Russia's rulers key facts

Alexander II

Important points:

• Emanicpated the serfs in 1861
• Civic stragey (less repressive to minorities than russification)
• Zemstva created
• Judges paid more to stop bribes
• Greater freedom of expression
• Better education
• Railway began to be built- 13,000 miles of siberian railway
• Assasination attempt he became more repressive 
• Assasinated

Alexander III

Important points:

• Russification- pogroms against the jews
• Repressive- reaction to the assaination of his father
• Sergei Witte's economic reforms started
• Peasant land bank to give cheap loans to buy land
• Banking reforms

Nicholas II

Important points:

• Indecisive ruler
• Introduced the first Duma although the powers of this were restricted again the next year with the fundamental law
• Sergei Witte's economic improvements greatly helped the economy
• 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese war- lost badly
• 1905 revolution- shot at peaceful protesters
• WW1 took control of the army
• 1917 revolution- forced the abdicate, lost support of army and Duma
• Murdered with family by the Bolsheviks

Provisional Government

Important points:

• Couldn't take control of Russia- were associated with the old regime
• Promised freedom of speech and democratic elections
• Didn't act to give the people what they wanted- land, better working and living conditions
• Power share with Petrograd Soviet
• Police work carried out my local militias
• Political prisoners released
• Lost support of the national minorities by refusing to give them autonomy
• Nothing about deterioration of the economy
• Didn't legitimise peasant land takeover- made them less willing to sell food to cities which increased food prices
• Continued the war
• Began suppression of left and right wing opponents
• Reforms didn't make much impact or have support

Lenin

Important points:

• Returned to Russia after revolution of 1917
• Lead the Bolsheviks in displacement of the Provisional Government
• 1917-1920 Strengthened Bolshevik rule and brutally defeated the opposition during the civil war
• War Communism
• Replaced war communism with the NEP in 1921
• Used Cheka and red army to repress
• Began to centralise industry and the economy

Stalin

Important points:

• Power struggle with political opponents such as Trotsky- had him killed
• Five year plans to modernise the Russian economy
• Workers who didn't reach targets punished severely- e.g beig industrial complexes such as Magintogorsk
• Collectivisation to improve Russian agriculture
• Great terror, show trials and purges
• NKVD used to imprison, exile and execute
• Signed Nazi-Soviet pact
• Defeated German invasion as had industrialised Russia to such a large extent
• Start of the Cold war
• Unprecedented level of repression, absolute control by the state

Khrushchev

Important points:

• Eliminated political opposition- had Beria killed who was previously the head of Stalin's NKVD
• Wanted to avoid mass unrest, liberally minded as son of a peasant
• Virgin land's campaign
• Launched destalinisation
• Russian troops ordered to crush an uprising in Hungary
• Moved towards decentralising the Russian economy
• Cold war- space race- first Russian spacecraft Sputnik 1, cuban missile crisis, nuclear arms race
• Promised social and economic reforms but couldn't go as far as he wanted due to financial problems from cold war
• Suffered as a result to his liberal attitude
• Gulags shut down
• Removed from power- easy to dismiss as less repressive