HP3 Flashcards
(55 cards)
What happened in February 1917? (Fitzpatrick)
“In February 1917, the autocracy collapsed in the face of popular demonstrations and the withdrawal of elite support for the regime.”
What was set up to replace the fallen regime after February 1917? (Fitzpatrick)
“In institutional terms, the new Provisional Government would represent the elite revolution, while the newly revived Petrograd Soviet would speak for the revolution of the people. Their relationship would be complementary rather than competitive, and ‘dual power’ (the term applied to the coexistence of the Provisional Government and the Soviet) would be a source of strength, not of weakness. “
What is a social revolution? (Skocpol)
“Social revolutions are rapid, basic transformations of a society’s state and class structures; and they are accompanied and in part carried through by class-based revolts from below”
What is a rebellion? (Skocpol)
“rebellions, even when successful, may involve the revolt of subordinate classes—but they do not eventuate in structural change”
What is a political revolution? (Skocpol)
“Political revolutions transform state structures but not social structures, and they are not necessarily accomplished through class conflict”
What is unique about social revolutions? (Skocpol)
“What is unique to social revolution is that basic changes in social structure and in political structure occur together in a mutually reinforcing fashion”
Does Skocpol see revolutionaries as creating revolutions?
“the fact is that historically no successful social revolution has ever been “made” by a mass-mobilizing, avowedly revolutionary movement.”
What can revolutionaries and their ideologies hope to do at best? (Skocpol)
“True enough, revolutionary organizations and ideologies have helped to cement the solidarity of radical vanguards before and/or during revolutionary crises. And they have greatly facilitated the consolidation of new regimes. But in no sense did such vanguards—let alone vanguards with large, mobilized, and ideologically imbued mass followings-ever create the revolutionary crises they exploited.”
Does Skocpol see the state merely as an instrument of the ruling class as Marxists do?
“attempts of state rulers merely to perform the state’s “own” functions may create conflicts of interest with the dominant class”
Does the state have its own interests? (Skocpol)
“Nevertheless, the state has its own distinct interests vis-a-vis subordinate classes”
What two functions do states normally perform?
“The state normally performs two basic sets of tasks: It maintains order, and it competes with other actual or potential states”
When did revolutionary crises develop in Frnace and Russia according to Skocpol?
“The revolutionary crises developed when the old-regime states became unable to meet the challenges of evolving international situations. Monarchical authorities were subjected to new threats or to intensified competition from more economically developed powers abroad. And they were constrained or checked in their responses by the institutionalized relationships of the autocratic state organizations to the landed upper classes and the agrarian economies”
What might the state do in pursuit of its interests that would contradict the interests of the ruling class?
Taxes to wage wars
What was the deciding factor in bringing about revolution in France and Russia? (Skocpol)
“And revolutionary political crises emerged precisely because of the unsuccessful attempts of the Bourbon, Romanov, and Manchu regimes to cope with foreign pressures.”
When did the King convene the Estates General to try and resolve the financial crisis?
May 1789
Who was the king that convened the estates general?
King Louis 16th (XVI)
Who were the three estates at the estates general?
First estate: clergy. Second estate: nobles. Third estate: commoners
What did the dominant class in Frnace want, that led to the calling of the estates general? (Skocpol)
“No longer confident that absolutism could solve the problems of state, and fearful for its privileges, the dominant class wanted a representative body to advise the king and give consent to any new taxes”
What is the significance of the Estates General to historians? (Skocpol)
“Many historians of the French Revolution argue that the calling of the Estates-General led to Revolution because it propelled the capitalist bourgeoisie, or else the upper Third Estate, onto the national political stage”
What did the divisions between the three estates as the Estates General culminate in? (Skocpol)
“Thus, by the early summer of 1789, the quarrels within the dominant class over forms of representation culminated in a victory for the Parisian National Assembly and its various liberal, urban supporters throughout France”
Who initially made up the National Assembley?
The Third estate, later joined by representatives of the other estates, and they claimed to rule
What was the most important liberalising reform in Russia before the revolution? (Skocpol)
“But the most important reform of all was the Emancipation of millions of Russian serfs, a process initiated, according to the first in a series of tsarist decrees, in 1861.”
What did Tzar Alexander do that went against the wishes of the Russian nobility? (Skocpol)
“Tsar Alexander declared that it was “better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait until it will begin to abolish itself from below.” Thus he overrode the clear opposition of the majority of noble estate owners and required them to accept the legal emancipation of the serfs”
What did the Tzarist state succeed in doing before the Russian Revolution?
“the tsarist autocracy actually succeeded in pushing through the reforms that it undertook in the aftermath of the humiliating Crimean defeat, including the reforms that ran significantly counter to the economic interests and social prerogatives of the serf-owning nobility.”
