Russia

D

The End of the Empire

The essential failure of the war combined with Alexander’s growing despotism increased popular discontent with the government. A secret terrorist group, the Narodnaya Volya (“The People’s Will”), in 1879 condemned Alexander to death for failing to summon a constituent assembly. After several failed attempts they finally succeeded on March 13, 1881, when Alexander was blown up by a bomb thrown by a Polish student.

Ironically, Alexander had, unknown to the public, given his consent finally to limited constitutional reform only that morning. These proposals were abandoned on his death by his son, Alexander III, who reacted to the assassination by instituting rigid censorship and police supervision of intellectual activities. The power of the zemstvos was drastically curbed, and Russification programmes were forced upon the many racial minorities within the empire. The oppression of Jews was particularly severe. They were forced to live in certain areas, not permitted to enter specific professions, and killed in great numbers (see Pogrom).

Political discontent was driven underground and revolutionary propaganda was eagerly accepted by Russian factory workers. The theories of Karl Marx found many supporters; the first Russian Marxist group was formed in St Petersburg in 1883. An intensified programme of industrialization had resulted in a great increase in the number of industrial workers. Such cities as St Petersburg and Moscow became notorious for the miserable working and living conditions of factory labourers.

In the last years of his reign, Alexander encouraged the development of Russia’s far eastern territories, authorizing construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. During this period the close relations with Germany and Austro-Hungary developed by his father—the Dreikaiserbund (“League of the Three Emperors”) collapsed in the face of Alexander’s concerns over Germany’s expansionist policies. In 1894 he concluded a secret military alliance, the Dual, or Franco-Russian, Alliance, with France.

Nicholas II, eldest son of Alexander III, ascended the throne in 1894. Although well intentioned, he was a weak ruler, out of touch with his people, easily dominated by others and a firm believer in the autocratic principles taught him by his father. His wife, Princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt, a granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria, became a fanatical believer in the Russian autocratic tradition and encouraged Nicholas to reject all reform proposals. She bore him four daughters and a son, Alexis, who suffered from haemophilia, which was carried in Queen Victoria’s line. In their vain attempts to effect a cure for him, Nicholas and Alexandra became prey to quacks and religious fanatics, notably the Siberian starets (holy man) Grigory Yefimovich Rasputin.

Autocracy, oppression, and police control increased under Nicholas. They were met by an upsurge of terrorist acts. From outside Russia political leaders, including notably Vladimir Ilich Lenin, directed the Socialist movement. The Social Democratic Labour Party was formed in 1898. In 1903 it split over policy into two factions: the Mensheviks (moderates) led by Julius Cedarbaum, who took the conspiratorial name of Martov; and the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction) led by Lenin. Although outwardly reunited in 1906, the two groups remained fundamentally deeply divided. In foreign affairs, Russia’s expanding interests in Dongbei clashed head on with those of the Japanese Empire. The resulting friction led to a Japanese attack on February 8, 1904.

D

1

The Revolution of 1905

Needing popular support for the prosecution of the war with Japan, the government permitted a congress of zemstvos to meet in St Petersburg in November 1904. When the demands of the congress for reform went unheeded by the government, they were adopted by Socialist groups. A demonstration was called by students and labour leaders. On January 22, 1905, thousands of people led by Georgy Apollonovich Gapon, a revolutionary priest, marched to the Winter Palace carrying icons and chanting “God save the tsar”. Their aim was to present a petition to Nicholas asking for an amnesty for political prisoners, the summoning of a constituent assembly, and an eight-hour working day. Nicholas was not in residence and the marchers were fired on by imperial troops. Hundreds were killed and wounded, and the event has become known in Russian history as Bloody Sunday.

