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You are here: Experts > Homework Help > 20th Century History > European History > Tsarist Opposition
Expert: Sam Rutherford - 10/8/2008
Question
Why was opposition to Tsarism so ineffective in the period before 1904?
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Yazz
Answer
I'm don't agree entirely with the premise. Just because opposition to tsarism didn't show results before 1905 doesn't mean it was entirely ineffective. One could argue it was doing significant work undermining the foundation of autocracy which finally developed a significant fissure in 1905 and collapsed in 1917.
The chief reason you don't see any effects prior to 1905 is that Alexander III was good at repressing revolution. Regimes with the means, the ability, and the will to repress opposition almost never fail. Nicholas II had the will but was much less competent. His incompetence was glaringly obvious during the Russo-Japanese war and again in WWI.
Also, objective conditions were less favorable to a revolution before 1905 than after. The Russian peasantry, like the peasantry elsewhere, was basically conservative and patriotic, at least in the sense that they had affection for the dynasty. They were highly resistant to the teachings of narodnik revolutionaries and their Socialist Revolutionary successors. And the peasantry was the primary class the revolutionary intelligensia sought to influence, there being very few urban workers. Industrialism increased sharply beginning around 1890, and factory workers did prove easier to educate and organize. You see the results of this in the vast labor unrest during the run up to 1905. But, when WWI presented revolutionaries with the opportunity to educate and organize large numbers of peasant soldiers, I have to believe that generations of effort in this regard made the task easier.
Finally, the terrorist tactics employed by groups like Narodnaya Voyla probably alienated the masses, but they energized a dedicated minority. The number of people willing to take action against the regime, whether as organizers, educators, or terrorists probably grew steadily over time, so when the regime finally collapsed, largely without the help of a revolutionary opposition, there were thousands ready and prepared to make a revolution, many of whom had been working on it in some fashion prior to 1905 when their efforts began to show.
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