The following is based on Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Russian Revolution, relevant excerpts from Russia and the Russians by Geoffrey Hosking, and the first 250 pages of A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes. Norman Cohn’s Warrant for Genocide, Robert Service’s Lenin: A Biography, and Dmitri Volkogonov’s Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary are also referenced.
The Crimean War and the Great Reforms of the 1860s
In 1853 Nicholas I, ruler of the Russian empire, sent an envoy to the Ottoman Sultan to demand the reaffirmation of the right of Orthodox Christians living under Muslim rule to appeal to Russia for “protection” should they deemed it necessary. This demand convinced the French and British that Russia sought to control Constantinople and so they landed their fleets on the Crimean peninsula where they destroyed the Russian Black Sea fleet. Russia sued for peace and was forced to abandon its long-asserted right to intervene on behalf of Orthodox Christians in the Balkan region. (Hosking, 280-1)
Russia's defeat in the Crimean War precipitated a period of reform. Based on Hosking's account, these reforms appear to have been primarily the work of elites who sought to render Russia capable of competing militarily with Western powers. Hosking enumerates the factors in Russia's defeat, factors acknowledged by Russia's elites.
Russia's inadequate road- and railway systems inhibited communication throughout the empire. And during the war inadequate railways and poor roads had inhibited the transportation of supplies to Russia's forces. The state of Russian industry remained stagnant as compared to that of the Western powers, leaving Russian forces with outmoded weaponry. (Hosking, 285-6)
And serfdom provided Russia with a further challenge. War inspired in peasants a hope, or expectation, of emancipation at the end of the war as a reward for military service. In addition, serfdom inhibited the raising of militia for fear of arousing such expectations. (Hosking, 286, 288)
The "cautious and conservative" Alexander II acceded to the throne in 1855, just as Russia was facing defeat in the Crimean War. Alexander's reign would straddle the period of reform. Hosking implies this to have been to his chagrin.
Serfdom. It was recognized by all to be the underpinning of Russia's backward society and it was with serfdom that the Great Reforms of the 1860s began.
Pre-Revolutionary Russia was a peasant society. By the time of the Revolution in 1917 the peasantry still constituted 80% of the population. Prior to emancipation, in the countryside there existed large feudal estates amid the peasant communal villages. The villages were governed by a mir, or village council. The village council would periodically redistribute the village's land among its members on the basis of the number of members in each household. (Figes, 89; Fitzpatrick, 15)
While the peasants worked their village strips, they were also legally obliged to provide free labor to the feudal lords on their estates. In 1861, they were relieved of this obligation. However, they incurred a new obligation. The Russian state had paid the former feudal lords for the freedom of the serfs, and now each village was obligated to make "redemption" payments to the Russian state. By making the peasant villages collectively responsible for the redemption payments, Emancipation was framed so as to avoid a flood of peasants into the towns. If a peasant sought to leave the village, that peasant must first pay their portion of the redemption payments. (Figes, 97)
Reform was also imposed upon the military during Alexander’s reign. The Cadet Corps--elite colleges that trained members of the nobility for positions as civil servants and army officers--were closed down. All recruits were to be made literate, and new military schools were opened with the purpose of preparing non-nobles to be army officers and giving them a secondary education. Education, not social status or class, was to determine the duration and nature of one’s service. With the Napoleonic and Prussian examples in mind, Russia enacted universal adult male conscription in 1874. These reforms were opposed by the nobility, who had previously held a virtual monopoly over the officer corps. (Hosking, 217, 300)
Under Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855, there was a temporary suspension in the long-established requirement in Russia that primary and secondary schools allow entrants from any social estate. This practice was re-established in 1864. Former serfs were now allowed entrance to universities, which were allowed to choose their own professors and develop their own programs and curriculum. “Women were allowed to attend courses but not to take degrees.” (Hosking, 296-7)
In 1864, other reforms permitted the judiciary complete independence from the crown. Evidently, previously social estates brought legal cases to courts that tried only the cases of that social estate. After 1864 this was no longer the case, except for the majority of cases brought by peasants. (In an overwhelmingly peasant society this might be thought to be quite an exception; on the other hand, it would not be surprising to learn that peasants were less litigious than the more modern and bourgeois elements of Russian society.)
Judges now held life tenure, and jury trials were granted in serious cases. Attorneys were granted at public expense if necessary, creating the new profession of advokat, or defense lawyer. (Hosking, 294)
The reforms of the 1860s did not grant a national elected parliament. However, it did grant elected assemblies at lower administrative levels. These were known as zemstvos. Russian society was still to be officially divided into social estates, and the voting system for the zemstvos was based partly on membership in a social estate and partly on property qualifications. Zemstvos would be dominated by the landed nobility. (Hosking, 293)
Understanding Russian administrative nomenclature was a bit of a challenge. The most basic administrative unit appears to have been a mir, or village commune. So far as I can decipher, its primary task, as referred to above, was to occasionally redistribute the commune's land among the village's households. A collection of villages was referred to as a volost. As a result of the reforms of the 1860s, these were each endowed with administrative powers, such as law and order and the allocation of the tax burden.
