Reform 1906-16

Question 1

Stolypin repression

Answer 1

• reasserted Russian control over Finland
• censored Press
• 19 August 1906, court + field marshals introduced
• Stolypin necktie
• 1906-10, 3741 people executed
• 60,000 executed, exiled or sentences to penal servitude without trial in first 3 years in office

Question 2

Stolypin government reform

Answer 2

• land taxes halted 1 January 1907 (to deprive mir of financial power)
• modernize local govt (land ownership, not birthright, provinicial governors sabotaged it)
• improve local courts
• new tier of zemstvo at volost level (increase zemstvo power, would end gentry squires domination (20,000), abolish land captains)
• “had Stolypin succeeded in broadening the social base of local government in the countryside, then perhaps in 1917 it would not have collapsed so disastrously and Soviet power might never have filled the subsequent political vacuum as successfully as it did”

Question 3

Stolypin social reform

Answer 3

• end discrimination against Jews (blocked by Church)
• regulate police (never had control)
• improve factory conditions
• protect civil liberties
• universal schooling (blocked by Church)

Question 4

Stolypin goals

Answer 4

• transform ‘obschina’ system
• protect Tsar from revolution
• eliminate mir
• de-radicalise peasants (harness natural conservatism, foist bourgeois mentality)

Question 5

Stolypin land reform outset

Answer 5

executive decree 9 November 1906 (Duma not in session)
- convert communal strips into private property
- seperators purchase additional land from gentry and the state with low-credit interest from the Peasant Land Bank
Peasants allowed to leave mir
- hostile to the idea (fear that peasant elders will sell up land and their children with become paupers)
- distrust of land captains
- little incentive

Question 6

Stolypin land reform results

Answer 6

• 1906-17, 15% of peasant household in European Russian consolidated
• pacified peasants
• living standards up
• many tried and failed (inexperience, insufficient transport/irrigation)
• 82% of those settled in Siberia stayed (of 3 million)
• “Stolypin’s reform had failed to alter their communal way of life” Figes
• “Without the democratization of local government, Stolypin’s reforms were doomed to fail” Figes
• provided a “sense of national purpose and hope” Pipes

Question 7

Witte inflation

Answer 7

• rose by 40% 1908-14
• wages rose 7%
• strikes up from 222 to 3547 1910-13

Question 8

Witte transport growth

Answer 8

• railway length in km grew 20,000 km 1900-13
• boosted exports and foreign trade
• balance of trade grew by 36 million roubles

Question 9

Witte failure to reform taxes

Answer 9

• most state revenue came from direct taxes, fell disproportionately on the poor
• liquor monopoly = 1/3rd of state revenue (1914 govt banned vodka sales as counterproductive to the war)

Question 10

Witte no investment in rural development

Answer 10

• 1911, European Russia had 166 tractors, US had 14,000

Question 11

Witte growth

Answer 11

• industrial output up from 100 to 163.3 1900-13
• coal production doubled
• Russia’s overall economic output doubles 1890-1900
• in 1913, total national income nearly equal to UK, industrial output was of similiar size to France
• but growth in national income 1893-14, 40% less than Austria

Question 12

Witte dependence on foreign loans

Answer 12

• percentage of foreign shareholding in joint-stock companies rose from 25% in 1890 to about 40% on the eve of WW1
• therefore economy collapsed more during war