In the late 19th century, Russia began its process of industrialization following its defeat at the hands of Western nations in the Crimean War. Russia's Industrial Revolution was further helped along by its growing population and an increasing labor force. As the industrial process continued, it gave new job opportunities such as: in mining, factory work, and railroad construction. This influx of jobs was taken by an influx of people, where it came from the country to work in the cities as cheap laborers, taking up dangerous and low-paying jobs. In spite of all these changing times and circumstances, the tension between the upper and lower classes remained tenser than ever before, building up under the fabric of society.
During the time of the Russian Revolution, Russia was a huge empire, and it spread across from Poland all the way to the Pacific, and it also had a large, culturally diverse population of about 165 million people of different religions and languages, and because of this it was a very difficult country to rule. This obviously wasn’t the Tsars fault as there wasn’t anything he could do about this besides working harder to prevent problems, and there were many problems constantly going on within Russia, which had started the revolution in 1917. Just a year before the revolution, 75% of the Russian population were peasants who farmed and lived in small villages. Although they had difficult lives and had to live in awful conditions, it had improved for them in 1861, they were all given a small amount of land, but not for free- they had to pay back a ridiculously large amount of money to the government and was usually paid off over two generations as it was unaffordable. Due to this, most of the farms were in debt.
In 1855, the conditions of the workplace were very dire as little focus was placed on industry under Alexander II, yet the need for improvement was starting to be seen. There was some improvement as Reutern increased the track from 3532km in 1862 to 22,000km by 1878. It was his son, Alexander III, who took action on this necessity. Alexander III mainly ignored light industry but saw the need to change with help of Witte. Together, they created the Trans-Siberian Railway improving the infrastructure and mobility of the country.
During the Nineteenth and Twentieth century the impressive leap in terms of industrialisation throughout Western Europe had moved the world forward, However Russia “could not generate enough capital to support rapid industrial development or to compete with advanced countries.” Russia’s incredibly diverse and expansive land made it very hard for Russian people to collaborate, as well as having difficulties with utilising Russia’s resources. This led to Russia being almost 100 years less industrially developed in the early Twentieth century The Russia that can be considered as Modern Russia would be that of the 1960s. There were massive changes to how Russia was viewed by the mid-20th century, such as it being a huge economic superpower, the high tension between America and the USSR resulting in the cold war, and the development of Nuclear weapons such as RDS-1 and ‘layer cake’: Russia’s hydrogen bomb. This means that the turning points should be judged by which moved Russia more towards the modern Russia they were known as in the 60s. Smitha talks of how “Russia fought the Crimean War with the largest standing army in Europe.” This being said, having the biggest army
To what extent was the lack of political representation the most significant cause of the 1905 revolution? There were a number of different causes that contributed to the start of the 1905 Russian revolution however some were more significant than others. One of the contributing factors was the lack of political representation due to the existence of an autocratic regime. Whilst this was an important factor, the most significant factors were the social and economical issues that caused unrest amongst the Russian population. The long-term policies of Russification imposed by the Tsar in the 1880s, caused a lot of political unrest within Russia and these contributed to the 1905 revolution.
Although the Titanic is known for carrying the rich and famous, the Ship actually had several purposes to carry British and US mail and to carry general cargo and frozen meat since at that time Europe could not produce enough livestock. It shows us that at this time people wanted to try and develop new things and systems to try to enhance and create better livelihood. People really thought that Titanic was going to be the unsinkable ship due to the fact that it was advertised everywhere that the Titanic was the place to be. It was also a massive development in technology and people weren’t really used to things like this. On the 2nd April 1912 the Titanic set off on its great voyage to America it was on the water for 4 days before hitting an iceberg and sinking 2hours and 40 minutes later.
Why did the opposition grow between August 1914 and December 1916? “The events that took place on the Eastern Front...would have a profound impact upon world history for the remainder of the century.” This reference shows that the facts and historic value of the tsars ruling had a profound effect on history that century. In August 1914 Russia was facing hardship. June 28th Franz Ferdinand was assassinated which later started a war between Germany and Russia. The opposition against the Tsar grew due to the loss of war and other factors such as; the Tsar controlling the army, the refusal to co-operate with the Dumas and Rasputin being an advisor.
One of the main causes of the war lasting so long was the failure of the Schlieffen plan. This was due to the Belgians putting up a fight that was not expected by the Germans and the British, honouring the 75 year old, ‘Treaty of London’, came to the aid of Belgium. Also, the Russians built up their army quicker than expected and forced Germany to split her forces and fight a war on both the eastern and western front. This was very important because Germany was not prepared for this war on two fronts. The Schlieffen plan predicted a quick victory over France within six weeks, which was the estimated time it would take Russia to fully mobilise.
They feared of a future German invasion. Also, they wanted control over the Baltic states (countries bordering Russia) because in both world wars Germany invaded Russia through those states because they were weak. They wanted their people in the governments of those countries so they could be relied upon. But U.S. and Britain wanted those countries to be independent, but really they did not want communism to expand. And the U.S. and Germany could not agree upon what to do with Germany, so it ended up being divided: West Germany to U.S. and Great Britain and West Germany to the Soviets.
Russia didn’t have entrepreneurs in the middle class due to the autocratic government which therefore mean the state intervention was needed as Russia didn’t have people like Britain did to drive forward industrialisation. There also was not an efficient banking system in Russia; this didn’t help drive anything forward and made it even harder to industrialise. In many European countries the nineteenth century was a period of rapid industrial growth; on the other hand Russia faced great difficulties in matching the