After 1905 the Tsar seemed to be giving in slightly and live did improve for people in little ways, people were mostly worse off than before though. Although the Tsar started a Duma he did not give them much power and he still made most off the decisions. For the first three Dumas the Tsar did not work with them at all but by the fourth he began to. The Duma could also just be completely dissolved by the Tsar at any time. For some peasants life did improve dramatically, Stolypin set up banks that would help peasants get loans and buy land.
Stalin was more popular because of Trotsky’s “political paralysis” he couldn’t be a good public speaker. This links to my next point because they both result in Stalin’s getting more power. Stalin made an alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev to form the triumvirate. The triumvirate’s main aim was to defeat Trotsky. Trotsky advocated a permanent revolution with Stalin didn’t want.
Having this powerful position in the party made people scared of him and that he sack them so they stayed very loyal to him. On the other hand his rivals, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev and Kamenev had little power in the Party. Trotsky did have a lot of power in the Red Army but none within the Party. This shows how important Stalin’s Party position was in him emerging as leader of Soviet Russia in 1929. Another very important reason in why Stalin emerged as leader was Tactical maneuvering of Stalin and his making and breaking of alliances.
How far were the divisions amongst its opponents responsible for the survival of Tsarist Rule 1881-1905 In the years 1881-1905 the Tsarist regime was faced large amounts of opposition from many people. The lower classes caused uprisings, their aims to remove the Tsar from power, while some educated middle class went on strike in an attempt to reform the regime. Many people were revolting and 3 main political groups emerged. The divides in these political groups were heavily responsible for the survival of the Tsarist rule, however there were other factors responsible such as the repression in Russia, which lead to the eventual removal of all opposition groups, and the loyalty of the Tsars supporters, which meant that his power was still stronger than the opposition he was facing. One of the main reasons the Tsarist rule continued during the tome 1881 until 1905 was due to the splits in the political groups.
One of the reasons why this didn’t work was the downfall of communication, and disagreements within the group due to the extent of different opinions was so great causing splits and creating smaller less powerful sub divisions. The liberals wanted to keep the tsar but reduce his power and used calm no violent tactics such a discussions and meetings, but this group split; the octobrists and the kadets. The octobrists set up the duma (government) and the kadets wanted full equality and were a first major opposition voice in the duma, both groups came into being at the time of the October manifesto 1905. The social democrats wanted an empire with no rich or poor people, they wanted communism and also like the liberals didn’t use violent tactics. The Bolshevik and Menshevik split and both parties were very distinct opposing Marxist parties.
When Alexander III became Tsar, he wanted to improve Russia after not really agreeing with his Fathers decisions. However, this didn’t really work and Alexander III inherited many of the problems which Russia had already been faced with; Backward economy, Subsistance agriculture and oversized population. In 1881, the reign was then moved over to Alexander III son, Nicolas II. As there was such an oversized population through out the whole of Russia, there was not enough space in the country. In fact, most of the population lived to the West side of the country because the eastern side, Siberia was not at all industrialized at this time.
The loss of support in the Tsar meant that more people sought to join the opposing groups, making them continuously more popular. Opposing groups such as the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks supported the act of a revolution which significantly increased the chances of such an occurrence. Nonetheless, some of the groups did not want revolution. The Octoberists for example were contented once the Tsar brought out the October manifesto. This effectively weakened the success of a revolution because of the lack of organization and co-operation.
This money was important because the economy in Russia was poor at the time; bearing in mind there was a huge number of peasants and very few working class people at the time may suggest a reason for this. Russia's biggest produce was grain. This was the most important factor in my opinion, as without this money, Witte wouldn't have been able to implement any of his ideas. The second area was state sponsored development of heavy industry. Witte believed that heavy industry was the way forward, because he thought that light industry and agriculture could both benefit from this boost.
This was only a temporary victory for the Bolsheviks as they lost support of the majority of the Russian population. In addition, he led the Reds in the Russian Civil War. The success of the Reds proved Lenin’s brilliant leadership. However, again, they lost a lot of support. Lenin had also ended the war with Germany by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Therefore the question of whether the collapse of the USSR is unavoidable, could be solved differently or should have been more radical had all came up. From the time as Gorbachev became as General Secretary until the collapse in 1991, there are several impacts of other causes of the breakdown such as the polices, economy, resistance within the party and etc. The situation before Gorbachev came into power Stalin tried to modernize Russia and catch up with the western countries. His system led to large-scale industrialization and economic growth, but was not adaptable. The product quality was far beyond Western standards which did not meet the people’s needs and the environment suffered heavy disasters.