In an attempt to increase their wages, industrial workers went on strike. The Tsar’s indecisiveness, the reality of him continuing the war against Germany although there were many thousands of casualties and the rest of Russia was starving due to the bad transportation systems, and the fact that he had broken his promises from the October Manifesto after the
Stalin’s Five Year Plans were in fact not plans, and for definite did not last a total of five years. Instead they were huge propaganda campaigns to persuade Russians that something amazing and creative was taking place. This labelled Stalin’s plans as the ‘Biggest economic experiment of the 20th Century,’ which was in fact true, as they completely reformed Russia’s economy. There are three main causes in Stalin’s USSR that caused him to initiate the Five Year Plans. These include political, ideological and last but not least economic.
This meant that the workforce couldn’t be fully harnessed. Also the newly freed serfs were heavily taxed and had to pay redemption payments to the government over a 49 year period. Witte wanted to exploit the resources within and around Russia which he achieved quite well with
He simply ordered the construction on a massive wall straight across Berlin and made it so no one could leave. The people could no longer cross to the West side anytime they wanted. People were forced to stay and work on the East side, thus increasing the Soviets productivity and bettering their economy. Of course, oppression never succeeds in the long run, and people were constantly rebelling against the Russian communists. Over 5,000 people successfully escaped over the wall (or under it) and around 150 died trying and became martyrs for their cause.
Ivan was beat senselessly and one could not even begin to imagine what they went through. It’s theatrically impossible that he survived these people where beat not fed or given water they worked outside with thin clothing when the temperature was -30 degrees Fahrenheit outside. The people in these gulags didn’t even deserve to be in there, a lot of them where in there for a political “crime”. A crime was talking about the government, disagreeing with the government, or even saying you would have done it differently. Stalin knew they did these things because he had spies watching everywhere you said one small thing you were in the gulags.
Poor harvests, famine, a lack of freedom and repressive policies meant that Russia was a country that was teetering on the brink of revolution long before dissatisfied factory workers marched on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Some of the causes of the 1905 revolution were due to poor working and living conditions. For instance, up to 15 people would share one room to live in, because of this demonstrations such as the one outside the Winter Palace commonly known as Bloody Sunday took place. 100’s were killed due to horrific misunderstanding by the Russian army. In many ways this helped fuel Russian Revolt.
Trotsky’s last major mistakes were that he was more often than not “ill” during important meetings; this caused a large amount of hostility towards Trotsky as others such as Bukharin deemed Trotsky to not take the Bolsheviks as seriously as other key members. The final straw which effectively removed Trotsky from running for leader was his failure to attend Lenin’s funeral. In late January 1924 approximately one million people came to mourn the death of their beloved leader, all Bolsheviks attended except for Trotsky. This lead to public outrage at the ruler of the red army “Trotsky through his lack of presence earned himself only the bitterness of Russia’s population” The reason not attending factored Trotsky so badly was that Lenin was hugely respected, so for who many
Wages rose how ever there were too few goods on which to spend money. Also the creation of collective farms essentially destroyed kulaks as a class and this disruption led to a famine. I think that over all the first five year plan was not a success in strengthening the soviet economy because a lot of the targets set were not achieved for example the production of coal were 35.4; oil was 11.7 and steel 4 million tonnes. The actual target of these was double the amount produced. I think it was successful in the sense it increased urbanisation, several gains were obtained in heavy industry and wages rose.
Lenin had a great impact on Russia and the Russian people with his range of policies and events that took place during his time in power. These had huge political and economic effects and had both short-term and long-term impacts. Even in exile, Lenin’s time in Germany did not stop him from organizing yet another Bolshevik uprising in Russia in October 1917. He put the Bolshevik Central Committee under massive pressure and their final decision to hold an uprising shows Lenin’s power and influence within the party. This was only a temporary victory for the Bolsheviks as they lost support of the majority of the Russian population.
Peasants were at the bottom of the Russian Society and in many people's eyes the most likely to want to revolt, but due to the illiteracy and lack of understanding of what was going on, they never, as Robert Service states in “A history of modern Russia” by saying “Peasants, while making money from the expanded market of their products, kept to tradition notions and customs,” this highlights how controlled the Russian Society was and that though many, if not all, peasants were in a bad situation, they upheld traditional values. This would have added to the Tsars strength before 1905, because the peasants made up 80% of the population, and having that huge a percentage under control really would have made the Tsar become under less threat of a revolution. Another reason as to why the Tsar was so strong before 1905 was his tight control over the Russian workers. The Russian industry wasn't very advanced and it can be argued that this was done on purpose, as Robert Service mentions “ for he and his ministers were fearful about the rapid creation of an unruly urban proletariat such as existed in other countries” this shows how the Tsar thought, that if the workers started to earn more money and have a better working life, it may lead to an unbalanced society, so to keep the workers in check, he deliberately