Opposition under Alexander II

The reforms of Alexander II’s reign stimulated those who saw the possibility of further change and were willing to use extremist tactics to achieve their ends. Opposition to Alexander II can be split into two broad categories: The Intelligentsia – the educated, usually middle class elites. Populists – believed in the power of the people to bring about change in Russia.

The Intelligentsia Size: relatively tiny as there were few educated Russians. Size and influence grew in the 1870s as judicial reforms meant the growth of professionally trained lawyers. The development of the Zemstva provided a new forum for debate. Travel abroad also allowed intellectuals to develop new ideas. Aims: To change the Russian state and allow more individual freedoms. The intelligentsia wanted to have a say in Russian political life.

Key Thinkers Mikhail Bakunin: a socialist intellectual who believed in the superiority of the peasant and suggested that land should be owned collectively. He believed that the state crushed individual freedom.

Key Thinkers Alexander Herzen: Believed that Russia’s existing social and political system had to go. He wanted a system with the mir at the centre of government. He laid out his ideas in a book called The Bell.

Key Thinkers Nicholas Chernyshevsky: Also placed his faith in the peasants as the revolutionary class and expressed his views in his book, What is to be done?

What did they have in common? They all believed that the Russian state had to change and that there needed to be individual freedom. More calls for reform were heard after the setting up of the zemstva in These provided a limited outlet and increased demands for constitutional change and heightened student idealism and determination.

The Populists Size: A group of around 2,000 people, mainly from the nobility and intelligentsia. They became known as the narodniks after the Russian ‘v narod’ meaning ‘to the people’ or, in English, Populists. Aims: The Populists aimed to win over the peasants by stirring up resentment about lack of land and the heavy tax burden. Mostly they were disappointed – the peasants’ ignorance, superstition, prejudice and deep-rooted loyalty to the tsar ensured that by the autumn of 1874, 1,600 had been arrested.

Case Study Mikhail Romas: Tried to put his populist ideas into action, sailing 30 miles down the River Volga to a small peasant village where he tried to organise a co-operative selling fruit and vegetables to a nearby town in return for cheap manufactured goods. Peasants were suspicious. Some richer ones were upset that he was undercutting their own deals. A poor peasant who had acted as his assistant was murdered and mutilated. Eventually, peasants blew up the shop (and half the village) by setting fire to his kerosene store and blaming Romas for the fire. He had to flee for his life as angry peasants set on him.

Land and Liberty If ‘going to the people’ did not work, a new strategy had to be adopted. Land and Liberty was more radical and better organised. It wanted to hand Russia’s land to the peasants and destroy the State. Members of Land and Liberty set out to work within peasant communes as doctors or teachers and tried to stir up resistance. However, a mixture of repression and peasant apathy made it clear that this approach would not work.

Land and Liberty did succeed in carrying out some assassinations – the head of the Third Section, and Prince Kropotkin. What worried the authorities was that the assassinations seemed to win public sympathy. Milyutin, minister of war, seemed to see the problem: It must be acknowledged that our entire government structure demands basic reform from top to bottom. The structure of rural self-government, of the zemstva, of local administration, as well as of institutions on the central and national level have outlived their time. They should all take on new forms in accordance with the spirit of the great reforms carried out in the sixties. The higher strands of government think only of protective police measures. I am convinced that the present leader in government are powerless, not only to solve the problem, but even to understand it.

1879: Land and Liberty split: Black Partition Led by Georgi Plekhanov. It wanted to share or partition the black soil provinces of Russia among the peasants. It worked peacefully among the peasantry, spreading socialist propaganda and trying to bring about reform without violence. It was severely weakened by arrests in and ceased to exist as a separate organisation. Plekhanov was attracted by Marxism and went on to create the first Russian Marxist organisation in The People’s Will Led by Timofei Mikhailov. Successfully planted a spy in the Third Section to keep the group informed of the secret police’s activities. Advocated violent methods, undermining the government by assassinating officials. In 1879 it declared that the tsar had to be removed unless he agreed to a constitution. Several attempts on his life were made before the successful attack in March, 1881.

Key Thinkers: Georgi Plekhanov Leader of Land and Liberty and then the Black Partition. Exiled from Russia in 1880, he settled in Geneva where he studied Marxism. He abandoned his belief in the peasantry and became attracted to the idea of worker-led change. Timofei Mikhailov The son of a peasant who moved to St Petersburg to work in a factory there. He became involved in revolutionary politics and was arrested in 1881 for taking part in the assassination of Alexander II. He was hanged a month later.

The execution of the tsar’s assassins.