Russia Flashcards
Roughly how many different nationalities were there in Russia at the turn of the century?
200
Who was Tsar from 1894-1917?
Nicholas II
What is an autocracy?
A system of government by one person with absolute power - e.g. the Tsar
Russia was rich in which raw materials?
Gold, silver, iron ore, coal, oil
What was russification?
The tsarist policy of making non-Russians in Russia speak Russian, wear Russian clothes and follow Russian customs.
What percentage of people were peasants, and what percentage were nobles?
80, 1
What were peasants known as before their emancipation (freeing) in 1861?
Serfs
What were better off peasants, who hired labour and rented land, known as?
Kulaks
Most soldiers in the army were:
Peasant conscripts, badly paid and poorly fed
Which group of people were known for their loyalty to the Tsar, fighting spirit and independence?
The Cossacks
How old was Tsar Nicholas when he had his “epic chestnut battle” with Prince George of Greece?
26
How did Tsar Alexander III (Nicholas’ father) refer to him, and what training did he give him in being Tsar?
Girlie and dunce; none
What was the main religion in Russia?
Russian Orthodox Christian
How did historian Orlando Figes describe Nicholas II’s abilities as Tsar?
“With his limitations, he could only play at the part of autocrat.”
Who did the Tsars believe had appointed them to rule?
God
How many people died in the 1891 famine?
400,000
Who was the “little father”?
The Tsar: it was a popular nickname for him, showing people’s affection and trust.
What was the family name of the Tsars at the turn of the 20th century?
Romanov
What was the name of the secret police under the Tsar?
The Okhrana
What was the Duma?
The Russian parliament
Who was Father Gapon?
The leader of the Bloody Sunday march
What was the exact date of Bloody Sunday?
22 January 1905
What were the four main demands of the Bloody Sunday marchers?
An eight hour working day, pay of one rouble a day, the vote, lower taxes.
To what did the the Tsar agree in the October Manifesto of 1905?
Civil rights, extending the franchise and that all laws had to be agreed by the newly established Duma
When was the Russo-Japanese war, who won, and why was it important?
1904-5; Japan; weakened people’s belief in the Tsarist regime.
What was the name of the Tsar’s ruthless prime minister between 1906 and 1911?
Petr Stolypin
What item of clothing might Stolypin have been likely to wear?
A necktie: “Stolypin’s necktie” was the nickname given to the hangman’s noose, a reference to Stolypin’s ruthlessness in the face of opposition.
What was the ratio of representatives to a) nobles and b) peasants in the first Duma?
One representative for every 2000 nobles, and one for every 90,000 peasants.
What could the first Duma not do?
Pass laws, appoint ministers or control finance in key areas such as defence. Also, the Tsar could dissolve it whenever he wished.
Who were the kulaks?
Wealthier peasants who were encouraged by Stolypin to buy up neighbouring strips of land.
What happened at the Lena goldfields in Siberia, in 1912?
A major strike lead to troops killing 170 workers and injuring 373.
There were 13,995 strikes in 1905. How many in 1910?
222
Who were the Bolsheviks?
A political party formed after the SDLP split, led by Lenin. Believed a small, elite group should spearhead the revolution.
Who were the Mensheviks?
A political party formed after the SDLP split, led by Trotsky. Believed in a mass membership party and prepared for slow change.
Ra-ra-Rasputin was, of course, Russia’s greatest love machine, but more importantly:
He was supposedly able to cure the Tsar’s son’s haemophilia.
Who were the proletariat?
The workers.
Where did Russia suffer two major military defeats in August 1914?
Tannenberg and the Masurian lakes.
What bizarre military decision did the Tsar make in September 1915?
Took control of the army himself
Who took over the reins of power while the Tsar was at the front?
The Tsarina
Within a year of the war starting, how many Russian soldiers had been killed?
1 million
True or false: Russian officers were appointed on merit rather than position in society.
False
By March 1915, roughly what percentage of Russian soldiers had to share a rifle?
25
What did the Tsar do the Duma in April 1915?
Dismissed it permanently
On 7 March 1917, what happened at the Putilov steelworks?
40,000 workers went on strike over wages.
By 10 March 1917, how many workers were demonstrating in St Petersburg?
250,000
What two bodies were set up on 12 March 1917?
The Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies.
What did the Tsar do on the 15th March 1917?
Abdicated in favour of his brother Michael, who refused the throne.
Who ruled the country after the fall of the Tsar, and of which party was it largely formed?
The Provisional Government; the Cadets.
What phrase is given to the fact that any decisions the Provisional Government wanted to implement had to be approved by the Petrograd Soviet?
Dual power.
In April 1917 Lenin returned to Petrograd, Into what were his speeches collated?
The April Theses.
Give two key Bolshevik slogans from 1917.
Peace, Bread and Land; All Power to the Soviets.
What is a soviet?
A workers’ co-operative - basically a trade union.
June 1917: first elections to the Congress of Soviets. How do the Bolsheviks do?
105 seats; half that of the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries.
What occurred on July 16-17 1917?
The July Days. Afterwards, Lenin fled and Kerensky took over the Provisional Government.
Who launched a coup in September 1917, and who did the Provisional Government ask for help against it?
The Cossack General Kornilov; the Red Guard.
In September 1917 the Bolsheviks won what, and what happened to Trotsky?
They won a majority in elections to the Petrograd Soviet, and Trotsky became its leader.
When did Lenin return from post-July Days exile?
