imperial russia, 1881 1914

The Russian Revolution1815-1924

Session IVImperial Russia, 1881-1914

Sunday, October 11, 2009

• Economic Conditions

• The Agrarian Problem

• Industry & Labor

• Foreign Trade

• Domestic Political Developments

• Full Reaction, 1881-1905

• Reformers & Revolutionaries

• The Revolution of 1905

• The Constitutional Experiment

• Foreign Policy

• Expansion

• The Train Wreck

Economic Conditions

Deryevnalit., the village

fig., thecountryside,rural Russia

Agriculture provided the economic and social basis of late-tsarist Russia. Approximately four-fifths of her population consisted of peasants who tilled the land and, in the northern provinces, also pursued industrial side occupations. A balloonist flying over Central Russia would have seen an endless landscape of cultivated fields, divided into narrow strips, interspersed with forests and meadows, scattered among which, every five to ten kilometers, lay villages of wooden huts. Cities were small and far between.

Richard Pipes, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, p. 4

Imperative for Change

We are at least two hundred years behind, we have really gained nothing yet, we have no definite attitude to the past, we do nothing but theorize or complain of depression or drink vodka. It is clear that to begin to live in the present we must first expiate our past, we must break with it; and we can expiate it only by suffering, by extraordinary unceasing labor.

the “perpetual student” Trofimovin Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, 1904

Imperative for Change

19th Century Russian Inte!igentsia

WesternizersSlavophilsVladimir Solovyov

Aleksey Khomyakov

Aleksandr Herzen

Vissarion Belinsky

Advocates of Reform:Three Main Groups

1. economic and social change granted from above

1. economic and social change granted from aboveby imperial ukase or administrative action without alteration of the political or social system

examples--Alexander II, in his early years, bureaucrat reformers, Miliutin, Stolypin

2. emulate the liberal countries of western Europe

2. emulate the liberal countries of western Europegradual reforms by the progressive extension of political rights

Westernizers, university professors, civil servants, professionals, capitalists

3. revolutionaries of various types

3. revolutionaries of various typesleast homogeneous of the three groups

Narodniki, People’s Will, Land and Freedom, Social Democrats, Bolsheviks. SRs

only agreed on the need for violence

Opponents of Reform

most members of the governing classes

Opponents of Reform

most members of the governing classesat the court,

Opponents of Reform

in the higher civil service and the officers of the military,

Opponents of Reform

the church, the Slavophil intelligentsia

Opponents of Reform

the landed gentry, who opposed change for ideological or material reasons

Opponents of Reform

the landed gentry, who opposed change for ideological or material reasons

the Muzhiki, the peasantry “the inert mass of the population”

The Agrarian Problem

Deryevna in Tambov Gubernia, 1891-92

photo by Maxim Dimitreyev,father of Russian photo journalism

The Mir System

S. Korovin, “На Миру (Na Miru)On the Mir”

The Mir System

mir-Slavic term=village collective, world, & peace; cf., Mir Miru

The Mir System

1861-the emancipation edict took the mir out from under the local noble and made it a self- governing body, collectively responsible for paying the redemption dues

The Mir System

peasants couldn’t leave without the permission of the mir

The Mir System

land was alloted by the mir to each household

The Mir System

land was alloted by the mir to each household

the medieval “three field system” and similar backward practices kept yields low

Primitive Transportation Hindered Productivity

Ilya Repin. Barge Haulers on the Volga. 1870-1873. Oil on canvas. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

… the great mass of the peasantry continued to live in the communes [miri] in conditions of deepening poverty. It is not surprising that the memory of the exciting promise of the days of emancipation should gradually have been transformed into a legend that the tsar’s wishes … had been betrayed by evil forces, and that some day justice would be done….

Craig, p.383

Industry & Labor

THE PUTILOV COMPANY IN LATE IMPERIAL RUSSIA, 1868-1917

19th Century Russian Industry

in contrast to agriculture, there was decided growth and modernization here

the Putilov Locomotive Works of St. Petersburg was “the Russian Krupp”

the rapid railway building of the 1870s slowed in the next decade

but between 1892 and 1902 total rail mileage grew by 46%

1890-1900-Putilov’s work force quadrupled to 12,400

rail demand spurred the new coal and iron industry in the Donetz basin

Baku and the Caucasus oil fields were another new development at the turn of the century

Rostow’s Take-off Stage was 1885-1900, so Russia had begun the Drive to Maturity (Stage 4) well before the 1917 Revolution

The Admiralty Dockyard. Lithograph by C.P.Beggrow . 1820s.

