Transcript Problems of 19th Century Russia

Problems of 19th Century Russia
 Autocracy
 Agriculture/Industrialization
 Intelligentsia
 Nationalities
Nicholas I (1825 – 1855)
 Alexander I’s brother
 Decembrist Revolt -
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“Constantine and
Constitution”
Codified Russian law – some
relief for serfs
1838 first railroad completed
Censorship and secret police
Persecution of nationalities
and minority religions
Expansion at the expense of
Ottomans
Czarist Russia after 1856
 1833 “Autocracy, Orthodoxy,
Nationality” the ruling principles
 Autocracy of the Czar - nature and
challenge
 Serfdom – nature and problems
 Intelligentsia – estranged from
government, church and the illiterate
peasants – centers and saviors of the
universe
Alexander II (1855 – 1881)
 Autocracy
– Edict of 1864
– Zemstvos
 Serfdom
– Emancipation Edict
 Intelligentsia
– Ignored press
censorship
– Permission to travel
abroad
– Eased controls on
universities
– Outburst of opinion
The Emancipation Act of 1861
 Land allocation
– 50% land to serfs to be “redeemed” by
payments over 49 years
– Owned collectively by mir (village assembly)
• Payments collected from members
• Lands assigned
• Little movement
– Lords freed of largely mortgaged serfs; receive
payments; no more obligation
– No investment of outside capital – agriculture
lags
 Inequality among Peasants
Revolutionism in Russia
 Between Anarchy and Revolutionism
Mikhail Bakunin Peter Kropotkin AlexanderHerzen
1814-1876
1842-1921
1812-1855
Three questions to consider
 How did the autocracy of the Russian Czar differ
from the absolutism of western Europe?
 Under what constraints did Russian serfs live?
How would you compare their circumstances to
those of the serfs in eastern Europe, slaves in the
United States, factory workers in Britain at the
same time?
 What was the role of the Russian mir in rural
Russian society? Did it enhance or limit freedoms
for the serfs after the Act of Emancipation?
Alexander III (1881 – 1894)
 Autocracy Reasserted
 Serfdom/Industrialization
– European capital finances
railways, mines, factories and
military
– Increase in exports and imports
– Growth of industrial workforce
laboring under same conditions
as 1848 western Europe
– Most industry concentrated
(500+) workers
– No corresponding growth in
business class
 Intelligentsia Suppressed
 Nationalities
Konstantin Pobiedonostsev 1827- 1907
 Procurator of the Holy
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Synod 1880
Architect of Russification
called "The Grand Inquisitor“
against constitutional and
democratic reforms
against religious freedom
against freedom of press
against trial by jury
against free non-church
education
Reaction and Progress after 1881
(Alexander III & Nicholas II)
 Russification
– Pogroms
– Forced assimilation of Muslims of Central Asia
– Western ideas suppressed
 Industrialization before 1914
– 1897 Count Witte inaugurates gold standard
– 1888-1914 railway track doubles; telegraph wires 5X,
postal stations 3X
– No machine tool industry or chemical plants
– Financed from loans from abroad; small capitalist class
 The “Cadets” Constitutional Democratic Party
– Liberals from educated middle class
– Active in zemstvos
Peasant Demands & Burdens
 Land hunger of
individuals and mirs
 Communal ownership
sometimes preferred
 Some wealthier
peasants prefer private
property (kulaks) not
liked by the rest
 Redemption payments
 Taxes
 Best wheat exported
Russian Culture in the 19th Century
 Tolstoy (1828-1910)
 Turgenev (1818-1883)
 Dostoevsky (1821-1881
 Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
 Rimsky Korsakov (1844-1908)
 Moussorgsky (1839-1881)
The Emergence of Revolutionary
Parties
 The Intelligentsia
– Secret societies
– Infiltrated by police
– Tied to doctrine and endless debates about the
true revolutionary class
 Populism
– Favored peasants as the source of revolution
– Peasant problems and peasant welfare the focus
– Mir the model for communism
– Social Revolutionary Party
Marxism’s Three Sources
 German Philosophy
– The Nature of Freedom
– Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism
– Marx’s Dialectical Materialism
 French Revolution
– Legal and civil equality first step
– Economic and social equality second step
 British Industrial Revolution
– The Condition of the Working Classes in
England 1844
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
1818-1883
1820-1893
What was The Condition of the Working
Classes in England in 1844?
 Labor in a depression
 Most of the profit reinvested as capital
 Capital held by private persons
 Government in the hands of well to do
 Religion considered useful to keep lower
orders in line
 Working conditions and living conditions
miserable
What was the Communist Manifesto ?
