Transcript Austria and Russia

Russian and Austrian Tensions
MR. WHITE’S WORLD HISTORY
Russia
 The Romanov dynasty had ruled Russia for many
hundreds of years into the 1800s
 Some czars had worked hard to modernize Russia,
while others were distrustful of outside, western
ideas – latinstvo
 This struggle would finally start to come to a climax
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
Western Ideas
 The Russian officers who fought Napoleon in the
Napoleonic Wars were exposed to the ideas and
technology of western Europe
 They formed secret societies with the goals of making
Russia more modern by adopting these ideas
 This eventually results in the Decembrist Revolt, an
attempt to modernize Russia through a military
revolt
Decembrist Revolt
 The Decembrist Revolt took place when Alexander I
died, and his son Nicholas I took the throne
 The revolt was defeated, but had two results:
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Leaders of the revolt were seen as martyrs to a cause, and
inspiration to others
The czars also constantly ruled with the threat of an uprising
Defeat and Resolve
 Russia’s defeat by France and the Ottoman Empire
in the Crimean War showed to many Russians how
technologically backwards Russia was
 Czar Alexander II believed that Russia needed to
industrialize to become a major power and compete
with other nations
The Serfs
 Russia still relied on peasant labor for its agriculture
 Serfs were peasants who were tied to the land that
they worked – basically a more restrictive form of
feudalism
 For Russia to industrialize, it needed available labor
 To get this labor, Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861
The Plight of the Serfs
 The serfs obtained legal freedom, and were given
land, but had to pay back the landholders for the
land they were given
 This kept many of them tied to the land still
 Some peasants gave up farming and moved to the
cities to become unskilled urban workers
Some Modernization
 Alexander did other things to modernize and
liberalize Russia:
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Limited the use of Russian secret police
Eased restrictions on the press
Modernized the judicial system
Shortened mandatory military service, from 25 years to 6
 Still, these reforms would not satisfy the people –
encouraged them
Radical Movements
 Radical reformers, many who were upper or middle
class intellectuals, continued to criticize the czar and
the government
 Many advocated the ending of the currently political,
economic, and or social structure, for a complete remaking of society in some other form
 Some groups turned to violence, assassinations, etc.,
to get their point across
 Alexander II tries to crush these radicals – was
assassinated in 1881
Alexander III
 Alexander III takes back many of his father’s reforms
– if you can’t appease them, crush them
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Restored censorship of the press
Extended powers of the secret police
 Alexander also encouraged the Russification of the
country
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Used nationalism to impose a Russian identity on people
Repressed many non-Russian ethnic, language, and religious
groups
Nicholas II
 When Nicholas II took over in 1894, many problems
continued, and he wasn’t strong willed enough to
stop them
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Peasants still unhappy
Middle-class reformers pushed for a constitutional monarchy
 Most importantly, the Russian working class had
increased in size dramatically, and were working and
living in poor conditions
Revolutionary Groups
 Several revolutionary groups had developed in
Russia – most followed the teachings of Karl Marx
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Mensheviks – Russia should develop into an industrialized
nation and then a socialist revolution could occur
Bolsheviks – Professional revolutionaries could use force to
bring about a revolution
Russian Tension
 Russia’s poor showing in the Russo-Japanese war
reinforced that Russia was not a modern nation
 Many people began to oppose the czarist government
 Bloody Sunday – a peaceful demonstration of about
200,000 workers resulted in Russian soldiers firing
on the demonstrators
The Russian Situation
 Soviets, or workers’ councils began to form to voice
workers’ grievances
 All revolutionary groups called for representative
government and universal suffrage
 General strikes resulted in Nicholas allowing the
formation of a duma to give the people
representation – he later dissolves it
 These events will combine with Russia’s experience
in World War I to bring revolution
Austria-Hungary
 Klemens von Metternich, in Austria, had worked to
keep liberal and nationalist forces from threatening
Austria
 In 1848, the revolutions that swept through France
and other places in Europe came to Austria
 After a revolution, the Austrian monarchy was able
to re-establish itself and put down the liberal
rebellion
The Dual Monarch
 To keep the empire from being destabilized by
Hungarian Magyars, Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph
split Austria-Hungary into a dual monarchy
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Both Austria and Hungary would operate basically
independently, for internal matters
The Emperor of Austria would politically rule both monarchies
Nationalism
 Nationalist tensions in the Balkans began to create
divisive pressures in the Austro-Hungarian empire
 The decline of the Ottoman empire in this area
allowed many nationalist groups to speak out for
independence
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Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania – revolts, which the Ottomans
suppressed
Bulgaria
 Russia had controlled Bulgaria as an expansion of its
empire
 At the Congress of Berlin, the European powers
stripped Russia of Bulgaria and divided the parts of
it into independent nations, or holdings of other
nations
 These divisions created small nations and other
divisive tensions within the larger empires, like the
Ottomans and Austria-Hungary
Balkan League
 The Balkan League was a political alliance of many of
the now-free Balkan states
 These nations helped many other Balkan
independence movements separate from the
Ottoman Empire
 But as these wars went on, the Balkan nations began
to have conflicts with each other, as well
End Results
 Serbia, a Slavic nation, gained more power and
would exert its influence on other independence
movements
 Russia supported these Slavic movements to gain
power in the region
 French, British, and German governments worked to
maintain a balance of power in that region
 With these increased tensions, writers called the
Balkans the “powder keg of Europe”