Class notes
Russian Revolution Class Notes
- Course
- Institution
In-depth and colour-coded notes covering the entire Russian Revolution as taught by the VCE Revolutions course. Written by a 47 raw study score and 99+ ATAR achiever.
[Show more]
Seller
Follow
lisajawalekar
Content preview
VCE History Revolutions Unit 3: The Russian RevolutionRussia AOS1 Revision Checklist Area of Study 1: Causes of Revolution
Topic Key Knowledge
1.1 • institutional weaknesses and tensions in Tsarist Russia (e.g. gentry,
Imperial bureaucracy, orthodox church, the army)
Russia
2.1 • Workers’ Grievances
Workers After a massive government push for industrialisation known as the Great Spurt
and pioneered by Sergei Witte in the late 1800s, the urban population of Russia
quadrupled from 1850-1900. However, infrastructure did not keep up with
population growth, so workers were forced into terrible living conditions.
Furthermore, the government had used sweatshop labour factories as
incentive for foreign investment, so workers had terrible working conditions.
Such conditions were shared by the hundreds of thousands of workers forced to
share lodgings and places of work, so a sense of class consciousness and
solidarity quickly developed, allowing revolutionary ideas to spread easily.
Smith, The Russian Revolution: “workers were easily politicised, seeing in the
state and capitalists a single mechanism of oppression”.
In 1905, the average St Petersburg worker:
• Worked 13-hour days 6 days per week.
• Had no compensation for sickness, injury or death.
• Had no workplace safety laws.
• Had no minimum wage.
Figes about working conditions in Russia in 1905: “This sort of ‘serf regime’
was bitterly resented by the workers as an affront to their personal dignity”.
In 1905, the average St Peterburg worker’s living conditions included:
• No individual privacy or space for personal belongings.
• Shared washing and cooking facilities between barracks.
• Warm-bed policy – 3 workers sleep in the same bed in eight hour shifts to
save space.
• 6 people per room.
• Bloody Sunday
Father Georgi Gapon creates a police union called the Assembly of Russian
Factory and Mill Workers. He hoped that if he followed all of the legal pathways
in creating this organisation, the tsar would be more likely to listen to the workers’
grievances.
3rd of January 1905:
4 members of Gapon’s union fired from Putilov Steelworks.
,Topic Key Knowledge
4 – 6th of January 1905:
Father Gapon oversees the creation of the Workers’ Petition, which outlines the
workers’ want for reforms – basic civil liberties, the creation of a democratically
elected Duma, and universal suffrage.
7th of January 1905:
Father Gapon decides the best way to have his petition heard by the tsar is to
organise city-wide protests and marches. He decides to march on a Sunday to
demonstrate his peaceful intentions and to recognise the Tsar as having a God-
given right to rule Russia. He notifies the authorities of his plans to march two
days before the event in an attempt to stay above board. The Okhrana notifies the
Tsar, who leaves his palace for the weekend.
8th of January 1905:
Father Gapon has used the anger and frustration of the workers, which has
reached a boiling point because of the firings, to organise strikes across St
Peterburg. 120,000 workers are on strike.
Tsar Nicholas has given no clear instructions as to how to deal with the protestors,
and the authorities are growing nervous for the Sunday March (9 th Jan). Governor-
General Trepov orders 12,000 soldiers into the city to prevent rioting.
9th of January 1905:
An estimated 150,000 workers are on the streets marching. Starting from outer-
city suburbs, they march in groups heading towards the Winter Palace in the
middle of the city. As they get closer and closer, authorities become more and
more agitated. Without being given clear instructions by neither the Tsar nor
Trepov, Police, Cossacks and soldiers begin to open fire on the crowd after
several warnings to disperse or be shot at. An estimated 200 are killed with a
further 800 wounded.
Significance:
The Bloody Sunday Tragedy served to both transform the way that Russians
looked at the Tsar, and also catalyse further revolutions.
The myth of the benevolent Tsar was shattered, and the nickname “Bloody
Nicholas” arose as a result of Tsar Nicholas receiving all of the blame for Bloody
Sunday.
Father Gapon: “There is no God, there is no tsar for us now”.
Orlando Figes: Bloody Sunday was the “turning point of the whole revolution”
,Topic Key Knowledge
More than 400,000 workers went on strike in January, and as news reached the
countryside, peasant uprisings began growing. Soldiers began mutinying, and it
was clear that the tsar was losing control of his country.
2.2 • Peasants’ Grievances
Peasants Had poor living conditions, and resented the wealth of the Gentry, which made
them an “exceedingly volatile” [Richard Pipes] group. Accounted for 82% of
Russia’s population.
