In this essay I am looking at the period 1855 to 1917 saw many changes in the ruling of Russia. In 1855 there was a strong Autocratic leader in charge of the country. This remained to be the case until early 1917 when the Tsar abdicated. So in this essay I am going to look at nature of the opposition to the Tsarist regime. In total there were 3 different leaders during the period I am looking at and in this essay I will be trying to answer questions such as how successful was the opposition in Russia in carrying out their respective plans? Also I will be looking at how each of the Tsars respectively dealt with the opposition in Russia.In this first paragraph I am going to look at why there ...view middle of the document...
So they went to live with the peasants to try and rouse them into action. So under Tsar Alexander opposition was limited to those who were educated enough. By 1881 there was a new Tsar in power which was Alexander III and the peasants were freed under the emancipation which happened in 1861 under the previous Tsar. The new Tsar was responsible for somewhat undoing the reforms that were prominent under Alexander II. For example he was stricter on the amount of people allowed to study at universities. So the Tsar taking away freedoms like this that were gave to them under the previous Tsar only helped creating more opposition to the regime. Also the famine of 1891 highlighted the incapability's of the Tsar in handling the country. So opposition under his reign was more threatening. Alexander's reign came to an end in 1894 and he was followed by his son Nicholas. He somewhat followed in his late fathers footsteps. His reign is often looked at in the different stages. Up and till 1905 Tsar Nicholas continued his fathers' policies and outlook. However due to factors like the defeat in the Russo-Japanese war opposition in Russia became more threatening to the Tsar, which resulted in him making serious reform in order to remain in power. This reform was to introduce a Duma which was an elected parliament. However there was organised opposition in Russia from groups such as the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries. So in this paragraph I have briefly gone into the main reasons for the rise in opposition in Russia under each of the three Tsars reign. I have also outlined who formed the opposition at this time.In the next paragraph I am going to look at the methods used by the different groups who opposed Tsarist rule. Methods used by the different groups were both passive and active. In Alexander's reign opposition only really came in the form of novels and articles. It wasn't until 1866 that the Tsar had a serious attempt made on his life. This was when student Dmitri Karakozov who was part of a group called "Hell" and he shot out at the Tsar but missed and was then arrested and later executed. Also under Alexander II there was The Narodniks who decided that the state was too strong so they had to win support from the peasants in order to bring about change. So there plans were to live with the peasants with the hope of "rousing" them up to protest against the Tsar in there numbers. Also it was common for these groups to assassinate those who were closest to the Tsar, for example in 1901 the Minister of Education was assassinated by a group of students. In early 1905 was Bloody Sunday, this was the most significant uprising to date. The uprising was lead by Father Gapon who was head of the assembly of Russian factory and mill workers. Although the march had been banned by the police, it still went ahead. The uprising involved workers marching to the Winter Palace peacefully to hand over a petition because of the sacking of five workers from the...