ensured a buy-in for Britain’s four nations. The Tsar’s attempts policy of ‘Russification’ aimed to forging a national identity. Russian culture was forced upon non-Russian communities. Russian was the only language to be taught in schools. However, for nations such as Poland who revolted against Russian impositions 1863, ‘Russification’ only exacerbated pre-existing national tensions. The Tsarist autocracy also frequently relied on coercion. However, the reality was that, in the words of Prince Sergei Trubetskoi (1900), ‘a unitary Tsarist autocracy, in the proper sense of the word, does not and cannot exist.’ Labelled by Figes as an ‘unstable pillar’ 3 , the Imperial bureaucracy was an ineffective tool for coercion. Local government often didn’t have the resources to control society; it was incredibly difficult to collect taxes from poor peasants. The Tsarist policy of keeping administration un-coordinated ensured loyalty from a weaker nobility. However, it also led to ‘knots of competing jurisdiction and legislation’ 4 . Finally, the police struggled to enforce the wishes of this chaotic bureaucracy; the ratio of police constables to civilians was incredibly small, estimated at 1 to 40,000. The Tsarist regime was simply not cruel or efficient enough to rely on coercion alone. This was a lesson the Revolutionaries would take on board - comparable revolutionary leaders who sought to overthrow the state authorities - such as Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky - would have been shot in Communist times (Trotsky in fact did have a gruesome end). However, Tsarist Russia, which was bound to a degree by moral and legal constraint, only exiled such revolutionaries. Icons of popular protest such as Leo Tolstoy would have quite simply disappeared under the Communist system, but in Tsarist Russia he remained relatively untouched. By 1917 Russia’s economy was in ruin. The government’s answer to the mounting costs was to borrow and print paper roubles, leading to mass inflation. A grain crisis led to the starvation of the army and the huge peasant body. The following spontaneous protest which contributed to the overthrowing of Tsar Nicholas II was symptomatic of a wider phenomenon; the intrinsic backwardness of Russia’s agrarian economy. The emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 was intended to modernize Russia’s economy following the catastrophe of the Crimean War (1853-1856). However, it had (arguably) failed. The ancient peasant commune, the Mir , was strengthened. The Mir reinforced primitive agricultural techniques, such as allocation of land proportional to family members. There was little incentive for a peasant to invest in his land, decreasing productivity. Whilst it was true Stolypin attempted to reform the Agrarian economy in 1906 and 1907, Figes argues it was too little, too late. Finally, by 1917 Russia’s demography made it ripe for revolution. Under the minister of Finance Sergei Witte (1892-1903), Russia underwent a policy of rapid and forced industrialization from 1890- 1900. Industrialization led to the emergence of a large urban and downtrodden proletariat. In the midst of Russia’s social urban inequality, Marxist ideas were seductively convincing. Ultimately, however, historians such as Figes have argued the unresolved Peasant Problem doomed the Tsar. 80% of the Russian population were peasants, most of who lived in increasing poverty and desperation. Nations such as Britain ensured a social buy-in for the working class by both representation and introducing reforms under the banner of New Liberalism. However, in Russia the liberal agenda was reversed after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. The public floggings re-introduced during Alexander III’s reign, combined with the imposition of martial law following the 1905 revolution (Stolypin’s Necktie) augmented resentment towards the Tsarist regime. Moreover, Stolypin’s attempt to establish a Volost Zemstvo dominated by the Peasantry was defeated. This ensured the local peasantry were not integrated into local politics, and thus alienated from the Tsarist regime. This increasingly meant ‘only a spark was needed to set the countryside on fire.’ 5 Indeed, it was the peasants who arguably scuppered the Russian war effort in 1916/17 by deserting (en masse) and seizing land.
On the other hand, many historians have argued against the notion of inevitability. The Russian
3 O. Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924 (London, Jonathan Cape 1996), pp. 35-83. 4 O. Figes, p. 38 5 R. Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, p. 274
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