History Crash courses
Russia’s determination
to expand in global influence was considered a threat to global stability Ivan
the Terrible, Peter the Great and Stalin all used brute force to propel their
underdeveloped nation forward. Alexander III enjoyed this mindset.
Nicholas acceded to the throne too early as he was not expecting he father to
die so young.
Nicholas II, Kaiser
Wilhelm II and Charles I of Austro-Hungary all lost their thrones in WW1 only
the UK remained as it was a constitutional monarch.
St. Petersburg was to bring
Western Culture and its architecture is Italian and the aristocrats favored
French.
1881-94 Alexander III
modernized the country by bringing in the railways.
1866 Alexander married
Maria Fedorovna who was the Princess Dagmar of Denmark she was originally
betrothed to his older brother. She was very popular amongst the Russian
people.
1868 May 18th in Baltic
city St. Petersburg Nicholas II born,. His brother George 1871, Michael 1878
In education he had a
passion for history and Russian literature and spoke English, French and German
fluently, his tutor Pobedonostsev hated non-orthodox groups and was an anti-Semite
and taught him against responsible government which was alien to Russia.
1994Nov1st Death of
Alexander III
1894 Nov 26th Nicholas
and Alexandra got married during the mourning period for his father.
From the beginning
Alexandra was disliked by the Russian population.
1894 Military Alliance
with France as both feared Germany.
Nicholas family expanded
Olga 1995 , Tattiana1897,Marie1899 Anastasia 1901, Alexey the crown prince 1904
1896 May Coronation in
Moscow of Tsar Nicholas II. The chain of the Order of Andrew came undone and
fell to the floor - a bad omen. The wedding feast offered food for the
poor and they charged in and not see the trenches in the ground from a military
exercise and thousand lay dead and wounded.
Russia embarked on a
program of rapid industrial and great railway expansion at the start of his
reign making it able to exploit the natural resources -coal metal timber. How
could an outdated autocracy maintain growing prosperity?
His 4 uncles Vladimir,
Alexis, Serge and Paul were able to influence the direction of the state till
the trauma of the war with Japan and 1905 revolution.
1899 Hague Convention
was attended by 20 nations to bring world peace including US, Mexico Persia
China Japan, so Nicholas was call Nicholas the Pacific, but disarmament was
rejected.
1899 Grand Duke George
brother and close pal of Nicolas died of tuberculosis.
1901 Jan Queen Victoria
in England died Alexandra's grandmother, a source of stability for her.
Wilhelm was 9 years
senior to Nicholas and had be Kaiser for 6 years when Nicholas became Tsar. The
2 kept up a cousinly correspondence till after the Japanese war. Though Russia
had more in common with Republican France.
Otto von Bismarck saw
Russian activity in Asia would diminish her role in Europe. Russia would have
trouble with the Japanese or British in India. Vladivostok was closed 3 months
in the year but Port Author was open.
Europeans had footholds
in China , British Hong Kong, Portugal Macau, Germany Tsingtao between 1898 and
1914 (Quindoa)
Russia managed to get a
99 year lease on Port author and the East China railway would link Siberia to
Vladivostok.
1899- 1901 Boxer
Rebellion failed to expel foreign exploitation.
1901 Japan made requests
against Russian encroachment onto Manchuria but were ignored.
1900 Revolutionary
terrorism returned and a few ministers were assassinated including Vyacheslave
Plehve in 1904 who turned a blind eye to attacks on Jews
1904 Feb Japan attacks
Russian Pacific navy sinking 2 battleships and a cruiser. Russia went to war
but had to rely on the incomplete single track Trans-Siberian Railway.
1904 Oct. Russia had committed
to Britain to keep her Black Sea fleet in place so sent her Baltic fleet
to the war against Japan They thought it was being attacked at
Dogger Bank and fired on English fishing trawlers from Hull. It only
arrived near Japan in 1905 May and consisted of 30 warships with 228
guns.
