Tsar Nicholas II wasn’t much of a good ruler for Russia; he ignored the fact that Russia wasn’t doing so good and overlooked the industrialization and nationalism that was occurring throughout Russia. Nicholas II disregarded the troubles the Russians were facing and seemed to only care about himself and him staying in power. This caused people to revolt as they needed a good strong leader to help Russia survive. The main leader who started China’s revolution was Sun Yat-sen who believed China should adopt a democratic government if it were to survive. The revolutions led by him eventually led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty in China.
Both Russia and China's revolution began as a struggle for a change in power. The initial revolution of China in 1911 was for the ousting of the Qing dynasty. Similarly, the 1917 revolution in Russia was instigated by the Bolsheviks revolution against the Tsarist government. The outcomes of Russia and China's revolution were similar as were the goals to establish a new government because both eventually led to the formation of a communist country. However, China's revolution differed because the initial democratic establishment led to opposition from the Communist party while the formation of the U.S.S.R faced minimal opposition.
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.
In January 1905, there was a revolutionary tide in Russia. This was mainly caused by the defeat of the Russo-Japanese War in September and the Bloody Sunday Incident in January. In the country, workers, peasants and merchants were holding demonstrations in order to express their discontent to the Tsarist government. Although Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto to pacify the discontent of people temporarily, he still had to face some problems after the 1905 Revolution. To regain the support from people, he needed to carry out the reforms in the October Manifesto.
This basic form of opposition was never truly effective as their actions were simply put down by the government partly due to their failure to unite and lack of ideology and political demands. This was, however, not the only internal opposition to Tsar Alexander II with the “Going to the People” movement emerging in 1874. Here young members of the Russia intelligentsia went to the peasants breaching to them about their ideas about how life should be lived. This proved unsuccessful, they failed to appeal to the peasantry and the regime managed to arrest members showing them to be ineffective at this point. However, the populist movement developed from here, eventually splitting into two groups; the Black Partition and the People’s Will.
This was probably due to their authoritarian ideology. It can be considered a fact that for the majority of the 1855-1964 period, the Russian citizens had little if any political freedom. Despite the legalization of political parties in 1905, this was a very short lived concession as Lenin revoked this in 1920. A similar approach was taken by Alexander III in reversing the reforms of Alexander II, including a reduction in power for the Zemstva. A recurring theme throughout the period is the regime’s desire to maintain autocracy, which Lenin’s disregard for democracy in any area and opposition shows.
Many historians have said Alexander II was considering the formation of a parliament in Russia. Furthermore, the assassination caused Alexander III to rule in reactionary nature in which many counter-reforms were created to limit the impact of the Great Reforms done by his father. This supports the view that the People’s Will were highly unsuccessful, even in the taking out of Alexander II. It can be said that the only example in this period of effective political opposition was the October 1917 revolution, where, unquestionably, the Bolsheviks took power and let their political vision be known. They were extremely successful in both the short term and the long term.
During this revolution, Lenin didn’t play any important role, however, just as well as the 1905 Revolution, he was using this experiences to make something more carefully planned. In the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin wrote and announced what is known as the April Thesis, in which he attacked Bolsheviks for supporting the Provisional Government. Lenin accused those Bolsheviks who were still supporting the Provisional Government of betraying socialism and suggested that they should leave the party. Some people took Lenin`s advice, arguing that any attempt at revolution was certainly going to fail and would lead to another repressive, authoritarian Russian government. Because of his April Theses, the October Revolution and the July Days would have never sparked up.
For example this caused divide within the populists leading to the formation of the Land and Liberty (1876) and the Black Repartition and the radical terrorist group People’s Will (1879). Eventually the Social Revolutionaries formed (1901) they believed that Russia’s future lay with the peasantry and so they wanted to give peasants their own land and improve living conditions for working classes. They used tactics such as terrorism and assassinations. However, the Liberals (Octobrists and Kadets- 1905), who also wanted to establish some sort of democracy did not
Lastly, was the Social Revolutionaries, these were the most radical and whose support came from the peasants. They wanted to take the land from the Rich and distribute amongst the peasants. A consequence of the differences in the opposition was that they couldn’t agree on what ways to overthrow the Tsar , the social revolutionaries used terrorism and violence whereas liberals only wanted minor changes therefore such extremes were not needed. As a result the Tsar was able to continue his reign whilst the opposition continued to disagree on the future of Russia.