Russia defied the pattern of nineteenth-century European domination. By 1914, they launched significant industrialization and accomplished other changes that preserved their independence. Russia achieved economic autonomy and was able to join in the imperialist scramble. Russia was not very flexible politically. Change in Russia increased internal strains and led to revolution. Russia continued expanding its influence in eastern Europe and central Asia. Russia was able to maintain their independence from their prior experience of cultural imitation, Russia from Byzantium and the West. They were able to learn without destroying their own culture. Russia also able to improve their political effectiveness during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a situation allowing the state to sponsor change.
Russia's Reforms and Industrial Advance. Russia moved into an active period of social and political reform in 1861 that established the base for industrialization by the 1890s. Immense social strain resulted as the government attempted to remain autocratic.
Russia before Reform. The French Revolution and Napoleon's invasion of 1812 produced a backlash in Russia against Westernization. Conservative intellectuals embraced the turn to isolation as a way of vaunting Russian values and institutions, including serfdom. Some intellectuals remained fascinated with Western developments in politics, science, and culture. When Western-oriented army officers fomented the Decembrist revolt of 1825, Tsar Nicholas I repressed opposition. As a consequence, Russia escaped the European revolutions of 1830 and 1848. Russia continued its territorial expansion. The Congress of Vienna confirmed its hold over Poland; Polish nationalist revolts during the 1830s were brutally suppressed. Pressure on the Ottoman Empire continued, and Russia supported dissidents in Greece and Serbia.
Economic and Social Problems: The Peasant Question. In economic terms, Russia fell behind the West because it failed to industrialize. Landlords increased exports of grain by tightening labor obligations on serfs. Russia remained a profoundly agricultural society dependent on unfree labor. The significance of the failure to industrialize was demonstrated by the Crimean War (1854-1856). Britain and France came to the support of the Ottomans and defeated the Russians because of their industrial economies. Tsar Alexander II was convinced that reforms were necessary, and that meant resolving the issue of serfdom. Many individuals believed that a free labor force would produce higher agricultural profits; others wished to end abuses or to end periodic peasant risings. Reform was seen as a way to protect distinctive Russian institutions, not to copy the West.
The Reform Era and Early Industrialization. The serfs were emancipated in 1861; they received land but did not gain any political freedoms. They were tied to their villages until they paid for the lands they had received. The payments, and increasing taxation, kept most peasants very poor. The emancipation created a larger urban labor force, but it did not spur agricultural productivity. Peasants continued to use old methods on their small holdings. Peasant risings persisted because of the enduring harsh conditions that were exacerbated by population growth. Reform had not gone far enough. Other efforts followed. In the 1860s and 1870s, Alexander II improved law codes and created local political councils (zemstvoes) with authority over regional matters. The councils gave political experience to middle-class people, but they had no influence on national policy. Military reform included officer promotion through merit and increased recruitment. There was limited extension of the education system. During this era, literacy increased rapidly and a market for popular reading matter developed. Some women gained access to higher education and to the professions. In family organization, Russia followed earlier European trends. A move to industrialization was part of the process of change. State support was vital, since Russia lacked a middle class and capital. A railway system was created in the 1870s; it reached the Pacific in the 1880s. The railways stimulated the iron and coal sectors, as well as the export of grain to the West. They also opened Siberia to development and increased Russian involvement in Asia. Factories appeared in Russian and Polish cities by the 1880s, and the government quickly acted to protect them from foreign competition. Under Count Witte, from 1892 to 1903, the government passed high tariffs, improved the banking system, and encouraged Western investment. By 1900, about half of industry was foreign owned. Russia became a debtor nation, but the industries did not produce economic autonomy. Even though by 1900 some Russian industries were challenging world leaders, the Russian industrial revolution was in its early stages. Its world rank was due to its great size and rich resources, not its technology or trained workforce. Despite all the reform, Russia remained a traditional peasant society that had not experienced the attitudinal change occurring with Western industrialization.
Protest and Revolution in Russia. Unrest accompanied transformation by the 1880s and Russia became a very unstable society.
