Full+Lowdown

Back to IB A1 English > Drama > The Government Inspector = Full Lowdown of the Russian Bureaucracy =

Russia in the time **The Government Inspector** was written, was ruled under Tsar Nicholas I.

=The Russian government was different from others:=
 * Firstly, it was rather large, and at the time the government was bigger than modern day Russia. This made a centralized government that had many hands on control very impractical compared to the liberal countries such as France or the UK.
 * Russia was in the "chains of the Orthodox Church" and was controlled by two systems. One of the governemnt, and in turn, the government was to be ascertained by faith, the Orthodox Church. In other words, whenever the government wanted to do something, they had to ask God "Is it ok?", and so the whole system was very complicated.

=The Russian Social Structure:= This system brought the Russian civilization far behind the west, and this was a big problem for Russia.
 * 1) Tsar
 * 2) Nobles
 * 3) Military
 * 4) Merchants
 * 5) Industrialist
 * 6) Landowners
 * 7) Farmers
 * 8) Serfs

Society did not like this governmental system, and several uprisings occurred during Tsar Nicholas I's reign.

=Decembrist Revolt= On 14th December 1825, Russian army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in a protest against Nicholas I, after his assumption of the throne after his elder brother Constantine removed himself from the line of succession, and this controversy (as officers swore allegiance to Constantine, not Nicholas I) caused rebellion. The revolt was soon suppressed by Nicholas I at the Senate Square. = = =November Uprising= On 29th November 1830, an uprising began by partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. It was also known as the Cadet Revolution. Many Polish officers from the local army began revolting and soon large segments of Polish society began joining. It was soon crushed in October, 1831 by the much superior Imperial Russian Army.

Bureaucracy continued to degenerate Russia until 1917, when the February and November Revolutions occurred and the USSR was created and the Tsar was forced to abdicate. Some still believe that Russia is still under bureaucratic government.

=Russification= Russification is also one characteristic of bureaucracy. It implemented Russian as the language to be used across the Russian Empire, ignoring Polish, Lithuanian, Uzbek, Belarussian, Kazakh, etc.

Other countries that are currently under Bureaucatic government (these are generally large countries):
 * USA
 * India
 * China
 * Indonesia