InNo+RyanC2013+10.17.2010

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= = =HOME MADE AWESOMENESS!!!= = = = = Some of the pictures are from the internet and here are the citations for each one from left to right...

=Borrowed Work=

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= = = = =toc= = = =Chapter 1=

= = **Geography**

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Land and Climate

 * Despite the size of Russia, most of the land that is present is unable to be used.
 * The southern border, provide high mountains as a defensive obstacle against foreign intruders.
 * Despite the high mountains benefit of protection, it also prevents warm air from spreading in, leaving it only to be influenced by the cold air from the Arctic Ocean.
 * The land in the Arctic Circle is called a tundra, a place where only moss and small shrubs grow.
 * The freezing climate of Russia affected its industry and farming. The climate also prevented trade by water, because rivers and sea ports were frozen preventing ships from landing.

Diverse Empire
= = = = = Chapter 2 =
 * About 125 million people lived in Tsar Nicholas's empire, all coming from different countries in Europe.
 * People that were foreign were already accustomed to their own language and way of life.
 * The people of Russia were not spread out evenly, resulting in crowded areas that were fertile.

**Government**

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Autocracy

 *  **Autocrat** - a monarch that doesn’t have to share power.
 * Tsar Nicholas 2, was an autocrat.
 * There was no parliament to oppose his power.
 * To govern 125 million Russians, he appointed thousands of civil servants.
 * Civil servants were organized into 14 ranks, from ministers to minor officials.
 * Many civil servants carried collected taxes and carried out new orders, however they were open to bribes because they were not paid.
 * To make sure that nobody questioned his authority Nicholas 2 had a secret police organization, the **Okhrana** (Protective Section).
 * The Okhrana arrested anyone who criticized the government.
 * Those tried were usually exiled and sent to Siberia.
 * During riots the Okhrana couldn’t do anything to stop them, which left it up to the **Cossacks** to break them up, who killed anyone who couldn’t run away.
 * Cossacks were fierce mounted soldiers armed with sabers who specialized in breaking up mobs.
 * The Russian Orthodox Church helped maintain the Tsar’s authority by teaching people to respect the autocracy and the Tsar.
 * All church officials took orders from the government minister and in that way the government had control over the minds of Russian churchgoers.

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Nicholas and Alexandr
= = = = = Chapter 3 =
 * Nicholas’ German wife, Alexandra, encouraged Nicholas to rule as an autocrat.
 * They had 5 children, four girls and one boy.
 * The boy, Alexis had **hemophilia**, which could cause him to bleed to death.
 * <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Since both Nicholas and Alexandra were deeply religious, they built a chapel on the grounds of the palace to pray for Alexis’ recovery.
 * <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Alexandra told her daughters and everyone else who knew, to keep Alexis’ illness a secret.

The People
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Peasants

 * Peasants were slaves to their landlords with no rights.
 * In 1861 they were freed from serfdom and given land by Tsar Alexander 2, Nicholas 2’s grandfather.
 * However land was not given to individuals, rather it was given to a **mir** (**village** **commune**), where the peasants lived.
 * The peasants had to pay redemption payments for 49 years in order to own the land.
 * Each year when the mirs gave out land, it gave out land according to the size of the family. The larger the family the more land they get.
 * However when families grew larger and larger smaller portions of land were given out.
 * This made it harder to support families, in addition to the **redemption** **payments**.
 * The average life expectancy was 55, due to malnutrition and diseases.
 * A good harvest would allow peasants to have some food to eat, and to sell some to pay the redemption payments.

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Town Workers
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 * Many peasants tried to improve their lives by working in the cities and returning to the communes during a harvest.
 * The largest city in Russia during the 1900s was St. Petersburg, the capital.
 * Nearly a million had come there to work, while more and more people were coming.
 * These workers were paid very little and going on strike was illegal.
 * Employers were always able to replace troublesome worker, as there was always unemployed people looking for work.

The Wealthy
= = = = = Chapter 4 =
 * Russian nobles were very rich, but were made up only one percent of the Russian population, and owned 25 percent of all the land.
 * Some nobles who farmed their land made large profits, while those who were lazier sold some of their land to pay for their lifestyle.
 * In the 1900’s capitalists were also becoming rich.
 * The Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte, made it easier for capitalists to make money.
 * He gave them government contracts and loans.
 * He also cut taxes for them.
 * Despite easy profits, capitalists did not share it with their workers, who began to hate them.

