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The Loan That Saved Russia?: Reassessing the 5 Percent Russian Government Loan of 1906

Hassan Malik

in Bankers and Bolsheviks

This chapter focuses on the 1905 Revolution, underscoring the price Russia paid for the strategic errors discussed in the previous chapter, and stressing the important financial-historical legacy of ... More

This chapter focuses on the 1905 Revolution, underscoring the price Russia paid for the strategic errors discussed in the previous chapter, and stressing the important financial-historical legacy of this period within the broader story of the revolution. It shows that, given the precarious state in which the Tsarist government found itself at the time and the massive size of the Russian Government Loan of 1906, some began to refer to the deal as “the loan that saved Russia.” However, an examination of business and government documents from both the Russian and Western sides suggests that such an interpretation is overly generous. Based on materials in European banking archives as well as Russian sources, there is reason to question the idea that the 1906 loan played a stabilizing role, and to think of it instead as a deal that played a destabilizing role in Russia and even abroad in the long run. The loan did not just fail to resolve domestic political tensions, it in fact exacerbated them, exposed the regime to attacks from its enemies abroad, and likely contributed to the roots of the Panic of 1907—a seminal event in the financial history of the twentieth century.Less

Crisis, Celebration, and the Decline of the Old Cultural Order

Lynn M. Sargeant

in Harmony and Discord: Music and the Transformation of Russian Cultural Life

This chapter looks first at the philosophical debates over the meaning of art that emerged at the turn of the century. It analyzes Lev Tolstoy's philosophical pamphlet What is Art? (1898), which ... More

This chapter looks first at the philosophical debates over the meaning of art that emerged at the turn of the century. It analyzes Lev Tolstoy's philosophical pamphlet What is Art? (1898), which rejected the bourgeois institutionalization and professionalization of the arts, and responses to it by musicians. The chapter then looks at the traumatic events of the so‐called conservatory revolution, particularly the firing of professor and composer Nikolai Rimsky‐Korsakov from his post at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the performance of his opera Kashchei the Immortal, which was read by educated society as a protest against Russia's autocratic regime. The events of 1905 weakened public confidence in the Society. The conservatories demanded their autonomy, which threatened the continuing existence of the Society as a voluntary association. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the ritual celebrations of the fiftieth anniversaries of the Russian Musical Society and the St. Petersburg Conservatory in 1909 and 1912.Less

Democracy and State Power

Marc Mulholland

in Bourgeois Liberty and the Politics of Fear: From Absolutism to Neo-Conservatism

The arrival of mass suffrage, in countries with governments responsible or irresponsible to elected parliaments, gave rise either to ‘umbrella’ pan-class parties, or sectional parties of class or ... More

The arrival of mass suffrage, in countries with governments responsible or irresponsible to elected parliaments, gave rise either to ‘umbrella’ pan-class parties, or sectional parties of class or nationality and/or religious identity. These gave rise to variations in circumstance determining the likely degree of socialist-liberal cooperation. On balance, socialists and liberals did cooperate, but only to a limited extent. The 1905 Revolution in Russia re-opened the debate about possibilities for overturning entrenched state power. It was also important in revealing the likelihood that liberal revolution could easily displace bourgeois leadership and present opportunities for socialists basing themselves upon the proletariat. Debates on this matter involving Rosa Luxemburg, V.I. Lenin, Karl Kautsky, and Leon Trotsky are examined. Whether militarism and imperialism was inherent in capitalism was debated by Kautsky, Rudolf Hilferding, and Lenin: Lenin's conclusion that bourgeois liberalism was defunct is foreshadowed.Less

An Entangled World at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: Russian Socialist Revolutionary Terrorism, Transatlantic Public Sphere and American Capital

Lutz Hafner

Frank Jacob and Mario Keßler (eds)

in Transatlantic Radicalism: Socialist and Anarchist Exchanges in the 19th and 20th Centuries

The chapter discusses how the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries terrorist tried to influence the Transatlantic Public Sphere to accept terrorist assassinations against high Tsarist officials. ... More

