1906-1914 Flashcards
When were the Fundamental Laws passed?
23rd April 1906
What did the Fundamental Laws do?
Meant tsar had complete autocratic power.
Tsar exercised legislative power over Imperial Duma.
Tsar had to approve laws before they came into existence.
Tsar appointed all members to the Council of the Empire.
It limited concessions made in October Manifesto and reduced power of the Duma (which was meant to be constitutional and representative).
How many acts of terrorism did revolutionaries carry out 1906-1914?
17,000.
Which revolutionary party assassinated Stolypin in 1911?
Social Revolutionaries
Why did the Kadets launch the Vyborg Appeal?
Annoyed over Fundamental Laws that limited the October Manifesto.
Annoyed that Nicholas dissolved the first Duma.
What happened during the Vyborg Appeal, 1906?
200 Duma deputies travelled to Vyborg, a Finnish town, and appealed to citizens to not pay their taxes and protest against conscription.
What were the consequences to the Vyborg Appeal, 1906?
There was no popular response from Vyborg population.
Government punished those who had signed it by removing their right to vote and sentencing them to 3 months in prison.
Deprived Duma of their most active Kadet leaders, only had 91 seats compared to first Duma, and this number was reduced further in 3rd and 4th Dumas.
Why did Stolypin launch his ‘wager on the strong’ 1906-1907?
Stolypin wanted to create a Kulak class of prosperous peasants, who would then be able to withdraw from the Mir and consolidate their strips, meaning they could try new agricultural techniques and grow their choice of crops.
What did Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ do?
Attempted to end strip system of farming and replace it with fenced fields like Western Europe.
Supported peasants to return to individual farms over obschina grouping.
Established a Lank Bank to provide funds for the independent peasants to buy their land.
Schemes for large-scale voluntary resettlement of the peasants were implemented (aim being to populate the Empire’s remoter areas, such as Siberia, and turn them into farming areas).
From 1907, land was made personal property of eldest male who was given the right to withdraw it from the Mir and consolidate strips of land to form one compact farm.
How was Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ considered successful?
Evidence drawn from tsarist tax returns shows that a significant minority of peasants were paying increasingly higher taxes in the decade before 1914, a sign that their farming was producing high profits.
1905-1915, 3.5 million peasants migrated to Siberia, which became one of the empire’s major agricultural regions, especially for dairy farming, eggs, butter and cereal production.
Peasant ownership of land grew - by 1914, 25% had left the Mir.
How was Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ considered unsuccessful?
In 1914, only 16% of land had been consolidated into farms - deep conservatism meant most were reluctant to leave the security of the Mir for the uncertainty of individual farming.
4/5 of Russian population were still peasants by 1914.
Rural poverty remained widespread.
Stolypin himself admitted they needed 20 years for the full effect but he was assassinated in 1911.
What was Stolypin’s ‘de-revolutionising the peasantry’?
Under Stolypin’s prompting, the government came to understand that a reason why the peasants had joined the 1905 Revolution was because they feared that the government was about to repossess the land of mortgage-holders who’d defaulted on their payments. The government consequently cancelled the outstanding repayments.
Why was Stolypin’s ‘de-revolutionising the peasantry’ considered unsuccessful?
Despite some progress in land reforms, the economy continued to struggle, with recessions occurring between 1908 and 1914.
Inflation rose by 40% with wages only improving by 7%. This led to the number of strikes increasing from 24 in 1911 to 2401 in 1914, culminating in a general strike in St Petersburg.
Russia needed these reforms to continue over a few decades to fully reach their impact, but Stolypin’s 1911 assassination cut the potential impact short.
Why did the Lena Goldfields Incident occur in 1912?
Social discontent grew rapidly from 1911 and the incident was a direct result of this.
In the Lena Goldfields in Siberia, demands from miners there for better pay and conditions were resisted by the employers, who appealed to the police to arrest the strike leaders as criminals.
What happened during the Lena Goldfields Incident 1912?
When police moved into Lena, strikers closed ranks and the situation rapidly deteriorated, resulting in troops firing on and killing or injuring a large number of miners. The Okhrana appeared to have acted as ‘agents provocateurs’ in order to identify the organisers of the strike.
What was the Tercentenary of the House of Romanov?
February 1913, 300 year celebration of the Romanov dynasty’s rule was celebrated with support shown for both the future of Russia and its tsar from the people on the streets.
What did historian David Christian say about the Romanov’s Tercentenary in his 1997 book ‘Imperial and Soviet Russia’?
Before the outbreak of war ‘despite everything, traditions of loyalty to tsarism survived among many sections of the population’ and ‘in the Duma, criticism of the government ceased’.
Why was the celebration of the Romanov’s Tercentenary a positive for tsarist rule?
It helped to restore Nicholas’ image as the ‘Little Father’ which had been shattered by the Bloody Sunday massacre (22nd January 1905).
What were some positives to the economy by 1914?
Economy had grown by 6%.
Russia was world’s 5th largest industrial power by 1914.
1908-1914, state revenue had doubled from 2 to 4 billion roubles.
1908-1914, number of banks increased from 1146 to 2393 and number of factories increased from 22,600 to 24,900.
How many state executions were there 1906-1911?
Stolypin’s repression policies saw 2500 state executions 1906-1911.
Noose became known as ‘Stolypin’s Necktie’.
How did the Duma change over time?
Became progressively more right-wing as the tsar dissolved it.
How had some educational reform and relief been made by 1914?
Number of primary schools almost doubled 1905-1914.
In the countryside, Zemstva expenditure on health and poor relief increased significantly.
