This was due to the inefficiency of Serfdom, and by this time, roughly 60% of Serfs had been mortgaged to the government. What this essentially means is that Serfdom was already beginning to come to a natural end. As the Nobles were the Tsar’s staunchest supporters, he was forced to emancipate the Serfs to allow the Nobles to refill their coffers and get out of their debt. As well as this, with the rest of Europe beginning to make large economic progress, Russia was beginning to look inferior economically and industrially, and it was Serfdom that was holding them back, with the simplest solution to just emancipate the Serfs and allow them to become more productive. The main reason that the Serfs were inefficient was due to oppression from the Nobles, which, coupled with poor farming methods, gave inferior results
This certainly fights against the view that Alexander II was reluctant in his reforms on the surface – however, once investigated, the limits of emancipation are clear. The 49 year redemption payments were a huge limiting factor in allowing peasants economic freedom to then have social freedom, and class was still a major issue even if it had been reduced. The highly inflated land prices that ensued meant that very few peasants could afford land, and Alexander II did nothing to resolve this. It does lend to the idea of his ‘radical’ reforms being fairly reluctant as he did not go further with them. Alexander III took an even more conservative view during his reign, repealing many of Alexander II’s social
Perhaps the term Tsar could be defined as an absolute ruler whose main objective would be to stay in power, and “red” would suggest that the ruler was to the far left of the political spectrum. Both Lenin and the Romanovs had to go to extreme measures to control Russia; it was one sixth of the world’s land mass with numerous ethnic groups with different cultures and languages. Perhaps then, it is the manner in which both regimes handled problems in controlling such a large number of peoples that would determine how similar or different they were. The apparent contradiction between Tsarism and Marxism-Leninism must be the difference in ideology. The Tsars believed that they ruled by divine right; so they believed that they were God’s appointed ruler on earth.
Explain why Alexander II introduced further reforms after the emancipation edict of 1861 Emancipation opened many opportunities for further reforms and forced a change in the structure of the Russian society. Serfdom was abolished and the nobility could no longer control them which led to light being shed on other problems in society such as the law, industry and also the military. The most important reason for the introduction of further reforms is that they were a reasonable response to the emancipation of the serfs, but only in short term. The emancipation act gave the serfs power to control their own lives instead of being dictated by people of a higher status, such as the nobility. For this, rural councils known as the Zemstvas were set up in 1864 which offered the serfs a representative government; but they were mostly dominated by the nobility and professionals and many of them resented their loss of power over the serfs.
The lack of unity opposition possessed was a key factor in its failure throughout the period. Division in opinion and ideology were consistent problems for opposition, which only fully united in the February revolution. Even then there were still divisions in opinion, however there was one common cause to unite behind. Other attributing factors such as heavy repression by rulers, well timed reforms and the continuing use of military force ultimately meant that opposition to Russian Governments was rarely successful in the 1855-1964. The peasantry were consistent opponents of Russian Government throughout the period, yet were rarely successful in doing so.
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.
Throughout the history of mankind there have been era's of serfdom, slavery around the world, but the type of serfdom that was being run in Russia is simply not too easy to forget the extreme dark period. While there are memories that are still being discovered in today's world, one cannot put on the shoes of a serf and live their life because it seemed that most serfs lived a depressed, tough and deadly life. Historians who study the rich history of Europe can say that serfdom has been around in Europe for almost a hundred years; dating from the 11th century to the 19th century. This type of feudalism spread throughout Europe. The powerful European Empires, such as Russia, began seeing that serfdom was the way to keep their empire stronger and to keep competition to see which empire was better.
The individual armies were nowhere near as strong as the Bolsheviks united army and therefore, in battles the whites would always loose. The Peasants believed that if the whites did take over then they would not do a very good job. They believed that the whites would take away the land that they gained in 1917 and so they would not give the Whites any support. Without this
The intentions of both the encomienda system and system of Russian serfdom were the same, however, they differed in the foundation and functionality. Russian serfdom and the Spanish Encomienda system had many similarities. They were both systems of forced labor in which work was demanded from lower status people. Spanish settlers in the New World, particularly in the Caribbean were in need for a labor source to cultivate land and mine silver. After the rule of the Mongol over Russia, many of the free peasants had fallen into debt and were forced to work as laborers on the large estates owned by nobles.
However, collectivization could not be averted and this time peasant revolts was not enough to direct government policy in their favour. Revolts relating to living and working standards were not even tolerated by the weakest Communist and Tsarist regimes, with Nicholas II massacring workers at Lena Goldfields in 1912 and Khrushchev’s KGB lashing out at riots due to food shortages at Novocherkassk in