Russian Empire

a) To what extent do these sources agree that Russian government policy on agriculture consistently failed and that peasants resisted it under both Tsarist and Communist rule?

Source1 concerns the emancipation statute of 1861. Western historian Ronald Hingley cites the introduction of redemption payments “serfs resented receiving too little land for their needs” this undermines the fundamental aims of the policy. Source 1 makes reference to how the Mir was in charge of paying the redemption payments for the whole village. Hingley points out that “individual peasants were bound in various ways to their village communes”; peasants were detained in their villages until the payments were received.

Hingley notes the creation of Special Courts delegated to discipline unruly peasants “the flogging of recalcitrant peasants” this is evidence of peasant rebellion, mainly due to the fact they were in a poorer position after emancipation than they were before the policy was introduced. Source 1 suggests agricultural policies were a failure, and provoked peasant uprising, due to the hope the emancipation edict gave peasants of being free.

Source 2, meanwhile, presents a mixed view on Stolypin’s agricultural reforms. Unlike Source 1 from 1992, this piece of evidence was documented circa 1906. It is therefore unaffected by later analysis or post-Communist interpretation.

The first quote is from Stolypin himself, stating that the government has placed “its wager” on the “sturdy and the strong”, this indicates that past agricultural reform, such as emancipation have failed, as further “wagers” or reforms were needed. The other two quotes deal with Stolypin’s reforms more directly. The second quote is from a Tsarist Official. It provides direct evidence of rebellion by peasants towards Stolypin’s reforms “The peasants were very hostile to the Law of 9 November” rebellions were commonplace, peasants feared that if land belonged to an individual as opposed to the commune, a consequence would be some would be left with nothing.

The third quote is from a peasant, it is important to not that 10% of the peasants in Russia did take up Stolypin’s proposals. Segei Semenov endorses Stolypin’s reforms anticipating a “bright new future” this challenges the notion that all agricultural policies consistently failed. Stolypin’s reforms were based on good principles that could have revitalized agriculture in Russia. This does suggest that this reform did bring some success, but the general consensus confirms that many peasants preferred social security resulting in the failure of the policy.

Source 3 is an excerpt from a meeting between Churchill and Stalin during the Second World War. We se Stalin’s personal view regarding the collective farm policy, it is thus a subjective piece of evidence. Stalin implies suggests that the collective farm policy was a failure; he refers to the policy as “a terrible struggle”. Stalin insinuates peasant resistance against the policy, stating some kulaks were “wiped out by their labourers” the resistance was a product of peasant reluctance to work on collectivised farms. The farms provided little reward or incentive to the actual peasants growing the grain resulting in the dramatic deterioration of the quality and quantity of the grain.

Source 3 ends with an important comment that food supply had been “vastly increased” this indicates policy victory. However modern evidence undermines Stalin’s statement, STATISTIC more and more people were dying of famine during the period of collectivization. Although, Source 3 opposes the view that agricultural policy failed, its reliability is debateable and should be questioned before it is taken into account.

Source 4 is an extract from Eduard Shevardandse’s ‘The future belongs to Freedom’ Source 4 describes the Virgin Land Schemes introduced by Khrushchev/. One must note that the writer was a Communist Youth League activist, and may have been more likely to exaggerate the support the peasants actually gave to the scheme. There is no mention of opposition to the scheme, on the contrary Shevardandse describes the “trains packed with young volunteers” this stands for optimism on part of peasantry towards the scheme. Source 5 confirms the implication in Source 4 of support in some measure for the project as the scheme did successfully increase the amount of grain produced between 1958 to 1965 from 100 to 114. While the evidence in Source 4 may be true to some extent, the reliability of the source is questionable.

The other factor source 4 presents is the relative success of the scheme. Source 5 does seem to disagree with the statement that the policy failed due to the increase in grain production.

In Source 4 it is suggested that the policy could have been a triumph had it not been for “stupid decisions” which weighed down many successes. These “ill-conceived strategies” included lack of coherence between the crops and the terrain, and deficiency of storage place for the grain, consequently the “crops rotted in the fields”. Source 5 reinforces the feeling that the scheme was a failure, as the agricultural output during the seven year plan only increased by 14%, the target for 1965 was 170, only 114 was achieved. Source 6 also argued that Khrushchev’s policy was for the most part unsuccessful. However the failure is blamed on Khrushchev’s inheritance of “a generation of neglect”.