The chapter discusses how the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries terrorist tried to influence the Transatlantic Public Sphere to accept terrorist assassinations against high Tsarist officials. Breshko-Breshkovskaya, member of the SR Central Committee, spent almost six months in the US in 1904/05 spent in order to solicit funds and to attract the US public. Her impact on the genesis of a transnational socialist organization is consequently one of the main aspects taken into consideration.Less

Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on the Jacobins and the Girondins

Jay Bergman

in The French Revolutionary Tradition in Russian and Soviet Politics, Political Thought, and Culture

Following a survey of how educated Russians analogized the 1905 Revolution to aspects of the French Revolution, Chapter 5 describes the debates within the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, and between ... More

Following a survey of how educated Russians analogized the 1905 Revolution to aspects of the French Revolution, Chapter 5 describes the debates within the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP, and between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks about the temporal relationship between a bourgeois revolution in Russia and a proletarian one. Also, because the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, in European exile, had time on their hands, they engaged in interminable debates on how the Jacobins and their supporters among the sans-culottes should be considered in terms of their class. The former were thought to originate in one or another subclass of the bourgeoisie; the latter were variously considered proletarian, proto-proletarian, or ‘plebeian’. Complicating matters—and making the emergence of a consensus more difficult—was that the classes that made the French Revolution were sometimes defined on the basis of what they did, and of whom they supported, rather than in terms of their social origin per se.Less

The International Financial Challenges of War and Revolution, 1904–1906

Jennifer Siegel

in For Peace and Money: French and British Finance in the Service of Tsars and Commissars

This chapter looks at the challenges of the 1904–1906 Russian imperial state loan negotiations. These loans were thrashed out in the face of civil unrest in response to the costly Russo-Japanese War ... More

This chapter looks at the challenges of the 1904–1906 Russian imperial state loan negotiations. These loans were thrashed out in the face of civil unrest in response to the costly Russo-Japanese War and the tumultuous Revolution of 1905. Russia’s increasingly precarious financial position and uncertain internal stability strained the Franco-Russian relationship. But as both the formal Russo-French political alliance and their more informal but far more tangible financial interrelationship seemed in growing jeopardy, the same circumstances appear to have strengthened the nascent and tenuous possibility of an Anglo-Russian rapprochement. It was within the context of the construction of the 1906 Imperial Russian Loan that the British banking house Baring Brothers rose to prominence in the Russian market; with the increased involvement of the City of London and British investment in Russian imperial finances came an ever greater chance of an amelioration of the long-standing Anglo-Russian geopolitical tensions.Less

Warsaw before 1905: One City, Many Stories

in Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry

This chapter presents a historical analysis of the city of Warsaw, the city's Jewish residents, their Polish neighbors, and the Russian imperial context. It charts Warsaw's modest beginnings to its ... More

This chapter presents a historical analysis of the city of Warsaw, the city's Jewish residents, their Polish neighbors, and the Russian imperial context. It charts Warsaw's modest beginnings to its growth as an industrial, commercial, and financial center, and then discusses the key developments in Polish society, the rise of political organizations and institutions, and the changing visions of community and nation. It also discusses the various attempts by Russian government officials to wield control over Warsaw and its Jewish residents. The chapter concludes with a brief history of the Revolution of 1905 throughout the Russian empire.Less

Between Revolutions

Paul Robinson

in Russian Conservatism

This chapter considers the tumultuous period of political turmoil following the 1905 Revolution. During this period, autocracy came under increasing pressure, and many conservatives either positively ... More

This chapter considers the tumultuous period of political turmoil following the 1905 Revolution. During this period, autocracy came under increasing pressure, and many conservatives either positively or grudgingly accepted the need for representative institutions or at least consultative ones. Anti-bureaucratic sentiment continued to grow and many conservatives pursued apparently paradoxical goals of strengthening autocracy while simultaneously limiting it. Meanwhile, the idea of the Russian nation remained very strongly associated with Orthodoxy, but a strand of conservatism that rested on ethno-nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism gained ground. Divisions among conservatives, furthermore, limited their political effectiveness. The defeat of the 1905 Revolution left liberalism and socialism in retreat. There was an opportunity for conservatives to take the lead and direct Russia along a new path, but they proved unable to unite around common projects.Less

