Meanwhile, economically, the priorities of the government and Tsar Nicholas II were of concern. It was believed that such a colossal country should too have a colossal army. Vast amounts of peasants were sent to join the organisation in efforts to make it of satisfactory size in the eyes or the Tsar. On an annual basis the army and the navy accounted for forty five percent of the governments expenditure. This figure compared with the insufficient four percent set aside for education demonstrates that perchance, the Tsar was more worried about seeming powerful than educating peasants in order to increase the percentage of working class citizens.
However, at the same time, was this a purposeful mistake? Tsar Nicholas II knew very well the peasants were extremely conservative and objected change, which maybe indicated that they wanted the Tsar to remain in control. Problematically to Nicholas II, if the peasants became educated, possibly together with their knowledge and large quantity, they could overthrow the Tsar. This therefore was perhaps placing him in a predicament.
The political state of Russia was almost as if it were under many restrictions by the Tsar during this time. Even though he was a monarch, his way of controlling the country was ruthlessly and with a sense of dictatorship. There was no free speech, no democracy or parliament, moreover, an absolute Monarch with unlimited power and authority ran Russia. This was known as Autocracy. He placed censorship on newspapers and propaganda indicating he was the ultimate decider and ruler of his country ran by only his rules. Although he seemed to be in control, his methods of politics were harsh and therefore making him very unpopular to the citizens of Russia.
To emphasise the Tsars absolute authority in ruling his country; citizens were taught not to believe in the pope and were Russian Orthodoxy’s. They even had the top of the churches shaped as his hat. It was an anti-Semitic society and one that made priests sympathetic towards rebellions. Showing again, that perhaps the Tsar didn’t have extraordinary popularity within Russia, putting him under threat, causing real problems within his reign.
Predominantly, one major issue facing the Tsar which links to all aspects of his rule, was how geographically huge the country was. Not only with the poor transportation was it hard to keep all parts of Russia governing efficiently, as well as this it put a strain on the Tsar to be powerful. Being so big, automatically assumed by Nicholas was that it had the potential to be omnipotent, kicking his ego to have massive armies and extra things the country did not need, causing other necessary affairs to be neglected. Consequently the gigantic country possibly wasn’t so powerful.
Overall, there were indeed many problems facing the Tsar in 1894 and in more than one way. Foremost was poor amount of working class citizens to develop the country, leaving Russia lacking economically and weaker compared to its neighbours. This perhaps was down to the autocratic society the Tsar Nicolas II chose to govern the country and his need to look powerful and threatening. Consequently he lost out on many beneficial chances. In fact regardless of the sheer size, socially it wasn’t big enough. The amount of peasants compared to the amount of land was insufficient. However it seems that maybe the size was too much for him to handle in the undeveloped day of age.
