Download Transformation of Russia in the 19th Century

Russia: Transformation of the Russian Empire in the 19th Century
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were times of crisis for Russia. Not
only did technology and industry continue to develop more rapidly in the West, but
also new, dynamic, competitive great powers appeared on the world scene: Otto von
Bismarck united Germany in the 1860s, the post-Civil War United States grew in size
and strength, and a modernized Japan emerged from the Meiji Restoration of 1868.
Although Russia was an expanding regional giant in Central Asia, bordering the
Ottoman, Persian, British Indian, and Chinese empires, it could not generate enough
capital to support rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced
countries on a commercial basis. Russia's fundamental dilemma was that
accelerated domestic development risked upheaval at home, but slower progress
risked full economic dependency on the faster-advancing countries to the east and
west. In fact, political ferment, particularly among the intelligentsia, accompanied the
transformation of Russia's economic and social structure, but so did impressive
developments in literature, music, the fine arts, and the natural sciences.
Economic Developments
Throughout the last half of the nineteenth century, Russia's economy developed
more slowly than did that of the major European nations to its west. Russia's
population was substantially larger than those of the more developed Western
countries, but the vast majority of the people lived in rural communities and engaged
in relatively primitive agriculture. Industry, in general, had greater state involvement
than in Western Europe, but in selected sectors it was developing with private
initiative, some of it foreign. Between 1850 and 1900, Russia's population doubled,
but it remained chiefly rural well into the twentieth century. Russia's population
growth rate from 1850 to 1910 was the fastest of all the major powers except for the
United States. Agriculture, which was technologically underdeveloped, remained in
the hands of former serfs and former state peasants, who together constituted about
four-fifths of the rural population. Large estates of more than fifty square kilometers
accounted for about 20 percent of all farmland, but few such estates were worked in
efficient, large-scale units. Small-scale peasant farming and the growth of the rural
population increased the amount of land used for agricultural development, but land
was used more for gardens and fields of grain and less for grazing meadows than it
had been in the past.
Industrial growth was significant, although unsteady, and in absolute terms it was not
extensive. Russia's industrial regions included Moscow, the central regions of
European Russia, St. Petersburg, the Baltic cities, Russian Poland, some areas
along the lower Don and Dnepr rivers, and the southern Ural Mountains. By 1890
Russia had about 32,000 kilometers of railroads and 1.4 million factory workers,
most of whom worked in the textile industry. Between 1860 and 1890, annual coal
production had grown about 1,200 percent to over 6.6 million tons, and iron and steel
production had more than doubled to 2 million tons per year. The state budget had
more than doubled, however, and debt expenditures had quadrupled, constituting 28
percent of official expenditures in 1891. Foreign trade was inadequate to meet the
empire's needs. Until the state introduced high industrial tariffs in the 1880s, it could
not finance trade with the West because its surpluses were insufficient to cover the
debts.
Reforms and their Limits: 1855-1892
Tsar Alexander II, who succeeded Nicholas I in 1855, was a conservative who saw
no alternative but to implement change. Alexander initiated substantial reforms in
education, the government, the judiciary, and the military. In 1861 he proclaimed the
emancipation of about 20 million privately held serfs. Local commissions, which were
dominated by landlords, effected emancipation by giving land and limited freedom to
the serfs. The former serfs usually remained in the village commune, but they were
required to make redemption payments to the government over a period of almost
fifty years. The government compensated former owners of serfs by issuing them
bonds.
The regime had envisioned that the 50,000 landlords who possessed estates of
more than 110 hectares would thrive without serfs and would continue to provide
loyal political and administrative leadership in the countryside. The government also
had expected that peasants would produce sufficient crops for their own
consumption and for export sales, thereby helping to finance most of the
government's expenses, imports, and foreign debt. Neither of the government's
expectations was realistic, however, and emancipation left both former serfs and
their former owners dissatisfied. The new peasants soon fell behind in their
payments to the government because the land they had received was poor and
because Russian agricultural methods were inadequate. The former owners often
had to sell their lands to remain solvent because most of them could neither farm nor
manage estates without their former serfs. In addition, the value of their government
bonds fell as the peasants failed to make their redemption payments.
