The Collapse of Autocracy 1894-1917 Flashcards
What did the Social Democratic Workers’ Party do?
They produced a manifesto which asserted that the working classes had been and were being exploited by their masters and that the future of Russia would be the product of the class struggle. However, the congress was broken up by okhrana agents who promptly arrested two of the newly elected committee. The group split due to the difference in views. They maintained an underground organisation in individual factories and workshops, where the leaders were local labour activists. They succeeded in taking over many legal labour institutions in both St Petersburg and Moscow from Mensheviks and gained six workers deputies in elections to the fourth Duma. They grew their support through the Pravada, their newspaper. Nonetheless, their growth was quite limited. They enjoyed no success with army or navy and nothing came of their avowed promise to launch a general strike, provoke mass street demonstrations and recreate a soviet of workers’ deputies on the 1905 model.
Why did the Social Democratic Workers’ Party split?
The group split due to the difference in views. The Mensheviks awaited the bourgeois revolution that they believed had to precede the proletarian revolution, insisted membership should be open to all and the party should work through the trade unions and other workers organisations to raise workers consciousness and wanted to follow democratic procedures and feared that approach of the Bolsheviks could lead to dictatorship. The Bolsheviks however, suggested the bourgeois and proletarian revolution could occur simultaneously, felt that the party’s job was to educate the workers to lead them through the revolution, believed that membership should be restricted and that members should work within the small cells that could escape police notice ad favoured control in the hands of a central committee.
What was the consequence of their split?
However, this split in the party was to have major consequences for the party. In 1903-04 many members changed sides. Plekhanov abandoned the Bolsheviks whom he had supported, white Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian Liberals. Between 1904 and 1917 Trotsky described himself as a non factional social democrat and spent much time trying to reconcile the different groups within the party and clashed many times with Lenin.
Why was the Social Democratic Party Weakened?
The social democrats were weakened by the exile of their leaders, by the rivalry between the social revolutionaries and as well as the secret police network whose agents were very effective in smashing revolutionary cells. Furthermore, the industrial depression from 1907, the lack of finance and a shortage of secret printing presses made organisations difficult and none of the exiled leaders, including Lenin, exercised effective control over their parties within Russia
What was the Social Revolutionary’s view?
The Social Revolutionaries put forward the view that the interests of peasants and workers, the so-called labouring poor, were identical and that they should therefore work together to destroy autocracy and bring about land redistribution. They believed in the idea of agrarian socialism, the idea that estates should be taken from landowners and dividing the land between the peasants to be farmed communally, were revived. Students began to champion a new style of Populism, taking inspiration from the People’s Will and favouring violent protests.
What did the Social Revolutionaries Do?
Their activity consisted of considerable assassinations including crucial people such as the minister of education, Nikolay Bogolepov. The Social Revolutionaries were successful in disrupting the government by political assassinations and carried out 2000 political assassinations between 1901 and 1905. These included the assassinations of two Ministers of Internal Affairs, Dmitri Sipyagin and Vyacheslav Plehve. However, the Social Revolutionaries’ more spectacular successes was the assassination of the Prime Minister Stolypin in 1911.
How did the Social Revolutionaries come to an end?
The Social Revolutionaries maintained its campaign of killings and violence in the following years but the secret police foiled some activities and was successful in infiltrating the movement at its highest levels. Some 4579 Socialist Revolutionaries were sentenced to death between 1905 and 1909 and 2365 were actually executed.
What was the significance of the assassination of Nikolay Bogolepov?
This assassination added to the tension which was already high in Russia and even attracted more support by other fellow students. Pyotr Karpovich was a student rebel who had twice been expelled from Kazan University. His revenge killing won support from fellow students and a Bogolepov lay dying, several thousand people gathered in front of Kazan Cathedral in Karpovich’s support. The regime proved its strength by breaking up the gathering with around 800 arrests and 60 injured but was still unable to stop the demonstrations which were provoked in Moscow.
What did Trade Unions Achieve?
Trade Unions similarly achieved little in Russia. 497 trade unions were closed down and 604 were denied registration between 1906 and 1910. Those that survived were mainly unions of the better paid male skilled workers particularly in the metal trade. Furthermore, from 1907, an economic depression and rise in unemployment combined with the political clampdown reduced any opportunity for union action. Nonetheless, the shooting of unarmed demonstrators at the Lena Goldfield strike in April 1912, provided a new impulse. This followed the beginning of economic recovery from 1911 which gave skilled labour more bargaining power in the marketplace. A new round of strikes followed. This trade union activity was mainly confined to St Petersburg and the surrounding area where three quarters of the strike took place, half in the metal trade where they demonstrated the state’s failure to pacify the working class in 1905. The repressive measures taken to break strikes such as fines, lockouts and blacklists added to anger and opposition.