Finally, a trend toward relaxation of censorship since the late 1850s was made official in 1865. Daily newspapers, academic works, and books and periodicals of more than 160 pages were no longer subject to censorship prior to publishing, although the right to withdraw from circulation any work deemed dangerous, and to prosecute its publishers, was retained.
Assassination and Counter-Reform, 1881-1891
Figes describes the competing models of autocracy. On the one hand was the archaic Muscovite model whereby the Tsar was supposed literally to own Russia, which he administrated as his personal fiefdom. The term "Muscovite" is rooted in "Moscow" and refers apparently to notions of autocracy that prevailed in the seventeenth century, when Moscow was the capital. The Tsar, as the earthly representative (or representation) of God, was to rule unrestrained. In particular, laws and bureaucrats were not to hamper His Imperial Majesty. And finally, it was conceived that there existed between the Tsar and his subjects a "mystical union" manifested in their Orthodox faith and their obedience to and love of the Tsar. "It was a fantasy of paternal rule, of a golden age of popular autocracy, free from the complications of a modern state." And it contrasted sharply with the “Petrine” model of autocracy, originating with Peter the Great who had sought to systematize the powers of the crown in the eighteenth century. This model emphasized bureaucratic institutions and legal norms. (Figes, 6-7)
By the end of the 1870s the reformists were calling for a constitution. While Alexander II had seemed on the precipice of establishing one, he was assassinated in 1881 and his successors, Alexander III and his son Nicholas II, strongly opposed the reformists and attempted to practice a Muscovite model of autocracy. Alexander's reign, in both Hosking's and Figes' books, is treated somewhat indirectly. Hosking discusses Russification and the empire; Figes delves into social history, whereas his book begins with a lengthy discussion of the royal family.
The period of Alexander's reign stands out as a period of counter-reform. His reign symbolized a rejection of the modernizing tendencies of the last decades in particular, but also a broader rejection of the more Western style of administration embodied in the Petrine practices that had prevailed since the turn of the eighteenth century. Alexander is portrayed as the archetypical autocrat: "He even looked like an autocrat should look...". It was under Alexander III that the Okhrana was established. This was the secret police that play so large a role in the first few chapters of any biography on any leading revolutionary of the time. “The Okhrana...fought what can only be described as a secret war, using special powers outside the law, to stamp out revolutionaries.” Figes readily points out any similarities between the Tsarist and Bolshevik regimes, and does not fail to here. “One can draw a straight line from the penal rigours of the tsarist regime to the terrorism of the revolutionaries and indeed to the police state of the Bolsheviks.” (Figes, 9, 16, 124)
The Russian empire was to undergo a process of “Russification” under Alexander. This consisted of the imposition of Russian culture and language upon the people’s of the empire. It also consisted of heightened anti-Semitism. Jews, already an oppressed minority, banished to the “Pale of Settlement”, saw their rights further eroded. According to Norman Cohn, “Both Alexander III and his son Nicholas II...were fanatical antisemites; and during their reigns everything possible was done, with every official encouragement, to clear Russia of Jews.” Both Hosking and Cohn attribute the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to anti-Semites within the Russian police apparatus (Hosking cites Cohn). To anti-Semites, this forged document was evidence of a Jewish world-conspiracy and it would play an infamous role in the course of world history after the First World War, when it was exported to the world. The Protocols “permeated” Hitler’s thinking, and by 1936 were “prescribed” as part of the educational curriculum of the Third Reich. (Hosking, 334, 342; Cohn, 58, 90, 139, 200, 222)
In 1889 “land captains” were created. Land captains, recruited from the gentry and appointed by the provincial governors, were granted the authority to overturn the decisions of peasant institutions, oversee peasant judicial disputes, remove elected peasant officials, and even to publicly flog peasants. The creation of land captains was part of an effort to extend the reach of the imperial authorities to local matters. It was regarded by peasants as a return to serfdom and greatly increased their resentment of their social superiors. (Hosking, 53)
Further counter-reforms included the enhancement of the powers of provincial governors, appointed by the monarch, in 1890 and 1892. The Cadet Corps were re-opened while efforts to render ordinary soldiers literate were dropped. Universities were put under police control in 1884. (Figes, 45, 165; Hosking, 300)
1891-1905 and Russian Radicalism
In 1891 a massive famine struck Russia. It was accompanied by epidemics of typhus and cholera. The government’s response to this crisis was definitive in painting it as both incompetent and indifferent. (Figes, 157-8)
One of the major consequences of the famine was that large strata of society were mobilized in relief campaigns. The zemstvos led the way. These were increasingly being affected by the politics of new professional classes: doctors, agronomists, teachers, statisticians, etc., referred to collectively as the “Third Element”. They sought essentially to modernize the country. Alexander III and Nicholas II persecuted the zemstvos, and provincials governors utilized the 1890 statute to undermine them. The government was compelled to relax its persecution during the crisis however, as it relied upon them for the relief efforts. Civil society had been activated and became generally opposed to the regime. (Figes 158-165)