 Summons to revolution written in
January 1848
 Inflammatory language
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Religion the opiate of the people
Females and children prostituted
Worker a Man without a country
Nothing to lose but chains
Marx’s Mature Thought Das Kapital
 Revolution inevitable result of historical forces
 Subsistence theory of wages borrows from British
school of political economy
 No future for laboring classes in capitalist
economic system
 Doctrine of surplus value asserts laborer robbed
since wages never equal to the value of what they
produce
 Overproduction of goods none could afford to buy,
depression, expansion necessary
Dialectical Materialism: The Process
 History constantly unfolding
 Change brought about through clash of
opposing economic interests
 Material conditions the key – owners of the
means of production shape government,
religion, values all with one idea in mind,
retaining power
 Feudal class-> Bourgeois class-> Proletariat
 Classless society the result
Class War Inevitable
 Social calm is not peace, only an interlude
 Employer the enemy everything else, law, religion
ammunition, nothing more
 Must avoid the temptation to opportunism above
all
– Improving circumstances
– Labor unions
– Expanding electorates or social legislation
 Intellectuals important in this war because they are
expert in discerning class interest
 Must explain this to the workers
Marxism: A Critique
 Claims
– Scientific, not utopian
– Based on what is a historical process, not what
we dream
– Realistic assessment no ethical ideas to
complicate
 Problems
– Working classes religious, patriotic
– No class consciousness
– Bird in hand vs bird in bush
• unions
• suffrage
– Wages rose after 1850
Marxism in Russia: Social Democrats
Pavel Axelrod
1850-1928
George Plekhanov
1857-1918
Split in the Social Democrats:
Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
 1903 Second Party Congress London and
Brussels
 Purpose: to unify Marxist parties in Russia
 Result: Split develops
 Lenin the author of Bolshevism (majority
that’s really a minority party)
 1912 Bolshevists form their own party
Leninism: Movement not Theory
 Tactician and activist
 Party a revolutionary
elite
 Party the vanguard
 Central committee
authors “party line”
 No deviation
 Dictatorship of the
proletariat
Questions to consider
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How did Alexander III attempt to stamp out
revolutionism and western influence? Why were
he and Pobiedonotsev unsuccessful in those
endeavours?
What changes did industrialization bring to
Russian society?
How did industrialization lead to the formation
of a liberal segment of public opinion?
How were Russian peasants affected by
industrialization?
More questions to consider
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On which issues did the populists depart from
traditional Marxism?
What were the sources of revolutionism in
Russian society?
Do you think exile was an effective punishment
in eliminating or stemming revolutionism in
Russia? Why or why not?
What distinguished Mensheviks from
Bolsheviks?
How did Lenin conceive of the party and its
function?
The Revolution of 1905
 Background and Revolutionary Events
– Growing Discontent
– Response to Military Defeat
– Reactions to Bloody Sunday
The October Manifesto:
Divide and Conquer
 Constitution
 Civil Liberties
 Duma elected by all classes with powers to
enact laws and control administration
 Cadets sell out the working class
 No mention of wages or hours
 No mention of land or tax burden
The Results of 1905: The Duma
 No power over foreign affairs, finance,
governments personnel
 The first Duma 1906
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No socialist candidates
Cadets the majority
Demand UMS and ministerial responsibility
Dismissed in 2 months
 The second Duma 1907
– SRP and Mensheviks participate
– 83 socialists returned
– Change in suffrage secures conservative
majority for third Duma
The Stolypin Reforms
 Prime Minister 1906-
1911
 Propertied class as
friend to the state
 Broadened powers of
zemstvos
 Peasants can leave
villages
 Success of the
Stolypin program
 Peasants can buy land
from mir
Stolypin’s Success: An Evaluation
 Over 1/3 of families eligible apply for
separation from the mir
 Trend toward private property
 Trend toward independent farming
 Mir not broken
 Poverty and land hunger remain
 The position of a reformer
– Too western for conservatives
– Dissolution of communes brings wrath of SRP
– Revolutionary’s worst nightmare
Westernization
 Industry
 Exports
 Parliamentary form of government
 Private property extended
 Individualist capitalism extended
 Some freedom of the press
 Arts
Questions to consider
 What happened on Bloody Sunday? Why did that
day prove to be a turning point for so many
Russians’ view of the Czar and the autocracy?
 What concessions did the October Manifesto
make? Why did those concessions divide the
opposition to the autocracy?
 In what ways was Russia westernized between
1905 and 1916?