That agricultural industry in the South was so corrupt that farmers gained no profit from their livestock and crops, therefore was inefficient and moving backwards. Communication between the North and South was very difficult, almost as if the North and South were two different countries, the Liberal government didn’t do a very good job in controlling the two divisions. Cavour said “To harmonise the north with the south is more difficult than to fight Austria or struggle with Rome.” In 1896 Italy tried to gain back their empire, in doing so they tried to take Adowa back in Africa, but suffered a humiliating defeat, and stunted their right to being called ‘a Great Nation’. Due to the fact that Liberal Italy found it hard to communicate across the two divisions, Liberal Italy was therefore unstable and not very secure. The new
This meant trade to other countries went down bringing the economy to yet another low and this lack of agricultural workers meant a lack of food across Russia, especially in towns and cities where there was no easy access to farms; and as is with most things in demand, the prices went through the roof, leaving peasants starving on a mass scale. The only short term fix that was established for this whole issue, was a series of loans from Russia’s allies, Britain and France; these loans are especially important when it comes to the provisional government’s role in the second revolution in 1917. The other major issue that was gained from the World War is the amazing show of incompetence from Russian military leaders, most notably Nicholas II. This led to a decreasing
This basic form of opposition was never truly effective as their actions were simply put down by the government partly due to their failure to unite and lack of ideology and political demands. This was, however, not the only internal opposition to Tsar Alexander II with the “Going to the People” movement emerging in 1874. Here young members of the Russia intelligentsia went to the peasants breaching to them about their ideas about how life should be lived. This proved unsuccessful, they failed to appeal to the peasantry and the regime managed to arrest members showing them to be ineffective at this point. However, the populist movement developed from here, eventually splitting into two groups; the Black Partition and the People’s Will.
The demoralisation of the proud Russian peoples created dissent, and discredited the Tsar. In August 1915, the Tsar left Petrograd to command the Russian army. In August 1915, the Tsar left Petrograd to command the Russian army. He therefore received the blame personally for all their defeats and lost control of his troops as he left Rasputin and the Tsarina to rule Russia. His army also consisted of millions of poor, starving peasants with bad equipment, poor supplies of rifles and ammunition.
Once all the main factors are evaluated, it becomes clear that the life of the peasants did not improve so it remained uniformly bleak throughout the period of 1855-1964. For majority of the period, the living conditions for the average peasant remained uniformly bleak. Especially when considering 1917, under Nicholas II, accommodation was often a low standard as demand outstripped supply following an influx to the cities, such poor living conditions had a detrimental effect in their quality of life which was also the same under the communist leaders, where living conditions remained in an equally bad, if not worse when compared to the Tsars. Some may suggest that Nikita Khrushchev did try to improve the living conditions by building more social housing but he was more interested in competing in the Cold War than improving the living conditions of the peasants. Therefore, lack of care led to his housing policy to be unsuccessful and proving that live of the peasants under Khrushchev did not improve.
As it was them who started the protest which turned into a revolution and also they were the ones behind the mutiny of the troops. However, the military was having many problems such as the war was going horribly wrong with many casualties, poor commanding from officers and limited military resources and equipment. The peasants were doing the fighting and the dying. So this could be a small contributing factor to the fall of the Romanov's on several different reasons. Firstly the tsar did not help the peasants personally, but instead leave the burden to the prime ministers when they cannot rule like a democracy today.
* I believe the event that actually triggered the revolt was the battle of Poitiers and Crecy. The peasants resented the noble’s failure to use them in the fight against the enemy and felt less fear of them as the knights lost prestige in the defeats. That is when all that anger from being demoted every time really built up and shot
The first social revolution came about during a period of great change not only in Russia but throughout Europe. These changes developed across a wide spectrum, such as from religion to politics, from economic development and from changes in the societies of Europe as a whole. A lot of the change occurred on the back of the industrial revolution and the competition between the various powers in Europe to be the best, the strongest and the most advanced, both socially and technologically. This essay will try to give and insight into the background of the socialist revolution; what were the main triggers or causes which eventually led to the conflict, what were the main challenges which the Russian empire faced at the time. This will be explored alongside the ways in which developments in revolutionary methods were to the fore throughout Europe during this period.
For however strong the system is at controlling the largely uneducated majority, Tsarism is only as powerful as the Tsar is at the time. So Tsarism in the 1900’s was not very powerful because we can see that from his actions Nicholas II was inept as a leader of such a large country. Blatant failures by the Tsar were apparent to the people of Russia; two examples, which cast questions over his ability, were the Famine of 1891 and the Russo-Japanese war. The famine was an extremely bad time to be a Russian citizen, a great majority of the country was starving and the Tsar and his government had no plan or solution to help the needy. A peasant needs nothing but a home and food, but when food is taken out of his life then he will ask questions
The lack of usable land in Russia and the subdivison of land between families both resulted in an incredibly low income, especially for larger families. This combined with the illiteracy of the people and refusal of the Tsar to provide basic education meant that there was no way to escape the misfortunes of life as a peasant. The poor harvests of 1900 and 1902 worsened matters even further and fuelled the peasants anger. The famines and starvation that followed provided sufficient evidence that the Tsar was not a born leader, “gifted and sent from God” as they had been taught to believe, but a weak and incompetent leader, incapable of making decisions or change. Another issue was that whilst the Tsar encouraged the industrial growth of Russia, and was keen for the country to become an industrial power, when peasants then left the land to work in the developing enterprises, they discovered that their living conditions did not improve.