When Nicholas II came to power in 1894 the struggle against the zemstvos was resumed. By this time, Russian civil society was calling for a national parliament, a call that would grow louder throughout the following decade. Figes also discusses the increasing radicalization of university students during this period. (Figes 165-167)
The word “intelligentsia” originates in Russian. Figes even attributes the “unkempt, long-haired, bearded and bespectacled” look of “left-wingers and revolutionaries across the world” to the Russian intelligentsia. The Russian intelligentsia was a tiny, educated, and politically radical elite. Their level of education produced a yawning cultural chasm between them and the peasants and workers they either mythologized or on whose behalf they presumed to advocate, and of whom they were also frequently contemptuous. Figes describes the Russian intelligentsia as highly dogmatic and attributes this to their cultural isolation and the relative scarcity of opposing doctrines and attitudes as a consequence of censorship. The intelligentsia expressed their political sentiments primarily through literature and literary criticism, presumably to avoid censorship, and “nearly all” Russian ideas were imported from the West. (Figes,125-9)
Sheila Fitzpatrick and Orlando Figes both provide brief surveys of the history of the Russian intelligentsia. The ideas of Populism dominated from at least the 1860s to the 1880s. Russian populism was a form of non-Marxist socialism. It sought to prevent the development of capitalism in Russia and to create a society based on the communal principles of the peasant village. Within the Populist movement there existed two competing political tendencies. The strand that seems to have prevailed in the 1860s was one that emphasized terrorist and conspiratorial means, and violent seizures of power by elite cliques. (Fitzpatrick, 24; Figes, 131-2, 135)
The tendency that prevailed in the 1870s however, advocated a democratic transformation of Russian society and emphasized the need for mass education and propaganda. It was this strand of Populism that led the “To the People” movement of the 1870s. Thousands of university students poured out into the countryside dressed as and emulating generally the peasants they so idealized. They sought to educate the peasantry in reading and writing, but also in politics. However, “The peasants...met these childish crusaders with mistrust and hostility.” (Figes, 135-6)
The failure of the To the People movement resulted in a reversion to the previous decade’s violence. A wave of revolutionary terror spread, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. (Figes, 137-8)
Figes’ work can be surprisingly jocular for a massive scholarly work on a historical event that ultimately wrought the quintessential totalitarianism. He references the two Russian censors who permitted Karl Marx’s Capital to be publish in Russia. The one surmised that just about nobody would have the stamina to endure it, and of them no one would understand it. The second assumed that since it was a critique of the British factory system there was no harm in publishing it. (Figes, 139)
The Russian publication was the first foreign publication of Capital. It was published in 1872 and to disillusioned Populist intellectuals in the late 1870s it must have seemed timely indeed. Henceforth, Marxism would be a significant force in Russian radicalism, emphasizing the role of the developing proletariat as opposed to the far more numerous but, as they saw it, ultimately-to-be-extinct peasantry. (Figes 139-40)
In 1898 the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party was founded. This party purported to represent the interests of the emerging Russian working class and was Marxist in ideology. The Socialist Revolutionary Party was established in 1901 and was rooted in the peasantry and a Populist politics. Each was founded in a period when political parties were illegal. The former--and one might assume the latter--continued to face a struggle between those seeking a democratic and gradual transformation of their society and those who sought a violent seizure of power. Those emphasizing democratic principles would be dubbed, in 1903, the Mensheviks, while those who sought a violent seizure of power became the Bolsheviks. (The labels were based on a particular squabble but the tactical shrewdness of the Bolshevik leadership is evident in their definitions: Menshevik and Bolshevik mean, respectively, minoritarian and majoritarian. The Bolsheviks, hence, were able to permanently saddle their opponents with a label that indicated a lack of broad support.) (Service, 156)
Lenin’s rigid dogmatism was evident as early as the famine of 1891. “Virtually alone among the revolutionaries of Samara and indeed the whole empire, he argued that the famine was the product of capitalist industrialisation.” Mass impoverishment of the peasantry was therefore inevitable and he refused to support relief efforts. (Service, 87)
The Russo-Japanese War and The First Russian Revolution
It was not until the 1890s that Russia began to experience large-scale economic growth. There are several consequences of the lateness of Russian industrialization. (Fitzpatrick, 19)
First, it was able to begin the process of industrialization using advanced European technology and methods, and utilizing large amounts of foreign investment and state intervention. Russia was economically backward compared to other European countries, and yet it's industrial sector itself was not.