The reliability of some sources must be taken into consideration. Some sources suggest subjectivity and bias such as Sources 3 and 4. Policies such as Stolypin’s land reforms and Khrushchev’s Virgin Land Schemes are shown to have limited success, but ultimately they both failed to reach targets required. By and large, all the sources do converge in the belief that most of the agricultural policies did fail consistently to a degree. Similarly there is evidence that it was resisted by Peasantry both under Tsarist and Communist rule.

Some of the main causes took a long to develop into revolution, as peasants, industrial workers and the general public were very patient and downtrodden. The views of these groups all interlocked with each other. These include long and short term causes including the spark which signals when people had had enough.

Conditions for the poor had worsened since 1891 when famine swept through the southern region of Russia and forced millions of peasants to leave their families and village communities to search for work in towns. Most of the industrial workers who worked in the factories were peasants and women. Women filled the textile factories in St Petersburg and Moscow, which was the poorest paying industry in Russia.

The industrial workers were angry at the poor living and working conditions. Living space was at a premium so workers had to occupy accommodation provided by the employers. There were ten to a room and a single sheet separated bedrooms. There was no privacy and famine easily spread. Also there were no regulations on safety or hours of work, so some people died or were badly injured and had to work 12-15 hours per day. In addition they received extremely poor wages.

The peasants had to pay very high taxes on grain and also on items such as alcohol and salt. The peasant farmers not working in the factories suffered two very poor harvests and it came to a point when they could barely survive. This proved too much for the peasants and they had enough. Russia’s population in 1900 was about 120 million; at least eighty percent were peasants, so they formed a big unhappy majority. Some peasants wanted land to be divided out fairly and taken off the middle class. The Social Revolutionary party also agreed with the peasants and wanted them to start a Revolution.

The middle class shared the view that there needed to be a change but unlike the other groups in Russia they didn’t feel the need to start a revolution. The middle class who came from well-educated backgrounds wanted the Tsar to share his power, so the Russian people could benefit from the freedom and rights that people in Britain enjoy.

Due to working and living conditions worsening and wages remaining low, there was less call for trade and jobs and so many were left without income. This included widespread famine and hunger, which had dramatically increased.

Agriculture was going downhill and Russia wanted to change its fortunes to develop it’s industry and remain an important military power. As Russia felt the need to improve her industry she had to borrow money from other countries, though the main source of money came from the people of Russia. Wages were kept low so money could be spent on industry’ and after a few years people would be better off. Industry grew rapidly at first due to the success in iron, steel and the railways. In 1902 depression hit Russia and there was an industrial slump and thousands of people lost their jobs. Demonstrations and strikes were a regular occurrence and many peasants were starving. There were many violent acts and landlord’s houses were even burned down.

To make matters worse there was a war with Japan. The Tsar Nicolas the 2nd thought it would be a good idea to have a war because after a victory people would stop criticizing the government. But Japan ended as easy winners and made conditions worse in Russia. Prices rose and the war caused shortage of food. The Tsar was humiliated as Japan defeated Russia with ease even though Russia was such a big country in comparison to the small size of Japan.

This brought more protests about the ineffectiveness of the Tsar and his government.

There were very many causes but the spark of the revolution was “Bloody Sunday”. Conditions in St Petersburg were appalling and tension was at an all time high. As trade unions were banned and strikes illegal the Russian public decided to turn to a march. There were a crowd of 200,000 protesters and they marched to the Winter Palace to give a petition to the Tsar. The Tsar was not there and the Cossacks charged and the soldiers opened fire. It was a big day as the Russian public had lost respect for the Tsar.

All theses causes contributed towards the Revolution. However, none is important enough to cause a revolution by itself. When these causes were combined together it only took one small short term event to provoke the people of Russia to revolt.

Governments in pre-revolutionary societies, such as the Autocratic governments of Russia and China obviously did not deal with social and political unrest very effectively if they were unable to stop the impending revolutions in their respective countries. In each case the majority of the population were looking for changes in the way their governments were ruling their country, but in each case their ideas for a better country were not heard by their governments which subsequently resulted in vast social and political unrest.

