Russian Political Development in the Nineteenth Century

During the 19th century, the subjects of the Russian czars were devastated by the constant fighting against the Ottoman Turks (e.g. Crimean War, Russo-Ottoman wars) that their absolute monarchs started to gain access to the Black Sea.  The czars knew that their vast empire was divided internally, because most of their subjects did not speak Russian, belong to the Russian Orthodox Church, or feel any attachment to Russian culture or history.  The czars used their secret police to impose a Russification policy to force their subjects to speak Russian, join the Russian Orthodox Church, and adhere to Russian customs.  Although there was a compulsory draft for all men, the non-Russians were put under special pressure, because the czars and their advisors believed that the enforced group living in the military would make the non-Russians give up their religions and customs.

The Jews living in Russian controlled territories in the Pale of Settlement and the Baltic countries were especially targeted to give up their identities.  Young Jewish boys were taken from their families at birth and brought up as Russian Orthodox Christians, and older Jewish boys were forced to join the army unless they were the only males in their families.  Pogroms, or organized massacres of Jews, were encouraged by local government leaders and not discouraged by the czars, because anti-Semitism gave Russians a scapegoat (excuse) for the economic and political problems the czars couldn't solve.

One attempt by the czars to bring Russia up to the economic level of England and France was to emancipate the serfs who had been bound to the landowners since the 17th century.  Czar Alexander II (ruled 1855 - 1881) emancipated the serfs in 1861 (about the same time as U.S. President Lincoln emancipated slaves in the Confederate states), but agreed to a plan by the landowners that the serfs would have to pay the state for the land that the landowners gave up for the serfs to farm.  Some serfs became successful and were known as kulaks (watch out for Stalin), but most of them became debt ridden tenant farmers.  Their sons were drafted to fight in the wars against the Ottomans, and some came back unable to work on the farms.

Alexander II was assassinated by a group of anarchists and Marxists who believed that only a revolution would change Russia's backward political system.  His son, Alexander III (ruled 1881 - 1894), responded by becoming more autocratic and enforcing more Russification and pogroms.  Many tens of thousands of Jews emigrated to the United States and Western Europe in the 1880s and 1890s to escape from persecution.

After Alexander III died of a stroke, his ill-prepared son, Nicholas II, became the last czar.  Nicholas II was caught off guard by a Japanese attack over quarrels between the two countries over Manchuria and the Liaodong peninsula.  When Russian workers learned of the Russian defeat, they walked to the czar's palace in St. Petersburg with a petition of grievances.  The czar's troops opened fire on the protesters.  This attack by government troops on Sunday, January 27, 1905 (Bloody Sunday) led to a general work stoppage throughout the country.  Nicholas II then allowed the formation of a Russian parliament called the Duma.  He was really still committed to absolutism, however, and did not abide by the constitutional powers of the legislature.  In hindsight, we know that Czar Nicholas II made a huge mistake in not guaranteeing rights for his subject-citizens.