Peter the Great’s Navy Shipyard, Skt-Peterburg

The first steamboat in Russia, Elizabeth, was built at the plant of K. N. Bird in 1815, and in 1834, the submarine of A. A. Schilder was built at Alexandrovsky Plant. It was the first solid-metal vessel constructed in Russia. To defend the sea approaches to the capital in 1854-55 a total of 89 propeller gunboats and corvettes were built; some battleships were equipped with propeller engines on the initiative of General-Admiral Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich with participation of N. I. Putilov in St. Petersburg. From the middle of the 19th century and up to 1904, the New Admiralty alone built 36 military ships, and Borodino battleship is considered to be the best of those. Nevsky Plant established in 1857 specialized in construction of torpedo boats as did Metal Plant founded at the same time. In 1912, the joint-stock company of Putilov Plants created Putilov Ship Building Plant and purchased Nevsky Plant. In 1914-17 some 10,000 workers were employed at these enterprises, building destroyers. By the end of 1914, the Baltic Plant and the Admiralty Plant completed 4 dreadnought battleships (Sevastopol, Poltava, Petropavlovsk and Gangut), and the serial construction of turbine destroyers of Novik type started at Putilov Plant. All in all in 1908-17, Petrograd shipbuilders built 37 turbine ships for the Baltic Fleet.

Russia’s “Military-Industrial Complex”--80 years later

The first steamboat in Russia, Elizabeth, was built at the plant of K. N. Bird in 1815, and in 1834, the submarine of A. A. Schilder was built at Alexandrovsky Plant. It was the first solid-metal vessel constructed in Russia. To defend the sea approaches to the capital in 1854-55 a total of 89 propeller gunboats and corvettes were built; some battleships were equipped with propeller engines on the initiative of General-Admiral Grand Prince Konstantin Nikolaevich with participation of N. I. Putilov in St. Petersburg. From the middle of the 19th century and up to 1904, the New Admiralty alone built 36 military ships, and Borodino battleship is considered to be the best of those. Nevsky Plant established in 1857 specialized in construction of torpedo boats as did Metal Plant founded at the same time. In 1912, the joint-stock company of Putilov Plants created Putilov Ship Building Plant and purchased Nevsky Plant. In 1914-17 some 10,000 workers were employed at these enterprises, building destroyers. By the end of 1914, the Baltic Plant and the Admiralty Plant completed 4 dreadnought battleships (Sevastopol, Poltava, Petropavlovsk and Gangut), and the serial construction of turbine destroyers of Novik type started at Putilov Plant. All in all in 1908-17, Petrograd shipbuilders built 37 turbine ships for the Baltic Fleet.

Russia’s “Military-Industrial Complex”--80 years later

State Sponsorship of Industry

father, Dutch Lutheran; mother, Russian nobility

college in Odessa, mathematics degree

1870s & ‘80s-railroad administration

1889-1892-Director of Railway Affairs--began the Trans-Siberian Railway

1892-1903-Finance Minister

encouraged foreign investment, 1897-put Russia on the gold standard

1903-1905-Chairman, Council of Ministers

Sergei Yulevich Witte1849-1915

VOLZHSKO-KAMSKY BANK, a joint-stock commercial bank founded by a group of manufacturers and merchants. The share capital amounted to 6 million roubles and increased up to 18 million roubles by 1914. The bank developed a network of 60 branches that in 1914 covered commercial centers of the Volga Region and the Urals, as well as Kiev, Kharkov, and Ekaterinburg. The leader among Russian commercial banks in 1890s, the bank dealt with financing domestic production, as well as issuing and distributing bonds of Russian rail carriers from the late 1890s on. The bank also took part in establishing Produgol Syndicate [to develop oil resources-JBP] in 1906. The volume of transactions was high enough for the bank to rank 6th among all Russian banks by 1914. The building of Volzhsko-Kamsky Bank was built by architect L. N. Benois at 38 Nevsky Prospect in the first third of the 19th century and partly re-built in 1898.