The Road to Revolution. Alexander II's reforms and economic change encouraged minority nationality demands in the empire. Cultural nationalism led to political demands and worried the state. Social protest was heightened by the limitations of reform and by industrialization. Peasants suffered from famine, redemption payments, taxes, and population pressure. Educated Russians also were dissatisfied. Business people and professionals sought more personal freedom and fuller political rights; the intelligentsia wanted radical political change and deep social reform while preserving a distinct Russian culture. Some of the intellectuals became anarchists who hoped to triumph by winning peasant support. When peasants were not interested, some turned to terrorism. The government reaction was to pull back from reform, introduce censorship, and exile dissidents to Siberia. Alexander II was assassinated in 1881; his successors opposed reform and continued political, religious, and ethnic repression. By the 1890s, new protest currents appeared. Marxist socialism spread among the intelligentsia. Lenin attempted to make Marxism fit Russian conditions and organized disciplined cells to work for the expected revolution. At the same time, working-class unrest in the cities showed through union formation and strikes—both illegal—to compensate for lack of political outlets.
The Revolution of 1905. Russia had continued imperialist expansion through the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. Gains were made against the Ottomans in the 1870s. New Slavic nations, Serbia and Bulgaria, were created, and conservatives talked of Russian leadership of a pan-Slavic movement. In the Middle East and central Asia, Russia was active in Persia and Afghanistan. In China, the Russians moved into Manchuria and gained long-term leases to territory. Russia encountered the similarly expanding Japanese and was defeated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The loss unleashed protests in Russia. Urban workers and peasants joined liberal groups in the Revolution of 1905. The government bowed and created a national parliament, the Duma. Minister Stolypin introduced important peasant reforms: greater freedom from redemption payments and liberal purchase and sale of land. He aimed to create a market-oriented peasantry divided from the rest of the peasant mass. Some entrepreneurs among the peasants—kulaks—did increase production. But the reform package quickly fell apart as the tsar withdrew rights, took authority away from the Duma, and resumed police repression.
Russia and Eastern Europe. After the loss to Japan, Russian foreign activities returned to the Ottoman Empire and Eastern Europe. Hungary, Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, some nations recently gaining independence from the Ottomans, established parliaments elected by carefully restricted voters. Kings ruled without much check. Most nations abolished serfdom, but landlord power remained extensive and peasant unrest continued. In economic organization, industrialization was minimal; these nations remained agricultural exporters dependent on Western markets. In the midst of their many problems, eastern Europeans enjoyed, during the late nineteenth century, a period of cultural productivity that helped to enhance their sense of national heritage. Russian novelists, such as Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy, gained world fame. In music, composers moved from the brilliant Romanticism of Tchaikovsky to innovative atonal styles. Eastern European composers, such as Chopin and Liszt, produced important works. In science, the Czech Mendel advanced the study of genetics and the Russian Pavlov contributed in physiology.
Holy Alliance: Alliance among Russia, Prussia, and Austria in defense of the established order; formed by the most conservative monarchies of Europe during the Congress of Vienna.
Decembrist uprising: Unsuccessful 1825 political revolt in Russia by midlevel army officers advocating reforms.
Crimean War (1854-1856): Began with a Russian attack on the Ottoman Empire; France and Britain joined on the Ottoman side; resulted in a Russian defeat because of Western industrial might; led to Russian reforms under Alexander II.
Emancipation of the serfs: Alexander II in 1861 ended serfdom in Russia; serfs did not obtain political rights and had to pay the aristocracy for lands gained.
Zemstvoes: Local political councils created as part of Alexander II’s reforms; gave the middle class professional experience in government but did not influence national policy.
Trans-Siberian railroad: Construction during the 1870s and 1880s to connect European Russia with the Pacific; increased the Russian role in Asia.
Count Sergei Witte: Russian term for articulate intellectuals as a class; desired radical change in the Russian political and economic systems; wished to maintain a Russian culture distinct from that of the West.
Intelligentsia: Russian term for articulate intellectuals as a class; desired radical change in the Russian political and economic systems; wished to maintain a Russian culture distinct from that of the West.
Anarchists: Political groups that thought the abolition of formal government was a first step to creating a better society; became important in Russia and was the modern world’s first large terrorist movement.
Lenin: Russian Marxist leader; insisted on the importance of disciplined revolutionary cells.
Bolsheviks: Literally “majority” party, but actually a political group backed by a minority of the population; the most radical branch of the Russian Marxist movement; led by Lenin.
Duma: Russian national assembly created as one of the reforms after the Revolution of 1905; progressively stripped of power during the reign of Nicholas II.
Stolypin reforms: Russian minister who introduced reforms intended to placate the peasantry after the Revolution of 1905; included reduction of land redemption payments and an attempt to create a market-oriented peasantry.
Kulaks: Agricultural entrepreneurs who used the Stolypin reforms to buy more land and increase production.
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