GCE A Level History
Revision
Russia and Its Rulers
Little Heath School
Tuesday 31 May 2011
Russia and Its Rulers
– Government styles before / after 1917
Aims – what did each ruler want to achieve
Methods – how did each ruler rule; their policies (reform
/ repression)
Outcomes – how successful was each ruler in achieving
their aims
Essays asking whether one ruler was better than the
rest at ‘something specific’.
– TURNING POINT essays especially related to turning
points in how Russia was governed
Tsar
Alexander II
1855 - 1881
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• To secure the throne:
• Make himself, the Romanov Dynasty and autocracy
more popular.
METHODS
• Reform ‘from above’
OUTCOMES
• Alexander II faced a rising tide of opposition and
ultimately the Peoples Will assassinated him in 1881.
Turning Points
• An good case could be made that Alexander II’s
accession to the throne in 1855 was a significant turning
point in the government of Russia. His decision to
‘reform from above’ led to the Emancipation Edict in
1861. In one fell swoop he ended serfdom and brought
Russia and its peasants out of mediaeval feudalism.
• This case is flawed. The inadequacies of emancipation
were quickly apparent. The lives of the peasants
remained grim as exemplified by the famine of 1891.
• For the purposes of an essay about RUSSIAN
GOVERNMENT is it relevant?
Turning Points
• In 1881 the assassination of Alexander II, the ‘Tsar
Liberator’, brought a final end to the period of reform
dominated by his emancipation of the serfs in 1861. His
successor, Alexander III, ruled repressively and
autocratically; his reign is often referred to as ‘the Reaction’.
• It has been argued that the assassination of Alexander II
marked the last chance that the Romanovs might reform
sufficiently to save their doomed dynasty. This argument has
some validity but Alexander II, faced with a rising tide of
opposition abandoned any serious attempt to reform and
modernise Russia long before the Peoples Will sentenced
him to death.
Tsar
Alexander III
1881 - 1894
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• To secure the throne:
• To restore traditional autocracy.
METHODS
• The ‘Reaction’ – increased repression
• But allowed Witte to commence ‘the Great Spurt’
OUTCOMES
• Re-established secure government (but Trotsky argued
that Alexander III ‘bequeathed Nicholas II a revolution’).
Turning Points
• Alexander III’s reactionary policies restored stability
during his reign, but as Trotsky has argued, his legacy to
Nicholas II was to be the revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
• The Romanovs were on collision course with
catastrophe; Alexander II’s assassination was a
significant event but it was not the most important
turning-point in the development of Russian government
in this period.
Tsar
Nicholas II
1894 - 1917
Rasputin
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• To secure the throne:
• To maintain traditional autocracy.
• To ‘rule like my late, unforgettable father’.
METHODS
• Repression
• Reform (when forced into it by revolution)
OUTCOMES
• Abdication in February 1917 and ending of the Romanov
dynasty (and of autocracy)
Turning Points
• The Russian Revolution of 1905 led to the October Manifesto, the
apparent abandonment of autocracy and introduction of a constitution &
the formation of the Duma, 4 of which existed between 1906 and 1917.
• It could be argued that this was an important turning-point in the
development of Russian government because it was the only period in
which Russian government deviated from its autocratic / dictatorial norm.
• However, Nicholas II’s announcement of the Fundamental Laws and
reassertion of autocracy before the Duma had even sat, his sacking of the
first two Dumas within months of the elections and his blatant rigging of
subsequent elections for the third and fourth Dumas all suggest that this
was a façade.
• Nicholas II announced the October Revolution as a ‘divide and rule’
strategy to avoid being overthrown in 1905. The differences this made to
the reality of absolute rule were negligible and short-lived.
Turning Points
• The revolutions of 1917 profoundly changed the course of
Russian history, ending the Romanov dynasty and creating
the world’s first communist state. Even if Berdiaev was correct
when stating that ‘All of the past is repeating itself, and acts
only behind new masks’, this was a fundamental change of
significant importance in Russian and world history.
• The replacement of autocratic Tsarism with the world’s first
communist government during the revolutions of 1917 was of
major importance. By 1956 a significant part of the world was
communist and predominantly under the direct influence of
the USSR. All of this was a direct result of the events of 1917
and the Bolshevik seizure of power.
From Autocracy
(or did that end in 1905)
February (March) - October (November) 1917
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
To Communist Dictatorship
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• Democracy
• A temporary (provisional) government until elections for
a Constituent Assembly could be held.
METHODS
• Greater freedoms / liberal reforms
• But stayed in the WAR and failed to re-distribute the land
OUTCOMES
• Overthrown by the Bolsheviks in October
(Lenin’s slogan: ‘Peace, Bread and Land’).
Turning Points
• The ending of autocracy when Nicholas II abdicated in
February 1917 gave Russian Government a window of
opportunity in which to develop a constitutional and
democratic model.
• However the Provisional Government made so many
mistakes that it was swept aside in October before the
planned elections to the new Constitutional Assembly
could take place.
Lenin
1917 - 1924
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• To secure power
• To introduce communism / Marxism
• To modernise Russia and catch up with the West
METHODS
• The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’
• But key reforms in 1917 and again in 1921 (NEP)
OUTCOMES
• Communists securely in power by 1924 when Lenin died
Turning Points
• Lenin seized power in October 1917, finally ending the
liberal dream that Russia might develop a constitutional /
democratic government in the period studied.
• He established the world’s first communist state and
destroyed the power of the old elites – the Russian
Orthodox Church and the landowning class; everyone
was a ‘comrade’ now;
• However his dictatorial style of government, including his
banning of factions in the Communist Party and crushing
of the Kronstadt Revolt owed much to the ‘autocratic’
model.
Stalin
c.1924 - 1953
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
AIMS
• To secure power
• To defeat and eliminate all possible rivals
• To modernise Russia and catch up with the West
METHODS
• Terror, Show Trials and purges
• The Five Year Plans and collectivisation
OUTCOMES
• The USSR was victorious in the Second World War and
was challenging the USA in the Cold War when Stalin died
in 1953
Turning Points
• Stalin’s rise to power was of immense significance.
• Stalin’s acquisition of total power had a huge impact as the
countless victims of de-kulakisation, the terror, the gulags and the
Show Trials could testify. As Khrushchev admitted in 1956 under
Stalin ‘Soviet citizens came to fear their own shadows’. Stalin’s
betrayal of the principles of the revolution led to what Lynch has
described as ‘the replacement of one form of state authoritarianism
by another’.
• Since the opening up of the old Soviet archives many historians now
claim that Stalinism grew directly out of Leninism, Volkogonov,
stating: ‘everything done in Russia after Lenin’s death was done
according to his blueprint’.
Khruschev
c.1954 - 1964
Aims, Methods & Outcomes
•
•
•
•
•
•
AIMS
To secure power in power struggle after Stalin’s death
To defeat and eliminate all possible rivals
To modernise Russia and catch up with the West
METHODS
De-Stalinisation (the ‘Secret Speech’, 1956)
Changed industrial focus to include consumer goods
OUTCOMES
On 14th October, 1964, the Communist Party Central
Committee forced Khrushchev to resign.
Turning Points
• Khrushchev’s announcement of de-Stalinisation in his
‘secret speech’ of 1956 promised the Russian people
reform from above.
• Khrushchev’s ‘Thaw’ was a welcome respite after the
brutal excesses of Stalin but his reforms didn’t lead to a
significant overhaul of the communist system.
• In 1956 Khrushchev crushed the Hungarian Revolt
despite his criticisms of Stalin’s regime and his
announcement of ‘peaceful co-existence’.