Question

What were the social, economic and political conditions in Russia before 1905?

Answer 1

Economic Condition

• About 85 percent of the population in Russian empire depended on agriculture in the beginning of the twentieth century.
• Cultivators cultivated crops for their own needs and Russia was also a major exporter of grains.
• Moscow and St Petersburg were the prominent industrial centers.
• When foreign investment increased in the industries and when the Russian railway network expanded many factories were set up in the 1890s.
• Iron and steel output quadrupled, and coal production doubled.
• Craftsmen and factory workers were almost equal in number, in some areas, in the 1900s.

Political Conditions

• Some Russian socialists felt that the Russian peasant custom of dividing land periodically made them natural socialists.
• So the main force of the revolution was the peasants and not workers; and Russia could quickly become a Socialist country when compared to other countries.
• Through the late nineteenth century, Socialists were active in the countryside.
• Socialists who respected Marx’s ideas founded the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party in 1898.
• However, it had to operate as an illegal organisation, because of policing by the government.
• It organised strikes, mobilised workers and set up a newspaper.
• In 1900, Socialist Revolutionary Party was founded by them.
• Socialist Revolutionary Party demanded that land belonging to nobles be transferred to peasants and thereby struggled for the right of the peasants.
• About peasants there was disagreement between the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats.
• Due to differentiation within the Peasants, Lenin felt that Peasants could not be one Social group.
• Due to the strategy of the organisation, the party was divided, one was the Bolsheviks groups led by the Vladimir Lenin who believed there should be control of the quality and number of members. The Other Mensheviks believed the party should be open for all.
• Before 1914, all political parties were illegal in Russia.

Social Condition

• Periodically, the land was pooled by the Russians, and as per needs of the individual families, the commune divided it.
• Workers were divided in Russia, which was visible through their manners and dress.
• Peasants were divided. Some peasants were capitalists who employed workers, some peasants worked as labourers, some peasants were rich and others were poor.
• Large properties were owned by Orthodox Church, the Crown, and the nobility.
• Peasants were deeply religious, they had no respect for nobility.
• Position and power were earned by Nobles not through their local popularity but through their services and to the Tsar.
• On a large scale in Southern Russia, in 1902, landlords were murdered, peasants refused to pay rent to the landlords and peasants wanted the land of the nobles.
• Such incidents spread all across Russia in 1905.