The Rise of Soviet Russia

Nicholas II, 1894-1917 – The Last of the Czars
The Industrial Revolution, The Russo-Japanese War, Events leading to the First Duma, The Dumas

1.  Nicholas II, 1894-1917 – The Last of the Czars

 A The Industrial Revolution

  i   Russia went through a remarkable industrial expansion be- tween 1890 and 1904.  Serge Witte, who was first Minister of Communications and then Minister of Finance from 1892 to 1903, believed that the Czarist regime of Russia could only survive on the basis of industrial expansion which could make full use of Russia's natural resources.  He borrowed heavily from abroad, particularly from France, to launch his programme of economic expansion. 

  ii   As with Britain's Industrial Revolution, good communications, particularly railways, were essential, and Witte was responsible for a great programme of railway building financed by the state.  This included the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway (1891-1905) and by 1905 Russia had nearly forty thousand miles of railways of which some two-thirds were owned by the state. 

  iii   Russian coal and iron industries were helped by the railway expansion and were encouraged to supply as much of the rails and equipment as possible.  Discoveries of oil in Trans-caucasia, the development of textile manufactures in Moscow and in Poland and the growth of shipbuilding on the Black Seawere further examples of the new industrial expansion.  In the last fifteen years of the century total industrial output nearly trebled.  By 1900, between two and a half and three million worker were employed in industry compared with the half million of 1880. 

  iv   What Russia and Witte needed was sufficient time to get through the difficult period of transition which affected every European country in the early years of its industrial revolution.  Heavy borrowing from abroad meant heavier taxes at home to pay the interest.  This was just one more burden for the peasants who, though relieved of the poll-tax, were continually and heavily in arrears with their taxes while living in the poverty of insanitary huts on a diet of bread and potatoes.  A million peasants a year went as seasonal workers into the Ukraine or moved into the cities seeking work in the new industry.  The town workers suffered from low wages resulting from the influx of landless, unemployed peasants, and from harsh working conditions and long hours.

 B The Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5

  i   Rivalry between Japan and Russia had been bitter since the war between Japan and China in 1894-5.  The complete Japanese victory in this war made Japan an equal and vital rival along-side the European powers, Britain, Russia, France and Germany, in the struggle to acquire influence and territory on the Chinese mainland. 

  ii   Whereas the other European powers were mainly interested in developing trade through control over ports and islands on the Chinese coast, Russia and Japan were the two powers by their geographical position best placed to establish control over large areas of the Chinese mainland. 

  iii   It was Russia, backed by Germany and France, who forced the Japanese in 1895 to give up some of the richest spoils of the victory over China, namely Port Arthur and the Liao-Tung peninsula.  Russia now posed as the protector of China, obtained vital financial and railway concessions and made a secret treaty of alliance with the Pekin government (1896).  Russian influence spread into the whole of Manchuria and in 1898 Russia obtained a twenty-five-year lease of Port Arthur and Talienwan.  The Japanese position in Korea was threatened by the Russian advance in Manchuria and they made their alliance with England in 1902 as a safeguard against the war with Russia they expected might come. 

  iv   In Russia, Witte was opposed to a war which he knew would endanger his whole economic programme.  He was overthrown in 1903 and the Czar was dominated by advisers contemptuous of the Japanese and eager to advance into China by outright territorial annexation.  Negotiations were carried on between Japan and Russia over Manchuria from August 1903 to February 1904 when war broke out. 

  v   The Japanese fleet torpedoed the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and their armed forces cleared Korea of Russian troops.  Another Japanese army landed on the Liao-Tung peninsula, cut off Port Arthur from Russian help and drove the Russians back to Mukden, leaving a third Japanese force to attack Port Arthur which fell on January 1, 1905.  Two Japanese armies now joined to crush the Russian forces at Mukden (March 1905). 

  vi   The Russian Baltic fleet which had sailed from Europe in October 1904 and had fired on a flotilla of British fishing smacks off the Dogger bank (October 21) was crushed by the Japanese fleet in the straits of Tsushima (May 1905) when it finally reached Japanese waters. 

