autocracy

autocracy

Divine Status
1. RED TSAR
  1. Portrayal as a God-like figure in the cult of personality.
    1. LENIN
      1. 30 August 1918 - survives assassination attempt. "hailed as a Christ-like figure", "blessed with supernatural powers", "quick recovery declared a miracle in the Bolshevik press" (Orlando Figes, p627)
        "It was the start of the Lenin cult - a cult designed by the Bolsheviks, apparently against Lenin's will, to promote their leader as the 'people's Tsar'." p628
        Bonch-Bruevich told of how Lenin wanted no part in the so-called 'cult'.
        Lenin "waged an ideological struggle against the glorification of the personality, of the individual". "It is shameful to read... they exaggerate everything, call me a genius, some kind of special person." (Lenin's own words cited in Nina Tumarkin, Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in Soviet Russia, p90)
        Divine image given to Lenin backed up by methods such as the press and a documentary film called Vladimir Ilich's Kremlin Stroll.
2. TSAR
  1. Divine status, accountable to no one but God. God supported his actions.
    1. Nicholas II: "I am not prepared to be a Tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling. I have no idea of even how to talk to the ministers." - trying to ignore his divine right and appointment by God.
Supreme, Unlimited Power
1. TSAR
  1. Supreme leader, makes all decisions, has power over life and death of subjects. No limits to power, accountable to no one. Supreme will, create decrees without consent. Most absolute authority in Europe. Answers to no one.
    1. Alexander II: At the end of his reign, 'the concept of the state embodied in the person of the autocrat was in no way altered' (W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms)
    2. "...the roots of the monarchy's collapse... (lay) in the growing conflict between a dynamic public culture and a fossilized autocracy that would not concede or even understand its political demands". (Orlando Figes, Revolutionary Russia, chapter 1)
2. RED TSAR
  1. Supreme leader. Sign death warrants. Create the law and make decrees. Listens and answers to no one.
    1. Trotsky: "The country had so radically vomited up the monarchy that it could not ever crawl down the people's throat again."
      1. "But if the monarchy was dead politically, it was still alive in a broader sense." (Figes, p350)
        Peasants still thought of politics in terms of the monarchy. They projected their ideals of the revolution onto some sort of authoritarian liberator ro deliver cherished land and freedom.
        A few days after the revolution, a soldier said to British Ambassador George Buchanan: "Yes, we need a republic, but at its head there should be a good Tsar."
Elite and Patronage of the Leader
1. TSAR
  1. Tsar supported by an elite - the nobility whose prime role was to serve the Tsar. Positions of influence in government, armed forces and civil service was held through patronage of the Tsar.
    1. Nicholas II: crumbling relationship with upper classes after refusal to compromise with them.
      1. One reason of many for collapse of Tsarist regime (Feb Rev).
2. RED TSAR
  1. Nomenklatura, the elite who held the top party, government and armed forces positions, supported the leader through their patronage. Kept their support through threat of removing privileges.
Bureaucracy
1. TSAR
  1. Huge government bureaucracy, slow, unwieldy, and impenetrable, with corruption at lower levels.
    1. Nicholas II: wanted to appear to be making a change by creating the Duma after the 1905 Revolution and October Manifesto.
      1. Curtailed its power.
        Could not pass laws or control finance.
        Ministers responsible to the Tsar, not the Duma.
        Nicholas dissolved the Dumas, which often didn't last longer than a matter of months.
      2. Corrupt electoral system.
        Weighted in favour of the well-off and against the working class and peasants.
        Revolutionary parties boycotted the Duma, realising they couldn't get any change made through it.
2. RED TSAR
  1. Huge, faceless bureaucracy in government and party which led to 'death by paper'. Local areas 'inner circles' of government and party officials and industrial managers made deals to suit themselves, ignoring instructions from the centre.
    1. 'Red Tape' - organisation, civil service, state officials.
      1. Party Bureaucracy and State Bureaucracy = everything controlled by the party.
        Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik Regime, 1919-24: "By the spring of 1918, the largest state in the world fell apart into innumerable overlapping entities. In a few months Russia reverted politically to the Middle Ages."
System of Ranks
1. TSAR
  1. Well developed system of ranks and privileges.
    1. Alexander II: emancipation not for the serfs, but to benefit his noble supporters.
      1. AGAINST: Both the land-owning class and serfs lost out.
2. RED TSAR
  1. System of ranks developed in 1930s (nomenklatura downwards). Party official or members got power and privileges corresponding to their level. Command economy demanded there be officials and managers at different levels and wage differentials between workers.