The massacre precipitated a series of events that became known as the Revolution of 1905. Strikes and riots protesting against the killings began throughout the industrialized sections of Russia. The rush of events, combined with continued disaster in the war against Japan, influenced the government to make concessions. The Emperor promised a limited consultative parliament, called the State Duma, and issued decrees granting freedom of worship to Old Believers (April 29) and more liberty for Poland (May 16). These concessions were considered totally inadequate and the agitation for reform intensified. There were strikes, peasant revolts, and assassinations. Soldiers and sailors mutinied, most famously on the Battleship Potemkin of the Black Sea fleet. On October 14, a soviet, or council of workers’ delegates, was formed at St Petersburg to lead a general strike. The strike, from 20 to 30 October, paralysed European Russia, and was accompanied by uprisings of nationalist groups, peasant unrest, and turmoil throughout the empire. To this was added the complete defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War. On October 30 the Tsar yielded and agreed to establish a constitution and a legislative Duma. For the first time a prime minister was appointed, initially Sergey Witte, who as minister both of finance and communications during the 1880s and 1890s was a key figure in the increasing industrialization of Russia. He was quickly replaced, however, by Pyotr Stolypin, who had attracted Nicholas’s attention by his ferocious suppression of uprisings in Saratov province during 1905. The “October Manifesto” split the revolutionaries. Many of the Mensheviks favoured participation in the Duma. The Bolsheviks opposed it, and the St Petersburg Soviet continued resistance until their arrest in December brought about a violent workers’ rebellion in Moscow, which was brutally quelled by army troops. Order was restored by equally drastic methods in the countryside. By early 1906, the government was again in control.

The first Duma was elected on a broad suffrage in the spring of 1906 and sat from May 10 to July 21. Before the meeting, however, the government had announced the Fundamental Laws, which reserved the prerogative to legislate by decree to the Emperor. They also limited the Duma’s financial powers. As a result the session was occupied with a campaign for recognition of rights and ended in deadlock. A second Duma met from March 5 to June 16, 1907. It was even more radical, and on its dissolution, a new electoral law increased the representative weight of the middle classes at the expense of workers and peasants. The revolutionary movement again began to mount. It was met by ruthless repression, directed by Stolypin and targeted particularly against minorities. Meanwhile, with the conservative middle classes now the dominant influence, the third Duma sat from the end of 1907 to 1912, and enacted various moderate reform measures. The fourth Duma (1912-1916) was less effective, mainly due to the outbreak of World War I; in November 1916, however, it gave Nicholas clear warning of impending revolution without fundamental changes in the regime.

D

2

World War I

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 put a temporary halt to the revolutionary activities of the radicals. The war was directly precipitated when Russia refused to stand aside while Austria invaded Serbia after the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The fourth Duma, then in session, rallied popular support to the government.

By the end of 1914 severe reverses had been inflicted on the Russian army, notably in East Prussia. The reverses increased in 1915 and, except for temporary victories, the defeat began to assume the proportions of the Crimean and Japanese disasters. By the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, the country had suffered 5.5 million casualties. Lack of supplies and transport, and the inefficiency of military leaders, further demoralized the troops. Desertions mounted, and the war became unpopular throughout Russia, where the civilian population faced serious food shortages. Repression and corruption in the government continued, and the country’s problems were exacerbated by the petty feuds that increasingly divided it. In the last 12 months of Nicholas’s rule there were four different prime ministers, three war ministers, and three foreign ministers. The emperor was dominated by his German-born wife, Alexandra, who was distrusted by the Russians and who was largely under the control of Rasputin. Rasputin was rumoured to have become the chief influence in the empire, controlling even military decisions. His presence at court was so resented, not least as a danger to the survival of the monarchy, that in December 1916, a group of aristocrats, including members of the imperial family, murdered him. Revolutionary agitation increased based round two main groups: the liberal intelligentsia, who believed that Russia could still win the war and be transformed into a democratic republic; and the Bolsheviks, who believed the war was already lost and wanted to carry out a complete political, economic, and social transformation of Russia. The first group led the February Revolution; the second, the October Revolution (dated on the Julian calendar). In February 1917, riots began in St Petersburg (renamed Petrograd in 1914). When troops were ordered to fire upon the rioters, they joined them instead. Demands for changes in the government finally resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II and his son on March 15, leaving the administration to a provisional government initially headed by Prince Lvov, and from July by Aleksandr Kerensky. The abdications ended the Russian Empire.

