Summary Why Did the Tsarist Regime Collapse in 1917?
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A full and unbiased view with many standpoints and POV's concerning the collapse of the Tsarist Regime and the time of it's collapse in 1917.
This document provides a full in depth view into the period of time in a summarised form and is useful for any students interested in learning about the ...
Why did the tsarist regime collapse in 1917?
WHAT WERE THE CHALLENGES FACING THE TSARIST REGIME AT THE END OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY?
THE ASSASSINATION OF ALEXANDER II:
On 1 March 1881, the Russian Tsar, Alexander II, was travelling by coach through the snow to the Winter Palace in St
Petersburg. An armed Cossack sat with the coach driver while six more Cossacks followed behind on horseback. Two
sledges with the Chief of Police for St Petersburg and other police officers followed as well. The Tsar had recently signed a
document that granted the first ever constitution to the Russian people.
The ‘Narodnaya Volya’ or ‘The People’s Will’ watched the Tsars journey having decided eighteen months earlier to
assassinate him. There had already been six unsuccessful attempts. A bomb was hurled at the Tsars carriage, injuring a few
Cossacks, the carriage was stopped and as the Tsar climbed out a second assassin threw his bomb, blowing up at the Tsar’s
feet.
The tsar and the assassin died shortly after
Five members of The People’s Will were convicted and sentenced to death
On 3 April they were lead out for public execution
Tsarist Russia as ‘creaky and vulnerable’
Underdeveloped empire
THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE AND ITS PEOPLE:
Communications over the huge expanse of Russia was poor. There were few paved roads except in big cities, most of which
were otherwise hard packed earth, which turned muddy in heavy rain and became impassable in winter. RIVERS were used
in longer journeys as so most of Russia’s major cities had grown up along important river routes. RAILWAYS were another
important mode of transport. There had been some expansion of railway by 1900 but Russia still only had as much as
Britain. The most important route was the TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILWAY that crossed Russia from Moscow in the west to
Vladivostok in the east which still took more than a week of continuous travel to journey.
SOURCE 1 THE PEOPLE:
Russian’s who lived around Moscow gradually
conquered the peoples around them from the fifteenth
century onwards. The area they controlled expanded and
developed into the Russian empire. Vladivostok and the
earliest part on the Pacific Ocean became part of the
Empire in 1859. The Caucasus region, which included
Georgian and Chechen people, was secured as late as
1864, and the central Asian area of Russia including
Turkistan was conquered in the 1860s and 1870s.
Tsarist Russia contained a ‘patchwork’ of different
national groups. Russians made up just half of the
population, the vast majority of whom lived in the
European part of Russia west of the Ural Mountains.
The diversity of culture and religion and language
throughout the empire was astonishing, with European
Russians to nomadic Muslims, to tribes who
wandered Siberia and dressed very much like native
American Indians.
The major nationalities in Russia by mother tongue in 1897
, THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF TSARIST RUSSIA
NOBILITY:
Made up just over one per cent of the population, owned 25 per cent of all the land. Some were extremely rich, with
enormous country estates.
Few spent time at these estates, mostly living in Moscow or St Petersburg doing the round of social events that
constituted ‘society’.
Some had important jobs in government or army but this was usually due to position, not merit
Increasing nobles were selling land to peasants and moving to the cities.
MIDDLE CLASSES:
Growing class of merchants, bankers and industrialists as industry and commerce developed
Progressive were sitting on town councils, supporting schools and becoming art patrons and founding museums and
art galleries.
A burgeoning cultural life in major cities with participating middle classes.
Lifestyle was very good, large houses and wide variety of food.
Professional class was growing and beginning to play a significant role in local government. Lawyers were active
in politics.
URBAN WORKERS:
Most workers were young and male. Although many were ex peasants, by 1900 over a third were young men
whose fathers had worked in factories, mines and railways.
Large numbers of women in textile factories in St Petersburg and Moscow.
Wages were low, working conditions were poor. High numbers of death from accidents and work related health
problems.
Living conditions were appalling with shared rooms in tenement blocks next to the factories. No privacy or private
space. Men, women and children generally lived in rooms divided by curtains.
PEASANTS:
Before 1861, peasants had been serfs, owned by their masters, the nobility. In 1861 they had been emancipated and
given plots of land from estates of nobility.
Peasants were still subject to restrictions in the commune or ‘Mir’ in which they lived. Affected farming and
personal freedom e.g. they couldn’t leave the village without permission.
Life was hard and unremitting. Small patches of land and worked on the estates of nobility.
Most were poor, illiterate or uneducated.
KULAKS were quite well off. They hired labour, rented and bought land.
Peasants usually got by but years of bad harvest caused widespread starvation (4000 died in 1891)
Disease was widespread, regular epidemics.
Lived in debt and squalor, prone to drunkenness and sexually transmitted diseases, especially syphilis.
HOW WAS RUSSIA GOVERNED UNDER THE TSARS?
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