Nature of Government Flashcards
what are the three aspects to Russian autocracy?
- Tsars accountable only to God and not to the people
- Tsars placed by God on earth to set moral standards
- Autocracy was the best way to rule; Liberal democracy would’ve failed
When was Nicholas 1 Tsar?
1825-1855
When was Alexander II Tsar?
1855-1881
When was Alexander III Tsar?
1881-1894
When was Nicholas II Tsar?
1894-1917
Autocratic principles?
‘Orthodoxy, Autocracy and Nationality’
What did the Fundamental Laws of 1832 state?
‘The emperor of all the Russians is an autocratic and unlimited monarch’
When was the first attempt on Alexander II’s life?
1866
what did Marxism-Leninism centre on?
- ‘superstructure’ had to be destroyed and replaced with bodies that would create an egalitarian society
- Marx’s ‘Labour Theory of Value’
what did the Labour Theory of Value claim?
under a capitalist economy the proletariat would never gain the full value of their efforts and would be exploited.
What is the dictatorship of the proletariat?
rule over the bourgeoisie by the workers
How did Lenin implement his ideology?
- writing e.g. publication of What is to be Done? (1902)
- leading a Bolshevik revolution against the PG October 1917
- engaging in a civil war 1917-1921 against opponents of the revolution (whites)
- War Communism
- concessions in the form of the NEP after the civil war
What did Lenin’s 1902 ‘What is to be Done?’ advocate
revolutionaries need to bypass the implementation of a democratically elected assembly and go straight to a government led by a Party Central Committee
why did Lenin introduce the NEP?
to ensure the backing of moderate Bolsheviks
What did the NEP cause politically?
a split in the party. Trotsky wanted a more ‘permanent revolution’.
What did Bukharin think about the NEP?
it was a necessary temporary measure to enable the consolidation of ‘socialism in one country’
When did Lenin die?
1924
what was Stalin’s ideology based on?
- command economy: based on centralised planning and collectivisation to change the superstructure of society
- personalisation of superstructure: cult of personality and propaganda
Why did Stalin move Russia away from a Lenin-style dictatorship to totalitarianism?
- he wanted Russia to succeed: in order for collectivisation to be successful, policies couldn’t be questioned
- Stalin was a megalomaniac
- He built on Lenin’s foundations of the Cheka and establishment of the Party Central Committee (its what Lenin would’ve wanted)
On what grounds did Khrushchev denounce Stalin during his 1956 secret speech to the Twentieth Party Congress?
- it was not Lenin’s wish that Stalin should become leader
- Stalin had not prepared the USSR adequately for WW2
- Stalin had committed crimes against the Russian people
- Stalin had alienated ‘outsider’ allies like Hungary
How did Khrushchev implement de-Stalinisation?
- releasing prisoners from Gulags
- relaxing censorship
- attempting to remove the cult of personality
What shows Khrushchev was still authoritarian?
he sent tanks to Hungary in 1956 to deal with the Nagy regime
Main continuities in central administration?
- degree of centralised administration and government
- all administrations hierarchical in nature e.g. Tsar or Poliburo at the top
- organs of government always accountable to leaders and not the people: democracy never fully implemented
- use of organs to perform specific roles
Organs of the Tsars government:
- a Council of Ministers
- the Imperial Council of State
- A Committee of Ministers
- the Senate (Supreme Court)
Organs of the Communist Government
- All-Russian Congress of Soviets
- CEC (divided into the Politburo, Orgburo and Ogburo)
- Sovnarkom
What was the Council of Ministers?
Tsar’s main law-making and administrative body, acted as main link between other organs of government and the tsar
What did the Imperial Council of State do?
advised the Tsar on legal and financial matters
When was the Committee of Ministers’ responsibilities divided up?
1906
what did the Senate do?
Supreme Court’s main duty was to act as the final court of appeal on major legal matters
What was the CEC?
Central Executive Committee, similar to the Council of Ministers under the Tsar.
Divided into three political offices: Politburo, Orgburo and Ogburo.
What was the Sovnarkom?
the Council of People’s Commissars
Main Tsarist changes to central administration
- ## October Manifesto led to the abandonment of a Committee of Ministers
What did the Fundamental Laws of 1906 do?
restricted the Duma’s power, reinforced the notion that the Duma would always be accountable to the tsar.
What happened to the Committee of Ministers in 1906 after the October Manifesto?
Its duties were divided up between the State Council (previously the Imperial Council of State) and the Duma.
What was the role of the State Council?
to act as a check on the activity of the Duma
What new representative organs did Stalin’s 1936 constitution introduce?
- The Supreme Soviet of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
- The Soviet of the Union
- The Soviet of Nationalities
What did the Soviet of the Union contain?
representatives of the whole of the USSR
What did Article 126 of Stalin’s Constitution state?
the Communist Party was ‘the nucleus of all the public and state organisations of the working people’
When did Alexander II introduce ‘Zemstva’ and ‘Duma’
Zemstva - 1864
Duma - 1870
The Third Element
the liberal voice of teachers, lawyers and doctors who demanded that central government should be remodelled on the lines of the Zemstva and Duma
What did Petrograd Soviet Order Number 1 do?
placed ultimate authority over soldiers into the hands of the Soviet
What did Alexander II’s 1864 legal reforms do?
