Russia Security

Question 1

INTRO
Context
LofA

Answer 1

All-powerful Romanov dynasty Russia 1613-1917
>80% Russia peasants, owed total obedience
Only major Western European country with no democracy by 1905
Tsar system, Russification, Church, and army all methods, effectiveness beginning to weaken tho

Question 2

Tsarist system

KAKAKA+E

Answer 2

All nobles relied on autocratic Tsar for high ranking army and civil service positions
Ensured their loyalty
‘Black masses’ kept uneducated and illiterate, working as small farmers
Ensured ‘kept under whip’ and incapable of cohesive rebellion
However oppression so severe peasants fed up and outnumber nobility, eg emancipation decree of 1861
Debts led to peasant dissatisfaction and plotting
Leo Tolstoy “constant peasant misery… and the general dissatisfaction of all of classes with the Governement.”

Question 3

Army

KAKA+E

Answer 3

1.5M men strong, feared for harsh discipline and conditions, punishment for small crimes
Masses kept in check through fear
Peasants unhappy at Governement squandering resources on an army used to control and intimidate, and neglecting actual needs
Russia’s budget 45% army, 4% education

Question 4

Russian Church

KAKA+E

Answer 4

Church used huge influence to see Tsar as “Gods anointed”
Millions of Christian Russians see tsar as “little father” who they must blindly follow out of loyalty
Peasants began to see priests as corrupt and hypocritical
Led to distrust of messages and therefore tsar
Moscow suburb in 1900, 40,000 citizens for one priest! Shows detachment and weakening influence

Question 5

Russification

KAKA+KA+E

Answer 5

Promote ‘all things russian’, open violence eg jews, Baltic Germans and poles
Some approved of gov endorsement of pogroms, favour tsardom
Democratic reformists parties founded in response
Cohesive opposition to Tsarism
1897 Jewish revolutionary bund
5 million Jews in Russia, massive opposition
Michael lynch! “ The governments policies of reaction and Russification produced a situation in which many political and national groups grew increasingly frustrated by the mixture of coercion and incompetence that characterised the tsarist system”