Opposition: ideas and ideologies
Cards (31)
- In 1895 the Tver Zmestva petitioned Nicholas II to set up an advisory body to which the tsar rejected it and called it a 'senseless dream' but this did not deter them.
- Wealthy landowner and liberal Kadet leader who served in the first duma and became leader of the Russian Union of Zemstva in 1914. He continued to demand an all-class zemstva at district level and a National Assemebly.
- Founded under Pyotr Struve who defected form the Marxists movement, opposing its commitment to a violent revolution. He wanted a constitutional system to be brought so that people could campaign legally. He published a book called Liberation which was published in Germany in which he wrote about that Russia needed a period of 'peaceful evolution; to adapt to its new industrialised status.
- They declared that they wanted to establish a constitutional government and arranged a series of 50 society banquets which was attended by members of the liberal elites.
- In theory their aim was achieved as they did end up getting the State Duma.
- On that occasion, the attempt failed.
- a rallying point for those who wished to appeal to the peasantry through a commitment to land socialisation and decentralised government. it was a fairly loose organisation comprising groups with a wide variety of views. Although the party never held a congress until 1906, its members broadly accepted Marxist teaching but combined this with populist ideas, thus favouring a specifically 'Russian' revolutionary programme.
- 'land nationalisation' set them apart from the pure Marxists. Not surprisingly, they developed a wide national base, with a large peasant membership, but despite this, 50 per cent of their supporters were from the urban working class.
- 'combat organisation and took the position himself, using his influence to betray comrades and mastermind the murder of Plehve. He was exposed as a tsarist spy in 1908 and fled to Germany where he died in 1918.
- In this they were quite successful, promoting a wave of political terrorism in the early years of the twentieth century. They carried out 2000 political assassinations between 1901 and 1905. These included the assassinations of two Ministers of Internal Affairs: Dmitri Sipyagin in 1902 and Vyacheslav von Plehve in 1904.
- The party played an active part in the 1905 Revolution, developing a full programme in November 1905 and forming a separate combat organisation, which attracted many students, to carry out assassinations. The SR maintained its campaign of killings and violence over the following years, but the Secret Police foiled some activities and was successful in infiltrating the movement at its highest levels. Some 4579 Socialist Revolutionaries were sentenced to death between 1905 and 1909, and 2365 were actually executed.
- Industrial take-off' helped make Marxist theories more attractive to Russian intellectuals from the late 1890s. Georgi Plekhanov's Emancipation of Labour group grew while a number of discussion circles, workers' organisations, illegal trade unions, and other groups were attracted by Marxist ideas. The socialism was common to both the Social Revolutionary Party and a new, Social Democratic Workers' Party (SD), which emerged in 1898 as an amalgam of various Marxist groups.
- However, only nine delegates were present. They chose their name, elected a three-man Central Committee, and produced a manifesto (drawn up by Pyotr Struve), which asserted that the working classes had been, and were being exploited by their masters and that the future of Russia would be the product of the class struggle. The manifesto made it clear that the impetus for change had to come from the working men themselves.
- Six meetings were held but because of the need for secrecy, no minutes were taken.
- The congress was broken up by Okhrana agents who promptly arrested two of the newly elected committee. It was not a promising start, but in the years that followed, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), who had been converted to Marxist ideas as a student from 1887, came to play a prominent part in the development of the party.
- Lenin argued in favour of a strong disciplined organisation of professional revolutionaries to lead the proletariat.
- However others, led by Julius Martov, believed their task should be to develop a broad party with a mass working-class membership. While Martov saw members cooperating with other liberal parties, Lenin wanted total dedication to revolution only. Lenin certainly did not have the overwhelming support of the majority at the beginning of the conference and it was only after a number of representatives withdrew that Lenin finally won the vote in favour of a more centralised party structure.
- Lenin then claimed that his supporters were the majority (in Russian the bolsheviki) whilst his opponents, led by Martov, and supported also by Trotsky, were dubbed 'the mensheviki (the minority) - even though, overall, the reverse was actually True
- The split in the party was to have major consequences for the future of Marxism in Russia. In 1903-04, many members changed sides. Plekhanov abandoned the Bolsheviks, whom he had supported, while Trotsky left the Mensheviks in September 1904 over their insistence on an alliance with Russian liberals. Between 1904 and 1917 Trotsky described himself as a 'non-factional social democrat' and spent much of his time trying to reconcile the different groups within the party.
- Wanted to follow democratic procedures and feared the that approach of the Bolsheviks could lead to dictatorship
- Favoured control in the hands of a Central Committee
- After the excitement raised by the 1905 Revolution, and the legalisation of the trade unions, a reduction in working class discontent might have been expected through better state-employer-worker relations.
- 1910. Those that survived were mainly unions of the better-paid male skilled workers, particularly in the metal trades.
- However, the shooting of unarmed demonstrators at the Lena goldfields in April 1912 provided a new impetus. This followed the beginnings of economic recovery from 1911, which gave skilled labour more bargaining power in the market place. A new round of strikes ensued.
- measures taken to break strikes - fines, lockouts and blacklists - added to.
- Apart from the Poles and Finns, none wanted outright independence and, in the case of the Ukrainians and Belorussians, a combination of policies of assimilation and repression enjoyed success, delaying the emergence of an ethnic consciousness.
- They also suffered from the activities of the Secret Police network whose agents were very effective in smashing revolutionary cells. The industrial depression from 1907, the lack of finance, and a shortage of secret printing presses made organisation difficult and none of the exiled leaders, including Lenin, exercised effective control over their parties within Russia.
- Rivavrly in Bolsheviks 1912-14
- When liberals decided to hold a national zemstva in congress in November, 5,000 telegrams poured in urging delegates to press for fundamental changes such as an extension to the franchise.