Russia Revision Guide

Revision Guide

Russia is a very big but most of it is too cold to be useful. In the Arctic Circle the land is tundra where little grows. South of this is the taiga, or pine forest. Only in the south is the land warm enough for farming.
In 1900 the cold also affected trade because much of the coastline was frozen for half the year and there were a few icebreakers. However, the Trans-Siberian Railway was being built to improve trade between eat and west.
The Russian Empire contained many people, the Majority of them non-Russian e.g. 22 million Ukrainians in the south and 8 million Poles in the west. Many of these peoples disliked the Russian rule and wanted independence.

The head of the government was Tsar Nicholas II. He ruled as an autocrat, a ruler who does not have to share power.
The work of the government as done by a large and corrupt civil slaves. Opponents of the Tsar were dealt with by police force, the Okhrana. Rebellions and riots were put down by the Churches.
The church in Russia, the Orthodox Church, supported the government by encouraging Russians to be loyal to the tsar and to respect authority

The head of the government was Tsar Nicholas II. He ruled as an autocrat, a ruler who does not have to share power.
The work of the government as done by a large and corrupt civil slaves. Opponents of the Tsar were dealt with by police force, the Okhrana. Rebellions and riots were put down by the Churches.
The church in Russia, the Orthodox Church, supported the government by encouraging Russians to be loyal to the tsar and to respect authority

Peasants in Russia had been s..s until 1861 when Tsar Alexander freed them. At the same time as being freed, peasants had their farming land put under communes, the m..s. Peasants who wanted to buy the land they farmed had to pay for it in forty-nine installments over the next fifty years. Life therefore remained hard for the peasants even after they had been freed.
The number of workers in towns was increasing in 1900. The largest city was the capital, St. Petersburg, with over 1 million inhabitants. They worked long hours, lived in slums, and were not allowed to join t..e u..s or to strike.
The richest people were nobles who, along with the Tsar and the Church, owned most of the land. A new class of civilians, businessmen and industrialists, was also growing rich as the government gave help to industry in the 1890s and 1900s.

Some opponents used terrorism to try to destroy the autocracy, e.g. the Peoples Will killed Alexander II in 1881.
Most of the Tsar’s opponents belonged two parties, which wanted revolution. One was the Socialist Revolutionary Party, which wanted the peasants to own all land. The other was the Social Democratic Party, which followed the ideas of Karl Marx and wanted a communist society.
In 1903 the Social Democrats split into two groups, the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Mensheviks led by Martov.
Other opponents of the Tsar included liberals who wanted a British style of democracy, with the Tsar sharing power with an elected president.