Admiral Togo destroyed
this in the Straits of Tsushima between Korean and Japan. Japan suffered 117 casualties
against Russia’s 4380 deaths and 5000 prisoners taken.
1905Jan 57780
Japanese dead and 28200 Russian dead and the Russians in Port Author surrendered.
1905 Sept Treaty of Portsmouth
signed in Kittery, Maine under Teddy Roosevelt and Japan received a lease to
Port Author and South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.
1905 Revolution. Jan As
a result of the defeat the Putilov steel works went on strike. Father Gapon led
a protest to the Winter Palace and this resulted in Bloody Sunday. Father Gapon
fled but the Social Revolutionary Party tracked him down and killed him.as they
thought he still was a police agent.
Grand Duke Serge an uncle
was assassinated and the Battle Ship Potemkin mutinied and used the ship to
bombard the Black Sea Coast. The Black Hundreds supported Orthodoxy,
Autocracy and Nationalism counteracting the revolutionaries but turned on the
Jews as a scapegoat. With Pogroms in 1903 and 1905 with the police turning a
blind eye.
1905 October Manifesto
the Tsar allowed the Duma to be elected on the advice of Witte, the far left
worried that this half way house would stop a full revolution they wanted, it
also upset the monarchists By 1906 Witte was forced to resign. The tsar
maintained control of foreign affairs and the army. The Duma immediately wanted
land reform universal suffrage, release of political prisoners and only
ministers acceptable to the Duma. Stolypin dissolved the Duma.
I907 A second Duma
elected. Stolypin put all electoral into the hands of landowners and
aristocrats. Stolypin started reforming Russia’s system of land ownership for
peasants. "Stolypin’s Necktie" to restore law and order 600 assassins
and terrorists were arrested and hung. Free primary school introduced.
1911 Stolypin
assassinated after 5 years of good administration. Nobody appointed afterwards
were capable.
AnnaVyrubova daughter of
the Imperial Chancellery Alexander Taneyev became Alexandra’s bosom friend and
lived in a house on the Tsarkoe Sela.
At a hunting lodge in
Spala, Poland Alexei was bleeding and just about being announced dead when a
telegram arrived from Rasputin in Pokrovskoe Siberia that he would live.
1913 300 years of
Romanov dynasty started by Michael Romanov, this was a big celebration of pageantry
both in St. Petersburg and Moscow.
WW1 British parliament
despised and alliance with the ruthless autocracy but alarmed and Germany's
naval power.
1848 France Joseph had
come to power, he was proposing tribalism rule not only by Austrians and
Magyars but also Slavs. When war started 1.4 million men were eligible for service
in Russia. Germany knew that it would take Russia 6 weeks to get her army
assembled and that was enough time to march through neutral Belgium, capture
Paris and knock France out of the war. However they got stuck 30 miles from
Paris. In Russia the aristocracy were European cosmopolitan and spoke more
French than Russian, and spent more time holidaying on Italian and French
Riviera than their estates.
Tsar’s brother Michael
married an twice divorced commoner Natalie and was forced to live in exile, if
he had become regent he would have been forced into a political marriage but
was later allowed to return.
1914 August Grand Duke
Nicholas, Tsars cousin, ran the war from a base at the Baranovichi junctions
Petersburg name changed to Petrograd more Slavic. Witte previous PM had advised
against going to war - what profits or rewards will it bring us? Germany had 10
meters of track for every one Russia had. Russia had only 1 factory for
every 150 in the UK.
Renenkampf ordered a
cavalry charge on the modern German guns and wiped out the flower of Russian
aristocratic youth. The Battle of Tannenbaum the German guns wiped out a million
Russians with a disproportionally number of Russian officers. Russia succeeded
against Austria -Hungary capturing 120000 prisoners and 900 guns.
The tsar took command of
the army to unify the country first Baranovichi then Mogliev in Belarus.
The Empress and 2 oldest
daughters learned nursing and helped in the Catherin Palace hospital. She had
to learn politics and needed a guide which was Rasputin the embodiment of
Russian peasantry.
