Who Was the Most Successful Ruler of Russia in the Period 1855 - 1956

Who was the most successful ruler of Russia in the period 1855 - 1956?

Three criteria will be usedto determine who was the most successful ruler of Russia in the period 1855 – 1956. Firstly how the rulers were able to secure and maintain their personal power. Secondly, the way in which they used their power to improve the condition of Russia and its peoples. Thirdly, the extent to which they were able to strengthen the power of the Russian state.

Against the first hurdle, that of securing and maintaining their personal authority, various rulers clearly fall at the first fence. For example, the leaders of the Provisional Government utterly failed to do that. Khrushchev paid for the ineffective nature of his reforms by his dismissal in 1964. Alexander II was an ‘ineffective reformer and an inefficient autocrat’. This led to his assassination in 1881 by the Peoples’ Will. Alexander II may be remembered for his emancipation of the serfs, but he was clearly not a successful ruler. Neither was his grandson, Nicholas II, who presided over the downfall of the Romanov dynasty. His abdication in February 1917 was followed by the butchery of his entire family in 1918. The most successful ruler he most certainly was not!

By default the field of rulers has been reduced to three: Alexander III, Lenin and Stalin. All three successfully maintained their personal power. From 1881 to 1894 Alexander III, with Pobodonostev the ‘great philosopher of absolutism’ as his mentor and guide, re-imposed uncompromising autocratic rule following the assassination of his father. The Okhranadrove most opposition underground or abroad. Lenin’s seizure of power in October 1917, even when stripped of Bolshevik mythology, was foot-perfect. His defeat of the forces of counter-revolution in the subsequent Civil War was equally resolute. Stalin too secured personal power when others seemed much better placed.His consolidation of personal power over Russia was awesome.

The extent to which these three rulers improved the condition of the Russian Empire and its peoples will be considered next. Alexander III is predominantly remembered for his imposition of ‘the Reaction’. The Okhrana pursued real and imagined opponents. His Land Captains maintained order in the countryside. He institutionalized Russification.The minority peoples of the Empire had their cultural and national identities extinguished. His vicious anti-Jewish pogroms, were the logical outcome of this ‘Russian chauvinism’. It was this same ‘Russian chauvinism’ that would cause Lenin to judge Stalin so harshly in his Testament following Stalin’s ruthless Russification of his native Georgia in the early 1920s. In many other respects Stalin had a great deal in common with Alexander III in terms of emphasizing control over the people above meeting their needs. By the 1930s the enforcement of collectivization and Stalin’s chilling persecution of the Kulaks left millions dead and further millions enslaved as zeks in the gulags. Alexander III’s Finance Ministers, Vyshnagradsky and Witte, also taxed the peasants to raise the capital for their industrial projects. Under both regimes the consequence of their ‘agricultural policies’ was famine, those of 1891 and 1932/33 being obvious examples. After Stalin embarked on collectivization historians like Alec Nove have estimated that some ten million peasants were killed; they either died in the famine or in the Siberian labour camps.

In 1956 Khrushchev denounced Stalin at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party. Khrushchev said that Stalin had ruled as a tyrant and that ‘Soviet citizens came to fear their own shadows’. Khrushchev argued that Lenin had only used terror against ‘class enemies’. This interpretation of events suggests that Lenin did his best for Russiain difficult circumstances. For example, his introduction of the NEP in 1921 can be seen as a humanitarian response to the state of Russia. This somewhat romanticized view of Lenin has come under increasing attack by revisionists, especially since the opening up of the old Soviet archives following the collapse of communism. Pipes has stated that: ‘Every ingredient of Stalinism save one – murdering fellow communists – Stalin learned from Lenin and that includes mass terror’. The post-Soviet Russian historian, Volkogonov, writing in 1994, agrees: ‘Everything done in Russia after Lenin’s death was done according to his blueprint’. Clearly, even if it is accepted that Lenin may have had more idealism than Pipes would credit him with, it is difficult to argue with any certainty that any of these three rulers did much for the condition of the peoples of the Russian Empire.

Which than of these three rulers did most to strengthen the power of Russia. From 1891 Witte was allowed to develop the economy. His ‘Great Spurt’, also spans the reign of Nicholas II. Even though Witte laid the foundations of Russian industrialization, defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/05 suggests that Alexander III made insufficient progress even if credited for all of Witte’s developments. Lenin secured victory for the newborn Bolshevik state in the Russian Civil War. However by 1921 he was presiding over a state facing total economic collapse, with 5 million starving to death in the Volga region. His change of direction in 1921 with the introduction of the NEP and its partial return to capitalism did bring slow progress in the 1920s. By then however, Lenin had died in 1924 with Russia at the crossroads and it could be argued that he lacked the time needed to strengthen his country.

Stalin then revolutionised the economy in the 1930s during the Five Year Plans. He justified the targets and methods of the Five Year Plans by stating, ‘we are 50 or 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this lag in ten years. Either we do it or they crush us.’ In Stalin’s words, ‘old Russia was ceaselessly beaten’. He was determined that this would not be the case in the future. In 1855 Russia had an impoverished population stagnating in mediaeval serfdom and an economy, based on primitive agricultural techniques, that was slipping decade by decade further behind the west. By 1953 when Stalin died the USSR exploded its first H – bomb. The USSR had apparently evolved into a global superpower. Even if the extent of Russia’s industrial advance under Stalin was exaggerated by propaganda, the achievement cannot be denied. Stalin’s greatest achievement was to strengthen the country to the point that it was capable of defeating Nazi Germany in the Second World War. By 1945 the USSR was a global power, poised to take-over Eastern Europe and to challenge the USA in the Cold War.

To conclude, Stalin succeeded in mobilizing the Russian population to achieve great goals but at a fearful cost in terms of human life. The obvious question is, did the achievement justify the means? Even if, from a liberal, western point of view, the answer must be ‘No!’ it is hard to argue that any of the other rulers from 1855-1956 achieved more for Russia. Some were undoubtedly more humane, Alexander II for example. Lenin too may have been more concerned about the condition of the citizens of the Empire but his shooting, illness and early death mean that one can only guess at the direction the USSR would have taken under him if he had survived. For leading the Bolsheviks to power and ensuring the survival of the new regime during the dark days of the Civil War, Lenin is probably Stalin’s closest rival in terms of achievement. There is undoubtedly much to dislike about Stalin, whose success was paid for with the blood and tears of his own people, but Stalin was the most successful ruler of Russia in this period.

John Philip