Interpretations Flashcards
Lynch regarding the bureaucracy of the Russian Empire
It was “capable of doing nothing but ‘serving’, knowing nothing apart from official forms… and sucking the blood of the people”
Corin regarding Tsar Nicholas II as a leader
“Nicholas was ideologically incapable of accomodating the new middle class let alone a more demanding peasantry and working class”
Orlando Figes’ assessment of Nicholas as tsar
“Nicholas was the source of all problems” and he was “a Tsar determined to rule from the throne yet quite incapable of exercising power” leading to an “autocracy without and autocrat”
D. Lieven on Nicholas’ position
“The dangers Russia faced were very great” and Nicholas was “not by temperament or personality very well quipped to wield [power]” meaning that those “traumatic years” would “probably have destroyed any man who sat on the throne”
Steve Smith regarding the act of modernisation as an autocracy
“The collapse of the autocracy was rooted in a crisis of modernisation” since the “government hoped that it could carry out modernisation whilst maintaining tight control over society”
Adcock regarding liberals
“liberals are evidence of the tsarist regime creating their own enemies”
Robert Service on the divides within the Russian Empire
the “empire was deeply fissured between the government and the tsar’s subjects;… between the educated and the uneducated;… between rich and poor; between privilege and oppression”
Harcave on reasoning for peasant discontent
“Their earnings were often so small that they could neither buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes and redemption dues they owed the government”
Richard Pipes on agrarian problems within the russian empire
“There was a general agreement at the turn of the century that Russia faced a grave and intensifying agrarian crisis due mainly to rural overpopulation”
Harcave on discontent among workers
“Dissatisfaction turned into desperation for many impoverished workers, which made them more sympathetic to radical ideas”
Robert Service regarding the military in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday
“the monarchy’s fate hung by a thread” (bc if unrest spread to the military, govt cant stop a revolution”
Trotsky on the 1905 rev and the October Manifesto
“Although there were a few broken ribs, tsarism came out of the experience of 1905 alive and strong”
Steve Smith on the significance on 1905
the fact “That the autocracy came out of the Revolution unscathed had little to do with political tactics”
Fitzpatrick on the outcome of 1905
“the political outcome of the 1905 revolution was ambiguous and in some ways unsatisfactory to all concerned”
Pipes on the outcome of 1905
“In the end, Russia gained nothing more than a breathing spell”
Michael Lynch on the impact of 1905
- “By October, the Tsar was faced with the most united opposition in Romanov history”
- “the liberals could claim remarkable success. Their appetite for reform was satisfied”
- “as long as the tsarist government kept its nerve and the army remained loyal, the forces of protest would find it very difficult to mount a serious challenge”
Richard Pipes on the impact of 1905
It “alerted Russia’s political institutions, but it left political attitudes untouched”
Lynch on the third Duma
“docile”
Lynch on the ministers that followed Stolypin
“the various ministers the tsar appointed were distinguished only by their incompetence”
Lynch on Stolypin’s reforms
- “even in advanced economies land reforms take time to work” but Stolypin had appr 5 years
- “there is doubt whether, even without the intrusion of murder and war, his peasant policy would have succeeded. The deep conservatism of the Russian peasants made them slow to respond”