Reforms of local government closely followed emancipation. In 1864 most local
government in the European part of Russia was organized into provincial and district
zemstva (sing., zemstvo), which were made up of representatives of all classes and
were responsible for local schools, public health, roads, prisons, food supply, and
other concerns. In 1870 elected city councils, or dumy (sing., duma ), were formed.
Dominated by property owners and constrained by provincial governors and the
police, the zemstva and dumy raised taxes and levied labor to support their activities.
In 1864 the regime implemented judicial reforms. In major towns, it established
Western-style courts with juries. In general, the judicial system functioned effectively,
but the government lacked the finances and cultural influence to extend the court
system to the villages, where traditional peasant justice continued to operate with
minimal interference from provincial officials. In addition, the regime instructed
judges to decide each case on its merits and not to use precedents, which would
have enabled them to construct a body of law independent of state authority.
Other major reforms took place in the educational and cultural spheres. The
accession of Alexander II brought a social restructuring that required a public
discussion of issues and the lifting of some types of censorship. When an attempt
was made to assassinate the tsar in 1866, the government reinstated censorship,
but not with the severity of pre-1855 control. The government also put restrictions on
universities in 1866, five years after they had gained autonomy. The central
government attempted to act through the zemstva to establish uniform curricula for
elementary schools and to impose conservative policies, but it lacked resources.
Because many liberal teachers and school officials were only nominally subject to
the reactionary Ministry of Education, however, the regime's educational
achievements were mixed after 1866.
In the financial sphere, Russia established the State Bank in 1866, which put the
national currency on a firmer footing. The Ministry of Finance supported railroad
development, which facilitated vital export activity, but it was cautious and moderate
in its foreign ventures. The ministry also founded the Peasant Land Bank in 1882 to
enable enterprising farmers to acquire more land. The Ministry of Internal Affairs
countered this policy, however, by establishing the Nobles' Land Bank in 1885 to
forestall foreclosures of mortgages.
The regime also sought to reform the military. One of the chief reasons for the
emancipation of the serfs was to facilitate the transition from a large standing army to
a reserve army by instituting territorial levies and mobilization in times of need.
Before emancipation, serfs could not receive military training and then return to their
owners. Bureaucratic inertia, however, obstructed military reform until the FrancoPrussian War (1870-71) demonstrated the necessity of building a modern army. The
levy system introduced in 1874 gave the army a role in teaching many peasants to
read and in pioneering medical education for women. But the army remained
backward despite these military reforms. Officers often preferred bayonets to bullets,
expressing worry that long-range sights on rifles would induce cowardice. In spite of
some notable achievements, Russia did not keep pace with Western technological
developments in the construction of rifles, machine guns, artillery, ships, and naval
ordnance. Russia also failed to use naval modernization as a means of developing
its industrial base in the 1860s.
In 1881 revolutionaries assassinated Alexander II. His son Alexander III (r. 1881-94)
initiated a period of political reaction, which intensified a counterreform movement
that had begun in 1866. He strengthened the security police, reorganizing it into an
agency known as the Okhrana, gave it extraordinary powers, and placed it under the
Ministry of Internal Affairs. Dmitriy Tolstoy, Alexander's minister of internal affairs,
instituted the use of land captains, who were noble overseers of districts, and he
restricted the power of the zemstva and the dumy . Alexander III assigned his former
tutor, the reactionary Konstantin Pobedonostsev, to be the procurator of the Holy
Synod of the Orthodox Church and Ivan Delyanov to be the minister of education. In
their attempts to "save" Russia from "modernism," they revived religious censorship,
persecuted non-Orthodox and non-Russian populations, fostered anti-Semitism, and
suppressed the autonomy of the universities. Their attacks on liberal and nonRussian elements alienated large segments of the population. The nationalities,
particularly Poles, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Ukrainians, reacted to the
regime's efforts to Russify them by intensifying their own nationalism. Many Jews
emigrated or joined radical movements. Secret organizations and political
movements continued to develop despite the regime's efforts to quell them.