The second consequence of the belatedness of Russian industrial development is that the industrialization was highly centralized. Because Russia rapidly moved into large-scale industry, several Russian cities were quickly transformed into major urban industrial centers. This included Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as Kiev, Warsaw and Baku. And along with large modern factories of course came a large number of factory workers, highly concentrated in the recently developed urban centers. (Fitzpatrick, 16)
Lastly, as a result of how recent a phenomenon Russian industrialization was, this highly concentrated developing urban working class was not much distinct from the peasantry. Most of the industrial workers were industrial workers only seasonally--they were peasants who traveled to the cities for only part of the year. Many permanent urban workers retained land outside the village on which their family lived. Other permanent urban workers simply continued to live outside the city and commute daily to the factory. In brief, pre-Revolutionary Russia did not have an exclusively urban working class. Industrialization was too new a phenomenon for there to be a significant generational gap between the peasantry and the developing proletariat.
This was a tumultuous period. The crown struggled against growing agitation by the liberal professionals and elements of the landed nobility who were calling for a constitution and a national parliament. The peasantry remained unsatisfied with the terms of Emancipation and were highly resentful of the use of land-captains. Rapid economic change was creating a revolutionary working class. (Figes, 168; Fitzpatrick, 19-20)
Russia chose this moment to go to war with Japan. Known as the Russo-Japanese War (January 1904 to August 1905), it would be a military humiliation for Russia. It would mark the first time an Asian power defeated a major European power. And Russia’s defeat would revive the liberal opposition by persuading them yet again of the incompetence of the autocracy. (Figes, 169)
As the liberal opposition grew, a major and tragic event in Russian history unfolded. It would come to be called “Bloody Sunday”. On January 9, 1905, tens of thousands of workers, led by the priest Father Gapon, marched in St Petersburg toward the Winter Palace to present the Tsar with a list of demands they had been striking for during the preceding week. The workers were ultimately fired upon and probably 200 were killed, although it was believed at the time that many more were. (Figes, 175-8)
I’m compelled to provide the following excerpt (Figes,177-8) which movingly captures the significance of the event:
These events were followed by “the largest ever labour protest in Russian history.” These strikes were spontaneous, and evidently represented an outburst of resentment at the regime. The liberal opposition was further disillusioned with the regime after Bloody Sunday, and the peasantry seized its opportunity to agitate for its own interests against that of the gentry. (Figes, 180, 182)
The Revolution of 1905 saw the first emergence of “soviets”, a Russian word which simply means “council”. During the massive general strike the St Petersburg Soviet was established in order to direct the strike. And yet, it was much more than this. The soviet established its own militia and newspaper, and organized the distribution of food. In addition to St Petersburg, soviets were established in fifty other cities. The leader of the St Petersburg Soviet was none other than the then-Menshevik Leon Trotsky. While the first Russian Revolution failed from the perspective of the revolutionary socialists, Trotsky valued the experience as a sort of political education. (Figes, 189-90; Volkogonov, 43 )
The 1905 Revolution culminated in a substantial concession to the demands of the liberals. In his October Manifesto Nicholas II, with extreme reluctance, conceded a national elected parliament, the Duma, and promised a constitution, which was established in the following year. Political parties were now legalized and could participate in the elections to the Duma which evidently combined both universal suffrage but also “an indirect system of voting by estates heavily weighted in favour of the crown’s traditional allies...”. (Figes, 193, 215)
Stolypin and Lost Opportunities
After the October Manifesto the liberals dropped their opposition. Their main demands had been met. But the peasant and worker rebellions had to be suppressed. This would take place under the leadership of Peter Stolypin, Russia’s Prime Minister from 1906 to 1911.
Stolypin was appointed because of the need for a “strong-man” who could restore order. But he was also a reformist. Of his main reforms was an effort to break up the peasant commune in order to establish a prosperous agricultural class that would identify its interests with the regime and stability. One of the effects of these measures however was to push landless peasants into the cities, further increasing the number of restless workers, although Stolypin did seek to ameliorate conditions in the factories. And importantly, the reforms intended to transform the countryside did not succeed in the central agricultural region of Russia. The peasants of this region would join the 1917 Revolution. (Figes, 221-4, 239)
It has been argued that Stolypin’s reforms had the potential to guide Russia along a path toward modern, liberal democracy. But Figes makes clear that opposition to his reforms existed in a crucial sector: the throne. A theme that pervades Figes’ work is that time and again the crown, in particular the last two Tsars, adopted policies and attitudes that prevented Russia from developing along Western lines. Figes paints the period beginning with Alexander III’s ascension to the throne and ending with the 1917 Revolution as a period of struggle between a modernizing society and a backward royal family. (Figes, 221-2)
The Crimean War and the Great Reforms of the 1860s
In 1853 Nicholas I, ruler of the Russian empire, sent an envoy to the Ottoman Sultan to demand the reaffirmation of the right of Orthodox Christians living under Muslim rule to appeal to Russia for “protection” should they deemed it necessary. This demand convinced the French and British that Russia sought to control Constantinople and so they landed their fleets on the Crimean peninsula where they destroyed the Russian Black Sea fleet. Russia sued for peace and was forced to abandon its long-asserted right to intervene on behalf of Orthodox Christians in the Balkan region. (Hosking, 280-1)
Russia's defeat in the Crimean War precipitated a period of reform. Based on Hosking's account, these reforms appear to have been primarily the work of elites who sought to render Russia capable of competing militarily with Western powers. Hosking enumerates the factors in Russia's defeat, factors acknowledged by Russia's elites.
