Russo-Japanese War

Question 1

Humiliating defeats in Russo-Jap war

Answer 1

Port Arthur (31,000 men lost, 9 Japanese ships sunk 15 Russian ones)
Battle of Tsushima
- 27-28 May
- Russian Baltic fleet sailed for 8 months
- 21/28 ships sunk in less than 24 hours
Japan had modernised under Emperor Meiji

Question 2

Trans-Siberian Railway failure in R-J

Answer 2

• source of national pride (began 1891)
• only run 13 trains a day
• 6 weeks to transfer troops to east
• one-way track
• parts sabotaged/incomplete

Question 3

Arrogance/incompetence of regime in R-J war

Answer 3

• ‘beat the short-tailed monkeys’
• rejected settlement (Japan offered control of Manchuria if could have Korea)
• 1902 Englang-Jap Alliance, England doesn’t help Russia
• ‘a little victorious war to stem the revolution’ Vyacheslav Plehve
• Tsar didn’t want war - pushed by Minister of War Kuropatkin
• • Kuropatkin claimed he would need only two Russian soldiers for every three Japanese, so superior were they to the Asians
• The Commander-in-Chief himself, Admiral Alexeev, knew almost nothing about the art of war, got there due to patronage of Grand Duke Alexis

Question 4

R-J humiliation of regime outcome

Answer 4

Treaty of Portsmouth (September 1905)

• evacuate Manchuria
• cede Liaodong Pen, south half of Sakhalin
• ‘the war had excited the social unrest it had been designed to dampen’ Lynch
• Plehve assasinated 15 July 1904 by SR Combat Organisation
• The autocracy had shown itself incapable of defending the national interest and joining the opposition now came to be seen, in the words of one official, as something ‘noble and patriotic’.22- Yet the sort of assembly which the Tsar had

Question 5

R-J liberals more powerful outcome

Answer 5

• Prince Sviatopolk-Mirski replaces Plehve – relaxed censorship, abolished corporal punishment, restored zemstvo members who had been persecuted by old regime
• Zemstvos more powerful as govt. loses control
• First national assembly, National Zemstvo Conference, met 6-9 November 1904 in St Petersburg, called for constitution, civil reforms, suffrage
• Paris Conference, meeting including SRs and Union of Liberation proposed united front against autocracy