Foreign Affairs after the Crimean War
After the Crimean War, Russia pursued cautious and well-calculated foreign policies
until nationalist passions and another Balkan crisis almost caused a catastrophic war
in the late 1870s. The 1856 Treaty of Paris, signed at the end of the Crimean War,
had demilitarized the Black Sea and deprived Russia of southern Bessarabia and a
narrow strip of land at the mouth of the Danube River. The treaty gave the West
European powers the nominal duty of protecting Christians living in the Ottoman
Empire, removing that role from Russia, which had been designated as such a
protector in the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji. Russia's primary goal during the first
phase of Alexander II's foreign policy was to alter the Treaty of Paris to regain naval
access to the Black Sea. Russian statesmen viewed Britain and Austria
(redesignated as Austria-Hungary in 1867) as opposed to that goal, so foreign policy
concentrated on good relations with France, Prussia, and the United States. Prussia
(Germany as of 1871) replaced Britain as Russia's chief banker in this period.
Following the Crimean War, the regime revived its expansionist policies. Russian
troops first moved to gain control of the Caucasus region, where the revolts of
Muslim tribesmen--Chechens, Cherkess, and Dagestanis--had continued despite
numerous Russian campaigns in the nineteenth century. Once the forces of
Aleksandr Baryatinskiy had captured the legendary Chechen rebel leader Shamil in
1859, the army resumed the expansion into Central Asia that had begun under
Nicholas I. The capture of Tashkent was a significant victory over the Quqon
(Kokand) Khanate, part of which was annexed in 1866. By 1867 Russian forces had
captured enough territory to form the Guberniya (Governorate General) of Turkestan,
the capital of which was Tashkent. The Bukhoro (Bukhara) Khanate then lost the
crucial Samarqand area to Russian forces in 1868. To avoid alarming Britain, which
had strong interests in protecting nearby India, Russia left the Bukhoran territories
directly bordering Afghanistan and Persia nominally independent. The Central Asian
khanates retained a degree of autonomy until 1917.
Russia followed the United States, Britain, and France in establishing relations with
Japan, and, together with Britain and France, Russia obtained concessions from
China consequent to the Second Opium War (1856-60). Under the Treaty of Aigun in
1858 and the Treaty of Beijing in 1860, China ceded to Russia extensive trading
rights and regions adjacent to the Amur and Ussuri rivers and allowed Russia to
begin building a port and naval base at Vladivostok. Meanwhile, in 1867 the logic of
the balance of power and the cost of developing and defending the Amur-Ussuri
region dictated that Russia sell Alaska to the United States in order to acquire muchneeded funds.
As part of the regime's foreign policy goals in Europe, Russia initially gave guarded
support to France's anti-Austrian diplomacy. A weak Franco-Russian entente soured,
however, when France backed a Polish uprising against Russian rule in 1863.
Russia then aligned itself more closely with Prussia by approving the unification of
Germany in exchange for a revision of the Treaty of Paris and the remilitarization of
the Black Sea. These diplomatic achievements came at a London conference in
1871, following France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. After 1871 Germany,
united under Prussian leadership, was the strongest continental power in Europe. In
1873 Germany formed the loosely knit League of the Three Emperors with Russia
and Austria-Hungary to prevent them from forming an alliance with France.
Nevertheless, Austro-Hungarian and Russian ambitions clashed in the Balkans,
where rivalries among Slavic nationalities and anti-Ottoman sentiments seethed. In
the 1870s, Russian nationalist opinion became a serious domestic factor in its
support for liberating Balkan Christians from Ottoman rule and making Bulgaria and
Serbia quasi-protectorates of Russia. From 1875 to 1877, the Balkan crisis escalated
with rebellions in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria, which the Ottoman Turks
suppressed with such great cruelty that Serbia, but none of the West European
powers, declared war.
In early 1877, Russia came to the rescue of beleaguered Serbian and Russian
volunteer forces when it went to war with the Ottoman Empire. Within one year,
Russian troops were nearing Constantinople, and the Ottomans surrendered.
