Autocratic powers and support for the Tsar

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Autocratic powers and support for the Tsar
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Autocratic powers

• The Tsar did not allow people to question his
  authority or challenge his power
• It was a criminal offence to oppose the tsar or
  his government
• There was no Parliament and political parties
  were not officially tolerated
• State censorship was imposed on the press and on
  published books
• Among Russias governing classes there was
  prejudice against granting rights to the masses,
  the sheer size of the peasants was regarded with
  fear and contempt by the educated, small elite

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Autocratic powers

• Alexandra wife of the tsar believed only
  repression could keep in check the dark masses
• Russia needs and loves the feel of the whip
• Political activists were driven to extremism,
  e.g. assassination of Tsar Alexander II by The
  Peoples will

• Supporters of reform or change had to go
  underground, these groups were often infiltrated
  by agents of the Okhrana, the tsars secret
  police

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The Okhrana or Protective Section

• Their role was to ensure nobody opposed the Tsar
• Its agents spied on political groups and arrested
  people who criticised the government
• Political prisoners were tried by special courts
  without juries and usually ended up in exile in
  Siberia

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Cossacks

• When there was famine, the Okhrana could not cope
  with all the opponents of the Tsar and riots
  broke out
• The Cossacks would come to the Tsars rescue,
  fierce mounted soldiers armed with sabres who
  specialised in breaking up mobs by butchering
  anyone who could not run

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The Army

• One method of keeping the peasant masses in check
  was to conscript them into the army and navy to
  fill the lower ranks with the higher ranks been
  filled with the aristocracy
• As well as maintaining recruitment this was also
  used as a punishment for law breakers
• Many camps were in the remote areas and
  conditions were grim, over 1 million soldiers
  died in peacetime under Nicholas I
• The army and navy accounted for 45 of
  government spending compared with 4 on education

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The Church

• The church also helped to maintain the authority
  of the church as the priests taught people to
  respect the autocracy and to be loyal to the Tsar

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The Church

• By the late 19th century the church was an
  essentially conservative body, opposed to
  political change
• The head of the church was a government minister,
  Bishops took their orders from him and priests
  took their orders from the Bishops, the
  government therefore had control over the minds
  and souls of many Russian churchgoers
• Some priests did sympathise with the
  revolutionaries but taught it was their duty to
  be obedient to the tsar as Gods anointed.

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• God commands us to love and obey from the inmost
  recesses of our heart every authority, and
  particularly the tsar.
• The catechism of the Church

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The Bureaucracy

• By the middle of the 19th century many critics
  within Russia had begun to assert that the civil
  service was corrupt
• The bureaucratic class possessed the power to
  control the lives of the Russian people, e.g.
  administration, police, militia
• This along with the other problems in Russia e.g.
  peasants and workers condition, tsar distanced
  from his people, growing revolutionary movements
  weakened the prestige and lowered the morale of
  imperial Russia