These consist of firstly, his encouragement of the revolution in 1917 through his confidence in his theory and timing. He then, in January of 1918 supported Trotsky opposed to Lenin in the conscription of the Red Army rather than depending on volunteers and also dissolved his promised Constituent Assembly in his refusal to share power- crucial to succeed in their aim of dictatorship. In March of that year he, much to the rest of the country’s distaste due to the severe demands, insisted on the signing of the Treaty of Brest Litovsk on the back of their withdrawal from WW! ; knowing that peace was essential for their survival. Lenin then ensured their victory in the Civil War with his establishment of War Communism and the use of terror.
Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy. Furthermore, peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia and a majority relied on agriculture for their income. Reforms that would please the ‘dark masses’ would strengthen the tsarist regime. Another reason for reforming agriculture was to oppress peasant unrest. In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties.
There are many cases in which the Tsar’s position and the government’s position are genuinely threatened such as the mass demonstrations leading to many strikes which had the potential of economic failure. On the other hand there are also cases where they are not seriously threatened the mutinies of the armed services for example did not carry on after the war. The revolutionary’s aims had no intentions to threaten the position of the Tsar or his government however some people could argue that it did because of the misinterpretations of their demands. The Tsar and his government faced three main opponents the industrial workers, peasants and the reformist middle class. The fact that peasantry took part in the 1905 revolution (also known as Bloody Sunday)shows that the suspicions of the peasants changing were true and to the Tsar and his government this could have appeared to be a threat because they always feared peasantry development, the Tsar and the Empress especially.
This meant serfdom was already coming to its own natural end, and for Alexander II to support his nobles he had to emancipate the serfs so they could go start increasing their wealth and get out of debt. Serfdom was also holding Russia back, with the rest of Europe liberalising and making vast economic progress Russia’s economy was starting to look inferior and for them to advance as a nation they had to increase productivity of the serfs and the simple solution was to emancipate them. The serfs were inefficient and had a low productivity due to poor farming methods and constantly being oppressed by their nobles. This oppression and poor farming was caused by the extremely conservative rule which refused to modernise, had the Tsar modernised the farming techniques and stopped the
The emancipation of the serfs appeared to have strengthened the loyalty of most peasants to the tsarist regime leading the peasants to greet the Populists with hostility due to their loyalty to the tsar. The serfs were hostile towards the populists as the serfs felt that populists did not understand their way of life through the involvement of ‘going to the people’ which was an idea from Lavrov in order to encourage peasants to rise up to revolution. The church taught the peasants to see Alexander as ‘little father’ which meant someone who was on their side. In my opinion Alexander II dealt with opposition very successfully between 1855-81 as he had the majority of the population against the Populists as serfs took up 80% of the population. Another way Alexander II successfully dealt with opposition was through censorship, he had utter control of media throughout Russia making it very difficult for opposition groups to spread their ideas and communicate with each other.
Hence, though peasant life was at its best in its history, all these reforms did for the majority was ignite the hope that more liberating reforms were to come. Unfortunately the untimely assassination of Tsar Liberator by the extremist group, ‘The Peoples Will’ led to the rise in power of Alexander 3rd, who’s views towards the ruling of Russia differed greatly from his fathers. Many of the liberties granted through the reforms were stripped by Alexander 3rd’s own reforms. Peasants control over courts was restricted as courts for government opponents became government controlled. Many government opponents would have been protesting about how unfair the Russian system was towards peasants and hence through trial by jury, they would have been sympathised with.
Because of the large amounts of profit they were making, they ended up buying more land and equipment on credit. However, when the war ended, the economy was disastrous once again, with farmers having to default onto this credit as a result of a lower amount of profit they were making. To fix these economic problems, Harding implemented a number of economic policies. The Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, passed the Fordney-McCumber Tariff Act was passed, which allowed Harding to raise any tariff by 50%. The act also emplaced the Tariff of 1922.
This caused a lot of distress amongst Russia’s population as well as depression. The war was thought of as a strategy to boost Russia’s morale and unite all the communities together to help the war effort, most importantly, to distract them from the current tension in the country. The war encouraged patriotism; it was soon obvious that Russia had hugely underestimated Japan’s strength and ability. This was also the first spontaneous outbreak of unrest which was directed at the Tsar, it made people lose their confidence in him. However, the Russo Japanese was not the only factor leading to Bloody Sunday, the start of the Revolution, other factors such as the Great Spurt and Alexander III’s manifesto – ‘the reaction’ also led to the start of the revolution.
There were many short and long term effects of the Russian revolution. Firstly the short term effects following the Russian revolution were that Lenin hoped the constituent assembly (parliament) would show the rest of Russia how good the Bolsheviks could be for the Russian nation and how popular their leadership was. However they only gained 161 seats, compared to the social revolutionaries who won 267 seats. Obviously the Bolsheviks had become popular in Petrograd, but beyond the capital the population hadn’t been more in favour of the social revolutionaries and hadn’t been convinced by Lenin’s promise yet. In reaction to this, he shut down the assembly in order to keep power for himself.
“BLOODY SUNDAY WAS ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT CAUSES OF THE 1905 REVOLUTION” To what extent do you agree? Although Bloody Sunday marked the breakdown of the Tsar and autocratic government, there were many other long and short term causes that provided the build up of tension and ultimately led to the revolution of 1905; Bloody Sunday was the final straw for the peasants and the other groups in Russian life, rather than a key cause. The most significant causes were mostly long term. Firstly, there was the terrible work and living conditions of the peasants, alongside the low wages they received. The lack of usable land in Russia and the subdivison of land between families both resulted in an incredibly low income, especially for larger families.