Agriculture in Russia was far behind other great powers and peasants were suffering greatly through the repeated famines in 1902 and 1905. Sergei Witte had done nothing to improve agriculture only focusing on the economy of Russia. This led to subsistence agriculture. Grain was being exported and there wasn’t enough for the peasants. This also meant that the land was not used to it full potential, all these factors lead to the famines and causing peasants to up rise using violence against government officials.
By the time it came to 1918 food shortages had caused riots and discontent and the government was finding it difficult to keep the army supplied. Industrialists became independent on war time business and they severely struggled when the war came to an abrupt end in 1918. Due to the opposition from many neutralists the government operated through the use of emergency powers, where parliament played the role of simply rubber stamping legislation. The Italian socialists openly condemned the conflict as a capitalist or ‘bosses’ war. Italian politics was largely divided during war years.
Railroad companies that charged four times as much as on the East gave farmers incentive to band together in order to combat outrages rates politically (Document D). Freight rates especially hurt farmers, who were far from both buying and selling markets, a clever extortion trick by the railroad companies to force farmers into paying at every occasion (Document F). With over a twenty percent decline in agriculture economy over fifty years, the farming community grew smaller and less organized by the day – an easy target for abusive
80% of Russia’s population was made up of peasants and most of them lived in poverty. As the population grew rapidly, 98 million in 1885 to 125 in 1905, an attempt to provide land for each peasant family made the size of peasant landholdings fall. As if this wasn’t enough there were several harvest failures which resulted in severe famine. This greatly angered peasants, who in jacqueries, attacked government officials and encouraged the start of the revolution. Also, compared to other European countries, Russian agriculture was still backward.
This was because 80% of the population lived in poverty and although the serfs were emancipated in 1861 they were still forced to pay redemption payments up until 1905. An increasing population meant that rural disturbances were growing as 1905 approached as a shortage of food and land became worse as higher taxes were put on those who could barely afford them in order to pay for the industrialisation of Russia. There were also disturbances from minorities who wanted an end to Russification, like Georgia and Poland who wanted autonomy and independence. As well as this, the growing industry in Russia meant more and more workers were moving to towns and cities in order to find a better life when in reality there was only low wages, poor living conditions and long hours. Due to this discontent began to grow in more densely populated areas and from the later part of the 1890s more and more strikes were happening.
Their anger was made evident during the peasant disturbances of 1902. The landowners were also unhappy with the terms of emancipation. They lost the free labour of their serfs and a large amount of land. As a result many were facing huge debts by 1905. Another long-term cause of the 1905 Revolution was the general disappointment with which many Russian people viewed the reforms of the previous decades.
The Positive Effects of The French Revolution Around the late 18th century, the overspending of King Louis XVI and his ancestors, coupled with the countries involvement in the American Revolution, pushed France to the edge of economic collapse. The urban workers and peasants not only suffered from the overspending of the royal family, but also from poor harvests and the high price of their daily food—bread. Many of them showed pessimism and hatred towards the government that forced them to pay high taxes but failed to protect their natural rights. To deal with the economic crisis, Louis XVI called the Estates-General, an assembly with representatives from French clergy, nobility and peasants, to meet in 1789 so he could increase the taxes that the Third Estate paid. The meeting of the Estates-General eventually led to the beginning of The French Revolution.
Summary: The Dust Bowl Migration The Dust Bowl was an ecological disaster in the Great Plains during the 1930’s. The Great Plains had suffered severe drought for several years which then led to the depletion of the soil used by farmers to harvest their major crops- wheat and cotton. This interesting phenomenon led to the massive migration of almost 3 million farmers and the intervention from the government. This mass migration became known in History as the Dust Bowl Migration. Since it occurred during the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl migration became significant due to the riskiness in relocation because of such high unemployment rates.
To what extent did the policies of Sergei Witte address the problems facing Russia at the end of the nineteenth century? Russia faced many problems at the end of the nineteenth century. Under Minister of Finance Ivan Vyshnegradskii there had been famine because of high taxes on consumer goods which had forced peasants to sell more and more grain. The government were slow to act and, although they eventually enforced a ban on grain exports, 350,000 died of starvation or disease. Economically and industrially Russia was also falling far behind many other Western countries at the time, like Britain and Germany.
Furthermore during this time Americans had a surplus of goods and services from which to choose, and the money with which to purchase them. However,the economic boom brought high inflation, which kept poorer citizens from saving any money, the lowest-paid workers in the country were the farm workers, with sales clerks and unskilled labourers .Happy, a sales clerk, Biff an aspiring farmworker , and Willy Loman a man with a dwindling sales career reflect the mental state of the American People of the time that battled to achieve Capitalist success i.e. acquiring material possessions as the basis of social approval. Willy loman in particular was effected by the Capitalist ideal , he believed that being "well liked" and a great salesman would make him a man worth remembering . But at the age of sixty- three and nearing retirement, Willy is seen as a man who gave all of his life to a business, "I'm tired to death" only to be thrown in the scrap-heap and as a house holder whose pattern of life was interwoven with instalment plans with which he could hardly catch up.