Alexander II to 1905: Reform, Repression and Revolution

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Alexander II freed around 23 million serfs from noble ownership. The key flaw: peasants had to pay redemption payments for 49 years and land was given to the commune, not individuals, leaving many poorer than before.

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Local elected councils created in 1864 to manage schools, roads and hospitals. They gave the middle class limited self-government at local level but had no national political power.

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The policy of forcing Russian language, culture and Orthodox religion on non-Russian peoples in the empire (Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, Jews). It alienated minorities and widened opposition to the tsar.

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Finance Minister Sergei Witte used foreign loans and tariffs to rapidly industrialise Russia in the 1890s (railways, steel, mines). It created a large urban working class in terrible conditions — a ready base for radical movements.

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Both were Marxist factions of the Social Democratic Party after the 1903 split. Lenin's Bolsheviks wanted a small, tight, professional revolutionary party. The Mensheviks wanted a broader mass party open to all workers.

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Father Gapon led 100,000+ workers to petition the tsar peacefully at the Winter Palace. Troops opened fire, killing up to 1,000. The massacre radicalised millions and triggered the 1905 Revolution.

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Russia suffered humiliating defeats (fall of Port Arthur, Mukden, destruction of the Baltic Fleet at Tsushima). The war exposed military incompetence, drained resources and domestic discontent exploded — making 1905 possible.

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An elected parliament (the Duma), civil liberties and the right for political parties to exist. It split the opposition — liberals accepted it, radicals rejected it — and the revolution collapsed.

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1) Land reform — let peasants leave the commune and consolidate private farms to create a loyal landowning class ('a wager on the strong'). 2) Repression — hanged thousands of revolutionaries ('Stolypin's necktie').

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Nicholas dissolved the first two Dumas when they demanded real power. In 1907 he changed the electoral law to give nobles more seats. The Dumas became toothless — proof that autocracy had barely changed.

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Alexander II tried to defuse opposition through reform (emancipation, zemstvos, courts) but was assassinated. Alexander III responded with repression (Okhrana, Russification, 'Temporary Regulations') — but only drove opposition underground and made it more extreme.

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Trotsky's phrase: 1905 showed the pattern — military failure, mass strikes, tsarist concessions — but the regime survived because the army stayed loyal. In 1917 the army mutinied, and the regime collapsed completely.