The Collapse of Autocracy 1894-1917
- Created by: [email protected]
- Created on: 22-03-21 09:43
View mindmap
- The Collapse of Autocracy 1894-1917
- Social developments to 1914
- Attempted to improve work - reduced working hours, banned employment under 12, more insurance and education
- Over 3000 uprisings supressed 1914
- Still widespread poverty - kulaks prospered but peasants stayed poor
- 1914 - only 60% illiteracy
- Around 1/3 of noble land transferred to new middle class / peasantry
- New opportunities for women, censorship relaxed 1905 (silver age of culture)
- Establishment of Bolshevik government
- Lenin's April Thesis - Peace, Bread, land
- Despite increasing support for the Bolsheviks, the first All-Russian Congress of Soviets passed a vote of confidence in the Provisional gov
- Kornilov coup - attempted overthrow (failed)
- Feb 1917 - 23,000 Bolsheviks. Oct - 200,000. Had 10,000 Red Guards
- Trotsky was still opposed to violence, refused Lenin's arguments for a revolution
- Sovnarkom established 1917 - lenin established decree on peace & land & military, workers control decree. new legal system
- Railways etc went on strike against a one Party government
- Lenin used propaganda, purges, secret police, imprisonment
- The economic development of Russia to 1914
- Witte
- Almost doubled railway trackage
- Nearly quadrupled coal output
- New rouble, based on value of Gold
- Foreign and industrial investment soared, sought skilled workers from abroad
- From 1903- 13 gov received over 25% of its income from industrial investments
- Industry
- 1914 - Russia 4th largest producer of coal, pig-iron and steel
- Oil production trebled 1885 - 1913. Internally self sufficient and able to compete on the industrial market
- 1914 - Russia was the 5th largest industrial power
- Railways
- State bought out smaller private railways and extended lines
- Stimulated iron and coal industries
- Caused fall in transport costs and thus price of goods
- Raised funds for gov - fares etc
- Agriculture
- Earlier problems with the Mir persisted - eg redemption payments, heavily taxed
- Stolypin - more grain production, peasant hereditary land ownership, emigration incentives
- Stolypin's reforms had drawbacks
- Witte
- Nicholas II and the challenge to Autocracy
- Bloody Sunday - peaceful protest for reform turned into a massacre - about 200 killed
- Russo-Japanese war - initial outburst of patriotism followed by a series of defeats
- The Dumas
- First Duma - boycotted by SRs, Bolsheviksetc- passed a vote of no confidence in the gov and sent 200 delegates to vyborg for a failed protest
- Second Duma - attended by SRs, Bolsheviksetc so more left-wing. opposed the gov and dissolved after refusing Stolypin's agrarin reform
- Third Duma - Mostly agreed reforms, but was suspended twice in 1911
- Fourth Duma - largely ignored
- 1906 - Nicholas issued the Fundamental laws, reasserting his autocratic powers
- Opposition: ideas and ideologies
- The great famine of 1891-2 - need to reform
- 1899 - SR Party founded - tried to unite workers and peasants BUT secret police infiltrated and 4000 were sentenced to death between 1905 and 1909
- SD Party split 1903 into the Bolsheviks (Lenin, no compromise) and Mensheviks (Martov/trotsky, cooperation)
- Hundreds of trade unions closed or denied registration after 1906
- Lena Goldfields massacre - wave of strikes forcefully suppressed
- 1905 - 1914 SR and SD parties weakened by exile of leaders, success of secret police, lack of finance / secret printing presses
- Membership to opposition groups declined
- Russia in Wartime
- Entry into war led to wave of patriotism
- 1915 - Nicholas appointed himself Commander in chief of the Russian Army + Navy - terrible decision
- Army of 15 million lacked weapons, warm clothes etc
- Military spending soared but consumer production slumped
- Railways requisitioned by military - food often unable to reach citizens, left to rot - cost of living rose by 300%
- Nicholas abdicated 1917 - provisional government promised amnesty for political prisoners, right to strike, elections to a constituent assembly
- Dual power with petrograd Soviet - encouraged peasant rights
- July Days - riots, including Bolsheviks, broke out against provisional
- Social developments to 1914
Comments
No comments have yet been made