Confession at a Time of Revolution

Nadieszda Kizenko

in Good for the Souls: A History of Confession in the Russian Empire

Chapter 7 explores how changes set in motion by rapid industrialization first climaxed in the Revolution of 1905, dropping confession rates. The Great War, initially sparking enthusiasm for the ... More

Chapter 7 explores how changes set in motion by rapid industrialization first climaxed in the Revolution of 1905, dropping confession rates. The Great War, initially sparking enthusiasm for the sacraments, dropped them further yet. After the February Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II, all state structures compelling or supporting annual confession vanished. Bishops, parish priests, monastics, and ordinary laypeople struggled to make sense of the revolutionary climate, exploring such new forms as general confession or seeking to drop confession altogether. This experience helped prepare them for the savage attack on religion under Soviet rule and the decades that followed, creating new forms of confession. It also informed the evolution of confession in different strands of the émigré Russian Orthodox Church. The legacy of confession in the empire would become even more important after the fall of communism, when the Russian Orthodox Church rejected Soviet-era changes and tried to embrace pre-revolutionary practice with unexpected fervour.Less

Relapsed Converts and Tales of Marranism

Ellie R. Schainker

in Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906

Chapter 5 analyzes narratives of relapsed converts and their multiple cultural fluencies using legal cases of converts suspected of illegally relapsing back to Judaism before 1905 and petitions for ... More

Chapter 5 analyzes narratives of relapsed converts and their multiple cultural fluencies using legal cases of converts suspected of illegally relapsing back to Judaism before 1905 and petitions for relapse after the legalization of apostasy in 1905. Imperial sponsorship of Russian Orthodoxy combined with the criminality of Orthodox deviance until 1905 created an environment in which Jewish converts often lived in the interstices of communal and confessional life, defying clear religious categorization. Relapsed converts and their tales of marranism, or secret Jewish practice, called into question the confessional state’s strategy of mapping identity and community onto confessional ascription-- especially in the wake of the cantonist episode when legal and chosen religious identities were often at odds. As church and state officials grappled with these difficulties, relapsed converts and their defenders tried to inscribe their cultural mobility into imperial law through freedom of conscience measures.Less

Russia’s Shattered Naval Dream

Rotem Kowner

in Tsushima: Great Battles Series

This chapter examines the way the battle affected Russian actions in the following years and the way it has been commemorated ever since. The battle sealed the fate of the Baltic Fleet and left only ... More

This chapter examines the way the battle affected Russian actions in the following years and the way it has been commemorated ever since. The battle sealed the fate of the Baltic Fleet and left only the Black Sea Fleet, which made up less than one-third of the entire force of the Imperial Russian Navy on the eve of the war, intact. From the world’s third largest naval power in early 1904, Russia declined in the aftermath of the battle into near-insignificance. Thereafter, tsarist Russia was not in any hurry to rebuild its fleet. In fact, the blow was so heavy that the navy entered an extended period of relative paralysis, and even decline, from which it only emerged during the Cold War, now as the navy of the Soviet Union. In addition, the chapter explores the three stages that mark the battle’s memory in Russia, in the Soviet Union, and again in present-day Russia during the subsequent century: shock, condemnation, and nostalgia.Less

Marital Choice and Marital Crisis in Late Imperial Russia

Barbara Alpern Engel

in Domestic Tensions, National Anxieties: Global Perspectives on Marriage, Crisis, and Nation

This chapter asks why Russian women included claims of involuntary marriage in appeals for marital separation, when such claims exerted no influence on officials of the Imperial Chancellery for ... More

This chapter asks why Russian women included claims of involuntary marriage in appeals for marital separation, when such claims exerted no influence on officials of the Imperial Chancellery for Receipt of Petitions, who determined the outcome of women’s appeals. To answer, the chapter explores the ideals of romantic choice that circulated ever more widely toward the close of the nineteenth century, challenging long-standing marital practices according to which the needs of household and family took precedence over the desires of the young, women especially. By encouraging women to act upon their feelings and choose a marital partner according to their own desires, the chapter argues, romantic ideals undermined patriarchal family relations, and indirectly, the autocratic authority they buttressed. Women’s self-assertion in the private realm contributed to the perceived marriage crisis of late imperial Russia. It also reflected the growing concern with individual rights that in 1905 would contribute to revolution.Less