(KRASNY) TREUGOLNIK (138 Obvodny Canal Embankment), an open joint-stock company, an enterprise making footwear from polymer materials. It was founded in 1860 by Hamburg merchant F. Krauskopf and his companions as the Russian-American Rubber Manufacture Association (since 1908 it was called Treugolnik). The main products of the plant were rubber overshoes (in the period from 1900 to 1912 its production increased from 10 million to 20 million pairs; up to 25% of the products were exported). The plant also produced machine belts, pipes for pipelines, discharge valves and faucets, isolation, medical instruments, etc. Up to the late 19th century the plant was country monopolist in this sector of the market, in the 20th century it was the largest enterprise of rubber goods production in Russia and Europe.

19th Century St. Petersburg Plants

19th Century St. Petersburg PlantsAfter the 1917 revolution the Putilov works were renamed “Red Putilov.” In 1934, Stalin secretly

had Sergei Kirov assassinated and named them for him

Development of a Proletariat

Development of a ProletariatWith the growth of industry in the 1890s...changes became noticeable: the number to take permanent empoyment in the fatories increased; thousands loosened their last ties with their villages; and many began to break away from old beliefs and to reject the restrictions imposed on their behavior by the Church and the patriarchal family. In addition, the fierce struggles in the factories had led at least a small core of the workers to see the relation between their economic problems and larger political problems; the fact that the state protected their employers--often foreign capitalists--impressed upon them the need for changing the political situation in order to improve the economic.

Sidney Harcave, Russia; A History, p. 381

The Human CostsThe Lena Goldfields Massacre

MEMORIAL AT THE PLACE OF THE WORKER MASSACRE 4/17 APRIL 1912 YEAR

SLUICE AT THE SITE OF THE ANNUNCIATION GOLD MINE

From material in the book “Harbinger of Revolutionary Events”

The Lena Miners OrganizePresident of the Central Strike Committee

Pavel Nikolaevich Batashev

From a Russian internet site

The Lena Miners Organize

Merciless exploitation of the workforce provided enormous profits for the British and Russian shareholders, such as A.I.Vyshnegradsky, Alexei Putilov (both on the board of directors), Count Sergei Witte, Empress Maria Fyodorovna, and others.

President of the Central Strike Committee Pavel Nikolaevich Batashev

The working conditions at the goldfields were extremely harsh. The miners had to work 15 to 16 hours a day. For every thousand workers, there were more than 700 traumatic accidents. One part of the low salary often had to be used to pay fines. The other part of it was given in the form of coupons to be used in stores at the mine itself.

February 29 (March 13) 1912-All this led a spontaneous strike at the Andreyevsky goldfield. An immediate cause for the strike was distribution of rotten meat at one of the stores.

4 March-the workers established their demands: an 8-hour workday, 30% raise in wages, the elimination of fines, and the improvement of food delivery, among others. However, none of these demands were satisfied by the administration

mid-March- the strike had extended to all the goldfields, and included over 6000 workers

the climax

4 April 1912 a thin line of Russian soldiers, confronted by a large crowd of gold miners on strike for several weeks, reacted with fear and anger. At their officers' orders, they opened fire, shooting five hundred unarmed protestors [150-270 killed, 100-250 wounded]. The event reverberated across Russia.

the climax

It has been suggested that Vladimir Ulyanov adopted his more popular alias after the river Lena — Lenin — after this event, although he had in fact started using it years earlier[1901]. He had served time in Shushenskoe (in Siberia, but not on the Lena River), 1897-1900

the climax

It has been suggested that Vladimir Ulyanov adopted his more popular alias after the river Lena — Lenin — after this event, although he had in fact started using it years earlier[1901]. He had served time in Shushenskoe (in Siberia, but not on the Lena River), 1897-1900

22 April 1912 Pravda sold 60,000 copies of its first issue describing the massacre

Lena. 1912 year. Picture by the artist U.N. Tulin

ETERNAL MEMORIAL FOR THE LENA WORKERS SLAIN IN THE BEASTLY MASSACRE4/17 APRIL 1912 WITNESSING THE STRUGGLE OF THE WORKING CLASS

1912 - 1967

Foreign Trade

The grain ship 'L'Avenir' (1908) moored in the Millwall Docks, with McDougall's Wheatsheaf Mill in the background. A French ship carrying Russian grain to Britain

