt?
St Petersburg’s main seaport
What is meant by “dual power”?
Power-sharing between the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet
What is a constituent assembly?
A governing body who draw up a new constitution
Who were the Red Guards?
Bolshevik armed forces
What is a mandate?
Authority to carry out a policy
What was the Cheka?
Bolshevik secret police
Who are Commissars?
Socialist ministers
What was Sovnarkom?
Soviet Council of People’s Commissars
What is the Politburo?
The highest policy-making body in the Soviet Union
What is meant by a “purge”?
“A cleaning out of impurities”
What was Stakhanovite?
A movement named after a miner with record-breaking amounts of coal in 1935
What was the Komsomol?
Young Communist organisation
What was the NKVD?
Secret police force that succeeded the Cheka
What was the Kolkhoz?
Main collective farm of Russia
What was the Nomenklatura?
Privileged elite who ran the party machine
What was the Cold War?
Tension between the US and Soviet Union post-WW2
What was Samizdat?
Secret publication of banned literature
What was Burzhui?
Abusive term against anti-Communists
What was a constitutional monarchy?
Where the ruler’s power is limited by an elected assembly
What was Marxism?
A political ideology that believes all history is driven by economic forces which create class struggles
What was a Narodnik?
Russian name for a populist
What were show trials?
Propagandist trials held for political purposes
What was a socialist?
Someone who believes factory and land should belong to the people
What was a Soviet?
An elected council that controlled factories or local areas
What were trade unions?
Organisations that represent workers in negotiations
What was the Winter Palace? Where is it located?
Home of the Tsar
St Petersburg
