Strattonite

Question 1

What is an autocrat?

Answer 1

A ruler with absolute authority, they hold unlimited power.

Question 2

Why was the Romanov dynasty in Russia under threat of collapsing?

Answer 2

Many reasons:

• Russia was backward, its calender was 13 days out of date, Spain and Italy had modernised their calenders in 1582.
• In 1894, Nicholas II, his power was increasingly based on the military might of the Cossacks and on the Okhrana (the secret police). These were two-edged strengths - they kept him in power, but they made him increasingly unpopular.
• Big - Russia was too big to rule. In 1913, it stretched 4,000 miles from Europe to Alaska, and comprised 125 million people.
• Backward - Russia was backward. It had few roads and limited industrialisation. Most people were still peasants.
• Weak - Russia was militarily weak. It had lost a war with Japan in 1904.
• Disunited - Russia had many different nationalities, languages and religions.
• Autocracy - the government of Russia, which Nicholas ruled over alone, was far too much work for one man.
• Proletariat - Russia was industrialising and the workers, eg in St Petersburg, were poor and oppressed. On Bloody Sunday 1905, they went on a peaceful march to ask the tsar to help them, but the Cossacks attacked them.
• Bourgeois - the representatives of the new middle class industrialists. They called themselves the Kadets and wanted Russia to have a constitution like England’s. In 1905, there was a revolution and they managed to force Nicholas to create a Duma (parliament), but it had no real power.
• Revolutionaries - for instance, the Social Revolutionaries and the Marxists - split into the Mensheviks who wanted peaceful change and the Bolsheviks who wanted a revolution - committed acts of terrorism such as the murder of Prime Minister Stolypin in 1911.

Question 3

Why was there a revolution in 1905?

Answer 3

In 1904, Nicholas lost a war with Japan, which undermined his authority. In 1905, a peaceful demonstration of workers led by the priest Father Gapon was attacked by the Cossacks, in a bid to assert the Tsar’s authority. The atrocity led to strikes and riots - sailors on the battleship ‘Potemkin’ mutinied. Workers and soldiers got together and set up committees called Soviets to represent them.

Question 4

How did Nicholas II survive the 1905 revolution?

Answer 4

He published the 'October Manifesto', which promised to create a Duma (parliament). This caused many middle-class people, called the Octobrists, to support him. He also lowered taxes on the poor and brought in Peter Stolypin as his prime minister. The Okhrana tracked down and arrested many revolutionaries.
However, as soon as he felt powerful enough, Nicholas stopped listening to the Duma, but the Soviets survived.

Question 5

What effects did the first world war have on Russia?

Answer 5

The First World War had two main effects on Russia: firstly a huge number of men lost their lives, and secondly it caused economic chaos. On 8 March 1917 women in St Petersburg went on a strike for ‘bread and peace’, starting the February Revolution.

Question 6

How did Nicholas make things go from bad to worse during the war?

Answer 6

Nicholas made things worse by going to the front to lead the army. This made him responsible for the defeats in most people’s eyes. It also left the government in the hands of the tsar’s wife, the tsarina, and the monk, Rasputin.

Question 7

How did that February revolution start?

Answer 7

The war effort caused economic chaos.
By February 1917, people in the towns were starving and freezing.
The revolution was started by the women - on 8 March 1917 they went on a march demanding bread, which turned into rioting.
The tsarina called in the troops. However, on 12 March they mutinied and started to help the rioters.
Workers and soldiers set up the Petrograd Soviet to coordinate the revolution.
The tsar went to pieces and was unable to make any decisions.
When the Duma realised the government was collapsing, it set up a provisional government, and on 15 March forced the tsar to abdicate.

Question 8

Why did the Russian monarchy collapse?

Answer 8

There are three main theories as to why:
Russia was old-fashioned and weak - it collapsed because it was unsuitable.
The First World War - its huge problems and disasters overturned a monarchy that had, so far, managed to survive.
The stupidity of the tsar - his decisions and actions cost him his throne.