Russia's inadequate road- and railway systems inhibited communication throughout the empire. And during the war inadequate railways and poor roads had inhibited the transportation of supplies to Russia's forces. The state of Russian industry remained stagnant as compared to that of the Western powers, leaving Russian forces with outmoded weaponry. (Hosking, 285-6)
And serfdom provided Russia with a further challenge. War inspired in peasants a hope, or expectation, of emancipation at the end of the war as a reward for military service. In addition, serfdom inhibited the raising of militia for fear of arousing such expectations. (Hosking, 286, 288)
The "cautious and conservative" Alexander II acceded to the throne in 1855, just as Russia was facing defeat in the Crimean War. Alexander's reign would straddle the period of reform. Hosking implies this to have been to his chagrin.
Serfdom. It was recognized by all to be the underpinning of Russia's backward society and it was with serfdom that the Great Reforms of the 1860s began.
Pre-Revolutionary Russia was a peasant society. By the time of the Revolution in 1917 the peasantry still constituted 80% of the population. Prior to emancipation, in the countryside there existed large feudal estates amid the peasant communal villages. The villages were governed by a mir, or village council. The village council would periodically redistribute the village's land among its members on the basis of the number of members in each household. (Figes, 89; Fitzpatrick, 15)
While the peasants worked their village strips, they were also legally obliged to provide free labor to the feudal lords on their estates. In 1861, they were relieved of this obligation. However, they incurred a new obligation. The Russian state had paid the former feudal lords for the freedom of the serfs, and now each village was obligated to make "redemption" payments to the Russian state. By making the peasant villages collectively responsible for the redemption payments, Emancipation was framed so as to avoid a flood of peasants into the towns. If a peasant sought to leave the village, that peasant must first pay their portion of the redemption payments. (Figes, 97)
Reform was also imposed upon the military during Alexander’s reign. The Cadet Corps--elite colleges that trained members of the nobility for positions as civil servants and army officers--were closed down. All recruits were to be made literate, and new military schools were opened with the purpose of preparing non-nobles to be army officers and giving them a secondary education. Education, not social status or class, was to determine the duration and nature of one’s service. With the Napoleonic and Prussian examples in mind, Russia enacted universal adult male conscription in 1874. These reforms were opposed by the nobility, who had previously held a virtual monopoly over the officer corps. (Hosking, 217, 300)
Under Nicholas I, who reigned from 1825 to 1855, there was a temporary suspension in the long-established requirement in Russia that primary and secondary schools allow entrants from any social estate. This practice was re-established in 1864. Former serfs were now allowed entrance to universities, which were allowed to choose their own professors and develop their own programs and curriculum. “Women were allowed to attend courses but not to take degrees.” (Hosking, 296-7)
In 1864, other reforms permitted the judiciary complete independence from the crown. Evidently, previously social estates brought legal cases to courts that tried only the cases of that social estate. After 1864 this was no longer the case, except for the majority of cases brought by peasants. (In an overwhelmingly peasant society this might be thought to be quite an exception; on the other hand, it would not be surprising to learn that peasants were less litigious than the more modern and bourgeois elements of Russian society.)
Judges now held life tenure, and jury trials were granted in serious cases. Attorneys were granted at public expense if necessary, creating the new profession of advokat, or defense lawyer. (Hosking, 294)
The reforms of the 1860s did not grant a national elected parliament. However, it did grant elected assemblies at lower administrative levels. These were known as zemstvos. Russian society was still to be officially divided into social estates, and the voting system for the zemstvos was based partly on membership in a social estate and partly on property qualifications. Zemstvos would be dominated by the landed nobility. (Hosking, 293)
Understanding Russian administrative nomenclature was a bit of a challenge. The most basic administrative unit appears to have been a mir, or village commune. So far as I can decipher, its primary task, as referred to above, was to occasionally redistribute the commune's land among the village's households. A collection of villages was referred to as a volost. As a result of the reforms of the 1860s, these were each endowed with administrative powers, such as law and order and the allocation of the tax burden.