Russia's nationalist diplomats and generals persuaded Alexander II to force the
Ottomans to sign the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, creating an enlarged,
independent Bulgaria that stretched into the southwestern Balkans. When Britain
threatened to declare war over the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, an exhausted
Russia backed down. At the Congress of Berlin in July 1878, Russia agreed to the
creation of a smaller Bulgaria. Russian nationalists were furious with AustriaHungary and Germany for failing to back Russia, but the tsar accepted a revived and
strengthened League of the Three Emperors as well as Austro-Hungarian hegemony
in the western Balkans.
Russian diplomatic and military interests subsequently returned to Central Asia,
where Russia had quelled a series of uprisings in the 1870s, and Russia
incorporated hitherto independent amirates into the empire. Britain renewed its
concerns in 1881 when Russian troops occupied Turkmen lands on the Persian and
Afghan borders, but Germany lent diplomatic support to Russian advances, and an
Anglo-Russian war was averted. Meanwhile, Russia's sponsorship of Bulgarian
independence brought negative results as the Bulgarians, angry at Russia's
continuing interference in domestic affairs, sought the support of Austria-Hungary. In
the dispute that arose between Austria-Hungary and Russia, Germany took a firm
position toward Russia while mollifying the tsar with a bilateral defensive alliance, the
Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 between Germany and Russia. Within a year, RussoGerman acrimony led to Bismarck's forbidding further loans to Russia, and France
replaced Germany as Russia's financier. When Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed
Bismarck in 1890, the loose Russo-Prussian entente collapsed after having lasted
for more than twenty-five years. Three years later, Russia allied itself with France by
entering into a joint military convention, which matched the dual alliance formed in
1879 by Germany and Austria-Hungary.
The Rise of Revolutionary Movements
Alexander II's reforms, particularly the lifting of state censorship, fostered the
expression of political and social thought. The regime relied on journals and
newspapers to gain support for its domestic and foreign policies. But liberal,
nationalist, and radical writers also helped to mold public opinion that was opposed
to tsarism, private property, and the imperial state. Because many intellectuals,
professionals, peasants, and workers shared these opposition sentiments, the
regime regarded the publications and the radical organizations as dangerous. From
the 1860s through the 1880s, Russian radicals, collectively known as Populists
(Narodniki), focused chiefly on the peasantry, whom they identified as "the people"
(narod ).
The leaders of the Populist movement included radical writers, idealists, and
advocates of terrorism. In the 1860s, Nikolay Chernyshevskiy, the most important
radical writer of the period, posited that Russia could bypass capitalism and move
directly to socialism (see Glossary). His most influential work, What Is to Be Done?
(1861), describes the role of an individual of a "superior nature" who guides a new,
revolutionary generation. Other radicals such as the incendiary anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin and his terrorist collaborator, Sergey Nechayev, urged direct action. The
calmer Petr Tkachev argued against the advocates of Marxism (see Glossary),
maintaining that a centralized revolutionary band had to seize power before
capitalism could fully develop. Disputing his views, the moralist and individualist Petr
Lavrov made a call "to the people," which hundreds of idealists heeded in 1873 and
1874 by leaving their schools for the countryside to try to generate a mass
movement among the narod . The Populist campaign failed, however, when the
peasants showed hostility to the urban idealists and the government began to
consider nationalist opinion more seriously.
The radicals reconsidered their approach, and in 1876 they formed a propagandist
organization called Land and Liberty (Zemlya i volya), which leaned toward terrorism.
This orientation became stronger three years later, when the group renamed itself
the People's Will (Narodnaya volya), the name under which the radicals were
responsible for the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. In 1879 Georgiy Plekhanov
formed a propagandist faction of Land and Liberty called Black Repartition (Chernyy
peredel), which advocated redistributing all land to the peasantry. This group studied
Marxism, which, paradoxically, was principally concerned with urban industrial
workers. The People's Will remained underground, but in 1887 a young member of
the group, Aleksandr Ul'yanov, attempted to assassinate Alexander III, and
authorities arrested and executed him. The execution greatly affected Vladimir
Ul'yanov, Aleksandr's brother. Influenced by Chernyshevskiy's writings, Vladimir
joined the People's Will, and later, inspired by Plekhanov, he converted to Marxism.
