Question 2
Could the years 1881-1914 be seen as a lost opportunity with regard to internal reform in Russia?
This question requires an examination of Tsarist modernising plans and an assessment of their success, including alternatives that could have been implemented.
Paragraph One
- The Tsarist state embarked on a policy of ‘state capitalism’ in the second half of the 19th century involving a conscious policy of economic development
- This was an oppressive regime whose inadequacies made it vulnerable to the challenges on the horizon
- Lost opportunity? Only if there was a viable alternative to what they did when the situation in 1881 is considered
Paragraph Two
Briefly comment on policies employed after 1881, especially Witte’s industrial strategy – and that it had to contend with a bureaucratic and autocratic regime
Paragraph Three
- Result: defeat in Russo-Japanese War 1904-5 & political crisis
- Minority nationalities rebelled
- Upheavals in the capital
- Peasant revolts
Causes :
- inefficient bureaucracy
- ill-prepared army
- starving peasants
- revolutionary intelligentsia
- exploited working class
- angry Poles
Paragraph Four
Alternatives impractical and/or harmful:
- too late to go back to a non-developed society
- Populism failed through peasant apathy
- Marxist revolution a problem in a state with 80% of the population peasants and because Marx and Lenin believed in necessity of a parallel revolution in Western Europe
- Liberalism seemed only acceptable alternative (individual & institutional liberty, representative government and guarantee of property)
Paragraph Five
Alex II’s successors didn’t follow up his reforms until 1905:
- Agriculture under communal control
- No constitution to regulate government
- Zemstvos not allowed sufficient authority
- 1900 21% literacy in Russia
Paragraph Six
Stolypin’s reforms after 1905:
- Land Reform Act 1906
- Increased educational opportunities
- A new representative assembly (Duma)
Remaining problems:
- Autocracy remained
- New liberal policies largely superficial
- Tsar ignored the Duma
- Reduced franchise to produce a more manageable assembly
- Liberalism lacked a power base in Russian society
- By 1914 only small percentage of land moved from communal to individuals
Paragraph Seven
- Not easy to solve the serious problems of society and economy
- Government policy after 1881 overstrained the economy
- No real alternatives in Russian context so not realistic to see these years as a lost opportunity – great potential but Russia unable to shed the obstacles of the past before 1881
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