limited impact of opposition 1894 - 1919 Flashcards
Limited impact: SOCIAL FACTORS
- Peasantry diverse, therefore difficult to mobilise
- Poor infastructure.
- Poor literacy- 21% rate. difficult to spread propaganda.
- Peasantry politically unaware.
RESULT: membership below 50,000 for main revolutionary groups.
Limited impact: REPRESSION
- Opposition parties illegal
- Laws aganist freedom/assembly.
- Leaders away from parties-exiled eg in Europe.
- Okhrana & army used to break up & put down opposition. (500 down in 1902)
- Anti-Semitism also impact in moving Jewish population around.
Limmited impact: DIVISIONS BETWEEN / WITHIN OPPOSITION GROUPS
Wide range of different views:
- How to carry out revolution
- No united opposition (eg middle-class opposition didn’t work with Socialists) (groups did not work together)
- Divisions within groups limited effectiveness & split share of support.
eg Mensheviks & Bolsheviks SDs much smaller than SRs in support terms
Limited impact: DECENT PREVIOUS 10 YEARS
- Economic growth
- Industrial output doubled
- Complaints targeted at agricultural policy & industrial/worker’s living conditions.
- Life not bad enough to justify direct complaints to Tsar: advisers were target.
Limited impact: Factors beyond Tsar’s control greater than the responsibility of the Tsar & his government.
What it said.
Limited impact: EQUALLY IMPORTANT
- All equally important.
- Repression caused opposition: didn’t simply quell it.
- Opposition groups had to work underground so infighting hindered it further.
- All groups wanted change but could not agree how.
- Arguably the 10 years were BAD: failure to deal with bad harvests, faliure in war, so each factor had its own difficulties & waeknesses.
Against: Repressive policies & Russification.
Repressive policies, Russification, economic distruption were unpopular but not by themselves enough to create widespread opposition.
- Suggests that social factors were not developed emough to mobilise widespread, organised opposition
Against: Repression
Hindered the effectiveness of organised opposition more than any other factor: With leaders in exile, opposition groups were unable to expolit the social discontent at the unpopular Tsarist policies & unhappy social conditions.
Existance of over 800 uprisings in three years shows that social factors & Tsarist policies were not sufficient restrictions on opposition & without the repression carried out by the Okhrana and army, these uprisings could have been developed into a more nationwide challenge.
Develop: Divisions between/within groups.
- Divisions more important than social factors.
- Social factors could be overcome whereas divisions between groups harder to deal with in context.
- Divisions meant that Okhrana could exploit differences and tensions through Infiltration.
- Divided meant that people less likely to support.
Develop: Not Disastrous First Ten Years
- Had economic policies been harsher then more opposition was likely. Economic situation was not as bad as it could have been.
- Tsarist policies helped maintain support for Tsarism as much as they created opposition.
- Regime arguably successful in dealing with opposition so more important than divisions between/within groups.
Develop: Factors beyond the Tsar’s control greater than the responsibility of the Tsar & his government.
- A more politicised population needed for opposition to be effective.
- Peasants too concerned with local issues, workers too concerned by living & working conditions.
- Logistical issues of infastructure & literacy.
THESE MEANT THAT IT WOULD ALWAYS BE DIFFICULT FOR OPPOSITION GROUPS.
- Absence of developed middle or urban class to have a significant impact.
This weakness was identified by Lenin…
Lenin compensated through his professional revolutionaries & the vanguard of the revolution
Develop: All factors were equally important
Not one factor is more important than any other in the web of causation.