The younger Ul'yanov later changed his name to Lenin.
Witte and Accelerated Industrialization
In the late 1800s, Russia's domestic backwardness and vulnerability in foreign affairs
reached crisis proportions. At home a famine claimed a half-million lives in 1891, and
activities by Japan and China near Russia's borders were perceived as threats from
abroad. In reaction, the regime was forced to adopt the ambitious but costly
economic programs of Sergey Witte, the country's strong-willed minister of finance.
Witte championed foreign loans, conversion to the gold standard, heavy taxation of
the peasantry, accelerated development of heavy industry, and a trans-Siberian
railroad. These policies were designed to modernize the country, secure the Russian
Far East, and give Russia a commanding position with which to exploit the resources
of China's northern territories, Korea, and Siberia. This expansionist foreign policy
was Russia's version of the imperialist logic displayed in the nineteenth century by
other large countries with vast undeveloped territories such as the United States. In
1894 the accession of the pliable Nicholas II upon the death of Alexander III gave
Witte and other powerful ministers the opportunity to dominate the government.
Witte's policies had mixed results. In spite of a severe economic depression at the
end of the century, Russia's coal, iron, steel, and oil production tripled between 1890
and 1900. Railroad mileage almost doubled, giving Russia the most track of any
nation other than the United States. Yet Russian grain production and exports failed
to rise significantly, and imports grew faster than exports. The state budget also
more than doubled, absorbing some of the country's economic growth. Western
historians differ as to the merits of Witte's reforms; some believe that domestic
industry, which did not benefit from subsidies or contracts, suffered a setback. Most
analysts agree that the Trans-Siberian Railroad (which was completed from Moscow
to Vladivostok in 1904) and the ventures into Manchuria and Korea were economic
losses for Russia and a drain on the treasury. Certainly the financial costs of his
reforms contributed to Witte's dismissal as minister of finance in 1903.
Radical Political Parties Develop
During the 1890s, Russia's industrial development led to a significant increase in the
size of the urban bourgeoisie and the working class, setting the stage for a more
dynamic political atmosphere and the development of radical parties. Because the
state and foreigners owned much of Russia's industry, the working class was
comparatively stronger and the bourgeoisie comparatively weaker than in the West.
The working class and peasants were the first to establish political parties because
the nobility and the wealthy bourgeoisie were politically timid. During the 1890s and
early 1900s, abysmal living and working conditions, high taxes, and land hunger
gave rise to more frequent strikes and agrarian disorders. These activities prompted
the bourgeoisie of various nationalities in the empire to develop a host of different
parties, both liberal and conservative.
Socialists of different nationalities formed their own parties. Russian Poles, who had
suffered significant administrative and educational Russification, founded the
nationalistic Polish Socialist Party in Paris in 1892. That party's founders hoped that
it would help reunite a divided Poland with the territories held by Austria-Hungary,
Germany, and Russia. In 1897 Jewish workers in Russia created the Bund (league
or union), an organization that subsequently became popular in western Ukraine,
Belorussia, Lithuania, and Russian Poland. The Russian Social Democratic Labor
Party was established in 1898. The Finnish Social Democrats remained separate,
but the Latvians and Georgians associated themselves with the Russian Social
Democrats. Armenians, inspired by both Russian and Balkan revolutionary traditions,
were politically active in this period in Russia and in the Ottoman Empire. Politically
minded Muslims living in Russia tended to be attracted to the pan-Islamic and panTurkic movements that were developing in Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. Russians
who fused the ideas of the old Populists and urban socialists formed Russia's largest
radical movement, the United Socialist Revolutionary Party, which combined the
standard Populist mix of propaganda and terrorist activities.
Vladimir I. Ul'yanov was the most politically talented of the revolutionary socialists. In
the 1890s, he labored to wean young radicals away from populism to Marxism.
