Chapter 5

Question 1

Why was the moderate liberal opposition a small group

Answer 1

• Majority of population were not literate - 21% by 1897 census
• Those who were literate may not have the time and wealth to travel, and see firsthand the political stagnatation of Russia

Question 2

What weakened the Moderate Liberal Opposition

Answer 2

• Seperation from within
• Westerns wanted to adopt ‘western ways’
• Slavophiles wanted to maintain Slavic principals and the power of the Church

Question 3

How threatening was the Moderate liberal opposition to the Tsar

Answer 3

• Not very
• Wanted to reform autocracy, not remove it

Question 4

What encouraged a sudden growth of opposition from c1870

Answer 4

• Relaxation in censorship, education and reform in judicial system
• Hope and dissapointment then strong repression under Alexander II and Alexander III

Question 5

What was a notable radical opposition group under Alexander II + Alexander III

Answer 5

• Young Russia developed as the younger generation wanted to go further than their parents
• In 1862, they set fires in St Petersburg, destroying over 2000 shops

Question 6

Who were the most prevelant radical thinkers under Alexander II and Alexander III,

Answer 6

• Cherneyshevsky
• Herzen
• Bakunin
• Bakunin translated Marx’s communist manifesto into Russian

Question 7

Why were radical thinkers not significant opposition

Answer 7

• Those who could read were mostly nobles or benefitted from autocracy
• Ideas like Marxism didn’t benefit them

Question 8

Evidence to show that radical thinkers were not that threatening under Alexander II and Alexander III

Answer 8

• The Tchaikovsky Circle was set up in 1868 in St Petersburg
• Distributed Marx’s ‘Das Kapital’
• But had no more than 100 members

Question 9

When was the first incidence of Populism

Answer 9

• 1874
• Lavrov led 200 men into the countryside to persuade them the future of the country depended on the devlopment of the peasant commune

Question 10

Aims of populists

Answer 10

Exploit the resentment felt about land redistribution after emancipation, and high taxes

Question 11

Why did populism fail

Answer 11

The peasants ill-education, superstition, and deep-rooted loyalty to the tsar, due to the Orthodox Church meant that they were quickly reported to the authorities

Question 12

Why was the populist movement, despite being a faliure, significant to the opposition under Alexander II and Alexander III

Answer 12

Took radical opposition away from underground meeting rooms

Question 13

When and why was ‘Land and Liberty’ established

Answer 13

• 1877
• Continue the populist tradition

Question 14

Why was Land and Liberty threatening to autocracy, but what is limiting about this

Answer 14

• Talks between the group and the zemstva to place pressure on the autocracy for consitutional reform
• Group split in 1879, just two years after founding in 1877

Question 15

When and what into did Land and Liberty split, with what leaders

Answer 15

• People’s Will under Mikhailov
• Black Repartition under Plekhanov

Question 16

Methods of People’s Will

Answer 16

• Political assasinations
• Violent methods
• Killed General Mazemstev in 1878 - Head of Third Section
• Killed Alexander II in 1881

Question 17

Aims of Black Repartition

Answer 17

Share the black soil provinces among the peasants

Question 18

Why was both Black Repartition and the People’s Will weak by Alexander III’s assension

Answer 18

Mass arrests in 1880-81

Question 19

What did failed populists turn to under Alexander II and Alexander III

Answer 19

Marxism

Question 20

How was the Moderate Liberal Opposition slightly strengthened under Alexander III

Answer 20

• Withdrawal from Loris-Melikov constitution and restriction of zemstva powers turned many conservatives to support the ‘Westerners’
• Less division amongst group

Question 20

Under Alexander III, what was the turning point, leading to much greater growth in discontent with autocracy

Answer 20

• Great Famine 1891-92
• Government’s faliure to deal with it
• Zemstva forced to provide local aid

Question 21

Evidence to show how Alexander III was brutal with radical opposition

Answer 21

• In 1887, a group of the reformed People’s Will made bombs with the intention of killing Alexander III
• Fiver were hung
• Including Aleksander Ulyanov; Lenin’s older brother

Question 22

Who ‘father of Russian Marxism’ and why

Answer 22

• Plekhanov
• Campaigned the impetus for change had to come from the emerging working class