&   vii   The war ended with the Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire, August 1905), the U.S.A.  having acted as mediator between the two nations.  Japan gained the island of Sakhalin and Port Arthur.  Korea was recognized as a Japanese sphere of influence.  Though both powers agreed to evacuate Manchuria, Russia held on to her mastery of Northern Manchuria. 

 C Events leading to the First Duma (Parliament), 1904-6

  ii   Russian defeats in the war brought discontent in town and countryside to a head.  In July 1904, Plehve, the Minister of the Interior, was assassinated.  In November 1904, represen-tatives of the Zemstva called for a freely elected, represen-tative National Assembly.  The fall of Port Arthur led to a great demonstration in front of the Winter Palace in Moscow (January 1905).  The troops opened fire on the crowd and this led to a wave of strikes and violence.  Many police officials were shot and the Governor-General of Moscow, uncle of the Czar, was killed by a bomb.  In March 1905, the Czar agreed to set up a National Assembly but it was to be purely advisory and elected on a narrow franchise. 

  ii   This disappointment provoked further violence.  The crew of the Battleship Potemkin mutinied (June 1905) and seized the ship, finally seeking refuge in a Rumanian port.  The peasants rose in the provinces and expelled landowners from their estates.  In October 1905, a general strike in St.  Petersburg brought the city to a standstill. 

  ii   The government of St.  Petersburg was taken over by a worker's council or Soviet in which Trotsky was the leading figure.  The Soviet brought together the various revolutionary groups in-cluding the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.  The former tried to exert control through industrial activity and the formation of Trade Unions; the latter were a more extreme group who preached armed revolt and tried to work on the discontent of the peasants

  iv   By the October Manifesto (1905) the government promised a Duma or National Parliament with real legislative power and based on a franchise including professional and working classes.  In the face of this concession the rebels lost their unity and the government crushed the revolt in town and countryside. 

 D The Dumas (National Parliaments), 1906-17

  i   England needed centuries to work out a stable Parliamentary system.  France was still struggling a hundred years after the Revolution to build a secure and effective system of government Russia had only eleven years to practise Parliamentary government before the experiment crashed in war and revolution. 

  ii   The first Duma lasted from May to July 1906.  Its four hundred members were predominantly progressive with a large liberal and labour representation.  Demands were put forward that the Czar's ministers should be responsible to the Duma and that the Duma should have full control over law making and finance.  The demands were refused and the Duma dissolved.  Nearly half of its members withdrew over the Russian border to Finland and called on the Russian people to resist, but the mass of the people were not interested in constitutional technicalities. 

  iii   Stolypin, the new Russian chief Minister, adopted a policy of ruthless order on the one hand and of agrarian reform on the other.  He was prepared to work with the Duma but his manipulation of elections only made the second Duma (March- June 1907) more difficult to deal with.  The Social Democratic party gained over fifty seats.  Unable to get support for his agrarian reforms or a promise to end terrorism, Stolypin charged the Social Democrats with disloyalty to the state and dissolved the Duma. 

  iv   Before the Third Duma (1907-12) the electproal laws were altered to the the major influence to the landowners.  Stolypin gained support for his agrarian reforms.  The peasants were given individual ownership of their lands and, to ease the shortage of land, crown and state lands were transferred to the Peasant Land Bank for sale to peasant buyers.  Migration to the new lands opened up in Siberia was strongly encouraged. 

  v   The Fourth Duma was very similar in composition to the third.  It did, however, suggest minor administrative reforms and make some criticism of the central government, but the Russian Parliaments had neither the time to gain control of the government nor to sink real roots down among the people.  The peasants were interested only in land.  The town workers thought of economic control, of economic and social levelling.  Relatively few outside the educated minority had any strong abiding interest in political liberty or individual rights as such. 

  vi   The Czar himself and his immediate advisers, with the exception of Witte who was dismissed and Stolypin who was assassinated in 1911, were never prepared to make any real political com- promise.  They also failed to give full support to industrial development or to the building up of satisfied peasant land-owners.  These two policies, the policies of Witte and of Stolypin, were the only means of saving Czarist rule, and for both of them, time and the avoidance of war were essential.  The blindness of the Czarist regime to the imperious necessity of taking time by the forelock caused the Reform movement to develop into a Revolution (1917) which destroyed not only the monarchy but the structure of Russian society itself.