The material below is copyrighted and may not be copied without permission.  It is taken from:
Thomas J. Kehoe, Harold E. Damerow, and Jose Marie Duvall, Exploring
     Western Civilization:  1600 to the Present:   A Worktext for the Active
     Student, Revised Edition.  (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co.,
      1999.)

            Russia experienced significant military defeats and attempts at internal reform in the period prior to World War I. The Crimean War of 1853-56 was one in a series of struggles between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. What was unusual in this case was that Turkey found allies in two of the leading states of western Europe: Britain and France. Neither side conducted brilliant military campaigns. This was the war in which the militarily disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade was immortalized by Lord Tennyson. Russia’s opponents won, and Russian ambitions in the Balkans and the Black Sea area were checked for a while.

            A new czar, Alexander II (1855-1881), came to the throne in 1855. With the defeat in war, he was more open to domestic reform than his predecessors had been. A major accomplishment was the freeing of the serfs on March 3, 1861. Russia’s agricultural land was divided between the landed nobility and the former serfs, who got about half the land. The land did not go directly to individual peasants. Rather it became the collective property of the village, or mir. Installment payments for the land had to be made by the village to the government, which had compensated the former noble owners. Because of his indebtedness, the peasant was not free to simply walk away from the village. Nevertheless, 20 million peasants had been legally freed from their masters. Vast labor reserves would become available for the modernization and industrialization of Russia. The judiciary was reformed; and the zemstvos, elected institutions of local government with limited powers, were introduced.

            The reforms did not produce a western-style democracy. More radical demands by intellectuals were rejected, and the radicals were suppressed. The would-be reformers turned to terrorism. After several unsuccessful attempts, they assassinated Czar Alexander II, on March 13, 1881. Alexander III (1881-1894) was more conservative than his father. Industrial development, however, actually accelerated under Count Sergei Witte (1849-1915), the minister of finance from 1892-1903.

            The last Russian czar was Nicholas II (1894-1917). It was partly to distract attention from internal problems that Nicholas became embroiled in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The war was a major victory for the Japanese. It set off widespread violence in Russia. The agitation accelerated after a group of peaceful protesters marching before the czar’s palace in St. Petersburg were shot on Bloody Sunday, January 22, 1905. Sailors mutinied and a general strike was called. The Revolution of 1905 forced Czar Nicholas to offer concessions. He allowed the creation of a Duma or legislative assembly. Representatives to the Duma had very limited powers and were elected under a very restricted suffrage. Government ministers were responsible to the czar, rather than to the Duma.

            Even so, Nicholas II was rather uncooperative, actually dismissing the first two Dumas. The Duma, as an institution, survived with minimal power. As World War I approached, Russia was a nation with large, unresolved internal problems.