Such unrest eventually led to the downfall of each government system due to their inability to subdue the situation. In Russia as with China under an autocratic rule, the vast majority of the population, the peasants and proletariat, were unhappy with the way their governments were treating them. The peasantry in both countries were severely poor and often starved. This was not helped by the fact that both countries had very poor weather conditions in the winter months that brought food production to a virtual stand still.

Peasants often did not own any land and were forced to work for landlords, who paid very little. Peasants were not happy with the current situation and wanted land reforms so they could own land for themselves. Unfortunately these pleas went unheard and so led to much discontent and unrest amongst the lower classes in these societies. The Tsar of Russia and the Empress of China were seen by the common person as a god-like deity selected by right of birth to rule the country as they see fit.

It was their divine right, and as such this placed the Tsar and Empress in a social status all of their own, way above anyone else. This could be a reason why they did not even care about the peasants, to them they were nothing. They were too interested in their own problems to worry about the affairs of state. Only when their power was threatened did they listen, in Russia it was when the effects of ‘Bloody Sunday’ threatened the image of the Tsar and in China when constant attack from westerners threatened to make people believe that the empress was losing the Mandate of Heaven.

In both cases, the resulting reforms put in place by each ruler was a case of too little too late. The effects of their incompetence were too deep rooted by now to be disguised by such minor and insignificant reforms. The Tsar and the Empress were very similar in the fact that they were both stuck in their old ways. The Tsar of Russia was often more concerned with family affairs than the affairs of state and wished to keep the government system the way it was so that he could pass it on to his son Alexei.

What he didn’t realise was that by not concerning himself with the affairs of state, he was in effect sealing the fate of autocracy in Russia by causing great discontent in the failing incompetent government system. Similarly in China, the Empress resisted western ideas and wished to keep the current system of government. By letting western ideas influence the people, they might have realised how ineffective their current government was and wish to change it. This would mean a complete lifestyle change for the Empress which of course she was not interested in.

So in both cases the government’s inability to accept change brought about great unrest as the people wanted to modernise, as conditions in other modernised countries were a lot better than their own. The effects of war played a major role in creating unrest in both Russia and China. In Russia, the Tsar had a choice whether or not to continue the wars in which Russia participated but in each case he chose to continue the wars, even though it was obvious that Russia lacked the capability to maintain and supply an army away from home.

The choices that he made only created more unrest, which the Tsar did not need. Obviously, if the Tsar simply avoided creating this unrest he wouldn’t have had to deal with it, so basically by not creating this unrest is a very effective way of dealing with it, pity the Tsar did not see it this way. Unfortunately in China there was no choice as to what wars could be participated in, they were all in defence. But these wars could have been avoided, especially those with Britain over trade.

China’s unwillingness to change or modernise was a major factor in causing these wars, if it had been more open to western ideas not only could China have avoided war with Britain, it could have been better prepared for wars later on with Japan. Of course this did not happen and Britain defeat China in many ‘Opium’ wars. Ports were opened up for trade and opium and cheap goods flooded in creating unrest amongst the merchants and peasants. China’s response was to build up it’s military and try to modernise by sending scholars abroad to learn western ideas.

This was like shooting themselves in the foot, many of the scholars became accustomed to western ideas and philosophy and concluded that it was more efficient and that for modernisation to occur the whole system of government must be changed. So this was not the best way to deal with unrest, because now there were more educated people with western ideas trying to gain support to change the government. The Tsar’s half-hearted attempt to solve the problems the arose after ‘Bloody Sunday’ could be credited for pushing the people that bit further into listening to revolutionary ideas that were floating around at the time.

The Tsar let the people have a Duma, so that they could have a say in how the country would be run, but he disbanded two Dumas in the first two weeks of their operation simply because they opposed him. Obviously the people did not truly have a say on anything because as soon as they wanted something that the Tsar did not like he simply disregarded it. Going back on his word was perhaps the most stupid thing the Tsar ever did, because now the people realised more than ever that the Tsar did not care about anything they had to say, so movements to oust the Tsar grew in popularity.

In both Russia and China, the governments trying to come to terms with political and social unrest did not do a very good job. In most cases they actually contributed to the creation of even more unrest than what was originally being tried to subdue. By trying to control unrest in their respective countries, the Tsar and Empress helped bring about their own demise, so effectively they did not deal with unrest at all.

