DBQ: Why didn’t reform work in nineteenth century Russia? (causation)
DOCUMENT #1: From the notes of Russian Senator I A Solovev on the discussions which took place between 1855 - 1860 concerning the possible emancipation of the serfs.
'A significant majority of land owners either did not sympathise at all with the enterprise [the emancipation of the serfs] that had begun or at least objected to giving the serfs land along with their freedom . . . In St Petersburg drawing rooms, at court functions, at parades and inspections of troops, behind the walls of the State Council and the Senate, and in offices of the ministers . . . were heard . . . energetic protests against the intentions of the government. These protests expressed in vigorous terms more or less the same idea - that the emancipation of the serfs was premature; the results of the reforms . . . would be that the estate owners would remain without working hands, the peasants because of their natural indolence [laziness] would not work even for themselves, the productivity of the state would decrease, causing general inflation, famine disease, and national misery. At the same time insubordination on the part of the peasants, local widespread rioting - in other words they predicted all the horrors of a "deeply plotted' democratic revolution.'
DOCUMENT #2: Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, an Englishmanliving and traveling in Russia in late 1870s, observes the effects of emancipation on the serfs
One year passed, five years passed, ten years passed, and the expected transformation did not take place. On the contrary, there appeared certain very ugly phenomena which were not at all in the programme. The peasants began to drink more and to work less, and the public life which the Communal institutions produced was by no means of a desirable kind…in very many Volosts [local assemblies] the peasant judges, elected by their fellow-villagers, acquired a bad habit of selling their decisions for vodka. The natural consequence of all this was that those who had indulged in exaggerated expectations sank into a state of inordinate despondency, and imagined things to be much worse than they really were. ….The present money-dues and taxes are often more burdensome than the labour-dues in the old times…Their burdens and their privileges have been swept away together, and been replaced by clearly defined, unbending, un-elastic legal relations. They have now to pay the market-price for every stick of firewood which they burn, for every log which they require for repairing their houses, and for every rood of land on which to graze their cattle. Nothing is now to be had gratis [free]. The demand to pay is encountered at every step. If a cow dies or a horse is stolen, the owner can no longer go to the proprietor with the hope of receiving a present, or at least a loan without interest, but must, if he has no ready money, apply to the village usurer, who probably considers twenty or thirty percent, as a by no means exorbitant rate of interest.
DOCUMENT #3: Proclamation by A. V. Iartsev (October, 1873)
Iartsev produced this text early in 1874 while under interrogation for his involvement in the "Movement to the People;" he represented it as a faithful transcript of a talk he had given to some construction workers.
Brothers! You can't deny that you are deceived at every step, that your labor benefits only the rich and the contractors. That's what you are thinking about--how to escape from this. The government doesn't think of improving your situation, it just wants to collect a bit more money to pay its functionaries and gather armies, so it can strut before other states. In Samara Province, in what you call the low country, such grain used to grow there that they still talk about it to this day, but now the common people is dying from hunger there, now they are eating all kinds of garbage. That's because the peasants there have little land, and with taxes, everything they might save for a hungry year is squeezed out. Now there is a drought, and death is among them. I have heard there is talk among you of equalizing the land. Well, you have nothing to expect from the government in that, for it is well fed and the well-fed don't understand the hungry…Even now there is the zemstvo assembly, but none of you can make any sense out of what goes on there. The peasants don't elect as delegates those that can be counted on but those who offer the most vodka. That's who gets elected when the common people is in darkness and is bad itself, the elections don't do any good. Stenka Razin and Pugachev[leaders of earlier peasant uprisings] were concerned about improving the way people live, but they did not do any good, because the common people was very backward, did not understand what was good for it, but listened to any scoundrel; much blood flowed, but no good was done. And all this was because everyone worried only about himself, and didn't think of others. And so, brothers, stand one for all and all for one, and only then can you get rid of taxes and the draft and equalize the land.
Document #4: Anton Chekhov, physician, playwright, and writer, “Peasants,” short story, (1897)
They lived in discord, quarreling constantly, because they did not respect but feared and suspected one another. Who keeps the tavern and makes the people drunkards? A peasant. Who embezzles and drinks up the school and church funds? A peasant. Who has stolen from his neighbor, committed arson, given false testimony in court for a bottle of vodka?
Yes, to live with them was terrible, yet all the same they were people; they suffered and wept as people do, and in their lives there wa much for which excuses might be found.
DOCUMENT #5: Testimony of Russian revolutionary Leo Deutsch on Vera Figner, one of the leaders of the revolutionary group, the People’s Will (1902)
This was a time [1870s] of hot discussion as to our future programme. Some held the opinion that the whole strength of our party should be concentrated on the terrorist struggle to overthrow the existing machinery of the State by attempting the lives of the Tsar and the lesser representatives of despotism. Others contended that revolutionary propaganda ought still to be tried and carried further…that revolutionists should work among the people, colonize the villages, and instruct the peasants…
[Vera] had just returned from a small village on the Volga where she had been living among the peasants for purposes of propaganda. The impressions she had received there had stirred her deeply, and she described in graphic language the fathomless misery and poverty, the hopeless ignorance of the provincial working classes. The conclusion she drew from it all was that under the existing conditions there was no way of helping these people.
“Show me any such way; show me how, under present circumstances, I can serve the peasants and I am ready to go back to the villages at once,” she said…But her experience had been that of many others who had idealized “the people”…in the late autumn of the same year…she was busy with preparations for an attempt on the life of Alexander II…and devoted herself with her whole soul to terrorist activity.
Document #6: Police Report to the Ministry of the Interior, 1898
From reports reaching the Ministry of the Interior it is seen that in certain provinces, predominantly southern and southeastern, there has recently emerged a series of peasant disorders in the form of systemic damage to the noble’ fields and meadors, together with the driving away of cattle under the protection of men armed with sticks and pitchforks. Often whole villages carry out armed attacks on the houses of the nobility and loot the working and even the living quarters, attacking and wounding servants and guards.
Document #7: Serge Witte, Minister of Finance (1892-1903), private letter to Tsar Nicholas II, 1898
It was not enough to free the peasant from the serf owner—it is still necessary to free him from the slavery of despotism, to give him a legal system, and consequently also an understanding of legality, and to educate him. But, at present, the peasant is subjugated by the arbitrariness of the local police chief, the local bureaucrats, every noble landowner and even his own village elders. Therefore, it is impossible to aid the peasant through material measures alone. First and foremost it is necessary to raise the spirit of the peasantry to make them your free and loyal sons.