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Question 1

When were the Fundamental Laws passed?

Answer 1

23rd April 1906

Question 2

What did the Fundamental Laws do?

Answer 2

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).

Question 3

How many acts of terrorism did revolutionaries carry out 1906-1914?

Answer 3

17,000.

Question 4

Which revolutionary party assassinated Stolypin in 1911?

Answer 4

Social Revolutionaries

Question 5

How many seats did the Mensheviks have in the first Duma?

Answer 5

18 seats

Question 6

When was the first Duma?

Answer 6

May-July 1906

Question 7

When was the October Manifesto passed?

Answer 7

17th October 1905

Question 8

Which liberal parties accepted the October Manifesto?

Answer 8

Octobrists and Kadets

Question 9

Who led the Octobrists?

Answer 9

Alexander Guchkov

Question 10

Who led the Kadets?

Answer 10

Pavel Milyukov

Question 11

How many seats did the Kadets have in the first Duma?

Answer 11

182

Question 12

Why did the Kadets launch the Vyborg Appeal?

Answer 12

Annoyed over Fundamental Laws that limited the October Manifesto.
Annoyed that Nicholas dissolved the first Duma.

Question 13

What happened during the Vyborg Appeal, 1906?

Answer 13

200 Duma deputies travelled to Vyborg, a Finnish town, and appealed to citizens to not pay their taxes and protest against conscription.

Question 14

What were the consequences to the Vyborg Appeal, 1906?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

Why did Stolypin launch his ‘wager on the strong’ 1906-1907?

Answer 15

Stolypin wanted to create a Kulak class of prosperous peasants.

Question 16

What did Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ do?

Answer 16

Attempted to end strip system of farming, supported peasants to return to individual farms over obschina grouping.
Established a Lank Bank to encourage investment.

Question 17

How was Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ considered successful?

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

How was Stolypin’s ‘wager on the strong’ considered unsuccessful?

Answer 18

In 1914, only 16% of land had been consolidated into farms - 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.

Question 19

What was Stolypin’s ‘de-revolutionising the peasantry’?

Answer 19

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.

Question 20

Why was Stolypin’s ‘de-revolutionising the peasantry’ considered unsuccessful?

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Why did the Lena Goldfields Incident occur in 1912?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What happened during the Lena Goldfields Incident 1912?

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

What was the Tercentenary of the House of Romanov?

Answer 23

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.

Question 24

What did historian David Christian say about the Romanov’s Tercentenary in his 1997 book ‘Imperial and Soviet Russia’?

Answer 24

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’.

Question 25

Why was the celebration of the Romanov’s Tercentenary a positive for tsarist rule?

Answer 25

It helped to restore Nicholas’ image as the ‘Little Father’ which had been shattered by the Bloody Sunday massacre (22nd January 1905).

Question 26

What were some positives to the economy by 1914?

Answer 26

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.

Question 27

How many state executions were there 1906-1911?

Answer 27

Stolypin’s repression policies saw 2500 state executions 1906-1911.
Noose became known as ‘Stolypin’s Necktie’.

Question 28

How did the Duma change over time?

Answer 28

Became progressively more right-wing as the tsar dissolved it.