Stolypin believed that the encouragement of a class such as the Kulaks would make them hostile to further change therefore more conservative and loyal to the Tsar as the Tsar had made them wealthy. Furthermore, peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia and a majority relied on agriculture for their income. Reforms that would please the ‘dark masses’ would strengthen the tsarist regime. Another reason for reforming agriculture was to oppress peasant unrest. In Poltava and Kharkov provinces, mass impoverishment of the peasants, which was exacerbated by the poor harvests of 1901 led to 40,000 peasants took part in an uprising where they also ransacked 150 landlord properties.
Conversely, the higher-value rouble helped increase the prices of goods. Witte's main method for raising the capital and modernisation would be the Trans-Siberian Railway, which from 1881 to 1900 increased from 13,000 to 33,000 miles. It was hoped it would encourage east to West migration of workers, to feed in to industry, however this did not happen. Instead, it helped growth and exports of Russia by making transportation of materials far easier. On the other hand, the growth in population compared with national output shows less production per head, and therefore less efficient production.
Industrialization was creating even more towns, increasing this problem. So in order to feed his industrial workforce Stalin needed to revolutionize agriculture. He achieved this through forced grain seizure and the prosecution of kulaks and forcing peasants to work together in ‘collectives’. By doing so he was able to secure extra grain to feed the growing urban population of workers and sell the surplus to gain foreign currencies for purchasing foreign machineries. Though collectivisation may have had short term boosts to the economy but the effects of collectivisation were disastrous.
In 1917, Russian Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate from the throne after the March Revolution. I think that the main reason he abdicated was not because of the opposition of the people, but Russia’s failures in World War One, however there are many reasons considered for why he did it. The top four are: the opposition of the town workers, Russia’s poor performance in WW1, the weakness of Tsar Nicholas II, and the events in St Petersburg in February 1917. The opposition of the peasant and town workers were a very important factor in bringing down the Tsar. When Nicholas was first crowned Tsar in 1894, the whole country rejoiced and had a new hope for a brighter future, that things would be better than they were before.
This meant serfdom was already coming to its own natural end, and for Alexander II to support his nobles he had to emancipate the serfs so they could go start increasing their wealth and get out of debt. Serfdom was also holding Russia back, with the rest of Europe liberalising and making vast economic progress Russia’s economy was starting to look inferior and for them to advance as a nation they had to increase productivity of the serfs and the simple solution was to emancipate them. The serfs were inefficient and had a low productivity due to poor farming methods and constantly being oppressed by their nobles. This oppression and poor farming was caused by the extremely conservative rule which refused to modernise, had the Tsar modernised the farming techniques and stopped the
It it over-simplistic to state that opposition was successful or unsuccessful in Russia from 1855 and 1964. The effectiveness of opposition in Russia had to be evaluated according to the regime in power. For example, the opposition to Tsarism under Alexander II was unsuccessful as his assassination led to reactionary Tsarist rule for thirty six more years. However, the opposition under Nicholas II’s rule was highly successful, helping to lead to a communist government. All Russian governments in this period faced strong opposition to their regime with the period as a whole punctuated by riots, disturbances and revolutions.
For example, there were some upper class such as Alexander Cassatt, who was in charge of the Pennsylvania Railroad also supporters of regulation and political Reform. Second, the Populist movement was fighting for money while the Progressives were pursuing higher profit. People who made up primarily of poor farmers just want to have a common life with others; they found that movement did influence the economy and politics. Then the Populist Party started to fight for moral regeneration, political democracy, and anti-monopoly. In weekly reading, The Common People Are Being Robbed, Mary indicated that “The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors”, and so did the farmers.
The long-term provision of large quantities of food may force down domestic prices and make matters worse for domestic farmers. It could be considered better for farmers to have a reduction in the subsidies given to farmers in the developed countries. 6. Continued dependency on aid means there is little incentive to be innovative and people develop a welfare mentality. 7.
This book foresees shortcomings for farmers and their crops as well economic distress. Populism is defined as people who are the under caste of society making a political movement. The farmers felt like they were beat around by big businesses, and felt like they had no political outreach to help them get an equal share for their work production. To oppose this they pulled together and formed the populist group called the Farmer’s Alliance. This helped the lower classes feel like they had some people.
Some of the exchanges that took place between the Old World and the New World included sugar, coffee, vegetables, precious metals, livestock, and diseases. These exchanges had both good and bad effects. Precious metals seemed to be a good thing, but they were plundered from the Aztec and Incan empires and usually melted down, destroying artifacts from those societies. Because these metals were so abundant, it caused inflation, thus actually lowering the standard of living for most in Europe. The crops helped to provide good food for the peasants of Europe and Ireland, helping to end the huge problem of famine.