ABSTRACT
The transformation overtaking Russia's social structure produced major changes in the radical subculture of the revolutionary intelligentsia. While Alexander III and his son Nicholas II remained resolutely committed to unvarnished autocracy, Russia's traditional social structure passed through a process of profound transformation. The assumption underlying Bismarck's diplomacy, that given her conflict with Austria-Hungary over the Balkans, Russia would have to accept German terms to avoid diplomatic isolation, proved unfounded. Russia's revolutionaries must shed their populist illusions, realize that Marx's analysis was fully applicable to Russia. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party was founded, only to be shattered by police arrests. The threat to order and property found expression in the formation of the Union of the Russian People. It was composed of disparate reactionary groups, violently nationalist and anti-Semitic, whose only regret was that the Tsar had issued any manifesto at all. The spectre of social upheaval thus enabled the Tsar's government to regain the initiative.