    1. Lenin abolished titles and ranks used in the Tsarist regime.
Repression
1. Terror and Secret Police
  1. RED TSAR
    1. Secret Police (Cheka, OGPU, NKVD) used in all aspects of life, monitoring everyone and rooting out opposition.
      1. Lenin
        Cheka, Bim-Bom the clown December 1917, "Revolution was not something to be taken lightly" (Tim Blanning article)
        "Lenin was cruel, in the sense that he was indifferent to human suffering."
        Lenin: "Do you really believe we can be victorious without the very cruelest revolutionary terror?"
        Molotov believed Lenin to be the more severe of Stalin and himself.
        "Lenin had always been an advocate of using mass terror against the enemies of his revolution". (Figes, p524)
    2. STALIN
      1. Gulags
        “The millions of slave labourers at the disposal of Gulag played an important economic role…” becoming “a normal component of the Soviet economy.” State-owned slaves were commonplace in world history, but particularly Russian history; the Romanov tsars had their ‘servi publici’ - the feudal system of serfdom. (Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment p330)
      2. Purges
        "The purges were often so wildly excessive and brutal hat they defy logical analysis." - M. Lynch, Stalin and Khrushchev - the Soviet Union, 1924-64, page 64.
      3. Great Terror and More
      4. Great Patriotic War
  2. TSAR
    1. Secret police (Okhrana) used to support the state and deal with critics.
      1. Okhrana established by Alexander III.
    2. Nicholas II: Bloody Sunday, 'at war with his own people'. Tsar's troops fired at peaceful demonstrators. Varying death tolls: palace sources = 100, revolutionaries = 1000+.
2. Control Over Population
  1. TSAR & RED TSAR
    1. Internal passports, residence permits and visas used to control the movement of the population.
    2. TSAR
      1. Alex III: Land Captains, 1889: New govt agent, chosen from gentry to control peasants, could overrule mir, replaced JPs functions. Greatly resented by peasants.
        Agriculture was exploited as source of export earnings - this led to a series of famines.
        SQUEEZING THE PEASANTS: "We must go hungry, but export." - Vyshnegradsky.
        1891 Famine
        Hit 17 of 39 provinces.
        'the defining event of the decade' - John F. Hutchinson, Late Imperial Russia, p14
3. Lack of Freedom
  1. TSAR
    1. Speech, written word etc...
      1. Censorship of the Press
        Alexander II: increased censorship in reactionary period.
        Alexander III: censorship tightened into rigid system and maintained throughout reign.
    2. Political
      1. Alex III - Emergency Powers, 1881: Statute Concerning Measures for the Protection of State Security and the Social Order. Wide govt. powers. increased repression of state critics, removal of elected officials.
      2. Alex III - Law: increased govt. interference in law courts, judges' security of tenure ended, JPs abolished.
      3. Alex III - Revolutionary Groups: weakened for a decade. Plot to assassinate Tsar led to execution of Lenin's brother and four others in 1887.
  2. RED TSAR
    1. Lack of Free Speech
      1. Censorship of the Press
      2. Banning of Rival Political Parties
        Introduce new constitution, crushed constituent assembly, refused coalition, Sovnarkom's Decrees banned bourgeois parties and newspapers.
        Trotsky exiled and assassinated. Troyskism became a crime. Zinoviev and Kamenev show trial - both shot 1936. Bukharin and Rykov executed. Tomsky suicide. Left and Right factions exterminated.
4. REFORM
  1. In contrast with the repression underpinning the 100 years, reform also emerged.
    1. Alexander II: Alexandrine Reforms
      1. Emancipation, Zemstva, Judicial, Censorship, Education, Military, Financial, some freedom restored.
        Key figures: Grand Duke Constantine, Duchess Elena Pavlovna, Rostovstev, Nicolai Milyutin, Dimitri Milyutin, Reutern, Golovnin.
      2. Overcame resistance to emancipation.
        But: "the laws which freed the serfs emerged from a process that the Tsar barely understood". (David Saunders, Russia in Age of Reaction and Reform, p216)
      3. Reactionary or Reforming?
        "Two different men lived in him" (Pyotr Kropotkin)
        Alexander II stuck between autocracy and modern constitutional development.
        B.N. Chicherin: "Alexander was called upon to execute one of the hardest tasks that can confront an autocratic ruler... to abolish an age-old order founded on slavery, to replace it with civil decency and freedom..."