**The Tsars Opponents**

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Terrorism

 * On March 1881, a bomb exploded beneath Tsar Alexander 2’s carriage.
 * He was unhurt but when he came out to expect the damage, he was killed by an explosive “snowball”.
 * This assassination was executed by one the small terrorists groups ‘People’s Will’.
 * These terrorists were determined to destroy the autocracy and make big changes to the government.
 * However this assassination did not destroy the autocracy.
 * His successors Alexander 3 (son) and Nicholas 2 (grandson) used the Okhrana to arrest critics and opponents, to make sure that the assassination wouldn’t happen again.
 * They did not succeed and three important groups of opponents remained.

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Socialists Revolutionary Party

 * The SRs, wanted all the land in Russia to be given to mirs (communes).
 * This meant taking land from the Tsar, nobles, and churches.
 * The SR had a ‘**Fighting** **Organization**’ to carry out terrorism campaigns.
 * They managed to kill three government ministers and dozens of other government officials.
 * The SR had the support of millions of peasants who wanted private land but couldn’t catch up to their redemption payment.

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Social Democratic Party
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 * The Social Democractic Party in the 1900, followed the ideas of **Karl Marx**, a German writer of the **Communist** **Manifesto**.
 * His book predicted that the working class would overthrow the capitalists, and share everything amongst themselves equally.
 * Marx called this act of sharing **socialism**.
 * Marx believed in a society that was selfless, and took nothing more than what they needed as payment.
 * This would bring **Communism** into action.
 * When the Social Democratic Party was set up in 1898 based on Marx’s ideas, its leaders began to depute on the best way to start a socialist revolution
 * This split them up in 1903 into the **Bolsheviks** and the **Mensheviks**.
 * The Bolsheviks believed that the revolution should be carried out and controlled by a small group of dedicated and skilled revolutionaries.
 * The Mensheviks believed that the party should be a massive one that was run democratically, electing their leaders and deciding on its politics.
 * The leader of the Bolsheviks, **Vladimir Ilyich Lenin**, said that the Mensheviks’ way was to slow. While the Mensheviks’ argued that without the support of the working class they could not succeed.
 * They were unable to come to an agreement and stayed split up.

Liberals
> = Chapter 5 =
 * Liberals were law-abiding Russians, who supported the Tsar but wanted a share of his power, and a democratic system of government with a power sharing parliament.
 * Unfortunately the plans for a Russian parliament by Alexander 2 were ripped up by Alexander 3 after he became Tsar and Alexander 2’s death.

**1905 Revolutions**

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War against Japan

 * In 1904, Russia and Japan went to war over Korea and Manchuria.
 * Tsar Nicholas thought the war would end quickly and make himself popular amongst the people.
 * The war did not turn out as expected and the Russians were crushed by the Japanese.
 * Not only was Nicholas’ position weakened but food supplies to the cities broke down and factories closed as raw material began to run out.

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Bloody Sunday

 * On Sunday 22 January, 1905, 200,000 workers and their families marched to the Tsar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.
 * They wanted better working and living conditions, an end to the Russo-Japanese War, and many other reforms.
 * They were lead by Father Gapon, a priest who helped poor workers.
 * Soldiers and Police tried to stop them, but when scuffles broke out the soldiers began to fire, and killed 500 marchers, wounding thousands of others.
 * When the news spread out riots broke out, and hundred of government officials were murdered.
 * This day known as **Bloody** **Sunday** started a revolution against the Tsar.

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1905 Revolution

 * In June 1905 the crew of battleship **Potemkin**, carried out mutiny when they threw their officers overboard.
 * Even though they gave themselves up the mutiny showed Tsar Nicholas that his armed forced could not be trusted.
 * Peasants in the countryside were also beginning to rebel, by killing their landlords and burning their farms.
 * Non-Russian’s part of the empire took the opportunity to declare themselves independent.
 * In September 1905 a general strike began, closing down factories, offices, shops, railways, and schools.
 * The strikers set up Soviets to run the town during the strike.
 * The strikers were willing to obey the Soviets, who had become a kind of replacement for the government.
 * Nicholas had to give way to resolve all these problems.
 * In October 1905 he issued a Document called the **October Manifesto**, which gave Russia a **Duma**, or elected parliament to help run the country.
 * It also allowed the Russians to have basic rights.
 * This delighted the liberals, however the revolutionary parties did not trust the Tsar’s promise.
 * The revolutionaries were right when the police arrested the St. Petersburg Soviet and exiled 15 of them to Siberia.
 * When an army was sent to crush the Soviet more than a thousand people died fighting between the revolutionaries and the soldiers.
 * Worse than the Tsar’s crushing of all areas of revolution were the **Black Hundred**.
 * The Black Hundreds were vigilantes who organized massacres of revolutionaries, which the police and army did nothing to stop.
 * By March 1906 the revolution was over, but Russia did get a parliament, the Duma.
 * Elections for the Duma were held in March 1906 allowing many anti-government personal gain power.
 * When the Duam met for the first time, Nicholas issued the **Fundamental Law**, which stated that supreme autocratic power belonged to the Emperor.
 * This law made it so that nothing had changed over the revolution.

