Revo Of 1905 :: essays research papers

At the turn of the twentieth carbon, Russia was a mirthful society, still stratifiedinto nobility and peasantry. The Russian people seemed to be as immovable asthe dark ground which they farmed, welded to the ground by centuries ofstruggle. magic spell the Europeans fought political battles, the Russians wrestledagainst the cold and starvation. Four decades earlier, Czar Alexander II subscribethe Emancipation Manifesto which freed the serfs from ownership by thenobles.1 He had hoped to fin totallyy bring Russia come in of the dark ages. Hisbureaucracy continued to elevate the peasants by making all classes of societyequal under the law and increasing the availability of education.2 Nevertheless,the inconsolable People of Russia remained in their darkness, understanding slimbesides their own beingness in the context of their communes. The communeoriented nature of the Russian peasants make Russia a prime target forMarxist revolutionaries. The uniquely backward coating of Rus sia spawned asingularly Russian form of Marxism, Narodnichestvo. Russian intellectuals ofthe 19th century felt that the socialist revolution must come from the uprising ofthe rude peasant masses, rather than through the proletariat of the cities. Thepeasants were remarkably unreceptive to subversive agitators. They wereblind to events fall outside of their own commune. More often than not, theagitators were run out of town by suspicious peasants. 3 By 1900, the remnantsof the Narodonik philosophy had break up into the Social Republican party. 4 TheEmancipation Manifesto had marked the beginning of the give notice for the nobility.Deprived of their serfs and unable to gain any power in the government, theNobles were oblige to sell off their land, little by little, to support their lifestyle.For a government supported by nothing more than the momentum of historyand tradition, the decay of the nobility foreshadowed the destruction of theautocracy. At the turn of the century, th e Czar had very little support outsidehis own bureaucracy. Young Nicholas II, heir to the throne in the late 1800s,inspired hope in those rallying for governmental reform. Zemstvos and volosts, local governments elected by nobles and peasants, hoped that Nicholas wouldat least allow these legislatures to have an informatory function for the Czar. 5They were sadly disappointed once Nicholas II ascended the throne. Upon the close of Alexander III, the zemstvo of Tver petitioned Nicholas II to allowlocal representative bodies to express their faith on questions of concern tothem, in order that. . . the Russian people tycoon reach the height of the throne.. .. Nicholas replied, I am extremely astonished and displeased with this