Finally, a trend toward relaxation of censorship since the late 1850s was made official in 1865. Daily newspapers, academic works, and books and periodicals of more than 160 pages were no longer subject to censorship prior to publishing, although the right to withdraw from circulation any work deemed dangerous, and to prosecute its publishers, was retained.
Assassination and Counter-Reform, 1881-1891
Figes describes the competing models of autocracy. On the one hand was the archaic Muscovite model whereby the Tsar was supposed literally to own Russia, which he administrated as his personal fiefdom. The term "Muscovite" is rooted in "Moscow" and refers apparently to notions of autocracy that prevailed in the seventeenth century, when Moscow was the capital. The Tsar, as the earthly representative (or representation) of God, was to rule unrestrained. In particular, laws and bureaucrats were not to hamper His Imperial Majesty. And finally, it was conceived that there existed between the Tsar and his subjects a "mystical union" manifested in their Orthodox faith and their obedience to and love of the Tsar. "It was a fantasy of paternal rule, of a golden age of popular autocracy, free from the complications of a modern state." And it contrasted sharply with the “Petrine” model of autocracy, originating with Peter the Great who had sought to systematize the powers of the crown in the eighteenth century. This model emphasized bureaucratic institutions and legal norms. (Figes, 6-7)
By the end of the 1870s the reformists were calling for a constitution. While Alexander II had seemed on the precipice of establishing one, he was assassinated in 1881 and his successors, Alexander III and his son Nicholas II, strongly opposed the reformists and attempted to practice a Muscovite model of autocracy. Alexander's reign, in both Hosking's and Figes' books, is treated somewhat indirectly. Hosking discusses Russification and the empire; Figes delves into social history, whereas his book begins with a lengthy discussion of the royal family.
The period of Alexander's reign stands out as a period of counter-reform. His reign symbolized a rejection of the modernizing tendencies of the last decades in particular, but also a broader rejection of the more Western style of administration embodied in the Petrine practices that had prevailed since the turn of the eighteenth century. Alexander is portrayed as the archetypical autocrat: "He even looked like an autocrat should look...". It was under Alexander III that the Okhrana was established. This was the secret police that play so large a role in the first few chapters of any biography on any leading revolutionary of the time. “The Okhrana...fought what can only be described as a secret war, using special powers outside the law, to stamp out revolutionaries.” Figes readily points out any similarities between the Tsarist and Bolshevik regimes, and does not fail to here. “One can draw a straight line from the penal rigours of the tsarist regime to the terrorism of the revolutionaries and indeed to the police state of the Bolsheviks.” (Figes, 9, 16, 124)
The Russian empire was to undergo a process of “Russification” under Alexander. This consisted of the imposition of Russian culture and language upon the people’s of the empire. It also consisted of heightened anti-Semitism. Jews, already an oppressed minority, banished to the “Pale of Settlement”, saw their rights further eroded. According to Norman Cohn, “Both Alexander III and his son Nicholas II...were fanatical antisemites; and during their reigns everything possible was done, with every official encouragement, to clear Russia of Jews.” Both Hosking and Cohn attribute the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to anti-Semites within the Russian police apparatus (Hosking cites Cohn). To anti-Semites, this forged document was evidence of a Jewish world-conspiracy and it would play an infamous role in the course of world history after the First World War, when it was exported to the world. The Protocols “permeated” Hitler’s thinking, and by 1936 were “prescribed” as part of the educational curriculum of the Third Reich. (Hosking, 334, 342; Cohn, 58, 90, 139, 200, 222)
In 1889 “land captains” were created. Land captains, recruited from the gentry and appointed by the provincial governors, were granted the authority to overturn the decisions of peasant institutions, oversee peasant judicial disputes, remove elected peasant officials, and even to publicly flog peasants. The creation of land captains was part of an effort to extend the reach of the imperial authorities to local matters. It was regarded by peasants as a return to serfdom and greatly increased their resentment of their social superiors. (Hosking, 53)
Further counter-reforms included the enhancement of the powers of provincial governors, appointed by the monarch, in 1890 and 1892. The Cadet Corps were re-opened while efforts to render ordinary soldiers literate were dropped. Universities were put under police control in 1884. (Figes, 45, 165; Hosking, 300)
1891-1905 and Russian Radicalism
In 1891 a massive famine struck Russia. It was accompanied by epidemics of typhus and cholera. The government’s response to this crisis was definitive in painting it as both incompetent and indifferent. (Figes, 157-8)
One of the major consequences of the famine was that large strata of society were mobilized in relief campaigns. The zemstvos led the way. These were increasingly being affected by the politics of new professional classes: doctors, agronomists, teachers, statisticians, etc., referred to collectively as the “Third Element”. They sought essentially to modernize the country. Alexander III and Nicholas II persecuted the zemstvos, and provincials governors utilized the 1890 statute to undermine them. The government was compelled to relax its persecution during the crisis however, as it relied upon them for the relief efforts. Civil society had been activated and became generally opposed to the regime. (Figes 158-165)
