weird Flashcards
What was the 1905 October Manifesto
- ‘free citizenship’ and ‘freedom of person, conscience, speech, assembly and union’
- Introduction of a consultative assembly (Duma) with legislative powers elected by a broad franchise that would include social groups that had no elected rights
What was the Fundamental Laws of the Russian EMpire published on the 23rd April 1906 with the Duma first day
- Exercise law-making power in conjunction with the Council of the Empire and the Imperial Duma
- Approve the laws, and without his approval no law could come into existence
- Hold all governmental powers in their widest extent throughout the whole Russian empire
- Appoint and dismiss the president of the Council; Ministers were responsible to him alone and even if the Duma, by 2/3rds majority passed a vote of censure on the Government, the government did not have to resign
- Declare war and approve a peace settlement
- Rule by decree during periods when the Duma was not in session
What was the peasant response to Nicholas’ concessions of 1905
- November Manifesto put an end to the redemption payments, many joined the 1905 revolution because they feared that the government would repossess the land of mortgage holders after many bad harvests
- Some peasants interpreted the Manifesto as a right to seize the land that they considered to be theirs by custom
- Number of peasants disturbances rose during the spring and summer 1906 the peasants burnt the landlord’s house, reaching a peak in November and December but then declined as Stolypin’s agricultural reforms took effect
What was the army response to Nicholas’ 1905 concessions
- They interpreted the November Manifesto as permission to ignore authority and indulge in expressions of resentment
- Between October and December 1905 mutinies in the army reduced the regime’s effective control over the cities and blocked communication
- These mutinies were usually confied to a petition demanding improvements in conditions and they always expressed loyalty to the tsar
What was the most famous incident of mutiny
The most famous incident was the mutiny at Kronstadt naval base which was put down with force only after 26 men were killed and another 107 injuries
How many mutinies during 1906
There were over 200 mutinies during 1906, affecting more than 20% of units
What happened to the St Petersburg Soviet after the 1905 concessions
- St Petersburg Soviet continued and on the 1st November 1905 called the second general assembly
- However the soviet increasingly met with little response and on the 5th of November called off its strike and had all its members arrested on the 3rd of December including Trotsky
How many times did the Chairmen of the Council of Ministers, Ministers of the Interior and Ministers of Education change between 1894-1917
8 Chairmen of the Council of Ministers
15 Ministers of the Interior
11 Ministers of education
How much of voting was intially given to landowners, peasants and those who lived in towns
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31% of vote to landowners, 42% to peasants and town 27%
- property qualification meant very few factory workers had access to the ballot box
What did Stolypin do to make the Duma’s less radical
- dismissed the second Duma and issued a new electoral law, enormously restricting the franchise and added representation to the landowners and the peasantry
- This reduced the number of men who could vote to one in six so that the peasants and the working class were almost excluded, in addition representation of the hostile minorities, particularly the Poles was significantly cut.
What did Stolypin’s new electoral law make the compositrion of the third Duma
produced a third Duma with a greatly increased extreme right and right of centre grouping, this was more favourable and lasted the full term
What role did the SD’s Bolsheviks play in the Duma’s
Gained a majority by 1917 supporting Lenin’s view of a narrow centralised party of professional revolutionaries, remained a small insignificant group till this point
What role did the SD’s Mensheviks play in the Duma’s
- Believed society should progress by natural evolution towards socialism, so opposed November revolution, drew membership from the ranks of the intellectuals
- Most influential in the second duma but ceased to have any representation in the 3rd and the 4th
What role did the Social Revolutionaries play in the the Dumas
- Boycotted every Duma apart from the 3rd
Why did cooperation stumble in 1910
cooperation stumbled when Stolypin encountered landlord opposition to the proposed reform of local government
What other reforms did the Third Duma acheive
- Introduction in June 1912 of accident and health insurance for workers consisting of a ‘hospital fund; financed mainly by employers and employees paying only 2-3% of their wages
- Restoration of the office of the justice of peace whose judicial powers had been transferred to the land commandments
What groups was the autocracy reliant on after 1912
After 1912 it was isolated and reliant on extreme right-wing groups like the Black Hundreds or the Union of the Russian People along with the army. Nicholas didn’t recognise the need to increase his appeal
Autocracy lost traditional supporters, the landed nobility as well as the entrepreneurs and the intelligentsia
How did enrolment in secondary and higher education respectively grow from 1900-14
- Enrolment in secondary education quadrupled and in higher education tripled from 1900 to 1914
How much did the budget for educational reform grow from 1900-13
In 1913 the education budget was 400% larger than it had been in 1900
What were most farms like before 1906
Before 1906 most farmings had remained small scale , in the hands of former serfs and state peasants, tied to their local mir
How much affect did land hunger have on the average holdings of peasants from 1877-1905
Land hunger caused the average holding to fall from 35 acres in 1877 to 28 by 1905
What traditional agricultural practices were perpetuated by the mir
- The solcha or wooden plough was still widely used
- medieval rotation systems, which wastefully left fallow land each year
What did a lack of husbandry do to the grain output of Russian farms compared to British farms
A lack of Husbandry also deprived the soil of manure so that the grain output from the British farmland was 4 times as great compared to Russian farms
What was the context to Stolypin’s agarian reforms
- Famine of 1891-2 prompted look at a lack of progress in agriculture and the government was also concerned about the dangerous peasant disturbances (1905-6)
- Russian governments mostly received reports from the poorly performing tradition agricultural areas where peasant poverty was at its worst
- This painted a picture of the ‘dark masses’ - drunken, illiterate and rebellious peasants who needed to be educated.