= = = = = = = Chapter 6 =

Influential People
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The Dumas
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 * When the Duma demanded a share in power in government, after the **Fundamental** **Law**, Nicholas 2 broke up the meeting with troops.
 * A second Duma was elected in 1907 consisting of SR and Social Democrats also.
 * The Second Duma was broken up after three months.
 * The third Duma lasted five years, due to the change in voting laws that made sure revolutionaries were not elected.
 * The third Duma mostly did what Nicholas wanted.
 * In 1906 Nicholas 2 appointed Peter Stolypin as a new Prime Minister, to make sure that there were no more revolutionary outbreaks.

Stolypin Reforms

 * Stolypin’s first move was to attack terrorism.
 * He arrested and executed thousands of terrorists.
 * 21,000 people were exiled to Siberia.
 * Terrorism had become a small problem under Stolypin’s rule.
 * Realizing that physical force would not solve all his problems, he started to helped peasants gain private land, in order to settle down outbreaks in the country side.
 * He abolished redemption payments and the mirs (communes).
 * Stolypin hoped that the hard working peasants would make the larger farms more productive and richer. Which would in turn prevent outbreaks in the country side.
 * Russia began to improve as industries grew, wages increased, and harvests were good.
 * In 1911 a police agent conducting terrorists investigations turned out to be a terrorists himself, and shot Stolypin dead.

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Rasputin

 * Alexandra who prayed for her son’s, Alexis, health daily, became acquainted to a man who claimed to be a **Starets.**
 * Two ladies introduced Alexandra and Nicholas to a man of special prophecy and healing powers, Gregory Efimovitch.
 * After this event Alexis had a fall, which started internal bleeding (haemophilia).
 * When Gregory Efimovitch prayed beside Alexis’s bed, he miraculously recovered.
 * From that moment on Gregory Efimovitch was the most trusted member in their court.
 * Gregory Efimovitch was not the most liked of men, as he was a drunk and known sexual harasser and defiler.
 * He had earned the nickname **Rasputin**, the disreputable one.
 * Nicholas and Alexandra did not listen to the information of Rasputin, and continued to trust him.
 * After the death of Stolypin, Raputin became more of an influence to the Royal family,
 * He gave political advice to Alexandra who passed it onto Nicholas.
 * Anyone who pleased Rasputin found it easier to get their way around things.
 * Rumors went around that he was having an affair with Alexandra, and everyone knew of his corruption except for Tsar Nicholas 2.

= = = = = = = Summary =

= = = = Riots and terrorism were a great problem, as these revolutionaries did anything it took to take down the autocracy upheld by Tsar Nicholas 2. When protesters marched to the Palace at St. Petersburg for reforms on their rights, a fight broke out resulting in death and a revolution against the Tsar. When the Tsar couldn’t take the riots and rebellions anymore, he agreed to set up a Parliament under the October Manifesto, which caused the Liberals to rejoice. On the other hand the revolutionaries did not trust the Tsar, and they were right not to as the Tsar issued a law that gave all power to himself and rendered the Parliament useless. Russia started to improve when Nicholas 2 appointed Stolypin as prime minister, however he was killed by a terrorist poising as an investigative officer.

= Questions =

= = = = <span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> 1. What similarities were there between the Alexandra and Marie Antoinette?

<span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> 2. What were the differences between what the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks?

<span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> 3. What kind of illness did Alexis have that caused him to have a near death experience due to a fall?

<span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> 4. Explain how the the church and the people that attend it are influenced by the government?

<span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"> 5. __ was carried out because the people wanted an end to the Russo-Japanese war, which was only one reform that the people requested during this tragic event.