When Nicholas II came to power in 1894 the struggle against the zemstvos was resumed. By this time, Russian civil society was calling for a national parliament, a call that would grow louder throughout the following decade. Figes also discusses the increasing radicalization of university students during this period. (Figes 165-167)
The word “intelligentsia” originates in Russian. Figes even attributes the “unkempt, long-haired, bearded and bespectacled” look of “left-wingers and revolutionaries across the world” to the Russian intelligentsia. The Russian intelligentsia was a tiny, educated, and politically radical elite. Their level of education produced a yawning cultural chasm between them and the peasants and workers they either mythologized or on whose behalf they presumed to advocate, and of whom they were also frequently contemptuous. Figes describes the Russian intelligentsia as highly dogmatic and attributes this to their cultural isolation and the relative scarcity of opposing doctrines and attitudes as a consequence of censorship. The intelligentsia expressed their political sentiments primarily through literature and literary criticism, presumably to avoid censorship, and “nearly all” Russian ideas were imported from the West. (Figes,125-9)
Sheila Fitzpatrick and Orlando Figes both provide brief surveys of the history of the Russian intelligentsia. The ideas of Populism dominated from at least the 1860s to the 1880s. Russian populism was a form of non-Marxist socialism. It sought to prevent the development of capitalism in Russia and to create a society based on the communal principles of the peasant village. Within the Populist movement there existed two competing political tendencies. The strand that seems to have prevailed in the 1860s was one that emphasized terrorist and conspiratorial means, and violent seizures of power by elite cliques. (Fitzpatrick, 24; Figes, 131-2, 135)
The tendency that prevailed in the 1870s however, advocated a democratic transformation of Russian society and emphasized the need for mass education and propaganda. It was this strand of Populism that led the “To the People” movement of the 1870s. Thousands of university students poured out into the countryside dressed as and emulating generally the peasants they so idealized. They sought to educate the peasantry in reading and writing, but also in politics. However, “The peasants...met these childish crusaders with mistrust and hostility.” (Figes, 135-6)
The failure of the To the People movement resulted in a reversion to the previous decade’s violence. A wave of revolutionary terror spread, culminating in the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. (Figes, 137-8)
Figes’ work can be surprisingly jocular for a massive scholarly work on a historical event that ultimately wrought the quintessential totalitarianism. He references the two Russian censors who permitted Karl Marx’s Capital to be publish in Russia. The one surmised that just about nobody would have the stamina to endure it, and of them no one would understand it. The second assumed that since it was a critique of the British factory system there was no harm in publishing it. (Figes, 139)
The Russian publication was the first foreign publication of Capital. It was published in 1872 and to disillusioned Populist intellectuals in the late 1870s it must have seemed timely indeed. Henceforth, Marxism would be a significant force in Russian radicalism, emphasizing the role of the developing proletariat as opposed to the far more numerous but, as they saw it, ultimately-to-be-extinct peasantry. (Figes 139-40)
In 1898 the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party was founded. This party purported to represent the interests of the emerging Russian working class and was Marxist in ideology. The Socialist Revolutionary Party was established in 1901 and was rooted in the peasantry and a Populist politics. Each was founded in a period when political parties were illegal. The former--and one might assume the latter--continued to face a struggle between those seeking a democratic and gradual transformation of their society and those who sought a violent seizure of power. Those emphasizing democratic principles would be dubbed, in 1903, the Mensheviks, while those who sought a violent seizure of power became the Bolsheviks. (The labels were based on a particular squabble but the tactical shrewdness of the Bolshevik leadership is evident in their definitions: Menshevik and Bolshevik mean, respectively, minoritarian and majoritarian. The Bolsheviks, hence, were able to permanently saddle their opponents with a label that indicated a lack of broad support.) (Service, 156)
Lenin’s rigid dogmatism was evident as early as the famine of 1891. “Virtually alone among the revolutionaries of Samara and indeed the whole empire, he argued that the famine was the product of capitalist industrialisation.” Mass impoverishment of the peasantry was therefore inevitable and he refused to support relief efforts. (Service, 87)
The Russo-Japanese War and The First Russian Revolution
It was not until the 1890s that Russia began to experience large-scale economic growth. There are several consequences of the lateness of Russian industrialization. (Fitzpatrick, 19)
First, it was able to begin the process of industrialization using advanced European technology and methods, and utilizing large amounts of foreign investment and state intervention. Russia was economically backward compared to other European countries, and yet it's industrial sector itself was not.
