Question

What were the grievances of the working class on the russian revolution?

Answer 1

Answer:

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION of February and October 1917 opened up a new historical epoch, and was greeted with enthusiasm by workers around the world. Never before had workers come close to winning power, though many participated in political life in the Social Democratic parties of Western Europe.

Suddenly, in Russia, revolution was an actuality, not simply a hope or a threat. Victor Serge described the intoxicating power of that moment as one where “life is beginning anew, where conscious will, intelligence, and an inexorable love of mankind are in action.”

The unique element at the heart of the Russian revolutionary process was its revolutionary working class — and the democratic form of self-organization that it created in struggle that made the idea and reality of power possible. Urban workers led and dominated the opposition to the old order and ultimately brought into being — for the first time in world history — a workers state, albeit in embryonic form.

The movement toward revolution by the working class was facilitated, perhaps paradoxically, by the underdeveloped nature of Russian society compared to the West. There was little in Tsarist Russia of the highly evolved civil society that had developed over many centuries in Western Europe.

The autocracy did not allow freely contested elections to a parliament with the ability to legislate, nor legal political parties, nor minimal formal liberties of speech, assembly and press. Nor did Russia possess the legal mass reformist parties with their parliamentary delegations, trade union leaderships and radical newspapers, not to mention sports clubs, popular theaters and the like, that played such a central role in the West’s working-class politics.

The virtual non-existence in Russia of these networks was to an important degree because Russia lacked a mature capitalist class — the sort of bourgeoisie that had elsewhere, over time, thrown up the institutions of civil society made possible by capitalist productivity and economic surpluses.

Consequently the working class in Tsarist Russia could carry the revolution forward with stunning speed relative to the more developed capitalist world, but only to the degree it built its own power through creating and expanding the political sway of profoundly democratic forms of self-government. The working class could make the revolution because it could win a political majority. Beginning in the urban centers of Petrograd and Moscow and then rolling across the empire, it overthrew the old order and brought to power authentically revolutionary mass institutions.

Answer 2

Answer:

Living and working conditions for most peasants were dreadful, famine and starvation were common. People worked for long hours, their wages were low and rent was high. In factory towns people lived in overcrowded slums and there were very few sanitary facilities. The Soviet working class was, according to Marxist–Leninist theory, supposed to be the Soviet Union's ruling class during its transition from the socialist stage of development to full communism. However, it's commonly argued that its influence over production and policies diminished as the USSR's existence progressed. The Russian nobility and royalty only made up under 1% of the population. They enjoyed a comfortable life without poverty. Their children - both boys and girls - could attend schools and universities. They lived in big stone houses in cities and often had one or several country estates.