Russia Notes

Russia

Contents

• Past questions

• Quotes

  • General

  • The Alexandrine reforms

  • 1905

• Maps

  • The expansion of the Russian Empire

• Chronology

  • Events

  • Imperialism

• Russia

  • Nature

  • Constitution

  • Foreign policy

• Politics

  • Aleksandr II

  • The great reforms

  • Reaction

  • Discontent

  • Public opinion

  • Aleksandr III

  • The Jews

• The serfs

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• The economy

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Local government

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Justice

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Education

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Censorship and law and order

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• The military

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Poland

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Finland

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• Belarus, the Ukraine, and other regions

  • Diagnosis

  • Reform

  • Reaction

• The wider empire

  • Formal empire

  • Informal empire

  • Reasons for expansion

  • Rule

  • Domestic response

• The 1905 Revolution

  • Historiography

  • Popular discontent

  • The gentry

  • A national opposition

  • Nationalism

  • The Russo-Japanese War

  • 1904 Revolution

  • 1905 Revolution

  • Provisional government

  • Counter-revolution

• Russia after 1905

  • Politics

  • The economy

  • Nationalism

Quotes

General

• The Tsar is “an autocratic and unlimited monarch”.

  • The first article of the Fundamental Laws of the Empire.

• “The Russian State is one and indivisible.”

  • The Fundamental State Laws of the Russian Empire, 1906

• “Every new conquest… requires a considerable increase in military resources and… weakens Russia”.

  • The Russian Foreign Ministry.

• To “improve the lives of those unfortunate offspring of the human race”.

  • NA Kryzhankovsky.

• “A glorious affair”.

  • Tsar Aleksandr II on the unauthorised moves of Colonel Cherniaev into Tashkent.

• Russia’s “still terrible thirst for greatness”.

  • One newspaper’s greeting of the year 1914.

• “Russia does not need colonialism.”

  • Sergei Witte.

The Alexandrine reforms

• I am sorry for failing to leave “an orderly, calm, and happy Russia”.

  • Tsar Nikolai I to his son on his death bed.

• The peasant “must not suffer ruin” as a result of the impositions of his landlord.

  • Pre-reform serf law.

• ‘Russia was not backward because serf relations dominated her economy; it was her backwardness that made serf relations persist.’

  • Olga Crisp.

• ‘It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below”.

  • Tsar Aleksandr II.

• “Is Russia not perishing? Am I called upon to save her in her final moments?”

  • Pyotr Valuev, Minister of the Interior

• “When the elements of insurrection exist, who knows whether or not the age of Pugachev can recur?”

  • Boris Chicherin.

• “[O]ut of every hundred petty bureaucrats one cannot find even two that are honest”.

  • A contemporary observer.

• ‘Discontent seemed to be general.’

  • David Saunders.

• The emancipation legislation was ‘arguably the greatest piece of socio-economic legislation attempted anywhere in the world hitherto’.

  • John Keep and Lionel Kochan.

• To “introduce into Russia legal proceedings that are swift, just, merciful and equal for all”.

  • Aleksandr II.

• To “take matters out of the hands of the inept government”.

  • The radical pamphlet Velikoruss calling on the middle classes.

• “Political rights for one class without political rights for all others are something unthinkable”.

  • Konstantin Kavelin.

• “For out centuries-old service to the state we received a wretched allotment of land with high redemption dues”.

  • Petition from the village of Tashino, 1905.

1905

• They are “senseless dreams”.

  • Nikolas II on the calls for a national gentry assembly.

• “Stores are empty. Factories have curtailed production.”

  • A newspaper in Warsaw, 1904

• That “there exist two Russias… and what pleases one is quite sure to displease the other”.

  • Liberal leader PN Milukov, 1905.

• “The voice of the zemstvo is the voice of life”.

  • The Chernigov zemstvo.

• “There was a feeling of burning shame and undeserved injury.”

  • Liberal activist NI Astrov.

• That “the Port Arthur debacle promises to shatter the foundations of the régime of Nikolas II”.

  • Georgi Plekhanov.

• “We are living at a time of extreme animation of national and nationalist feelings among all peoples inhabiting the Russia Empire”.

  • An intellectual, 1910.

• The gentry were “even incapable of simply residing in the countryside”.

  • A 1905 report to the St Petersburg noble assembly.

• “Formerly we kept no accounts and drank champagne; now we keep accounts and content ourselves with kvass”.

  • A barin after the 1905 Revolution.

• “All classes of Russian society are… in a state of ferment”.

  • Maurice Bombard, French ambassador to St Petersburg, 1904.

• That “the sovereign considers the autocracy a dogma of faith”.

  • Sergei Witte.

• “The yearning for democracy is alien to the Russian people”.

  • NA Shipov.

• The press print “rapid attacks against the bureaucracy, the war, and the government”.

  • Samuel Harper, late 1904.

• “You run away from the Japanese, but you shoot at your own people”.

  • Protestors, 22^nd January 1905.

• “For out centuries-old service to the state we received a wretched allotment of land with high redemption dues”.

  • Petition from the village of Tashino, 1905.

• To “exterminate the gangs of insurgents”.

  • The orders received by one colonel.

• That “now he wants to hang and shoot everybody”.

  • Tsar Nikolas II on Sergei Witte, January 1906.

• “The Russian State is one and indivisible.”

  • The Fundamental State Laws of the Russian Empire, 1906

• And “the palmy days of autocracy have been revived”.

  • A British journalist, July 1906.

• The failure to “reconcile the two eternally hostile forces, the state and society”.

  • Octobrist leader, Aleksandr Guchkov, 1914.

Maps

The expansion of the Russian Empire

Chronology

Events

1809 – Finnish Diet convened

February 1855 – Aleksandr II succeeds Nikolai I

19^th February 1855 – Bell falls through three flaws as Aleksandr administered the oath of loyalty

March 1856 – Treaty of Paris, end of the Crimean War

1859 – Rural council reform

1860 – State bank...

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