With the outbreak of revolution in 1905 thousands of members of the working classes of industrial Russia combined together to provide their own unique contribution to Russian history and politics - the soviet movement. This movement was not a spontaneous outburst of semi-anarchistic and inchoate political and emotional attitudes. Nor was it a movement controlled and manipulated by revolutionary Social Democracy. In terms of its organisations, ideology, and political base the soviet movement of 1905 was controlled and directed by the working class itself and the experiences of past industrial struggle. This thesis examines in detail the extent and nature of the soviet movement in 1905. Part 1 introduces some of the methodological and theoretical issues associated with our study and provides the reader with the narrative detail of the movement. Part 2 contains a thematic exploration of the movement in terms of its organisation, social composition, political and economic demands and forms of protest. It also examines the nature of the relationship between revolutionary social democracy and the Soviets. It finds, that, given the right circumstances, the working classes were capable not only of forming a broad based opposition to the Tsarist autocracy but were also able to draw up their own political agenda with their own forms of revolutionary protest.

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This interdisciplinary thesis explores how the Crimean War (1854-56) has registered in British consciousness since the conflict’s outbreak. It draws extensively on the National Army Museum’s (NAM) rich collection of archives, paintings, prints, medals and objects. The thesis situates NAM’s collection in a wider material context, by drawing upon collections held elsewhere. It therefore provides an important overview of the conflict’s material legacy in Britain. This material heritage is used to document and assess the War’s mixed reception over time, its powerful associations of pride and shame surrounding certain events, concepts and personalities. Chapter 1 frames the War’s key debates surrounding military mismanagement by contrasting two of its early and influential chroniclers: the historian Alexander Kinglake and journalist William Russell. Their distinct ideological dispositions demonstrate the War’s contested nature and different Victorian ideals of war and soldiering. Chapter 2 accounts for the exceptional status of the eponymously named Charge of the Light Brigade, tracing its afterlife to the turn of the twentieth century. It looks at various strategies for negotiating its futile outcome, from traditional forms of individual hero-worship through to the impact of Tennyson’s tribute to a ‘noble six hundred’ in wartime and in the late-Victorian period. Chapter 3 explores further the public status of the Army through the media influence of the monarchy in the aftermath of the Crimean War, an aspect of the War which has been neglected. Mediated royal acts of sympathy towards sick and wounded soldiers and the institution of the Victoria Cross are contextualised against royal anxiety about its loss of influence over the Army. This chapter discusses in detail a striking set of royal photographs showing wounded soldiers, which are an important source for discussing apprehension of suffering. Chapter 4 traces the public faces of Florence Nightingale, outlining the nature and consequences of Victorian investment in Nightingale as a benevolent Army presence before turning to posthumous responses to Nightingale’s personality and work. It assesses for the first time objects and public memorials associated with Nightingale and their role during the First and Second World Wars. The Crimean War was the only Victorian war on a European scale and involved increasingly direct forms of communication between civilians and war workers. This project assesses how public knowledge of the operations, failures and losses of the War led to affirming and subversive responses in the Victorian imagination and beyond. These responses reveal the social, political and emotional conflicts engendered by war, which are of continued relevance to the public conscience.

The health of the British Army deteriorated catastrophically during the first winter of the Crimean campaign to create a Sanitary Disaster; but this tragedy did not persist and the way the situation evolved to the spectacular Sanitary Success evident during the last nine months of the campaign is the principal question addressed in this thesis. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of large numerical data sets of published and unpublished contemporary documents; and by considering events strictly in date order errors in interpretation associated with the knowledge of hindsight are avoided. The most notable conclusion made is that the mortality at Scutari from diseases such as continued fever, diarrhoea, dysentery, frostbite, pneumonia, scurvy, and typhus mirrored almost exactly what occurred in the Army as a whole. This is not surprising as most patients came from the Crimea and it suggests there is no justification in considering the hospitals in Scutari as a special case, and indeed the Army’s health problems were not solved there, as has been implied by commentators who have concentrated almost exclusively on events in the Barrack Hospital where Miss Nightingale was based, but principally in the Crimea where the Army was located. There were no notable advances in medical science during the campaign and there is little evidence to support the assertion of that the Sanitary Commission saved the Army, or indeed that their efforts were more than subsidiary. Rather, it was the progressive improvement in the standard of living of the troops by providing adequate food, clothing, fuel and shelter, coupled with improvements in health care in the camps and general hospitals in the Crimea, from early in 1855 which resulted in the Sanitary Success of 1856, and which Lord Panmure acknowledged when proposing a vote of thanks to the armed forces in the House of Lords after the ratification of the Peace Treaty.

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This study seeks to illuminate the historical significance of non-ruling male Romanovs within the life of the Russian Empire. Crucial to this work are the issues of state-centred versus tsar-centred ideology and the evolution of the service ethos. Thus we begin with a brief overview of seventeenth-century Muscovy, the reign of Peter I, and the post-Petrine eighteenth-century. The 'thread' of Petrine heritage, as interpreted by successive rulers and their servitors, runs through every chapter, sometimes obliquely, sometimes to the fore. Our examination of the grand dukes themselves is divided between the objective issue of role, and the subjective one of identity. With regard to the former, it is our hope to present a more thorough picture of the range and nature of grand ducal duties, honours, appointments, etc., than has hitherto been available in a single work. With regard to the latter, it is here that we seek to identify patterns of behaviour, the power dynamics within the imperial family, and the grand dukes' position in relation to the public at large, service colleagues, and disaffected portions of society. Important questions emerge concerning the consequences of grand ducal independence and/or non-comformity, the way behaviour was perceived and represented (e.g., as patriotic, Petrine, treasonous, etc.), the effects of modernization and family growth (upon both role and identity), and grand ducal response to conflict between state and crown. Our study focuses upon the nineteenth-century, encompassing the maturation of the first generation of adult grand dukes, the emergence of several junior branches of the imperial family, the evolution of the service establishment into a more modern, state-centred entity, and the origins of both revolution and reaction. Inevitably, certain individuals demand more attention than others. In this instance, grand dukes Konstantin Pavlovich and Konstantin Nikolaevich -- men who have already been written about at some length -- emerge as figures of particular note, but only insofar as they reveal patterns of behaviour with enduring relevance to our central theme, that of evolving relations between state and dynasty, and grand ducal allegiance to both entities. We conclude with a brief overview of relevant developments in the twentieth century.