Why did Trade Unions fail?
Although their action started to take shape, the danger to the autocracy of the pre war strike movement was less than it seemed. As well as being geographically limited, only 12% of enterprises experienced a strike and even the general strikes only brought out a quarter of the manufacturing labour force.
What was the Lena Goldfield Strike?
The gold miners of the Lena riverbanks in Northern Siberia worked long hours for low pay in an inhospitable climate. In 1912, a group of miners went on strike over some inedible horse meat and the Bolsheviks helped spread these activities. When their ringleaders were arrested, several thousand miners converged on one mine to present petitions. As they approached, they were fired on and around 500 were killed or injured.
What did the Liberals do?
In 1895, the Zemstvo petitioned Nicholas II to set up an advisory body which he dismissed as a ‘senseless dream’. This did not, however, deter liberal nobles, like Prince Lvov, who continued to demand the creation of an all-class zemstvo. However, when Ivan Shipov tried to set up an ‘All Zemstvo Organisation’ in 1896, it was immediately banned. This encouraged some of the more radical liberals to establish the Beseda Symposium and to meet up in secret to discuss matters of liberal interest such as judicial reform and education. Still, the government endured and ordered the dismissal of hundreds of liberals from the elected boards of the Zemstva. However, it is noticeable that the regime, in actual fact, undermined itself; as the regime’s control over opposition increased, so did the Liberals demand. The Beseda Symposium assumed the leadership of the liberal movement, which attracted a wide range of support from public figures, town leaders, members of the legal and teaching professions and industrialists. Furthermore, in 1903, the union of liberation was founded under the inspiration of Pyotr Struve. He opposed the marxist movement due to its commitment to violent revolution
What did Struve believe?
Struve believed that what Russia needed was a period of peaceful revolution in which to adapt to its new industrialising status. He wanted to see a constitutional system put in place through which the urban workers could campaign legally to improve their conditions. Their aim was achieved through the holding of grand meetings to which representatives of the Zemstvo and other professional societies were invited. Members declared their intention to work for the establishment of a constitutional government, thus, one of their aims was achieved as a representative national body; the state Duma was established.
Describe the Russo-Japanese War
The Tsar responded to a Japanese assault on the Russian far Eastern naval base, with a ‘short swift victorious war’ which would detract from the tide of unrest at home. However, the Russians really had very little idea of their enemy or the inadequacies of their own forces. Running a war 6000 miles away from the capital was never going to be easy and a series of defeats turned the initial surge of anti Japanese patriotism into one of oppositions to the government.
Due to this there were renewed cries for a Duma and Pyotr Mirksy, who replaced Plehve, who is accredited with encouraging the Tsar, expanded the rights of the Zemstva
Describe Bloody Sunday
The humiliation in the Russo-Japanese war added to the growing discontent and on the 3rd of January 1905 a strike began at the Putilov Iron Works in St Petersburg, which soon involved around 150,000 workers. The economically injured mixed with political ones and father Gapon, to whose union many of the strikers belonged to, decided to conduct a peaceful march to the Tsar’s winter palace in the centre of St Petersburg on Sunday 9th January. Gapon wished to present Nicholas II with a petition to demonstrate worker’s loyalty but also requesting reform. The crowds included both women and men carrying icons of the Tsar.
Nicholas chose to spend the weekend at Tsarskoe Selo, his summer palace a little way from the city, 12,000 troops were used to break up the demonstrations. The day became known as Bloody Sunday and it sparked an outbreak of rebellion, which spread throughout the empire and broke the bond between the Tsar and the people. 200 deaths and 500 wounded
Describe the Potemkin Mutiny
The protest on the Potemkin- one of the Russian Black Sea Ships- began over a mouldy meat ration and led to a full scale mutiny in which seven officers were killed. The sailors hoisted the red revolutionary flag and sailed to Odesa, where they placed a dead soldier’s body at the bottom of the Potemkin Steps between the city and the harbour. When the towns folk arrived to pay respects and show solidarity with the sailors, troops fired on them. Many jumped into the sea and more than 2000 were killed and around 3000 were wounded.