Figes, A people’s Tragedy: “peasant life in Russia really was nasty, brutish
and short”.
They could expect:
• Life expectancy of 35.
• 40% literacy rates in 1914.
• No right to a public criminal trial.
After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, living conditions generally grew
worse for peasants as they were expected to pay for the infrastructure (ploughs,
mills) they had previously received for free as serfs. Furthermore, they were now
forced to pay land redemption payments and taxes. The Gentry kept the best
1/6 of the land, so peasant labour was largely fruitless.
After emancipation, bitterness grew as peasants believed they had been cheated
by the gentry, and resentment of the tsarist regime grew for perpetuating an
unequal system.
“the emancipation…left peasants feeling cheated” [Stephen Smith]
They demanded fair redistribution of farmland and an end to land
redemption payments. They furthermore resented the tsarist regime for
perpetuating an unequal system and exacerbating their poverty under the
guise of freedom.
• Peasant Uprisings
News of Bloody Sunday reached the countryside in Summer 1905. Discontented
peasants were further angered by the behaviour of the Tsarist regime and
interpreted the tragedy as a sign to stage their own protests.
Throughout Russia, peasants began to stage peaceful protests, which included:
• Refusing to pay rent to the gentry.
• Refusing to pay land redemption payments.
• Invading the gentry’s land and stealing infrastructure.
, Topic Key Knowledge
The military was at war with Japan, so the Peasant uprisings went largely without
consequence, which emboldened them to pursue more violent forms of
uprising. They began invading the manors and land of the gentry, aiming to force
fair redistribution of land. In the Summer of 1905, approximately 15% of noble
manors were destroyed in peasant uprisings.
Peasant uprisings were one of the many factors contributing to an unstable and
potentially revolutionary situation in Russia 1905, and thus demonstrated that
the Tsar was losing control of his empire.
2.3 • Soldiers’ And Sailors’ Grievances
Soldiers The Russian army relied on conscription to maintain its massive size – at 2.6
million standing soldiers, it was the largest in the world. Soldiers were treated
like animals, fostering “growing tensions between the military…and the
Romanov regime” [Figes]. Thus, a growing atmosphere of discontent was clear
amongst soldiers’ ranks in 1905.
Every peasant village had to supply soldiers via conscription; conscripts had to
serve 6-year terms and during this time were stripped of the rights of free
citizens.
Orlando Figes: “the determination of soldiery to throw off this ‘army serfdom’
and gain the dignity of citizenship was to become a major story of the
revolution”.
Furthermore, the tsar reduced military funding by 40% between 1880 and 1904
to divert funds into industrialisation without reducing the size of the army. Thus,
soldiers were forced to grow their own food and repair their own clothes because
of budget cuts.
Orlando Figes: “the tsarist regime created an army of farmers and cobblers”.
• The Russo-Japanese War
Fearful of growing internal tensions in Russia, Tsar Nicholas was glad that war was
brewing with Japan in late 1904, as it would serve to unify the country under him
against a foreign threat. A European power had not fallen to an Asian power in
modern history, and so the tsar “took victory for granted” [Orlando Figes].
Starts in December 1904 when Japan launches a surprise attack on Russia in an
attempt to take control of their disputed territory of Manchuria (which was
Chinese). Russia is able to mobilise 1 million soldiers, who are taken by train or
ship to Manchuria. This war sparked wave after wave of patriotism and support
for the Tsar, and they all believed that it would be easy to beat the Japanese.
The benefits of buying summaries with Stuvia:
Guaranteed quality through customer reviews
Stuvia customers have reviewed more than 700,000 summaries. This how you know that you are buying the best documents.
Quick and easy check-out
You can quickly pay through credit card or Stuvia-credit for the summaries. There is no membership needed.
Focus on what matters
Your fellow students write the study notes themselves, which is why the documents are always reliable and up-to-date. This ensures you quickly get to the core!
Frequently asked questions
What do I get when I buy this document?
You get a PDF, available immediately after your purchase. The purchased document is accessible anytime, anywhere and indefinitely through your profile.
Satisfaction guarantee: how does it work?
Our satisfaction guarantee ensures that you always find a study document that suits you well. You fill out a form, and our customer service team takes care of the rest.
Who am I buying these notes from?
Stuvia is a marketplace, so you are not buying this document from us, but from seller lisajawalekar. Stuvia facilitates payment to the seller.
Will I be stuck with a subscription?
No, you only buy these notes for $12.99. You're not tied to anything after your purchase.
Can Stuvia be trusted?
4.6 stars on Google & Trustpilot (+1000 reviews)
75057 documents were sold in the last 30 days
Founded in 2010, the go-to place to buy study notes for 14 years now