The second consequence of the belatedness of Russian industrial development is that the industrialization was highly centralized. Because Russia rapidly moved into large-scale industry, several Russian cities were quickly transformed into major urban industrial centers. This included Moscow and St Petersburg, as well as Kiev, Warsaw and Baku. And along with large modern factories of course came a large number of factory workers, highly concentrated in the recently developed urban centers. (Fitzpatrick, 16)
Lastly, as a result of how recent a phenomenon Russian industrialization was, this highly concentrated developing urban working class was not much distinct from the peasantry. Most of the industrial workers were industrial workers only seasonally--they were peasants who traveled to the cities for only part of the year. Many permanent urban workers retained land outside the village on which their family lived. Other permanent urban workers simply continued to live outside the city and commute daily to the factory. In brief, pre-Revolutionary Russia did not have an exclusively urban working class. Industrialization was too new a phenomenon for there to be a significant generational gap between the peasantry and the developing proletariat.
This was a tumultuous period. The crown struggled against growing agitation by the liberal professionals and elements of the landed nobility who were calling for a constitution and a national parliament. The peasantry remained unsatisfied with the terms of Emancipation and were highly resentful of the use of land-captains. Rapid economic change was creating a revolutionary working class. (Figes, 168; Fitzpatrick, 19-20)
Russia chose this moment to go to war with Japan. Known as the Russo-Japanese War (January 1904 to August 1905), it would be a military humiliation for Russia. It would mark the first time an Asian power defeated a major European power. And Russia’s defeat would revive the liberal opposition by persuading them yet again of the incompetence of the autocracy. (Figes, 169)
As the liberal opposition grew, a major and tragic event in Russian history unfolded. It would come to be called “Bloody Sunday”. On January 9, 1905, tens of thousands of workers, led by the priest Father Gapon, marched in St Petersburg toward the Winter Palace to present the Tsar with a list of demands they had been striking for during the preceding week. The workers were ultimately fired upon and probably 200 were killed, although it was believed at the time that many more were. (Figes, 175-8)
I’m compelled to provide the following excerpt (Figes,177-8) which movingly captures the significance of the event:
When the firing finally stopped and the survivors looked around at the dead and wounded bodies on the ground there was one vital moment, the turning-point of the whole revolution, when their mood suddenly changed from disbelief to anger. ‘I observed the faces around me’, recalled a Bolshevik in the crowd, ‘and I detected neither fear nor panic. No, the reverend and almost prayerful expressions were replaced by hostility and even hatred. I saw these looks of hatred and vengeance on literally every face--old and young, men and women. The revolution had been truly born, and it had been born in the very core, in the very bowels of the people.’ In that one vital moment the popular myth of a Good Tsar which had sustained the regime through the centuries was suddenly destroyed.
The Revolution of 1905 saw the first emergence of “soviets”, a Russian word which simply means “council”. During the massive general strike the St Petersburg Soviet was established in order to direct the strike. And yet, it was much more than this. The soviet established its own militia and newspaper, and organized the distribution of food. In addition to St Petersburg, soviets were established in fifty other cities. The leader of the St Petersburg Soviet was none other than the then-Menshevik Leon Trotsky. While the first Russian Revolution failed from the perspective of the revolutionary socialists, Trotsky valued the experience as a sort of political education. (Figes, 189-90; Volkogonov, 43 )
The 1905 Revolution culminated in a substantial concession to the demands of the liberals. In his October Manifesto Nicholas II, with extreme reluctance, conceded a national elected parliament, the Duma, and promised a constitution, which was established in the following year. Political parties were now legalized and could participate in the elections to the Duma which evidently combined both universal suffrage but also “an indirect system of voting by estates heavily weighted in favour of the crown’s traditional allies...”. (Figes, 193, 215)
Stolypin and Lost Opportunities
After the October Manifesto the liberals dropped their opposition. Their main demands had been met. But the peasant and worker rebellions had to be suppressed. This would take place under the leadership of Peter Stolypin, Russia’s Prime Minister from 1906 to 1911.
Stolypin was appointed because of the need for a “strong-man” who could restore order. But he was also a reformist. Of his main reforms was an effort to break up the peasant commune in order to establish a prosperous agricultural class that would identify its interests with the regime and stability. One of the effects of these measures however was to push landless peasants into the cities, further increasing the number of restless workers, although Stolypin did seek to ameliorate conditions in the factories. And importantly, the reforms intended to transform the countryside did not succeed in the central agricultural region of Russia. The peasants of this region would join the 1917 Revolution. (Figes, 221-4, 239)
It has been argued that Stolypin’s reforms had the potential to guide Russia along a path toward modern, liberal democracy. But Figes makes clear that opposition to his reforms existed in a crucial sector: the throne. A theme that pervades Figes’ work is that time and again the crown, in particular the last two Tsars, adopted policies and attitudes that prevented Russia from developing along Western lines. Figes paints the period beginning with Alexander III’s ascension to the throne and ending with the 1917 Revolution as a period of struggle between a modernizing society and a backward royal family. (Figes, 221-2)
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