Explain the reasons for the fall of the Romanovs The cause of the fall of the Romanov dynasty in 1917 was a result of long-term causes including Tsar Alexander’s inability to satisfy his people and Tsar Nicholas II’s inability to rule to throne all together. The Bloody Sunday event, the war with Germany, Rasputin and Tsars bad decisions was also some of the causes which led the Romanovs to fall. It all began in 1894 when Alexander Ill, died leaving his son Nicholas II to become the tsar of Russia at the age of 26. Nicholas was married to

Alexander the princess of Germany which they had 5 children, 4 girls and a boy. The only son Alexis was born with hemophilia. Russia was a huge country with millions of extremely poor farming peasants. These peasants lived horrible lives, many were starting to wonder why the tsar had all the wealth and they had none. In 1905 Russian Revolution was sparked off by a peaceful protest held on January 22nd. Thousands of demonstrators such as students, factory workers, revolutionaries, doctors and teachers marched through the cold and snow covered streets of St

Petersburg to Winter Palace to protest about their lifestyle, led by a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Gapon. When the peaceful protestors arrived they were confronted by troops, which they fired on the crowd. After the firing had finished several hundred protestors lay dead, this event was called ‘Bloody Sunday. In 1907 Nicholas and Alexander had asked a priest called Gregory yefimovich also known as ‘Rasputin’, to help pray and care for their son Alexis when he became sick. He was the representation of everything that was wrong in the Russian autocracy, corrupt, and rrational.

He was also considered an alcoholic, dirty charlatan who held control over millions of people’s lives, even though Russia had a fairly capable bureaucracy and thousands of well-educated, highly cultured nobles who were interested in local government and the rule of law. In 1914 Russia had entered in WWI, repairing the division between the tsar and his people. Russia was not welled prepared, they still wasn’t industrialized. They were fighting with swords, cannons, and horses against machine guns.

It was very difficult to get medicine, ammunition, and even food to the ront of the armies because railways were incomplete and Just stopped before reaching their supposed destination, the result caused many soldiers to starve. During this war Russia had lost over one million people as casualties and POW’s. Militarily, it wasn’t going too bad until in 191 5 Nicholas had decided to take control of the army himself. It was Rasputin’s and Alexandra’s advice that caused Nicholas to take personal control of the Russian Army, which wasn’t a good idea as he had no military strategic training.

He travelled to the army headquarters in Mogilev, 500km way from Petrograd which led to Tsar Wife Alexander in charge while he was away at war. This caused stir between tsar and his people due to tsar not using the money to help the poor but spending all their money on war. The Germans ended up overthrowing the Russians that people started to think Nikolas and Alexandra were German spies who were sabotaging the war effort. In conclusion the fall of where all peasants marched peacefully but concluded with many deaths, Rasputin and how he convinced tsar to do things, and the tsar bad decision associated also with WW1 against Germany.

Why did the Tsarist regime collapse in 1917? ‘By the beginning of 1917, tsarism was rotting from within. ’(1) Romanov’s had ruled Russia since 1613 but people were unhappy and the Tsarist regime was due to collapse for and it was inevitable that it would happen soon, it finally did under Tsar Nicholas II in 1917. There were many factors as to why the Tsarist regime collapsed some of the most important were Tsar’s personality, political opposition ,peasants and workers and The World War I. One of the factors that lead the tsarist regime to collapse was Tsar’s personality.

Nicholas II was coronated in 1894 but he wasn’t ready to be a Tsar because just in 1881 he witnessed his granddads, Alexander II’s assassination when his carriage was blown up. Nicholas was not a strong character and he didn’t want to be a Tsar but he was religious and both he and his wife Alexandra believed they were chosen by God and couldn’t challenge his decision. ‘He had intelligence… faith and courage but he was… ignorant about governmental matters. Nicky had been trained as a soldier. He had not been taught statesmanship and… as not a statesman. ’ (2) Also he was more of a family man rather than a ruler and was a devoted husband and father who looked good in the eyes of his people but he didn’t really bother about what happened to Russia and didn’t really do what he was meant to do; rule the country, which weakened him significantly. Although he was a good father he was unhappy as his only son Alexis suffered from haemophilia and it was likely to die young which again out the Tsar away from ruling the country. He was ignorant and refused to share power. He mistrusted most of his ministers and yet was incapable of carrying out the task of ruling the vast Russian empire alone. ’ (7) At first peasants were loyal to him and believed he’d carry on what his granddad did, free servants, relax censorship of the press, improve conditions of the army, change education and bring in Zemstva; locally elected councils, however he made the government weaker, he was almost the ‘invisible’ Tsar as he never travelled so his people didn’t know him and he couldn’t see what was best for them.