        Argument: What Alexander II achieved was liberation, whether or not it was the kind wished for or envisaged.
      4. Emancipation
        "Scholars had once believed that the step was taken largely on economic grounds, namely as a result of a crisis in the serf economy. This belief, however, does not appear well grounded. There is no evidence that economic considerations were uppermost in the government’s mind when it took the decision to proceed with emancipation." Russia under the Old Regime, Richard Pipes, p163.
        "...serfdom attained the very peak of economic efficiency on the eve of its abolition." (p163)
        "The Emancipation Edict, issued after prolonged deliberations of 19th February 1861, immediately abrogated the landlord's authority." (p164)
        Alexander II, 1856: "It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below."
    2. Alexander III
      1. Social
        Poll tax ended (indirect taxes increased).
        Redemption payments lowered (Finance Minister Bunge).
        1883 Peasants Land Bank. 1885 Nobles Land Bank. Provide cheap loans to buy land. Progressive.
        Factory legislation. Hours, employment of women and children restricted, inspectorate established.
        Zemstva continued to improve local areas (esp. primary education).
      2. Economic
        Major spurt in industrialisation under Bunge, Vyshnegradsky and Witte.
        Alex III as a realist prepared to support industrialisation and Witte's policy. (Paradoxically to his reactionary tendencies).
        Economy grew 8% p.a. in 1890s
    3. Nicholas II
      1. Stolypin's Agrarian Reforms 1906-11
        "Stolypin's Necktie"
        Create new loyal backbone of agricultural workers. Turn productive peasants into farmers. Free them from control of the mir. Get rid of redemption payments. Start of the kulaks?
        Increase in grain production. 1913 = 'golden year' - a level not reached again until Khrushchev era.
5. Consolidation of Bolshevik Rule
  1. Red Army
  2. Cheka set up Dec 1917. Dzerzhinsky. 1918 = 120 employees. 1921 = 200,000.
    1. Arrest SR and Menshevik leaders
    2. Win the war against 'internal enemies'.
      1. Strikes and demonstrations broken up by force.
  3. NEP repressive measures
  4. July 1918 - murder of the Romanovs.
  5. Red Terror
    1. 1918: 50,000 dead in first year.
    2. attacks on kulaks
    3. 'Officially' introduced in Sept 1919.
  6. Civil War 1918-20
    1. Reds v Whites
      1. 1920, Red Army 5 million strong.
    2. War Communism
      1. Led to 1921 famine and Kronstadt Mutiny.
        Kronstadt Mutiny: Lenin's flash of lightning.
        Crushed by Red Army.
        economic collapse - production plummeted, cities depopulated, famine (volga region 1920-21), c5-8 million died.
        NEP 1921
        Lenin: "let the peasants have their little but of capitalism as long as we keep the power" (15 March 1921)
        Commanding heights still controlled by the state.
        U-turn from extreme communism to capitalism.
        Political Repression
        Church
        1921: Union of the Militant Godless.
        Peasantry
        Villages supporting the Reds were rewarded.
        1922: Tambov region swamped by Red Army.
        brutal campaign
        Political Rivals
        1921: 5000 Mensheviks arrested.
        Show Trials
        11 SR leaders executed.
        Mensheviks and SRs outlawed as political organisations.
        Party
        Tenth Party Congress, 1921, Ban on Factions.
        Censorship
        Main Administration for Affairs of Literature and Publishing Houses. (Glavlit)
        GPU
        Cheka renamed GPU in 1922.
        Stephen Cohen: "NEP was a political dictatorship"
      2. abolition of capitalism, no private wealth, property or enterprise. requisitioning of grain, nationalisation. extreme economic system.
    3. "odds always favoured the Reds" - control of railways, Petrograd, strength of Trotsky and Red Army.
6. Collectivisation and FYP
  1. Collectivisation "was throwing the country back into medieval serfdom." (The Secret File of Joseph Stalin: A Hidden Life By Roman Brackman, p197)
No History of Democracy
1. TSAR
  1. No tradition of democratic political institutions.
    1. Nicholas II: alienated the intelligentsia - middle-class liberals wanted to participate in government ; wanted some form of elected national assembly. Students protested against repressive government controls.
2. RED TSAR
  1. No genuinely democratic institutions, although soviets were designed to be a purer form of democratic participation.
    1. "Soviet Russia was the first state in history formally to outlaw law." Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution 1899-1919.

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