In fact, the hangman’s noose became known as Stolypin’s necktie. It may have seemed that Stolypin helped peasants but actually a lot of poorer peasants were forced to sell their land and work for other peasants. Overall life did not get much better for people in Russia, there were many signs that life should have improved like the creation of the Dumas but life did not actually improve enough to
This money was important because the economy in Russia was poor at the time; bearing in mind there was a huge number of peasants and very few working class people at the time may suggest a reason for this. Russia's biggest produce was grain. This was the most important factor in my opinion, as without this money, Witte wouldn't have been able to implement any of his ideas. The second area was state sponsored development of heavy industry. Witte believed that heavy industry was the way forward, because he thought that light industry and agriculture could both benefit from this boost.
A large number of Russia’s problems were caused by pre-existing conditions such as poor distribution of food supplies, transportation, and inflation. There are a number of other conditions that contributed to Russia’s war problems; however these are arguably the most important factors. Firstly, the requisitioning of horses and fertilisers by the military for the war effort made it difficult to sustain agricultural output, since farmers still used medieval farming techniques horses were needed to produce a harvest, this resulted in a huge decline in food production and threw the lower class into starvation. Furthermore, the army had first rights on the limited amount of food being produced and they had priority in the use of various transport systems, they also commandeered the railways and roads with the result that the food supplies that were available could not be distributed easily to the rest of the nation. This was terribly inconsiderate of the military as the other 82% of the nation was left to starve as the military was the government’s top priority.
Not all peasants were loyal or religious as many supported the opposition, the Social Revolutionaries. Their main discontent was over land - they resented the amount of land owned by the aristocracy, the Church and the Tsar. They also hated the conditions they had to live in and work. An example of their horrible conditions was that the life expectancy for an average peasant farmer was only forty years old. Most of the peasants wanted change and the way they could do was to get the Tsar out and they could achieve that through the Social Revolutionaries and other opposition parties.
The reactionary reign of Alexander III led to a tightening of government control and the persecution of minority groups, such as Jews, within the Empire. Another long-term cause of the 1905 Revolution was the worsening conditions of both peasants and urban workers. The famines in 1897, 1898 and 1901 had led to shortage and distress in the countryside. Living and working conditions in Russia’s industrial towns were no better. Workers worked in poorly ventilated factories for long hours and little pay.
Agriculture in Russia was far behind other great powers and peasants were suffering greatly through the repeated famines in 1902 and 1905. Sergei Witte had done nothing to improve agriculture only focusing on the economy of Russia. This led to subsistence agriculture. Grain was being exported and there wasn’t enough for the peasants. This also meant that the land was not used to it full potential, all these factors lead to the famines and causing peasants to up rise using violence against government officials.
Peasants felt disappointed and disillusioned and many rioted. There were 1159 in 1861, affecting 1176 estates and requiring the army to restore order on 337 estates. This reform was not as successful as intended and did not create a ‘modern’ society. General Dmitri Milyutin was Minister of War in 1861, he aimed at
The failure of NEP was not the main reason why collectivisation was introduced, but to a number of other factors. Such as, Stalin wanting to make agriculture in the countryside more productive, by giving people an incentive to work and to work together. Also in making Russia more communist, the farms being state owned, and anyone not communist got rid of, e.g. Kulaks and Nepmen who did well off NEP. To raise funds (from the grain) to help assist industrialisation, creating capital investment and overall to increase Stalin and the party’s power also by getting rid of opposition e.g.
After the July days Lenin supported the programme of ‘Peace, Land, Bread’ with this being able to win the support of Bolshevik industrial workers and poor peasants, as it meant end to the food shortages, land to the peasants and the Bolshevik opposition to war. Another way in which the Lenin was a cause of the Bolshevik seizure of power was his idea of the three decrees and it was the second decree that was the problem, the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This was a problem in the way that even though it would bring an end to the war against the Germans and Austria-Hungarians, it was not very popular by some of the Russian people as it gave away land to these two countries. This meant that Lenin was losing his popularity due to the treaty and more people were taking up support of the Bolsheviks due to the programme of Peace, bread, land. Meaning that they had support of the industrial workers and poor peasants, these made up a great population of Russia.
Railroad companies that charged four times as much as on the East gave farmers incentive to band together in order to combat outrages rates politically (Document D). Freight rates especially hurt farmers, who were far from both buying and selling markets, a clever extortion trick by the railroad companies to force farmers into paying at every occasion (Document F). With over a twenty percent decline in agriculture economy over fifty years, the farming community grew smaller and less organized by the day – an easy target for abusive