Industrialisation In Russia Essay, Research Paper

There was a great deal of tension between the Russian people and the autocracy during the early 20th century, which was brought about by the poor leadership by the autocracy. The way the country was beining run was out dated and unprogressive, so as the rest of Europe was growing as a result of the industrial revolution Russia was being left behind. Russia was struggling to keep up mainly because the economy was quickly modernising and the autocratic political system was holding it back. Because of all the social and economic changes it was necessary for the political system to change, but the Tsar – who was still held up his views that he held the divine right to rule and his abilities were without flaw – would not listen to the cries of the people no matter how loud, he would simply send out the armies to scilence the people. This continued untill 1905 where things got so bad that somthing had to change.

Russia’s demise was mostly brought about by the Ineptness of Tsar Nicholas II and his belief in the dying political system of autocrecy. Autocrecy is a form of absoultism, the head of the autocratic system has absolute political power over everyone. Furthermore the leader of the autocracy had a religious dimension attached to attached to them, they were the head of the Curch as well as the chief government power, and thus rule by divine right, which made many of the god fearing peasents too afraid to rebell. Nicholas was also a very stubborn, weak-willed leader, this stubbornness, paired with his delusional belief that he was appointed by god (as all Tsars are), was all it took to halt any progress of change in Russia, because any changes would provide a possible oppoonient to Tsarist power.From these facts it is obvious that that Nicholas was the wrong person for the task of leading Russia through this time of great change, and autocracy’s misleading and dangerious allure enhanced the Tsar’s inability by allowing him to think that it was his god given right to rule his country as he saw fit, rather than being answerable to the cries of the people. Thus it was the autocracy’s ignorance which was one of mayjor problems when the industrial revoultion took hold.

Under the rule of the Tsar there was still a boom of industrial growth, but Russia was a late bloomer compared to the Weastern European countries, and it didn’t help the workers a great deal as their living and working conditions were appauling and waigers lousy,”just eniough to buy the bread they needed.” These terrible conditions for the workers could only be accepted for so long, because of the huge factories with thousands of employes it was easy to orginies large unions and strikes for better working conditions. In the early stages these rebellions were quickley quashed by the military. It wasn’t all bad however, Russia’s industrial strength quickly grew to become the fifth strongest in the league of industrial powers. Also the period between 1906 and 1914 the industrial production doubbled and Russia became the fourth largest producer of coal, pig iron and steel. But because of this very rapid change to industrialisation it created great strains on sociery which helped leed to the revolution.

The agricultrial side to Russia also went through a huge changes through this industrial boom. 84% of Russian people were peasents and there just wasn’t eniough land to go around. Because of the sudden swing of the countries econmy towards industry, harvests suffered and many starved due to this poorly orginised Nation. however things began to look up when reforms were introduced which allowed peasents to buy there own land, they hoped this woud cause the peasents to want to work their lands to the best of their ability using modern methods and produce more food. This worked temporeraly and produced a record harvest in 1913, and maybe could have worked permantly if it wasn’t for the outbreak of The Great War. But because of the shortage of land and the promise of jobs in factories many peasents moved to the cities but the condititions weren’t much better so somthing had to be done. But with an ignorant, egotistical stubborn Tsar leading the country nothing would be done unless the people took matters into their own hands.