Russia - KT1

• Nicholas came to the throne at the age of 26 in 1894, he knew himself that he was not capable of ruling Russia. Upon hearing of his father’s death, he wept and said “I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never  wanted to become one.” 
• Nicholas believed strongly in the Divine Right of Kings and considered it his duty to continue the  autocratic rule of his father. He saw revolutionary ideas as the product of ‘dark forces’ and attributed them to a minority of Jewish plotters and university students (liberals).
• Nicholas was tutored by and heavily influenced by the ideas of Pobedonostev, a highly conservative  and repressive minister who called representative government “the great lie of our time”.
• In 1894 Imperial Russia’s Geography included a space of 8 million square miles, covering two  continents and 11 time zones. 
• Russia was covered by the dense Tyga forest and Northern Russia was made up of frozen tundra,  making it difficult to develop the country and exploit its resources.
• The only productive arable land was the Black Earth region in the Ukraine.
• The Fundamental Laws of 1832 had declared that the Tsar was absolute ruler. This meant that Russia had advanced very little compared with her European neighbors, who had by the beginning of the  20th Century established some form of representative government. 
• There were some reforming Tsars such as Alexander II, who in 1861, emancipated the serfs.
• The Russian civil service was an area of serious reform under Peter I. However, by the 19th century it had become a cess pit of nepotism that characterized the Russian state.
• The Church had also become detached from the emerging urban population, with one suburb in  Moscow only having one priest for 40,000 people. 
• Pobedonostev was Over-Procurator of the Holy Synod (Head of the governing body of the Russian  Orthodox Church), from 1880, a position that he used to speak out forcibly in favour of absolutism,  nationalism and anti-semitism. 
•  The working class made up only 4% of the population, whereas the British population was over 70%  working class by this point. 
• The Russian peasantry made up 82% of the population. The peasants were viewed with suspicion by the ruling classes, going so far to call them the ‘dark masses’, due to their predominantly illiterate and uneducated sta
• The Russian economy lagged behind Germany, Britain and the USA. The economic stagnation is  evidenced by how Russia’s GDP in 1890 was $108,772 million compared to Britain’s $351,527 million.
• There was some industry in the Urals region, where they produced iron amongst other raw materials. However, most production was done on a domestic scale and not on an industrial, factory driven, scale.
• The Russian army in 1894 was the largest in the world numbering nearly 1.5 million people and costing the government 45% of its annual GDP.
• The Russian army, barring the Crimean War, was mostly only needed to put down national risings and border raids with Turkey and had not faced a serious European power since the days of Napoleon.
• National Minorities - Poles

  Historically the Poles had been passionate about breaking away from Russian influence and The Polish Revolt of 1863 was an indication of growing nationalism. 
• National Minorities - Poles

  As a result of industrialisation in Poland, a proletariat began to emerge in the 1890s that showed an  interest in Marxism and socialism. Workers’ political parties formed, including the Polish Socialist Party (1892) and the Democratic Party (1893). 
• National Minorities - Finns

  Prior to Nicholas II’s rule in 1894, Finland had been allowed a separate Finnish parliament (Diet) and even a constitution. 
• National Minorities - Finns

  Nicholas II appointed Nikolai Bobrikov as governor general of Finland and he promptly integrated it into the Russian Empire and began the process of Russification.
• National Minorities - Finns

  Opposition against this was so strong that the governor general was assassinated in 1904 and in 1905 Finland was given full autonomy, though Stolypin quickly reneged on this and it wasn’t until 1917 that Finland eventually gained independence. 
• National Minorities - Jews

  Nicholas II was personally anti-Jewish and pursued many of the same hostile policies as his father,  Alexander III, though the number of pogroms increased sharply, as ultra-conservative Russian  nationalists in the ‘Black Hundreds’ were encouraged by the Tsar’s stance.
• National Minorities - Jews

  Over 600 new measures were introduced against the Jews, including a requirement that Jews had to live in ghettoes. 
• National Minorities - Jews

  This alienated the vast majority of Russia’s 5 million Jews, large numbers of whom fled in desperation to Western Europe, or North America, carrying with them a hatred of Tsarism.
• National Minorities - Jews

  Some Jews were social democrats and they set up their own Jewish SD party called the Bund. This led to the accusation that they were revolutionaries, which prompted a 1905 pogrom in the Pale  Settlement. 
• National Minorities - Jews

  In 1902, the Okhrana released the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, a conspiracy theory which claimed Jews were trying to take over the world. Between 1905 and 1916, 14 million copies of 3,000 different antisemitic books were printed. 
• National Minorities - Jews

  Nicholas II did make a concession to the Jews by allowing them to sit on the Duma. 
• Pobodonostev

  He probably wrote Alexander III’s accession manifesto, which reasserted Tsarist autocracy and because of his extensive influence he received the nickname ‘the Black Tsar’. 
• Pobodonostev

  Pobedonostev also had a strong influence over Russian law. He published three volumes of ‘A Course of Civil Law’, which influenced the training of Russian legal experts under Nicholas II.
• Pobodonostev

  Pobedonostev disliked liberalism and democracy and as a result he opposed most forms of  modernisation. He called representative government ‘the great lie of our time’ and he called the  peasantry (the majority of the Russian population) the ‘dark masses’. 
• Pobodonostev

  Pobedonostev was a strong believer in Russification and was particularly anti-Semitic, referring to  Judaism as the ‘Hebrew Leprosy’. 
• Pobodonostev

  Russian was declared the official language and all legal proceedings, trials and  government/administration had to be done in Russian. If you were not fluent in Russian, you were not allowed to hold public office. 
• Political Opposition - Populists (Narodniks)

  ‘The People’s Will’ assassinated Tsar Alexander II, however he was a reformists Tsar and their  assassination of him decreased their popularity. 
• Political Opposition - Populists (Narodniks)

  Middle class movements to educate and revolutionise the peasantry were completely ineffective as the peasantry were naturally conservative. As a result, the Populists were unable to gain widespread  support. 
• Political Opposition - Populists (Narodniks)

  The ideas and violent tradition of the Populists went on to inspire the beliefs and tactics of the SRs and the Trudoviks. 
• Political Opposition - SR

  2,000 successful political assassination, including the much-hated interior minister Vyacheslav Plehve and Grand Duke Sergei, Nicholas II’s uncle. 
• Political Opposition - SR

  In 1903, the head of the SR Combat Organisation (responsible for assassinations) was betrayed to the Okhrana and sentenced to a life of hard labour. 
• Political Opposition - SR

  The same Okhrana agent, Yevno Azef, was able to become the new head of the SR Combat  Organisation, undermining them from the inside and having lots of SRs arrested.
• Political Opposition - SR

  The SRs split into left and right SRs, with the left wanting terrorism and the right wanting moderate  reform. The SRs were weakened by the fact that they were a collection of radical groups and not a  united party.