1915 Jan Anna Vyrubova
was in a train that crashed and Rasputin looked at her on her deathbed and said
she will survive be will be crippled.
In 16 months under the
Tsarina there were 4 PMs, 5 ministers of the Interior, 3 ministers of war adn
4minister of agriculture and nobody who posed a threat to Rasputin. Polivanov
proved to be a capable War Minister in his brief tenure but refused to
associate with Rasputin. There were appointees who turned down ministries
knowing how short lived they were.
Rasputin suggested they
suspend all trains for 3 days to allow food trains to use the track
because of shortages.
The Duma called for responsible
government but Nicholas felt that the peasants supported him and during the war
giving concessions would show weakness. Minister of Interior anticipated a rise
in social disorder and 4 cavalry regiments were brought to Petrograd. The Tsar
felt more confident as arms shipments had arrived from Britain and France.
1917 March There were
long queues outside bakeries for meagre rations and shortages of coal meant
factories stopped working. The 13th million men were called up. Kerensky
decided that the Tsar must be removed only 5 days after the Tsar left
Petrograd. The garrison here was manned by new young soldiers and working class
men unsuitable for the front and the police empathized with them due to the
state of hunger. Posters threatened strikers they would be sent to the front.
Crowds arrived at the Duma with red banners and singing the Marsellaise. Both a
provisional government and an assembly of Soviet Soldiers Workers Deputies.
Kerensky 36 years old was de facto head of government and moved carefully to
avoid a blood bath.
The tsar tried returning
to Petrograd but the train was held up by revolutionaries. He was handed a
paper to sign abdication, but also for his son and wanted his brother Michael
to be take the crown, which he turned down. So the last Romanov as the first
would be Michael. The Bolsheviks would not allow this.
As long as the
Provisional Government was in the war they got French, British support. The US
was just joining the war now. Thus it was an alliances of democracies against
an alliance of Emperors.
The palace guards swore allegiance
to the Provisional gov. Kerensky as Minister of Justice had to investigate
Alexandra's pro German activities. The tales of the Tsarina and Rasputin were
now openly put in the press.
The government had to
get the royal family to safety. The British ambassador George Buchanan sent a
telegram asking for their asylum. Liberal PM Lloyd George detested the Russian
autocracy who needed help getting out of this mess of his own creating but the
Provincial Government was her ally. Britain claimed she was scared of U-boats
, but really worried about keeping social cohesion during the war.
Lenin was living in
exile at the time in Geneva an considered this revolution made a proper
revolution less likely. He got ceiled passage in a train through Germany and
declared an immediate end to the war. Lenin immediately demanded the abolition
of the police and armed forces. He was immediately rejected.
Kerensky refused
to negotiate peace with Germany as this would have cut off aid from the allies
and a $325 million loan from America. The uprising that followed forced Lenin
to flee to Finland and Trotsky was arrested.
1917 Oct a mob stormed
the Winter Palace where the Provisional Government were gathered and Kerensky
fled into exile and the Bolsheviks took over
1918 March Brest Litovsk
Treaty took Russia out the war. The Bolsheviks had now served their purpose to
the Kaiser but were now a danger of a global communist revolution to
Germany. With Russia out the war the Germans could beat the allies
in Flanders but the American had arrived.
The Royal family was in Yekaterinburg.
The civil war had started and Czech POWs seized control of Omsk and were
advancing and would join the White Army and the Romanov could fall into their hands.
Meanwhile American and British troops had arrived in Murmansk.
1918 July the Romanovs
were murdered 8 days before the Whites got there and drove out the Bolsheviks.
Their bodies were burned and dumped down a disused mineshaft. Prince Michael
was also shot in Siberia.
1917- 1922 Russian Civil
War.
Alexander Kerensky lived
in Europe till WW2 and settled in the US with his family and died 1970
1998 the Imperial family
were buried in a Church Tomb of Peter and Paul Cathedral in St.
Petersburg.
2007 Yekaterinburg,is a
place of pilgrimage. All their bodies were found
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