- introduced a jury system for criminal cases
- created a hierarchy of courts for diff types of case
- better pay for judges to lessen corruption
- pubic attendance at court allowed
What was the Vera Zasulich case?
On January 24th 1878 she shot and wounded Trepov the Chief-of-Police
What changes did Alexander III introduce?
- he centralised the police under the Minister for theInterior
- special courts were designed for political cases
- replaced Justices of the Peace with Land Captains
Communist legal changes?
- ‘Revolutionary justice’
2. New criminal code of 1921 legalised the use of terror to deter all anti-revolutionary behaviour
Alexander II’s ‘secret police’
Third Section (the Imperial Chancellery) until he replaced them with the Okhrana in 1880, a less openly aggressive body.
Who used the Okhrana?
- Alexander II from 1880
- Alexander III
- Nicholas II
What Secret Police did Lenin use?
the Cheka
When did Lenin establish the Cheka and why?
December 1917
To deal with those who opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power in October, used to implement war communism and the red terror during the civil war 1917-21
OGPU
the Cheka was replaced by the less brutal United State Police Administration (OGPU) in 1924
NKVD
Stalin introduced the People’s Commisariat for Internal Affairs in 1934. The NKVD were used for purges and trials.
What did Khrushchev use?
the MVD and the KGB
What was the MVD responsible for?
‘ordinary’ criminal acts and civil disorder
what was the KGB used for?
internal and external security matters
What was the MRC?
the Military Revolutionary Committee, a body of soldiers mainly from Petrograd encouraged by the Bolsheviks to become the vanguard of the October Revolution
Red Army
the MRC merged with the Red Guard to form Trotsky’s Red Army, essential to the winning of the Civil War for the Bolsheviks.
What was Agitprop?
The Association of Proletarian Writers
key oppositional parties before 1917
- Populists (Narodniks)
- Land & Liberty (1876)
- the People’s Will (1879)
- the SD’s (1989)
- SRs (1901)
- Kadets (1905)
- the Octobrists (1905)
When was Land and Liberty formed?
1876
When was the People’s Will formed?
1879?
When was the SD’s formed?
1898
When was the SRs formed?
1901
What political oppositional groups formed in 1905?
Kadets and Octobrists
What influential oppositional leaders appeared before 1917?
- Plekhanov (SD)
- Lenin (SD/Bolshevik)
- Struve (Liberal)
- Milyukov (Kadet)
Who was an influential Kadet leader?
Milyukov
Who was an influential Liberal leader?
Struve
Who was an influential SD leader?
Plekhanov
What caused peasant revolts?
- dissatisfaction with land allocations
- redemption payments
- food shortages
Lena Goldfields strike?
1912, over 200 workers were killed by the army
National Minorities Representation?
- Finland got full autonomy 1905
- Polish National Democratic Party members gained seats in the first and second Dumas
Relaxation under Khrushchev?
By 1959 there were only 11,000 counter-revolutionaries in Gulags compared with 5.5 million in 1953
What happened to the Bolshevik Party in 1918?
It was transformed into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU)
How was the one-party state reinforced?
the Ban of Factions of 1921
Who challenged the Communists during the Civil War?
Whites, Greens, Poles.
who was involved in the power struggle after Lenin’s death?
Stalin and the United Opposition (Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev).
What was the United Opposition?
Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev
What protests happened in 1962?
Novocherkassk protests against food shortages and rising food prices
What changes did the Provisional Government introduce?
- release of political prisoners
- formation of an alliance with the Petrograd Soviet
Quote Lynch (Lib)
‘1917 did not mark a complete break with the past. Rather it was the replacement of one form of state authoritarianism with another’
Quote Smith (Revisionist)
‘The collapse of the autocracy was rooted in a crisis of modernisation… the effect of industrialization, urbanization, internal migration, and the emergence of new social classes was to set in train forces that served to erode the foundations of the autocratic state”.
Figes on Tsarist refusal to concede reforms
‘The tsarist regime’s downfall was not inevitable; but its own stupidity made it so’
Pipes on the fall of Tsarism
“…the collapse of tsarism, while not improbable, was certainly not inevitable”.
Figes (revisionist) on the Tsarist system
‘the tsarist system proved much too rigid and unwieldy, too inflexible and set in its ways, too authoritarian and inefficient, to adapt itself to the situation as it changed’.
Smith (Revisionist) on the February Revolution
“When the February Revolution came, it was not as the result of military defeat, or even war weariness, but as the result of the collapse of public support in the government”.
Figes on the ‘collapse’ of the Romanov regime
“the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was not overthrown”.
Pipes on the ‘extraordinary rapidity’ of the Romanov collapse
“It was if the greatest empire in the world had been an artificial construction, without organic unity. The instant the monarch withdrew, the entire structure collapsed in a heap”.
Crankshaw on the collapse of Romanov dynasty
“Imperial Russia simply rotted away from the centre outward until its shell fell in”.
Trotsky on the collapse of the monarchy
‘the country… radically vomited up the monarchy’