October 1917.
7 November 1917:
The Russian Revolution begins.
What did Lenin’s November Decrees promise?
Peace with Germany, 8 hour day and 48 hour week for workers, land given to peasants, non-Bolshevik newspapers banned.
What happened in new elections to the Constituent Assembly, November 1917?
Bolsheviks came a distant second: 175 deputies to the SRs’ 370.
What did Lenin’s December Decrees do?
The Cadets were banned, factories were placed under control of workers’ committees, church land was confiscated by the state.
In January 1918 the Constituent Assembly met for the first time. What did Lenin do?
Shut it down for good within 24 hours.
What was signed in March 1918, what was its main aim and what were its key terms?
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk between Russia and Germany, which took Russia out of the war. Russia lost 27% of its arable land, 26% of its railways, 74% of its iron and coal; 50 million Russians displaced; reparations of 3bn roubles.
When did Russian Civil War begin?
Spring 1918
Who were the three sides in the Russian Civil War?
Reds (Bolsheviks), Whites (opponents of Bolshevism, including Tsarists, nobles, Mensheviks and SRs, supported by Britain, France, USA and Japan) and Greens (independent groups of nationalists, peasants and bandits).
Why did the Reds win the Civil War (four reasons)?
Their military strength, white weaknesses, Red Terror and War Communism.
What, in general, was War Communism?
The measures the Bolsheviks adopted during the Civil War to share out Russia’s wealth and keep the towns and Red Army well fed and equipped.
Who mutinied in February 1921?
Sailors at the Kronstadt naval base.
In March 1921, what replaced War Communism?
The New Economic Policy (NEP)
What was collectivisation?
The enforced grouping of individual farmers’ land and livestock into larger,collective farms.
What was a kolkhoz?
A collective farm.
What percentage of the kolkhoz’s produce would be sold to the government?
90%
What were the MTS?
The Motor Tractor Stations, whose tractor drivers toured the kolkhoz to do the ploughing.
What is the significance of the numbers 30 million and 16 million?
They were the number of cows and horses respectively that peasants killed rather than give them to the kolkhoz.
By how much did grain production fall between 1928 (the beginning of collectivisation) and 1934?
10%
How many people died in the 1932 famine?
13 million
What happened to state grain procurement (i.e. the amount of grain taken by the state from the peasants) 1929-32?
It doubled.
What was Gosplan?
The Russian state planning organisation which drew up the 5 Year Plans.
It might sound obvious that a five year plan should take five years. But how many did Stalin insist it should take?
4.
On what did the first, second and third Five Year Plans focus, or plan to focus?
Major industry; mining; as before, but with added consumer goods.
What was the name of the huge city built as part of the regeneration drive?
Magnitogorsk.
Who was Stakhanov?
A legendary miner who other workers were encouraged to emulate.
Give the coal and steel stats which suggest the 5YPs succeeded.
Coal production rose from 35m tonnes in 1927 to 150m in 1940.
Steel production rose from 3m tonnes in 1927 to 19m in 1940.
What were gulags and what was built as a result of their existence?
Prisons where the punishment was forced labour. Prisoners built the Moscow Metro and Belomor Canal.
What happened to workers’ wages under the first 5YP?
They fell by 50%.
What is a totalitarian state?
One where the leader has total control.
Of what is this a description? “The idea that one person is glorified above all others, as all things to all people.”
A cult of personality.
Give three ways in which Stalin promoted a cult of personality.
His name and picture were everywhere, in a variety of outfits and poses; streets and cities named after him; poems and plays written about him; statues put up of him.
What title were children encouraged to give to Stalin?
Great Leader.
What was socialist realism?
The required style for artists, film makers and composers, dealing with working people and giving clear messages of how well communism was working.
What was the League of the Godless?
A group which smashed churches as part of the overall attack on religion.
What were the names of the three youth groups Russians joined, in ascending order of age at which people joined?
The Octobrists, the Young Pioneers, the Komsomol.
What were the purges?
An attempt to cleanse Russia of perceived opposition to Stalin and communism.
What happened at the 17th Communist Party Congress in 1934?
Sergei Kirov received more applause than Stalin after calling for the pace of industrialisation to slow down. He was killed soon after.
According to a directive sent to all regional communist party branches, a good Bolshevik should:
“recognise an enemy of the party no matter how well he may be masked.”
What were show trials?
Public trials, usually on trumped up charges, of senior old Bolsheviks who might oppose Stalin. They were broadcast on the radio.
Name three high profile victims of show trials.
Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Yagoda.
What fraction of churches were still holding regular services by 1939?
1 in 40.
How many people went to the cinema each month in Magnitogorsk?
20,000
What percentage of Moscow households had more than one room?
6%
What happened to the average Moscow worker’s meat consumption during the 1930s?
It fell 80%.
What was the Great Retreat?
A policy of returning to traditional, conservative family values.
Give two policies associated with the Great Retreat.
Abortion was made illegal; divorced fathers had to pay maintenance for their children.
In what way did Stalin improve workers’ work/life balance?
They were all allowed to take one holiday a year.
A 1935 law allowed the NKVD to impose what penalty for youth crime?
Death (although there are no records of it having been used).
After 1932, what did all citizens have to carry?
An identity booklet showing their nationality.
What percentage of industrial workers were women by 1942?
42%
Who were the nomenclatura?
Those at the very top of society, a special group loyal to Stalin who had the best jobs, housing, food and clothes.
