He also believed in peasants being freed from serfdom. This view was adopted by the peasantry and was a key cause in their uprising. Sebastian Lotzer and Christoph Schappeler were two preachers that strongly believed that peasants should not stand for mistreatment by their lords. They stated that lords should not force any more work on the peasants than they are being compensated for. This was major cause because the peasants demanded to be paid fairly.
These other causes are all political social and economical factors which helped to free the serfs. And had the Tsar taken a more liberal view on his rule the emancipation may never have happened. Firstly there are many political causes for the emancipation of the serfs. The bankruptcy of nobles who were the tsar’s main supporters was, caused because of the inefficiency of using serfs to farm lands, which meant most nobles were losing money and by 1860 over 60% of serfs were mortgaged to the government meaning they were “unofficially” no longer tied to their land. 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.
And those who fall behind are beaten. But we do not want to be beaten!” (Document 1) Attitudes such as these helped to rally the people of Russia, so that they came together as a united force. People came together to provide workers for the factories, and farmers on the collective farms. Stalin created a feeling of pride and nationalism that also helped this country grow strong. Yet, for all of Stalin’s positive accomplishments, he also seemed quite the negative ruler, First, Stalin developed a system of collective farming that combined once privately owned farms into large farms, operated by the government.
Lastly, was the Social Revolutionaries, these were the most radical and whose support came from the peasants. They wanted to take the land from the Rich and distribute amongst the peasants. A consequence of the differences in the opposition was that they couldn’t agree on what ways to overthrow the Tsar , the social revolutionaries used terrorism and violence whereas liberals only wanted minor changes therefore such extremes were not needed. As a result the Tsar was able to continue his reign whilst the opposition continued to disagree on the future of Russia.
These views are expressed in his two key works, A Concise History of the Russian Revolution (published in 1995) and Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime 1919-1924 (published in 1994). Pipe’s believes that Lenin was primarily responsible for the success of the uprising, even though Pipe’s recognizes Lenin’s role as the most important, he still hypocritically called Lenin’s April Theses “totally out of touch with reality, if not positively mad” despite the fact that this theses played a huge role in the Lenin and Bolshevik uprising. Pipe’s also believes that Trotsky just carried out Lenin’s commands. However the role or Trotsky and his actions before the October revolution were very evidently done on his own accord, with Lenin accompanying Trotsky in his decisions. In early October, 1917, Trotsky was elected
The success of the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War was due to Lenin, Trotsky and their combined political, social and military capabilities as they were experts. They introduced various political and military policies that enabled them to raise support in Russia and create a dominant and successful military force. Both leaders showed immense dedication to the socialist cause and in doing so provided ruthless and brilliant leadership that ensured Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. Peasant support for the Bolsheviks was a result of the Whites political and social faults. Firstly, the Whites treated the peasant class harshly, they did not see the advantage of gaining the support of the larger lower class as about 82% and they did not take full advantage of that.
Seeing the minute armies, farmers clustered around the small, yet sufficient, protection of the large landowners, giving up the control of their farming lands. But the economic problems in Rome were much more
This was good for peasants, because it led to social mobility for those who had survived. Peasants were now in high demand because of the shortage. This was not so good for those that wanted to keep their high status, though. Higher classmen tried to limit the prices of food and wages, but to no avail. The government now had no control over the common people because they could not control the disease
His “Great Turn” can be seen as a realistic and attractive policy, suited to the rank and file of the party, that he did not adopt earlier in the 20’s since it was not a fitting policy at the time. The problems in ideology could be seen to link to the problems with agriculture as it was the Kulak class that Stalin held responsible for hoarding the grain and demanding higher prices for it, thus if the ideology changed to rid Soviet society of such elements, then haste could be seen to be of importance. However this was not the only problem with Russian agriculture. Farming methods were
Many of the people looked up to the Tsar like a father, not because he was inspirational or because he was exceptional but because 85% of the country, the Peasants were uneducated and so were very easily controlled and influenced. If one is uneducated and knows nothing else except solid Russian traditions like Tsarism then no one will question it and ask if it really is the best option for a country like Russia, for every country has a political system that suits it. However as the peasants and proletariat became better educated they did ask questions and realised that they were under complete authoritarian control. Not only would they query Tsarism as a whole but the actual Tsar, in personality and ability. For however strong the system is at controlling the largely uneducated majority, Tsarism is only as powerful as the Tsar is at the time.