People were poor, the communication and travel were awful as Russia was such a massive country, there were all sorts of nationalities and religions in the country so people couldn’t communicate well, the society was ‘backward’ as there were too many workers and peasants (82% of population) and they were poor and had no laws, the nobles had everything. As the tsar didn’t travel he couldn’t stop any revolutions and so he weakened himself. People began to question him and his ability to rule Russia; they were unhappy and started to plot on how to overthrow him. The present ruler has lost absolutely the affection of Russian people, and whatever the future may have in store for the dynasty, the present Tsar will never again be safe in the midst of his people. ’ (9) This showed people he was careless and weakened him. Another factor that lead the tsarist regime to collapse was the political opposition. ‘The key question is this-is the peaceful renovation of the country possible? Or is it possible only by internal revolution? ’(6) There were many people who wanted the Tsar to collapse.

Some like Octobrists or Kadets were more peaceful. Kadets were middle-class liberals who wanted elected parliament. They had the support of well educated wealthy people in towns, but that wasn’t enough people and they didn’t attract peasants and workers which was bad as they were the majority. The Social Revolutionaries and Social Democrats wanted revolution. ’Both groups were prepared to work with the liberals, providing the latter continued to push the tsarist regime towards greater democracy and parliamentary power. (5) Social Revolutionaries were supported be peasants and they wanted to give peasants land to make their life better and make them happy, however because of the size of the country and ignorance of the peasants, the revolution was impossible. They were divided in aims and methods as some wanted to share land and some wanted communism and eventually their revolution didn’t happen. Lenin and Trotsky were in the Social Democrats; they were supported by factory workers and followed communist teachings.

They wanted to overthrow the government, however they were also divided; Mensheviks wanted to get a big group of people including the middle class but Bolsheviks wanted small amount of people who would organise strikes and demonstrations. ‘We Bolsheviks will not shirk the task. ’(1) This showed the people that if so many people wanted change then surely there is something wrong with the Tsar’s ruling. The 1905 revolutions was the perfect opportunity for opposition to show the Tsar how many people needed change and to show people the Tsar was not fit to rule.

The spark that started it off was the Bloody Sunday it was a peaceful petition from Father Gapon to ask for change but the Tsar got troops to attack the 200,000 workers who marched to him to ask for help, but the Tsar didn’t care he feared for his life, maybe he knew he was a bad Tsar and thought that people were coming to assassinate him like his grandfather. This got people to think whether the Tsar actually care about his people.

The economic problems also led to the revolution, the government borrowed money, the violence from troops continued, the taxes for poorest went up, the working and living conditions were terrible and people were angry. The Russo-Japanese war meant prices went up and shops lacked food and goods, industries closed leaving people unemployed and hungry and even though Tsar thought war was a good idea he became less popular as people thought he was incapable to rule and Russia got defeated and humiliated which was yet another one of Tsars mistakes. There were riots and disorders in the streets, and I think it’s the best description of a revolution; people were smashing up shops, looting bread shops; women particularly. ’(1) Everyone hated the Tsar which weakened the Tsarist regime as people knew the Tsar wasn’t fit to rule them. The next factors that lead the Tsarist regime to collapse were the peasants and workers. At first the people saw Tsar as a father figure as that was what the Orthodox Church taught and people were very religious and they blamed landlords and factory owners.

People believed Russia will change under Nicholas, when he was crowned ‘The crowds have been building up for two days. ’(1) However this quickly began to change and peasants and workers realised that the Tsar didn’t care about them but they had hope. The workers, worked over 12 hours, they were poor, and they had hard work and had no privacy. Factories were open 24/7 and 30 people had to be cramped into a one little room and worked for minimal wages.