Russia’s Share of World Trade=4%

not markedly higher than in the first half of the century

most striking development--steady growth of grain exports

1860-1,120,000 tons to 1897-6,945,000 tons

1836-1840-grain = 15% of total value of Russian exports

after 1871-grain = about 50%

effects outside the purely economic sphere1902-under pressure from the junkers, Germany passed a tariff that severely hurt Russian grain exports

this pushed Russia even farther into the anti-German French alliance

Domestic Political Developments

Ilya Repin. The Revolutionary Meeting. 1883. Oil on canvas. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

Full Reaction, 1881-1905

Full Reaction, 1881-1905Первомартовцы

(Pyervomartovtsi

The First of Marchers)

(Those who did something

[assassinate Alexander II]

on the first of March) by

Nicolai Kibalchick

The Tsar Liberator

March 1, 1881--Both the thirty-five year old tsarevich, about to become tsar Alexander III and his twelve year old son, Nicolasha, one day to become the last tsar were present at the death bed of tsar Alexander II. As he lay there, both legs shattered by the assassin’s bomb, dying in great pain, beyond the physicians’ ability to save; is it too much to assume that the hope for further liberal reforms was dying as well?

Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev (1827-1907)

son of a literature professor, becomes a law professor

1866-tutor to the future Alexander III

1880- Procurator of the Holy Synod (controls state church)

1881-becomes the “eminence grise,” bane of liberals

1894-less influence under Nicholas whom he also tutored, still Russification maintained

Pobiedonostsev’s Reaction

opposed the liberal Interior Minister, Count Loris-Melikov

said political reforms cause “drift toward constitutionalism”

“Russification” of Poles and Finns, pogroms against the Jews

replaced Zemstvo schools with parochial schools under his control

reversed liberal judicial reforms of Alexander IIValentin Serov. Portrait of K. Pobedonostsev. 1902.

Charcoal, color pencils on paper. The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Russia’s Jews

1791-the Pale of Settlement was begun by Catherine the Great

At its heyday, the Pale, which included the new Polish and Lithuanian territories, had a Jewish population of over 5 million, which represented the largest concentration (40 percent) of world Jewry at that time.

Jews who wouldn’t convert were expelled from cities to the Pale, unless they had special skills or economic qualifications

pogroms (pa•GROMs) were especially fierce 1881-1883 and 1903-1906

1881-1914-some 2 million emigrated, mostly to the United States

Tsar Alexander III

“unsophisticated, conscientious ruler with a firm will and unrelievedly conservative views”

1881-Education Minister Count Dimitry Tolstoy added Interior (MVD, i.e., police) to his portfolio

the secret, counter-terrorist police, the Okhrana, is created

famous for the technique of agents provocateurs and forging The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

1882-”temporary”laws further muzzled the universities and the press. “May Laws” tightened restrictions on the Jews 1845-1881-1894

The Okhrana Leadership at Fontanka 16

Photograph, 1905Sunday, October 11, 2009

a fateful execution?

Aleksandr Ulyanov1866-1887

• gold medalist at Simbirsk & Skt-Peterburg Universities (natural sciences, zoology)

• 1886-became a member of the terrorist wing of the Narodnaya Volya

• March 1, 1887-arrested as part of an assassination plot against Alexander III (hence called piervomartovtsi, like the earlier successful assassins of his father)

• 8 March-tried and hanged at Schisselburg

• legend has it that his younger brother, V.I. Ulyanov, was radicalized by this event

• this is doubtful, he had a cold response,”There is another way;” Lenin never favored “propaganda of the deed”

Soviet monument at Schisselburg commemorating thepolitical prisoners executed there

Reformers and Revolutionaries

Арест пропагандистаArrest of a propagandistby Ilya Repin

Coronation of the last tsar; 26/14 May 1896Sunday, October 11, 2009

Valentin Serov. Anointing of the Emperor Nicholas II in The Uspensky Cathedral. 1896. Oil on canvas. The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.

An Ill Omen? the Khodynka Stampede

18 [O.S.] May 1896Sunday, October 11, 2009

An Ill Omen? the Khodynka Stampede

Of the approximate half million in attendance, it is estimated that 1,429 individuals died and another 9,000 to 20,000 were injured.

Very much like our Who Concert tragedy, the crowds trampled one another; here, to get to the free beer and trinkets celebrating the coronation

18 [O.S.] May 1896Sunday, October 11, 2009