Exiled from 1895 to 1899 in Siberia, where he took the name Lenin from the mighty
Siberian Lena River, he was the master tactician among the organizers of the
Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. In December 1900, he founded the
newspaper Iskra (Spark). In his book What Is to Be Done? (1902), Lenin developed
the theory that a newspaper published abroad could aid in organizing a centralized
revolutionary party to direct the overthrow of an autocratic government. He then
worked to establish a tightly organized, highly disciplined party to do so in Russia. At
the Second Party Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903,
he forced the Bund to walk out and induced a split between his majority Bolshevik
(see Glossary) faction and the minority Menshevik (see Glossary) faction, which
believed more in worker spontaneity than in strict organizational tactics. Lenin's
concept of a revolutionary party and a worker-peasant alliance owed more to
Tkachev and to the People's Will than to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the
developers of Marxism. Young Bolsheviks, such as Joseph V. Stalin and Nikolay
Bukharin, looked to Lenin as their leader.
Imperialism in Asia and the Russo-Japanese War
At the turn of the century, Russia gained room to maneuver in Asia because of its
alliance with France and the growing rivalry between Britain and Germany. Tsar
Nicholas failed to orchestrate a coherent Far Eastern policy because of ministerial
conflicts, however. Russia's uncoordinated and aggressive moves in the region
ultimately led to the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).
By 1895 Germany was competing with France for Russia's favor, and British
statesmen hoped to negotiate with the Russians to demarcate spheres of influence
in Asia. This situation enabled Russia to intervene in northeastern Asia after Japan's
victory over China in 1895. In the negotiations that followed, Japan was forced to
make concessions in the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur in southern Manchuria.
The next year, Witte used French capital to establish the Russo-Chinese Bank. The
goal of the bank was to finance the construction of a railroad across northern
Manchuria and thus shorten the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Within two years, Russia
had acquired leases on the Liaotung Peninsula and Port Arthur and had begun
building a trunk line from Harbin in central Manchuria to Port Arthur on the coast.
In 1900 China reacted to foreign encroachments on its territory with an armed
popular uprising, the Boxer Rebellion. Russian military contingents joined forces
from Europe, Japan, and the United States to restore order in northern China. A
force of 180,000 Russian troops fought to pacify part of Manchuria and to secure its
railroads. The Japanese were backed by Britain and the United States, however, and
insisted that Russia evacuate Manchuria. Witte and some Russian diplomats wanted
to compromise with Japan and trade Manchuria for Korea, but a group of Witte's
reactionary enemies, courtiers, and military and naval leaders refused to
compromise. The tsar favored their viewpoint, and, disdaining Japan's threats-despite the latter's formal alliance with Britain--the Russian government equivocated
until Japan declared war in early 1904.
In the war that followed, Japan's location, technological superiority, and superior
morale gave it command of the seas, and Russia's sluggishness and incompetent
commanders caused continuous setbacks on land. In January 1905, after an eightmonth siege, Russia surrendered Port Arthur, and in March the Japanese forced the
Russians to withdraw north of Mukden. In May, at the Tsushima Straits, the
Japanese destroyed Russia's last hope in the war, a fleet assembled from the navy's
Baltic and Mediterranean squadrons. Theoretically, Russian army reinforcements
could have driven the Japanese from the Asian mainland, but revolution at home and
diplomatic pressure forced the tsar to seek peace. Russia accepted mediation by
United States president Theodore Roosevelt, ceded southern Sakhalin Island to
Japan, and acknowledged Japan's ascendancy in Korea and southern Manchuria.
The Last Years of the Autocracy
The Russo-Japanese War was a turning point in Russian history. It led to a popular
uprising against the government that forced the regime to respond with domestic
economic and political reforms. In the same period, however, counterreform and
special-interest groups exerted increasing influence on the regime's policies. In
foreign affairs, Russia again became an intrusive participant in Balkan affairs and in
the international political intrigues of the major European powers. As a consequence
of its foreign policies, Russia was drawn into a world war for which its domestic
policies rendered it unprepared. Severely weakened by internal turmoil and lacking
leadership, the regime ultimately was unable to overcome the traumatic events that
would lead to the fall of tsarism and initiate a new era in Russian and world history.
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