To the east, in the vast Russian Empire, neither the Industrial
Revolution nor the European Enlightenment had
exerted much impact. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, Russia was overwhelmingly rural, agricultural,
and autocratic. The Russian tsar was still regarded
as a divine-right monarch with unlimited power,
although the physical extent of the empire made the
claim impracticable. For centuries, Russian farmers had
groaned under the yoke of an oppressive feudal system
that tied the peasant to poverty conditions and the legal
status of a serf under the authority of his manor lord. An
enlightened tsar, Alexander II (r. 1855–1881), had
emancipated the serfs in 1861, but under conditions that
left most Russian peasants still poor and with little hope
for social or economic betterment. In desperation, the
muzhik (the Russian term for peasant) periodically lashed
out at his oppressors in sporadic rebellions, but all such
uprisings were quelled with brutal efficiency by the tsarist
regime.
In western Europe, as we have seen, it was the urban
middle class that took the lead in the struggle for change.
In Russia, the middle class was still small in size and lacking
in self-confidence. A few, however, had traveled to
the West and were determined to import Western values
and institutions into the backward Russian environment.
At mid-century, a few progressive intellectuals went out
to the villages to arouse their rural brethren to the need
for change. Known as narodniks (from the Russian term
narod, for “people” or “nation”), they sought to energize
the peasantry as a force for the transformation of Russian
society. Although many saw the answer to Russian problems
in the western European model, others insisted on
the uniqueness of the Russian experience and sought to
bring about a revitalization of the country on the basis of
the communal traditions of the native village.
For the most part, such efforts achieved little. The
muzhik was resistant to change and suspicious of outsiders.
In desperation, some radical intellectuals turned to terrorism
in the hope that assassinations of public officials
would spark tsarist repression, thus demonstrating the
brutality of the system and galvanizing popular anger.
Chief among such groups was the Narodnaya Volya (“the
People’s Will”), a terrorist organization that carried out
the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.
The assassination of Alexander II convinced his son
and successor, Alexander III (r. 1881–1894), that reform
had been a mistake, and he quickly returned to the repressive
measures of earlier tsars. When Alexander III
died, his weak son and successor, Nicholas II (r. 1894 –
1917), began his rule armed with his father’s conviction
that the absolute power of the tsars should be preserved.
But it was too late, for conditions were changing. Although
industrialization came late to Russia, it progressed
rapidly after 1890, especially with the assistance of foreign
investment capital. By 1900, Russia had become the
fourth largest producer of steel, behind the United States,
Germany, and Great Britain. At the same time, Russia
was turning out half of the world’s production of oil. Conditions
for the working class, however, were abysmal, and
opposition to the tsarist regime from workers, peasants,
and intellectuals finally exploded into revolt in 1905.
Facing an exhaustive war with Japan in Asia (see Chapter
3), Tsar Nicholas reluctantly granted civil liberties
and agreed to create a legislative assembly, the Duma,
elected directly by a broad franchise. But real constitutional
monarchy proved short-lived. By 1907, the tsar
had curtailed the power of the Duma and fell back on the
army and the bureaucracy to rule Russia.
World History
