imperial russia

• John Westwood- alex II


  ; their local knowledge “enabled them to do a good job” and to “look after their affairs
• Westwood - alex II


  seeds of liberalism
• Boris Chicherin

  “Alexander set out to remodel completely the enormous state which had been entrusted to his care”
• Alfred Rieber

  suggests that the emancipation and reform process was motivated by desire to protect the autocratic state
• Richard Pipes - ALEX II

  Alexander II's reign was characterized by a series of liberal reforms that aimed to modernize and liberalize the Russian Empire
• Dominic Lieven - ALEX II


  fell short due to opposition from conservative elements within the government and society
• Pobendstanov, Hugh Setom-Watson

  “an overall attitude of nostalgia, obscurantist and narrowly bureaucratic paternalism
• Nobles, Richard Charques


  ‘no single act of government in the reign of Alexander II stirred the Russian peasant to more bitter resentment – created state of “semi-serfdom”, reinstating dominance of nobility and removing some autonomy of peasants
• David Christian

  – Witte “Like Peter the Great, Witte hoped to use Russia’s traditional political and fiscal structures to pay for economic modernisation”

   
• Geoffrey Hosking - ALEX III


  "Alexander III's economic policies were characterized by a return to a more conservative, protectionist approach. 
• leon trostky, 1905 rev


  "A dress rehearsal for the real revolution of 1917"
• Richard Pipes - reasons for the revolution


  The 1917 uprising succeeded at this time as the noble class has lost support for the TsarHe blames a lot of this support on Rasputin's influence
• Wood - reasons for the revolution

  threw away the last chance of survival by not compromising and living up to his promises -Eg: the Duma
• Buchannan (Nicholas II)


  one of the most pathetic figures in history
• Robert Service (Nicholas II)


  'Although Nicholas II may not have been an outstanding emperor, it was the general situation and not his personality that enfeebled the regime's reaction to the assaults made upon it.'
• pipes, nicholas II


  "The February Revolution was not the result of a single cause, but rather the accumulation of a number of factors, including the failure of the Tsarist regime to modernize and the impact of World War I on the Russian economy and society."
• JP Nettl - terror and coercion


  "The machinery of counter-terror and repression grew piecemeal but rapidly from each challenge to Bolshevik authority".
• service - bolsheviks


  the Soviet regime retained a vision of political, economic and cultural betterment. 
• volkonogov - bolsheviks


  'The promise to create a new society without oppression, police rule and terror...was swallowed up by the imperatives of Bolshevik survival and never retrieved'
• service - NEP


  "The NEP seemed to them a betrayal of the revolution."
• service - NEP argument

  'The NEP had saved the regime from destruction; but it had induced its own grave instabilities into the compound of the Soviet order.'
• duranty - nep


  definitely a reversion to Capitalism,
• service - terror and coercion

  'Lenin justified dictatorship and terror'
• taylor - war communism


  'with few rewads for their labor, the peasants showed little interest in growing more than what their immediate needs required.'
• sverdlov - red terror

  'merciless mass terror against all opponents'
• service - trotsky


  'He did more than anyone to found the Red Army.'
• figes - communism


  'the growing divide in economic relations between countryside and towns'