Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Political Reaction,
1881-1904
- Impact of Industrialisation
- Vyshnegradsky
- Appointed in 1886; wanted to
improve finances and gold
reserves
- Increased indirect taxes,
reduced imports by
increasing tariffs; industrial
machinery and cotton was
protected; negotiated some
loans from France
- Exports increased by
18%
- Peasants bore the
brunt of heavy
taxation; price of
good rose; made
the famine of 1891
even worse
- Witte
- Minister
of
finance in
1892
- Believed in
modernisation;
would curb unrest
and revolutionary
activity
- 3 key problems: insufficient capital;
lack of technical and managerial
expertise; insufficient manpower
- Raised interest rates to increase
foreign investment and business
confidence; new rouble in 1897
backed by the value of gold,
- Lots of investment
in mining, metal, oil
and banking; he
encouraged foreign
experts and workers
- Forced
Russia into
an industrial
revolution
- Railways
- Opened up Russia,
connection between
industrial and agricultural
areas; transport costs fell
- Trans-Siberian
Railway; economic
benefits, peasants
encouraged to
emigrate to Siberia,
supported transport
of militrary supplies
and troops
- Annual Growth
- 4th largest industrial
economy
- Imports and exports
grew in quantitiy
and value
- Dependence on
foreign loans
- Led to the creation of
the new urban and
middle classes
- Rural Economy
- Population
- The population had
doubled to 132.9
million in 1900
- Population growth
had caused the
further subdivision
of estates
- Kulaks
- Took
advantage of
poor peasants
- Poor Peasants
- Migrated to Siberia,
encouraged by
government schemes
- High mortality
rates
- Internal Opposition
- Populism
- A2's assassination
ended the Populist
movement
- The People's Will reformed
in 1886, and attempted to
assassinate A3
- No benefits of A2 killing: no
practical benefits, wave of
arrests, greater police
surveillance, abandonment
of Louis-Melikov's proposals,
strict regime of A3
- Great Famine highlighted
the need to reform the
rural economy; revived
Populist ideals
- Social Revolutionary
Movement
- In 1901, a group of
Populists came together
to create this
- Fairly loose organisation; wide variety
of views; never centrally controlled;
never held congress till 1906
- Accepted basic Marxist
teachings but mixed it with
Populist ideas
- Wide national base with
large peasant membership;
50% of supporters were
from the urban working
class
- Social
Democrats
- Plekhanov established
the Emancipation of
Labour group in
Switzerland: smuggled
and translated Marxist
works into Russia
- The first Congress was
broken up by the
Okhrana
- Second Party Congress
in 1903 in Brussels then
London, divisions with
Lenin and Martov
- By 1906, 2 separate SD parties
- Repression
& Police
- Ohkrana
upped the
surveillance
- Split in
the SDP
- Mensheviks: Martov; waited for bourgeois
revolution and then proletarian
revolution, impetus had to come from
workes, open membership, democratic
procedures
- Bolsheviks: Lenin; bourgeois and
proletarian revolution would
occur simultaneously, their duty
to educate workers, restricted
membership, control in the
hands of a Central Committee
- Intelligentsia
& liberals
- Pressed for change and reform but
through reforming the autocracy
- Zemstva allowed liberal
thinkers to air views; they
did all the work in the
Great Famine so wanted
extra powers
- A3 reduced Zemstva powers,
N2 ignored demand to set up
advisory body
- Union of Liberation found in 1903,
peaceful evolution needed,
establishment of a constitutional
government, liberal elites
attended society banquets
- Rule of N2
- Rule of the
Tsars
- A3 publically hung those
involved in A2's death; strong
centralised control was
reasserted; Land Captains
1889 could override Zemstva
decisions, magistrates were
removed. He forced
counter-reforms
- A3 & N2 believed their power was
undermined by Western ideas,
consititutional theories, secular thinking
and urban discontent. Staunch believers
in Orthodoxy and nationalism; student
demonstrations were crushed
- N2 purged elected boards of liberals;
dismissed attempts to create an
'All-Zemstva Organisation in 1896. Not
suited to being an autocrat, failed to
develop any domestic policy
porgrammes, increased repression,
ignored disturbances; autocracy was
out of date yet he fantatised about
absolute power, feeble
- Russification
- Official policy under
A3&N2
- Red
Cockerel
- Peasants set fire to
landlord's barns,
destroyed grain or
attacked landlords
- Industrial strikes in towns,
police-sponsored trade unions
set up to prevent workers
joining radical socialists