Why was Russia so difficult to govern in the late 1800's?

by osanka747 (student)

Why Russia was difficult to govern in the late 1800’s

There are four main reasons as to why Russia was so hard to govern in the late 1800’s these are: Russia’s geography, the diversity of cultures and religions throughout Russia, the autocratic system of government by witch the country was ruled and the state of Russia’s economy. And in this essay I will explain them and how they all made it difficult for Russia to be governed.

One of the reasons that made Russia difficult to govern was its geography, Russia is an extremely large country that spreads over two continents and a large proportion of the land being scarcely habited on uninhabitable, thus it would take months to traverse the country prior to the laying of the first railway and even after that it would still take two weeks or more to travel across the country. This made communication near impossible leaving peasants living in the countryside isolated from the rest of the country. This contributed to the country being hard to govern because people living in small towns could not effectively communicate with others living elsewhere thus the government could not easily enforce new laws and such to people living far away from the large cities such as Kiev and Moscow.

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In the late 1800’s Russia’s population consisted of a large number of different ethnic and religious groups, this being due to Russia spreading across two continents. The cultural diversity of Russia made is difficult for decisions made by the Tsar to (even if he has wanted to) please everyone, this lead to a growing hatred towards the government due to certain groups not getting what they want. The many different cultures coupled with much of the lane being uninhabitable wastelands lead to the potential for conflict between groups of different ethnicity and religion living close together in the countryside where the best land for farming is, this made Russia hard to govern because the potential for conflict would have to be quelled and the fact that Russia was a liberal country that wanted everyone to hold the same religion and beliefs so they would try to ‘Russify’ the people, further increasing resentment towards the government as they would have seen this as trying to strip them if their heritage and identity.

The third reason Russia was hard to govern was the autocratic system of government by which the country was ruled, this means that one man, the Tsar had complete control over the country and no person could go against his word, his word was law, and anybody that publicly questioned him or voiced opinions against him would be imprisoned, exiled or even executed. The orthodox church gave the message that the Tsar was appointed by God, but as people grew more educated they started to see reason and learn of other countries such as England and Germany and the way they were run they began to disagree with the way Russia was being governed, but as nobody could go against the word of the Tsar even more resentment towards the government was built up and more and more people stated to publically disagree with choices being made by the Tsar, this made controlling the population harder for the government.

The final major problem in governing Russia is the state of the economy. Russia’s poor economic development can be clearly seen in the difference in size between urban workers (around 10% of the population) and the country peasants who lived a hand to mouth existence by farming small plots of land (around 77% of the population) The low numbers of working class population is an indication that Russia had not been through the industrialisation that western countries such as England had experienced witch was a vital factor needed to keep a country economically stable. As Russia was not financially secure enough to give support such as housing and food to their people, this lack of help further increased the resentment towards the Russian government especially amongst the urban workers who were constantly working but not reaping the benefits they felt they deserved.

So, to conclude, due to the Russian citizens’ needs and wants not being met, the large area that Russia covered and the lack of an industrial revolution that many countries had already experienced to bring economic stability to the country, I believe that Russia was incredibly difficult, near impossible to govern in the late 1800’s leaving the citizens hungry for revolution and to bring democracy into the country.

Scott Scottow.