AP World- Chap 24: Russian Empire Flashcards
(15 cards)
Russia vs Ottoman
- Russia had almost no middle class
- engaged in reforms under Alexander I
- Russia developed a closer relation with western Europe and eventually became an arena for every sort of European intellectual, artistic, & political tendency while Ottoman succumbed to European imperialism
Obsolete Russia
- 1700: 3 out of 100 Russians lived in cities, 2/3 in Moscow
- well-engineered roads did not begin to appear until 1817
- an overwhelmingly agricultural land like Ottoman
- industrialization projects depended heavily on foreign expertise
Tsar Nicholas I
- built first railroad from St. Petersburg & Russian capital t his summer palace in 1837
- industrial revolution required educated and independent minded artist but he was afraid of the spread of literacy and modern education, preferred serfs
Slavophiles
intellectuals opposed western European influences, considered the Orthodox faith, solidity of peasant life, and tsar’s absolute rule to be proper bases of Russian civilization
Pan-Slavism
- militant political doctrine advocating unity of all the Slavic peoples, including those under Austrian and Ottoman rule
- movement among Russian intellectuals to identify culturally and politically with Slavic peoples of Europe
Tension between Russia and Britain/ France
Britain and France feared Russia as a rival for power in the east
Tension between Russia and Britain
- Britain thought warlike Russia would press on until it had conquered all the lands separating it from British India, which was very important to their prosperity
- Britain saw Russia as a threat to India and despised the subjection of serfs (gained freedom 27 years after Britain)
Russia and Asia
- expansionism focused on the south, where being behind didn’t matter b/c the people there were even more behind
- 1860: port on Pacific coast the eventually grow into great naval port of Vladivostok
Problems with Russian Expansion
political friction w/: Qing China &Japan (east), Iran (Central Asian and Caucasus frontiers), Ottoman (eastern end of Black Sea)
Standoff In Afghanistan
- between Russia and Europe
- caused by the competition that ensured over which power would control southern Central Asia
Tsar Alexander I
- reforms met a positive response because Peter the Great had enlisted educated Ukrainian clerics to spread a Western spirit of education
- reforms promised more on paper than they brought about in practice
Opposition to Alexander I’s Reforms
- fear that the new gov’t bureaucrats would act as agents of imperial tyranny
- fear was realized during the conservative reign of Nicholas I
- people formed secret societies of opposition
Decembrist revolt
- after Alexanader I’s death (1825), which caused confusion over who was to succeed him
- attempt by army officers tot take control of the Russian gov’t
- failed and participants were severely punished
Effects of Crimean War (1856)
- great powers meeting in Paris forced Russia to return land to the Ottomans in both Europe and Asia
- humiliation spurred Nicholas’s son and successor Alexander II to institute new reforms and reinvigorate the country
Tsar Alexander II
- emancipation of serfs in 1861 (greatest reform)
- authorized new joint-stock companies, projected a railroad network to tie country together, modernized legal and administrative arms of gov’t
- intellectual and cultural trends flourished
