sergei witte: finance minister responsible for industrialisation reform in russia
TRANSCRIPT
THE CRISES OF 1905…
• Sergei Witte:
• Finance Minister
• Responsible for industrialisation reform in Russia
RUSSIAN INDUSTRIALISATION
Rapid industrialisation brought with it virtually no legislative or regulatory controls on the treatment of labour
By the first years of the 20th century, Russia’s three million industrial workers were one of the lowest paid workforces in Europe
WORKING CONDITIONS:
The average working day was 10.5 hours, six days a week
15-hour days were not unknown.
There were no annual holidays, sick leave or superannuation.
WORKING CONDITIONS:
Workplace hygiene and safety were poor; illness, accidents and injuries were common-place and with no leave or compensation available, sick or injured workers were summarily dismissed
Factory owners often imposed arbitrary fines for lateness, failing to meet production quotas or more trivial ‘offences’ like toilet breaks and talking or singing while working
DISSATISFACTION GROWS
Living conditions were overcrowded because there was not enough infrastructure to support the peasants moving to the cities looking for industrial work
1904 survey: An average of 16 people per apartment
DISSATISFACTION GROWS…
The dissatisfaction of factory workers grew steadily but became particularly acute in the final months of 1904 because:
Russia entered the difficult and disastrous war with Japan
The national economy slipped into a severe
recession where trade declined, where companies to dismiss thousands of workers and increase pressure on those they retained.
DISSATISFACTION GROWS
There were significant increases in homelessness and poverty; the tsarist government’s only response was to ask zemstvo leaders to organise charitable relief.
Food prices in the cities increased by as much as 50 per cent, however wages failed to increase correspondingly.
SACKING OF WORKERS FROM THE PUTILOV STEEL PLANT
In early 1905, 5 men were sacked from the Putilov Steel Works, one of the largest factories in St Petersburg
This resulted in massive strikes of sympathy throughout the city, growing to 105 000 workers by Friday, 7 January 1905
BLOODY SUNDAY
On a freezing Saturday morning on the 9th January 1905, the largest strike in Russia’s history occurred
111 000 men, women and children started to march in different sections of St Petersburg aiming to march to the Tsar’s Winter Palace on the Neva River
The Putilov strikes and Sunday march were organised by Father Georgy Gapon, a Ukranian-born priest and head of the radical Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers
BLOODY SUNDAY
The aim of these strikes was to present the Tsar with a petition signed by 135 000 workers outlining their grievances and requesting significant reforms, including
The marchers carried religious symbols and carried portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina
BLOODY SUNDAY
Nicholas II was in his palace 25 miles south of the capital
As several thousand workers approached the Winter Palace, officers called out the palace’s security garrison (comprised of soldiers and cossacks) to guard its entry points
As the workers approached, the soldiers opened fire on the crowd
It is not known whether the soldiers fired spontaneously or in response to aggression
The number of victims is also unclear, estimated between 96 and over 200
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE PICTURE?
CONSEQUENCES
Nicholas was condemned in much of the Western world as a tyrant
The Tsar was given the name of ‘Bloody Nicholas’ within Russia
Father Gapon: “there is no God…there is no Tsar!” The next day, 150 000 workers showed their disgust
by not working The Tsar lost his benevolent image and lost the
support of a large proportion of the workers Over the coming days these strikes expanded
throughout St Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw and the Baltic states
CONSEQUENCES: A BRITISH CARTOON OF THE TSAR
CONSEQUENCES
February 17th: Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar’s uncle and brother-in-law and former governor of Moscow, was assassinated in the Kremlin
The murder was carried out by the SR party’s terrorist arm
BATTLE OF TSUSHIMA: MAY 1905
Last class: we saw that this was the turning point in the Russo-Japanese War
Japan sealed the humiliating military defeat of Russia
Exposed weaknesses in infrastructure
Contributed to economic recession and rising of food prices
Exacerbated existing discontent from ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre
MUTINY OF THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN AND OTHER MUTINIES
Another worrying sign for tsarism was a spate of mutinies that erupted in military units through the middle and end of 1905, spurred by a drop in morale after the Battle of Tsushima
The most famous of these occurred aboard the battleship Potemkin on the Black Sea, triggered by officers with a liking for corporal punishment and the serving of maggot-ridden meat to mistreated sailors.
In June 1905 the sailors, inspired by civilian uprisings in the cities, rebelled and killed or expelled the ship’s officers.
Now in command of the Potemkin, they sailed it first to Odessa (which was under a general strike) and then to Romania, where most of them disembarked.
Another mutiny broke at in November at the naval depot in Sevastopol, where several thousand sailors formed their own worker’s representative council and demanded the abolition of tsarism, a constituent assembly and improvements to their conditions.
OTHER MUTINIES
In September, on return from fighting the Japanese in the east, army troops mutinied and occupied a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway
These mutinies: Nicholas was losing support of some of the armed forces, unable to restore order given the random nature and location of armed opposition
ESTABLISHMENT OF UNIONS AND SOVIETS
Miliukov (Menshevik leader) establishes a worker’s union in May, the All-Russian Union of Peasants in June
The St Petersburg Soviet (representative worker’s committee) is established by Leon Trotsky in October, containing 500 delegates elected by 200,000 workers in almost 100 different factories –to represent industrial workers
The Mensheviks were the dominant political group in this new body
The Bolsheviks and SRs were also well-represented Factory workers and peasants were now formally
represented so their grievances could be heard
GENERAL STRIKES
Within a month of Bloody Sunday an estimated 800,000 industrial workers were striking across Russia, around half of these in St Petersburg alone
By October, the widespread nature of these halted the economy
The Tsar was forced to act –issued the October Manifesto on 17th October 1905 promising a parliament to represent the Russian people, called a Duma
A BARRICADE ERECTED BY REVOLUTIONARIES IN ST PETERSBURG
A TRAIN OVERTURNED BY STRIKING WORKERS AT THE MAIN RAILWAY DEPOT IN TIFLIS IN 1905
SUMMARY
1. Russian industrial workers endured low wages, poor working conditions and appalling treatment from employers. 2. Conditions worsened in 1904 due to the war and economic recession, leading to the formation of workers’ sections.
3. In January 1905 workers at the Putilov plant, led by Georgy Gapon, drafted a petition intended for the tsar.
4. When they attempted to deliver this, scores of workers were gunned down in the street by tsarist soldiers.
5. ‘Bloody Sunday’, as it became known, eroded respect for tsarism and contributed to a wave of general strikes, political demands and violence that became the 1905 Revolution.
SUMMARY
5. The 1905 Revolution that followed was not a coordinated revolution but a series of anti-tsarist strikes, protests and actions.
6. Triggered by the Bloody Sunday shootings in the capital, it began as general strikes imposed by industrial workers.
7. There was also political violence, such as the assassination of the tsar’s uncle Grand Duke Sergei.
8. Other features of the revolution were military mutinies and the formation of workers’ soviets.
9. The tsar responded by promising a representative Duma but this was not done either promptly or sincerely.
‘MOTHER RUSSIA IN CHAINS’
US CARTOON