social and economic causes in russian revolution
Answers
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the vast majority of
Russiaís people were agriculturists. About 85 per cent of the Russian
empireís population earned their living from agriculture. This
proportion was higher than in most European countries. For instance,
in France and Germany the proportion was between 40 per cent and
50 per cent. In the empire, cultivators produced for the market as
well as for their own needs and Russia was a major exporter of grain.
Industry was found in pockets. Prominent industrial areas were
St Petersburg and Moscow. Craftsmen undertook much of the
production, but large factories existed alongside craft workshops.
Many factories were set up in the 1890s, when Russiaís railway
network was extended, and foreign investment in industry increased.
Coal production doubled and iron and steel output quadrupled. By
the 1900s, in some areas factory workers and craftsmen were almost
equal in number.
Most industry was the private property of industrialists. Government
supervised large factories to ensure minimum wages and limited hours
of work. But factory inspectors could not prevent rules being broken.
In craft units and small workshops, the working day was sometimes
15 hours, compared with 10 or 12 hours in factories. Accommodation
varied from rooms to dormitories.
Workers were a divided social group. Some had strong links with
the villages from which they came. Others had settled in cities
permanently. Workers were divided by skill. A metalworker of St.
Petersburg recalled, ëMetalworkers considered themselves aristocrats
among other workers. Their occupations demanded more training
and skill . . . í Women made up 31 per cent of the factory labour
force by 1914, but they were paid less than men (between half and
three-quarters of a manís wage). Divisions among workers showed
themselves in dress and manners too. Some workers formed
associations to help members in times of unemployment or financial
hardship but such associations were few.
Despite divisions, workers did unite to strike work (stop work) when
they disagreed with employers about dismissals or work conditions.
These strikes took place frequently in the textile industry during
1896-1897, and in the metal industry during 1902.
In the countryside, peasants cultivated most of the land. But the
nobility, the crown and the Orthodox Church owned large
properties. Like workers, peasants too were divided. They were also
Fig.5 ñ Unemployed peasants in pre-war
St Petersburg.
Many survived by eating at charitable
kitchens and living in poorhouses.
Fig.6 ñ Workers sleeping in bunkers in a
dormitory in pre-revolutionary Russia.
They slept in shifts and could not keep their
families with them.
India and the Contemporary World
32
deeply religious. But except in a few cases they had no respect for the Source A
nobility. Nobles got their power and position through their services
to the Tsar, not through local popularity. This was unlike France
where, during the French Revolution in Brittany, peasants respected
nobles and fought for them. In Russia, peasants wanted the land of
the nobles to be given to them. Frequently, they refused to pay rent
and even murdered landlords. In 1902, this occurred on a large scale
in south Russia. And in 1905, such incidents took place all
over Russia.
Russian peasants were different from other European peasants in
another way. They pooled their land together periodically and their
commune (mir) divided it according to the needs of individual families.
2.3 Socialism in Russia
All political parties were illegal in Russia before 1914. The Russian
Social Democratic Workers Party was founded in 1898 by socialists
who respected Marxís ideas. However, because of government
policing, it had to operate as an illegal organisation. It set up a
newspaper, mobilised workers and organised strikes.
Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing
land periodically made them natural socialists. So peasants, not
workers, would be the main force of the revolution, and Russia could
become socialist more quickly than other countries. Socialists were
active in the countryside through the late nineteenth century. They
formed the Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1900. This party struggled
for peasantsí rights and demanded that land belonging to nobles be
transferred to peasants. Social Democrats disagreed with Socialist
Revolutionaries about peasants. Lenin felt that peasants were not
one united group. Some were poor and others rich, some worked as
labourers while others were capitalists who employed workers. Given
this ëdifferentiationí within them, they could not all be part of a
socialist movement.
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