The purges and show trials aimed to terrorise Soviet society into compliance with Stalin’s regime, and ‘remove potential enemies,’ to allow Stalin to found an almost entirely ‘new’ Communist party, which comprised of ‘more dependable’ members. The Terror fundamentally had the impact of manipulating and destroying social norms, and disarranging the political and military structure which had formed in Russia following the Bolshevik revolution. During the purges and show trials which comprised the Terror, the Communist Party were forced into submission, which essentially impacted the party in an adverse manner. 90 per cent of the once established Bolshevik party members were purged, including Bukharin, Yagoda and Rykov at show trials, and the remaining members were exhausted of any power. The removal of these skilled and able members was detrimental for the Communist party, as it weakened them industrially and economically, and resulted in an endemic lack of experience across the party.
How accurate is it to say that the growth of reformist groups in the years from 1881 was the main cause of the 1905 revolution? The most notable reformist groups that had an impact on the 1905 revolution were the national minorities, the army and the revolutionary parties. The national minorities leapt at the chance of changing autocracy, ending Russification and a democratic government by using Russia’s confusion against itself. It consisted of Jews who wanted civil rights, Polish and Finnish people (and other parts of the Russian empire) who wanted independence and many others. This turned into great violence across the empire, with peasants even attacking officials.
Was the Tsar’s personal inadequacy that led to the revolution of Feb/March 1917? Essentially, Tsar Nicholas II was a lacking ruler, he was unwilling to get rid of autocracy which then resulted to no reforms in government which was often corrupt mainly due to the fact that it was an autocracy. This led to the demands of the people being ignored causing there to be universal discontent all over the land of Russia, logically Nicholas’s inadequacy as a Tsar would be a reasonable consideration for what led to the 1917 revolution, however there were other reason not just Nicholas lacking strength in leadership which resulted to the revolution. For example, there had been lingering discontent growing especially with the industrial workers and peasants beforehand concerning their conditions of work. This led to an increase in strikes.
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.
Nicholas II may have believed that, by taking charge, his army would be inspired and would fight with renewed vigour. Unfortunately, the Tsar knew little about the command and organisation of large military forces, and the series of defeats and humiliations continued. The organisation of the Russian army deteriorated and there were massive shortages of ammunition, equipment, and medical supplies. Nicholas II's decision to take charge meant that he was increasingly seen by the Russian people as having personal responsibility for the military disasters inflicted on Russia. Therefore it can be argued that it was not the protesters on the streets of Petrograd but the poor leadership
The Noble class of Russia owned most of the countries wealth and land. Nicholas II assigned family members to important political roles; this caused him to have absolute power over Russia without any threats of being over powered. Not only was Nicholas II corrupt with assigning important roles, but also he had insufficiency of the training and experience needed for the Russian Tsar, his failure to make decisions and his organization was extremely poor, “Unfit to run a village post office” This underlines the point that Nicholas II was extremely poor at making decisions and his lack organization was so poor that he would be unable to run a small village post office, that is normally very quiet, let alone Russia, one of the worlds biggest countries, this is backed up by “His ancestors did not pass on to him one quality which would have
History: Russia (Notes) Why was Russia a hard country to govern before 1905? • As Russia is equivalent to one sixth of the entire world, Russia would have been hard to govern in this sense because there would be a lot of citizens to control. • Citizens of all different nationalities may disagree with the governing of Russia and plan a rebellion. • When trying to pass new laws, Russia would have been hard to govern in this sense due to the lack of technology; and with an extortionate amount of people inhabiting Russia, legislation may have been a very long process and people could have been wrongly arrested for various things due to miscommunications. • Many different religions due to many different nationalities inhabiting Russia, this could have caused religious disputes, conflict and perhaps religious wars.
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.
Before the elections Lenin repeatedly stated that the assembly was of utmost importance to the future of Russia and so allowed the elections to continue. After the votes had been counted it became obvious that the Bolsheviks did not represent the majority of Russians as they had claimed. In response to this political defeat Lenin simply ordered his troops to force the elected representatives out and closed the assembly. This event shows Lenin’s refusal to accept input from any political party other than his own Bolsheviks. It displays Lenin’s striking similarity to the way the Tsar reacted to political pressure from opposing ideologies and factions.
Most of the peasants wanted change and the way they could do was to get the Tsar out and they could achieve that through the Social Revolutionaries and other opposition parties. Talking on the subject for the want and need for change, throughout the years between 1905 and 1914 there were still moderates and radicals who desired change and for the Tsarist regime to be extinguished. Even with the army at the Tsar’s side he still couldn’t stop all the thousands of strikes and riots that occurred during this period. Most of these strikes were caused by the Bolsheviks. The problem was, however, that there were no real leaders present in Russia to take control of all the separate groups of revolutionaries as they were either exiled or in a different country at the time, such as Lenin, who was in London trying to run the Bolshevik party from there.