For some peasants life did improve dramatically, Stolypin set up banks that would help peasants get loans and buy land. This was a huge improvement for peasants as they were getting more freedom, this may have been because they would murder their landlords. This lead to improvements in farming this therefore lead to an industrial boom and made Russia the world’s fourth largest producer of coal, pig iron and steel. Only 15% of peasants took up Stolypin’s idea though. As for the Dumas, they could not pass laws, could not appoint ministers and could not control finance.
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. This was on the verge of the revolution. The deep resentment from the peasantry towards the Tsar increased after the war as lots of money had being invested in the war and Russia had lost. Moreover, Sergei Witte had tried to improve the economy of Russia but it was to make sure that the Russian social order stayed the same. Due to industrialisation, factories were built which lead to rapid growth of population in the towns and cities for example from 98 million in 1885 to 125 million in 1905.
One of the main problems was the social problems it caused because of the loss of agricultural workers in the war led to a massive food shortage in Russia it also dint help when the tsar announced their would be bread rationing, in the war Russia also didn’t perform very well they lost 1.6 million Russian soldiers 3.9 million were wounded and 2.4 million were captured. another reason why the 1905 revolution survived was because the Tsar issued the October manifest which meant that a lot of people were happy because it allowed people to have a freedom of speech it also said that the Tsar would share his power which he had to intention of doing over time he started undoing concessions and arguing that the Duma was only a shell of democracy as it could not pass laws without the approval of the monarch, and that freedom of speech was heavily
Even though this solved all the immediate needs of the communist state, the majority of the peasants were unhappy about the new policies and rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This, in turn, forced Lenin to change policies and introduce the New Economic Policy. The NEP was seen, in the Bolsheviks’ eyes, as a return to capitalism as it allowed small businesses to open and people to sell goods in the market, even though major industries, such as steel and iron were still under government control. Lenin had a huge impact on Russia. He made Russia a strong state and consolidated her
These ideas seemed great but they did work much as Russia’s economy only grew by 50%, compared to other countries this was nothing. 80% of the country’s population were still peasants farming for themselves and having problems with land hunger, so they were generally unhappy. Because they were peasants and not workers in the cites, this shows that Russia was STILL not very modernized. The Trans-Siberian Railway was an ambitious project. It was a railway that started in the west of Russia, going through all of the major cities and then ending up in the east near the Pacific sea.
This money was important because the economy in Russia was poor at the time; bearing in mind there was a huge number of peasants and very few working class people at the time may suggest a reason for this. Russia's biggest produce was grain. This was the most important factor in my opinion, as without this money, Witte wouldn't have been able to implement any of his ideas. The second area was state sponsored development of heavy industry. Witte believed that heavy industry was the way forward, because he thought that light industry and agriculture could both benefit from this boost.
Roads and railway were inadequate to meet the demands. Transport and housing were also inadequate to cope with the number of town dwellers. Under the NEP there had been unemployment, a shortage of labour. Many of the new workers were in experienced peasants. Wages rose how ever there were too few goods on which to spend money.
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.
However, due to the Industrial Revolution, America began to stray from the vision the founding fathers had for the nation in the late 1700’s and 1800’s. Though social mobility was promised to immigrants and common Americans, these same people were often exploited and left in poverty. Founding fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson, valued farming above all else, but as industrialism took hold of America, farming became much necessary, and farmers more scarce. Finally, though America’s politicians promised to hear what the common people had to say, during and after the Industrial Revolution it seemed that only the very wealthy could make any sort of impact, and there was nothing to stop them from crushing the working class underfoot. The United States of America was built on the ideal that every man should be able to make his way in the world regardless of his family or class.
There were many failures in collectivisation, particularly in the initial phases - output fell in the 1930s largely for three reasons; the peasants resented the state taking their land, machinery and livestock, so they did not work as hard and put more effort into their private plots, where they could keep any profit generated - who wouldn't? These private plots - some 5% of the land provided as much as 25% of the agricultural produce of the country. Alongside the implementation of collectivisation was the policy of liquidating the kulaks. The Party said these were rich farmers - in reality they were the better farmers, they had improved their