The wealthiest class of people in Russia were the aristocracy, or the land owners. They generally benefitted from the tsar’s rule as the Tsar highly favoured many of the aristocrats in Russia because of their great influence and support of autocracy in Russia. This was mainly because the autocrat rule of the Tsar over Russia meant that the aristocrats owned vast and rich estates, lands, towns and country houses and a very elegant and luxurious lifestyle. Many of the rich aristocrats greatly benefitted from the industrial growth in Russia and as a result moved to and lived in glamorous parts of Russian cities. Because of their support for the Tsarist government and autocracy in Russia, they were a key part of the Tsar’s government and were commonly placed as local officials in countryside where they dominated the local assemblies called zemstva. The aristocracy did not face many major problems, although a few got into some financial trouble. The aristocracy’s main fear would have been a revolt of the peasants, of which they relied on to live the privileged lifestyles.
Due to increased pressure from many strikes my workers, peasants, the middle-class and some of the Aristocracy, the Tsar created a Duma (parliament). In his October Manifesto the Tsar offered the right to free speech and the right to form political parties. In November he announced further concessions and financial help for peasants. Generally, middle-class liberals were divided, however revolutionary groups were very suspicious. In the end the revolutionaries were proved right as the tsar brought his best troops back from the Far East and ruthlessly crushed as rebellions over Russia. The Tsarist government had a great strength in that it made it obvious that as long as the army’s allegiance remained with the Tsar, no revolutions could possibly succeed, however it did provide a foundation for opposition parties to work with.
Many Russian campaigns also took place during the Tsar’s rule. As a result Russia’s land grew extensively, especially in the Far East. The land owned by Russia bordered that of Afghanistan and India. However some of Russia’s actions in the Far East led to many tensions and eventually outbreak of war between Japan and Russia.
Despite these improvements and assertive policies in Russia, the general well-being of the general population was far from being good. The majority of the people were greatly disgruntled. In fact the peasants, who made up 80 percent of the Russian population, lived in dreadful working conditions. Poverty was the dominating problem that peasants continually faced throughout Russia. Indeed famine and starvation were common in Russia and the life expectancy of farmers in some regions was only 40 years old. Most of Russia’s land was very infertile, and the few amounts of very rich and fertile lands were mainly owned by the aristocracy. By the early 1900s land for peasants was in very short supply. This was partly due to the huge population increase of 50% from 1860 to 1897 where peasants had to divide more and more of the already small amounts of land they worked on to give them to their sons and daughters. This population increase was considered to be an inevitable indication of major food shortages and death in the future of Russia because it was a strong sign of Russia’s peasant population being caught in a dark ‘poverty cycle’. This meant that more and more peasants would have many children in the hope of generating more income for the family. This however greatly increased the demand and strain on Russia’s agricultural industry to produce more food to feed the great Russian population which simply could not cope. The peasants used outdated farming techniques where each family was allotted a strip of land in a large field of land and this small amount of land had to be subdivided repeatedly between sons of peasants meaning that more and more peasants had less amounts of food and lived in extreme poverty. Strip farming was used in England during the medieval era, which shows how backwards farming was in Russia considering this technique was still being used in the 20th century. Education in Russia for most people was non-existent and very few peasants could read or write. Even basic sanitation was not available to peasants and as a result disease easily spread throughout Russia, killing many in the process. Children were particularly prone to abuse and disease, and the child mortality rate was extremely high. Taxes were already unbearable in Russia and when Sergey Witte, the Minister of Finance increased the taxes furthermore, the peasants had no choice but to rebel against Witte’s industrial movements, but to no avail. To make matters worse, peasants throughout Russia were considered as dirt or ‘dark people’. Many aristocrats, officials and bureaucrats did not even class them as human beings even though they dominated the Russian population. Anton Chekov, a famous Russian novelist described the peasants in a story that he published in 1897. He said ‘...these people lived worse than cattle. and it was terrible to be with them... The most insignificant little clerk or official treated the peasants as though they were tramps.’ This shows how peasants lived, coped and were regarded in Russia. The aristocrats regarded the peasants as unimportant and close filth. However they knew the one danger that peasants could pose to them was revolution.
The workers in Russia were a rapidly growing class since the late nineteenth century. The Tsars of Russia were keen to see Russia become an industrial power. They were the key driving force and success to making Russia improve its industry greatly. The greatest concentrations of workers resided in the then capital of Russia, St. Petersburg and Moscow. Many of the workers consisted of peasants that had travelled to large cities in order to find a slightly more fruitful way of life and to earn some extra money before returning to their countryside homes before the harvest took place. These hopes were dashed as the workers lived in cramped conditions full of filth and void of basic human necessities. Disease and violence was ripe. Overcrowding, scarce food, alcoholism and no sanitation were the everyday facts that the workers had to live with. Unlike many other European countries, no government regulations were present on important matters like child labour, working hours, safety, education and health were imposed. This meant that many considered the very dark lives of the workers to have been as bad as that of the peasants. As a result a lot of resentment was held by the working class towards the middle-class who greatly benefited from their work. Those who were previously peasants had their deep and severe hatred of the middle and aristocratic classes intensified by the further mistreatment they had to endure during while working on industrial sights and cities in Russia. They thought that they would get a better life by moving to work in the cities, however when they found that living and working conditions were no better or maybe worse than that of the country. Because of this many of the working class turned to the growing extreme left parties such as the Social democrats and Social revolutionaries as a last resort for a reformed Russia that had a more bearable lifestyle. Conditions in Russia had not improved much since the early 19th century and the time the Tsar came to power, however this was worsened greatly during the Tsar’s rule because of the vast population increase. The situation of the workers and peasants reached the point where strikes were not enough and only an organised ‘revolution’ of some sort would be able to have a chance of bring change around.
Revolution happened in 1905 under the Tsar’s Nicholas II’s rule when a crowd of 200,000 protestors led by the socialist priest Father Gapon, came to the Winter Palace where they delivered a petition to Tsar. The revolution included many acts of terrorism, worker strikes and military mutinies; however the protest led by Gapon was one of the most decisive parts of the revolution. The protest took place in St. Petersburg was very peaceful. Protestors even held up pictures of the Tsar to show their respect for him. However the Tsar had left at the first signs of a protest. The petition was very respectful and pleading towards the Tsar. It described how the protestors wished to ‘seek truth, justice and protection’ from the Tsar. They asked for shorter working days and a light increase in wages to make life for the average Russian a lot more bearable. However not much notice was taken of the petition and in one of the most fragile moments of Russia’s history, Cossack soldiers charged and opened fire on the protestors without warning. Many innocent lives were brutally taken away and the effects of this reverberated throughout the whole of Russia. From that day on, the people of Russia had finally lost all respect and pride that they had for the Tsar as their protector. Russian people not only became completely detached form the Tsar and his autocratic state, but from Russia itself.
Finally in 1904, Russia entered a deeply humiliating war with Japan. This was caused by the Tsar’s interest in the Far East and his occupation of Chinese land which the Japanese had enormous interests in. As a result Japan declared war on Russia after a surprise attack and the whole of the Russian Naval army was destroyed. Not only did this expose Tsar Nicholas II’s inability as a military leader, but also made Russia look like extremely weak around the world by having been defeated by a non-Western power.
Overall it seems clear that although conditions did improve to a small extent in Russia regarding new classes and economy, most of the events before WW1 in 1914 were highly negative. The Russian people were distrustful of their own government. They were mistreated to no end and received hardly any sympathy, empathy or actions on their behalf. Russia had already lost to a non-Western country in war and going into WW1 was a very bad idea.
