Russia

1. Catherine II (the Great). The successor of the sickly Peter III, Catherine II was his wife until his suspected murder and she took the throne in 1762. Although she made no great reforms in Russian society, she gathered many friends by her death in 1796.

Catherine had to keep the nobility pleased at all times because if she didn’t she could be dethroned easily. Because of this she carried out very few social reforms. Russia continued to follow an economic growth that Peter that Great had started. She tried to remove trade barriers, and assisted in expanding the middle class, which helped trade. Catherine II’s great addition to Russia was the land she gained, she was able to add more territory to Russia than had been in nearly a century before her.

While nothing very important was achieved during Catherine’s rule, she acquired valuable friends that proved to be useful in the future of Russia.

Alexander I. The successor of Paul I and the grandson of Catherine the Great, Alexander I spent the early part of his rule attempting to reform the administering body of the government. The reforms he initiated here brought about a much better trained group of officials.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander I was in char

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Gorbachev turned next t political reform, he tried to make Russian Politics like America’s. After the wars, many of the people had become self-confident in their beliefs, and when peacetime came, they began to express them. Because this happened so rapidly it caused many problems in Russia. Because of this Russia was at last on its way towards joining the world in becoming a modern society. ge of the reconstruction of much of the land along the route to the French invasion, this caused a expansion in the textile business, which boosted the economy.

When an election decreed for a Constituent Assembly by the provisional

government that had taken the place of the Tsar but was overthrown by

Lenin, took place, it gave the majority of the seats to the Socialist Revolutionaries, rather than the Bolsheviks. This makes them the real force behind the revolution.

5) The attempted revolutions in 1905 began for many reasons. A new Constitution was written which allowed free elections. In a sense, the fall of Russia can be looked at as an efficient end to the Cold War, and the beginning of camaraderie between the United States and Russia. "

Alexander Kerensky was a moderate socialist. These revolutions created great instability in these newly democratized nations, economically, politically, and militarily. Literature was distributed on a massive scale by radical socialists and Bolshevik agents and fraternization with the enemy hit the military ranks hard. Fearing peasant revolts and the constantly distrusting nobility, the government never took any serious steps towards abolishing the serf system and reforming their backward agrarian economy.

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