Whole families including children were working just so they could buy something to eat and improve their lives. Both workers and peasants ate cheap, awful food and their life expectancy was less than 40 years. The peasants didn’t have enough land; some of them were taken to work in factories as 4/5 people at that time were peasants. This angered them and they started to blame the Tsar directly. ‘They receive terrible wages and generally live in overcrowded conditions… but manufactures have received permission to use overtime. (3) People were so fed up they ‘increasingly formed protests. ’ (4) Which was really bad for the Tsar, as peasants and workers formed protests everyone would soon find out and join them. There were so many of the workers that when Father Gapon made a petition ‘Do not refuse to help your people. Destroy the wall between yourself and your people. ’(12), it wasn’t hard to get 200,000 people to march to Tsar with him but the Tsar was already threatened and killed most of them, ‘The soldiers fired all day long. (8) However peasants didn’t give up on wanting their bit of land and so when after 1905 revolution they were promised it as the Tsar promised it to them, they stopped all protests and were overwhelmed but a year later the Tsar took it away from them, which was a massive mistake as he proved that he didn’t care about his people at all and was another reason to get rid of him. Russian people were angry and wanted to get rid of the Tsar. Instead of ‘destroying the wall’ Nicholas II made it bigger and this weakened his regime.

The last factor that lead the Tsarist regime to collapse was the World War I. Russia suffered from shortage of food due to bad harvests, poor transport and loosing rich farmland to Germans, people were starving and were unhappy ‘The combination of a population explosion, backward farming techniques and poor policy making had made for a grave crisis’(5) but the Tsar decided to leave Russia went to be the commander-in-chief of the war. ‘His decisions showed him to be hopelessly out of touch. (1) Russia had no good rifles and soldiers had to wait for someone in front of them to die so they could take their rifle and participate in the war. ‘If we should have three days of serious fighting, we might run out of ammunition altogether. ’(10) The support of the army ebbed away and the Tsar could no longer blame the defeats on his subordinated and had to take the responsibility himself, the soldiers now blamed him directly for their misery.

The peasants who made up most of the army and had the image of the wise and caring Tsar further shattered. As the Tsar left, he left Tsarina in charge of Russia, Alexandra refused to take any advice from loyal middle-class ‘Alexandra was the dominant personality in the relationship’ (7) and she refused to share power like the Tsar, and so she was blamed for everything that went wrong. The patriotic people became frustrated at Tsarina’s incompetence; they were convinced someone else would be better.

People hated everything German, they even changed the name St. Petersburg to Petrograd as it sounded too German, but Tsarina was German, which made her more unpopular. There were rumours that she was sabotaging Russia and was a German spy so that Germany could win the war. Rasputin was believed to be a holy man as he healed Alexis and so he had a lot of influence over Tsarina, there were a lot of scandals surrounding them which made Tsarina even more unpopular. People believed they had an affair and there were rumours that they were German agents. Alexandra made decisions based on whims or messages from God, mediated by Rasputin. ’(1) People believed he was leading the country to its doom. Russian’s were angry as Rasputin was just a peasant and he helped to rule the country and they didn’t understand why such person should be allowed to do that. Some were also wondering why the Tsar allowed Rasputin to be so close with the royal family ‘I did realise that the man possessed great hypnotic power. ’(11) Finally in December 1916, Rasputin got murdered by a group of jealous nobles ‘Rasputin was dead… ur hearts filled with hope’ (1) but it was too late to restore the reputation of the royal family in the eyes of Russian people and so this weakened and lead to the destruction of Tsarist regime. In conclusion I think that the most important weakness was Tsar’s personality as, he didn’t want to be a Tsar in the first place, he was ignorant and if he tried to listen to his ministers he wouldn’t have made as many mistakes as the Russo-Japanese war or the Bloody Sunday; so in effect the 1905 revolution.

The peasants and workers didn’t want much so only if he improved their wages and gave them some land and continue what his granddad Alexander II had done, he would’ve had their support and avoid weakening himself. If he was travelling around and was liked by his people, political opposition wouldn’t form and so there would be peace in Russia and he would’ve been a strong Tsar. If he didn’t care only about himself and his family, the Tsarist regime would have been strong and Russian people would have been satisfied and the Tsarist regime would continue.