Stolypin's repression, 1906-14 Flashcards
Who did Stolypin act as between 1906 and 1911?
The Tsar’s head of government.
What did Stolypin aim to do from 1906-14?
Restore order through a policy of cautious reform and brutal repression
What did Stolypin declare in August 1906?
A state of emergency - this formally suspended the rights guaranteed by the Fundamental Laws, allowing the government to use terror against the Tsar’s subjects.
How did the government use terror?
1 - Officials were given the right to imprison people without putting them on trial
2 - The military were given the power to dispense justice - lawyers and appeals were banned in military courts. Military courts had the right to exile or execute rebels, and appeals weren’t permitted
How many people were found guilty of political crimes between 1906 and 1910? Of these, how many were sent to labour camps, and how many were resettled?
- Over 37,000 people
- Over 8,000 were sent to labour camps
- Almost 2000 were resettled to Russia’s deserts or to the frozen wastes of Siberia - resettlement meant death, in the majority of cases
What was Russia’s prison population in 1905, and what was it by 1913?
1905 - 98,000
1913 - 250,000
Stolypin’s name became associated with…
the brutal policies.
The trains that carried people away into exile became known as…and the hangman’s noose was nicknamed…
- ‘Stolypin wagons’
- ‘Stolypins necktie’
What, and when, was the first phase of action against revolutionary parties?
1906-07:
- Wide and brutal suppression of revolutionaries
- The state’s main method was to put revolutionaries on trial in military courts.
How did revolutionaries respond to action against them from 1906-07?
- The SRs continued their campaign of assassinations leading to the deaths of over 1100 government officials in 1906
- Revolutionary leaders fled Russia - Lenin, for example, fled to Finland and then to Western Europe
What did Maksimilian Trusevich, head of the Russian police, establish in 1907?
- 1907 - Maksimilian Trusevich, head of the Russian police, established eight regional security bureaus to target revolutionary parties
- The new bureaus oversaw the dissolution of the Second Duma and the arrest and prosecution of the revolutionaries who had been elected to the Duma
What did Trusevich do from mid-1907?
He instituted a policy of surveillance and subversion. He tried to limit the number of executions, and disrupt revolutionary parties through infiltration
Was Trusevich’s policy of surveillance successful?
- It was highly effective and official reports indicate that the Trusevich and Stolypin were convinced that, by 1908, their agents had effectively won the battle against revolutionary parties
Trusevick’s agents infiltrated…
Revolutionary parties, creating an atmosphere of mistrust, as revolutionaries had no idea which of their comrades were double agents.
What was an example of infiltration in revolutionary parties?
Evno Azef - a police informant:
- Infiltrated the SRs in 1909