The provisional government, which favoured the establishment of a republican democracy, continued to prosecute the war. However, Kerensky’s attempts to mount a major offensive in the summer of 1917 were bitterly resented by ordinary Russians dreading another winter of war, and hampered by conflict with the Petrograd Soviet, which had been revived earlier in the year. After ten years of forced exile, Lenin returned to Petrograd to plan the Bolshevik takeover. On October 25, taking advantage of splits in the Kerensky government, he gave the command that launched the October Revolution. Ten days later troops of revolutionary forces, the Red Army, stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd and Bolsheviks took control of the state. Lenin then changed the name “Bolshevik” to “Communist”, and on November 7, 1917 (25 October in the Julian calendar), the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was proclaimed as the territorial successor of the Russian Empire. In 1922 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established, comprising the territory of the former Russian Empire, less the newly independent Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; the RSFSR, with re-drawn boundaries, became one of 15 constituent republics of the USSR.

E

Russian Revolution and the Soviet Era

For detailed information about the Russian Revolution, see Russian Revolution. For the history of the territory of the former Russian Empire after the Russian Revolution and before the independence of the Russian Federation on December 25, in 1991, see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

F

Post-Soviet Russia

Shortly after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, a power struggle emerged between conservative and reformist forces in Russia. President Boris Yeltsin, who was elected in June 1991 by popular vote, originally was granted sweeping powers by the Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD), one of the two legislative bodies that existed under the 1978 constitution. Yeltsin used his powers to initiate a programme of sweeping economic reform and to establish a network of regional appointees in order to bypass local legislatures dominated by neo-Communists. Conservatives, led by Supreme Soviet Chairman Ruslan Khasbulatov, a former Yeltsin ally, sought to reduce Yeltsin’s powers after he launched a campaign of radical economic reform in early 1992. At a meeting of the Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD) in December 1992, the acting prime minister Yegor Gaidar (1992), the chief architect of the government’s plan for economic reform, was replaced by Viktor Chernomyrdin, a long-time member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and the Minister of the Gas Industry of the former USSR. The CPD also rescinded several powers granted to Yeltsin, including control over local administrators. That same month the Constitutional Court limited Yeltsin’s ban on the CPSU and the Russian Communist Party to the national organization, effectively legalizing the latter in Russia. Yeltsin protested at the reduction of his powers, and an agreement was reached with the CPD at the end of 1992 to hold a popular referendum on a new constitution. Conservatives in local and national legislative bodies resisted the organization of a national referendum, however, prompting Yeltsin to declare emergency presidential rule on March 20, 1993. Yeltsin’s announcement of emergency rule was condemned by the Constitutional Court Chairman Valeriy Zorkin, Khasbulatov, Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoy, and others. Both sides subsequently modified their positions: Yeltsin never formally issued a decree on emergency rule, and conservatives allowed the referendum to take place on April 25, 1993.

Yeltsin scored a resounding victory at the polls, but the referendum failed to resolve the power struggle. In September 1993 Yeltsin removed Rutskoy as vice-president on charges of corruption, an action opposed by the parliament. In the same month Yeltsin issued a decree dissolving parliament, due to the resistance of conservative deputies to the work of the Constituent Assembly. The parliament responded by denouncing Yeltsin’s actions as unconstitutional and declaring Rutskoy as president. About 100 deputies and several hundred armed supporters, led by Khasbulatov and Rutskoy, occupied the parliament building, also known as the White House, and refused to disband. A tense stalemate between government and rebel forces lasted several days. It was broken when rebel supporters staged an attack on the mayor’s office and a television centre. The government responded by shelling the parliament building and arresting the occupiers. More than 140 people died in the rebellion and its dispersal by government forces. On October 4, 1993, Rutskoy and Khasbulatov were taken prisoner and charged with inciting mass disorder.