01 russian origins and history

Russia: A Brief Political History

Comparative

Government & Politics

Россия

Russia

America and

Russia

from Alex de Toqueville’s

Democracy in America(1839)

America and Russia

from De Toqueville’sDemocracy in America

(1839)There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal – the Russians and

the Anglo-Americans.

America and Russiafrom De Toqueville’s

Democracy in America (1839)

Both have grown in obscurity, and while the world's attention was occupied elsewhere,

they have suddenly taken their place among the leading nations,

making the world take note of their birth and of their greatness almost at the same instant.

America and Russiafrom De Toqueville’s Democracy in America (1839)

All other peoples seem to have nearly reached their natural limits and to need nothing but to preserve them;

but these two are growing. All the others have halted or advanced only through great exertions;

they alone march easily and quickly forward along a path whose end no eye can yet see.


The American fights against natural obstacles; the Russian is at grips with men.

The former combats the wilderness and barbarism;

the latter, civilization with all its arms.

America's conquests are made with the plowshare,

Russia's with the sword.


To attain their aims,the former relies on personal interest and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals.

The latter in a sense concentrates the whole power of society in one man.


One has freedom as the principal means of action;

the other has servitude.

Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse;

nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

InvasionRussia’s political history began w/ invasion :

• 800s Varangian Vikings

• 1237-1240 MMongol ongol IInvasionnvasion: Genghis Khan’s forces push from North China across the Asian continent to take Moscow– Tatars: a Turkish people also invading Russia –

became agents/administrators for Mongols

Characteristics & ThemesPervading Russian History

1. Backwardness – technological, social

2. Closed to West – . . . except sometimes

& at times, not so much

1. Invasions / fear of invasions / xenophobia / paranoia

2. Alternating periods of repression followed feeble efforts at reform

3. Nearly no cultural history of democracy

1240-1480 Mongol/Tatar Rule• Brutal invasion• Russia “hibernated” • During this period

the rest of Europe

enjoyed the high

middle ages and then

the beginning of

the Renaissance

Russia slept through the Renaissance and missed it and its benefits

Paleolithic Europe inhabited originally

by

“indigenous” matriarchal

semi-agrarian tribes

• worshipped 'Mother Earth',

• spoke unknown languages.

Indo-Europeans• Semi-nomadic, Horses,

mounted warriors• Patriarchal – • a Pantheon of nature

gods, of whom 'Father-in-Sky' was chief

• Proto-Indo-European = ancestor of nearly all modern So.West Asian, Indian, Iranian, and European languages,

as well as many now extinct languages.

Indo-European Language

tree

Slavic Groups

Slavs

As late as late 8th Century Slavs were still

• nearly Neolithic

• subsistence farmers

• living on the fringe of the forest

• Remote from . . . Everything

• Lagging behind . . . Everyone

BUT, then . . . a new force arrived

Varangian Vikings Connecting Baltic Sea &Black Sea,

Viking traders & adventurers followed the Rivers:

Dnieper, Don, & Volga & connecting waterways,

southeastward through what is today Russia .

Established fortified trading posts (gorodyi) & secure depots along their river routes to and from Byzantium.

TThehe RRusus• 1st “Russian” monarchic dynasty,

• local Slavs called them, the Rus,

• one of these Viking trade centers grew into the kingdom of Kiev -

Rurikr

• Novgorod

• about 860

The Rus prospered, progressed & expanded

The Rus became increasingly more connected w/ the

2 Great Civilizations still extant at the close of

the 1st millennium AD

• the ByzantineByzantine EmpireEmpire &

• IslamicIslamic EmpiresEmpires

Rome was not the source of Russian civilization,

• Russia never comprised part of the Western Roman Empire

• No Roman Roads, Roman Aqueducts, Roman Law, or Roman Christianity

• It path was different - it did NOT develop along the same track as Western Europe

Ancient

For Russia, traditional historic divisions

of European studies don’t work:

Classical

Medieval Renaissance

Modern

Russian history is more fittingly divided into periods corresponding to epochs in which

various cities served as

capital of the Russian state –

Russian history is more fittingly divided into periods corresponding to epochs in which

various cities served as

capital of the Russian state –

Kiev, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Moscow again.

From first “Russian” state originating about end of 9th century around Kiev,

Russian history has essentially been a tale of three cities

Epochs of Russian History

Each capital

commanded a sprawling,

and expanding Slavic empire

on the eastern periphery of Europe,

each city

left its indelible mark on modern Russian

culture.

Russian proverb:

KievKiev was the

mother of Russia;

Moscow Moscow its its heartheart;

St. Petersburg its

head.

Looked to monotheistic faiths as basis for a unified state

accepted Eastern Orthodox Christianity for himself & for his people.

Prince Vladimir, 988

Christianity became the common faith and the resulting common culture were most important factors which helped to weld and temper the rising Russian state and national identity.

Christianity became the common faith and resulting common culture were most important factors which helped to weld and temper the rising Russian state and national identity.

Prince Vladimir, 988

Orthodoxy provided the Rus a degree of homogeneity anda more clearly defined national identity

Saints Cyrill & Methodius

Slavs were an illiterate culture Prechristian Russian

Byzantine monks, created a Slavic alphabet derived from Greek letters & some Hebrew.

Cyrillic - sped the spread of Christianity among the Rus.

Translate words 1-6 from Cyrillic and into Roman letters and English language.

1. Америка2. Россйя3. Цар Иван Грознйк 4. Kpemлн5. Катарина Бошоя6. Сталин

7.And now, using Cyrillic letters . . . .write the sounds of your full name

But,

• But they did NOT live happily

ever . . . . .

Hey, . . .

What’s all that smoke and dust on the eastern horizon?

Mongol Hordes

Mongol Hordes occupy and dominate Russia for the

Early Empire

• Ivan III - “gathering of Russian land”

• Moscow becomes a powerful state

• Cossacks

(Turkish word = “free men” - peasants help expand borders

• Adopted Byzantine traditions - 3rd Rome

Ivan III Vasilevich (Ivan the Great)

• Grand Dukes of Moscow had been attempting for years to overthrow the Mongols

• Ivan the Great first subjugated the surrounding cities & autonomous provinces

• 1480 refused to pay tribute demanded by Mongols (Tatars).

• Russians freed themselves from Mongol overlordship.

• Ivan the Great became the 1st national sovereign, (but not the first tsar. )

Ivan the Terrible• Ivan III’s grandson

• Began “assemblies of the land”

- groups informing Tsar

• Military & aristocratic elite

(boyars) threatened his power

• Oprichnina - centralized power, created strategic network by which Ivan challenged the old nobility - created a loyal govt.

• Granted new powers, Tsar Ivan hunted and killed “traitors” and innocents

Ivan the Terrible• Oprichnina• Russia in

disarray• Kinda his own

fault• Died with no heir• punishable by

death to mention "Oprichnina"

• Civil War• Polish invasion

Openness to the West

• Romanov Dynasty begins in 1613, when Russian independence is restored

• First 3 Romanovs work to “catch up” Russia with Europe: – Organized/modernized trade and commerce– Efforts toward education & chronicling histories– Bringing in European artists

Opening to the WestTsar Peter the Great 1689-1725

– Traveled widely;– preference for things

Western; – contempt for Russian

backwardness– “Westernizing”– Modernized expansionistic

army– Table of Ranks - linked

positions in gov’t to performance & merit

– Built St. Petersburg – the Window on the West

Reform, then Repression

• 1762-1796 Catherine the Great (Царина, tsarina, czarina)

• Initially “open”• reforms . . .• French Revolution,

– rebellion at home– led her to become more

oppressive

Russian E x p a n s i o n

• The Russian empire would stand until 1991• Orthodox rivalry w/ Poland Catholic brings

acquisition of Ukraine, partition of Poland• In South, grab lands from the Ottomans

- Crimean War• In East, Russians displace natives,

– take Manchuria

• Claimed Alaska, visited California & Hawaii

Russian Life

• Orthodox Christianity controlled by Czar - Caesaropapism

• Almost completely agrarian

• Most peasants still tied to the land, – Tsars created laws that backed land owners

(boyars) - - - WHY?

Nicholas II - the last Czar

• ruled 1894 until abdication 15 Mar (ides of March) 1917

• Khodynka Tragedy– 1,389 people trampled to

death, 1,300 injured.

• Russo-Japanese War

• Bloody Sunday, Jan. 1905

• Duma Concessions

• Okhrana repressions

World War

• Tsar Nicky’s lethal failure

• mid-1915, Nicholas

made disastrous decision to take

direct command of Russian armies.– From then on, every military failure was . . . HIS

• Dec. 1916, Rasputin was murdered . . .

several times

Bolsheviks• Vladimir Illyich

Ulyanov - aka

Lenin

Russian Civil War 1918-1922• Bolsheviks and their Red Army

• Mensheviks (Whites) – any combination of the opposition – disunited, disorganized, well, . . . doomed

War communismThe NEP - НЭП Новая экономическая политика

Under the NEP

The Soviet promise of modernization rested on one main issue, transforming the USSR into a modern industrialized society to do so the Soviet Union had to reshape preexisting structures, agricultural system and

the class structure that surrounded it.

the state was forced to backpedal away from Communist ideals:embraced a more liberal approach to modernizing the economy. Soviet state abandoned idea of nationalizing industries.Soviet govt promoted and reformed the private sectorseverely cut the central govt budget.The Soviet Union welcomed foreign investment

The NEP was primarily a pragmatic agricultural policy. Privately, Lenin considered the NEP a strategic retreat

СТАЛИН

STALIN

Holodomor Ukraine’s forced famine

8 million dead in Ukraine another1.5 million in Kazakhstan

1932-33

The Soviet State’s massive collectivization efforts caused famines in the early 1930s, wiped out entire rural populationsnot only in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, but also the Volga and North Caucasus, and other Central Asian regions of Russia.

A total of 14 million people are believed to have died as a direct result of collectivizationharvests and livestock were requisitioned en masse,leading to food shortages and starvation.

Millions more died in Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s, and millions more in the

forced deportations during and after World War II.

. Hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachais, Volga Germans,” Meskhetian Turks

-- virtually any non-Slavic group -- were murdered by the thousands as a result of aggressive resettlements at the hands of an increasingly paranoid and sadistic Stalinist regime.

The GULAG

Наше Дело ПравоеВраг Будет РазбитПобеда Будет За Нами!

Our Cause Is RightThe Enemy Will Be SmashedVictory Will Be Ours!

TOTALITARIANISM

Statistics vary, but some historians estimate that by the mid-1950s as many as 56 million people were killed as a result of Stalin’s deportations, repressions, purges, murder and collectivization.

56 Million?The sickening scope of Stalin’s State-sponsored violence was so vast that taking an historically accurate measure of his victims, the perpetrators, and the motivations will never be fully accurate . . . or even possible.

Documents

01 russian origins and history