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The russian revolution
Chapter 14 revolution in russia
Chapter 14 revolution in russia
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In 1917, Russian peasants felt they needed to revolt because they had hard labour that rewarded them nothing. The peasants and farmers had to do all the manual labour until it becomes the death of them, to satisfy the classes above them. The middle class would have ownership of the food the farmers grew, leaving the farmers almost no food for themselves and their families. The overworking people were done being taken advantage of and rebelled. These people wanted to have communism, where everyone works for themselves and nobody else. All your work’s rewards would go to you and only you. Therefore, leading us to believe that the Russian lower class rebelled because they were hungry and overworked. Another reason the Russian lower class rebelled is because the military would shoot …show more content…
The aristocrats earn their place in the social hiearchy pyramid by birth. Aristocrats control the laws make new ones. With these people governing the nation, they make the unjust laws that the lower class has to follow, causing the lower class to be unhappy with these laws and rebel. Although the aristocrats govern them, the royal family still has a large roll to play. The royal family can veto laws, enforce new ones, and even send orders to kill as they please. The royal family only cares about themselves, therefore not caring about their citizens and taking care of them. This causes the citizens to live their lives out in fear and in harsh conditions. This especially harms the lower class, infuriating them to the point where they rebel.
In addition, after looking at the Russian cartoon, my hypothesis is the Russian lower class felt the need to revolt because they were being overworked with no benefits, the military would kill whomever does not satisfy the upper class, and the aristocrats and the royal family were the cause of the harsh conditions that peasants and farmers were
One of the first and most vital sources utilized was Not By Bread Alone by Barbara Engel. This article comes from Barbara Alpern Engel who is a historian who has wrote several books on Russian women and specifically Russian women during the early 1900s. The book appears in the larger journal The Journal of Modern History. The purpose of this article is to expound on the subsistence riots in WWI era Russia and the ones that lead to the Russian Revolution. A value of this source is her specialization, it seems, in Russian history from 1700 onwards. She has wrote several other books on Russian history and thus she has a greater knowledge than most on the subject. A limitation of this article maybe since she
No war is fought without the struggle for resources, and with Russia still rapidly lagging behind in the international industrialisation race by the turn of the 20th century, the stage was set for social unrest and uprising against its already uncoordinated and temporally displaced government. With inconceivable demands for soldiers, cavalry and warfare paraphernalia, Russia stood little chance in the face of the great powers of World War One. Shortages of basic human necessities led to countless subsistence riots and the eventual power struggle between the ruling body and its people. From the beginnings of WWI to 1916, prices of essential goods rose 131 percent in Moscow and more than 150 percent in Petrograd. Additionally, historian Walter G. Moss stated that in September 1915 that “there were 100,000 strikers in Russia; in October 1916, there were 250,000 in Petrograd alone.” Moss continues to exemplify the increasing evidence of social unrest and connects the riots to a lack of resources when he goes on to point out that “subsistence riots protesting high prices and shortages… also increased.” ...
In February of 1917 a group of female factory workers and led a revolt in which the Tsar was dethroned, only to be replaced by a provisionary government composed of the Russian elite. When this government did not live up to its promises of an end to Russian involvement in World War I, the Bolsheviks (“majority”), a revolutionary movement led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the provisionary government in what bacame known as the October revolution.
After their “peasant economy [had] come to a full collapse and ruin, from which it will not recover in several years”, the peasants started getting furious (Document 5). They became frustrated as their living situation continued to decline rather than improve. Anton Chekhov, a physician, and short story writer, depicted in his short story “Peasants” the life of peasants. He wrote that “they lived in discord, quarreling constantly [...] Who keeps a tavern and makes people drunkards? A peasant.” (Document 7). Peasants were seen by many as the root of the problem and trouble makers. They were blamed for many of the problems in the society. After Nicholas II became Tsar and Russia started to industrialize, the peasants were believed to create more tension. Police Report 4894 to the Ministry of the Interior, claimed that “there has recently emerged a series of peasant disorders in the form of systematic damage to the noble’s fields and meadows” (Document 9). The Nobles were significantly favored over the peasants as the new image of them being the cause of the problems engraved the minds of the public. This was the case until Tsar Nicholas II created the Duma in
Human beings can only be oppressed and mistreated for so long before they rebel against their tormentors to show that they will not be victimized any longer. Everyone has their breaking point, that time when they are just pushed too hard, and eventually the peasants reached that point. They decide that they had been abused for long enough and that it is time to put a stop to it, so they do. This revolt had been a
I. A good majority of the Russian people were weary and uncontent with the way the war was going and with the Czar's rule. This uncontent, along with economic hardships, caused riots and demonstrations to break out. The Czar called for the army to put down the revolution, as they did in 1905. But the army joined the revolt and the Czar was kicked out of power soon afterwards.
The Russian revolution of February 1917 was a momentous event in the course of Russian history. The causes of the revolution were very critical and even today historians debate on what was the primary cause of the revolution. The revolution began in Petrograd as “a workers’ revolt” in response to bread shortages. It removed Russia from the war and brought about the transformation of the Russian Empire into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, replacing Russia’s monarchy with the world’s first Communist state. The revolution opened the door for Russia to fully enter the industrial age. Before 1917, Russia was a mostly agrarian nation. The Russian working class had been for many years fed up with the ways they had to live and work and it was only a matter of time before they had to take a stand. Peasants worked many hours for low wages and no land, which caused many families to lose their lives. Some would argue that World War I led to the intense downfall of Russia, while others believe that the main cause was the peasant unrest because of harsh living conditions. Although World War I cost Russia many resources and much land, the primary cause of the Russian Revolution was the peasant unrest due to living conditions because even before the war began in Russia there were outbreaks from peasants due to the lack of food and land that were only going to get worse with time.
Before the Russian Revolution, Russia was going through some hard times. In Russia, during the early 1900’s, there was a huge difference between the rich and the poor. There was a large number of peasants living in poverty. On the other hand, there was a restricted amount of people living in a life of lavish, who owned large plots of land, and had servants to tend to their needs. Czar Nicholas II was one of the few that was living a life of luxury, which angered the peasants. What also angered the peasants was a man named Rasputin. Rasputin lived with the Romanovs because he claimed that he had magical powers that could cure Nicholas II’s son’s disease: haemophilia. When World War I came along...
The discontentment of industrial workers in Russia was an important factor behind the 1905 revolution in Russia. The conditions in the factories left a lot of workers dissatisfied with how they were treat, with many factories completely forsaking anything resembling health and safety regulations and others making their employees work 11 hours a day throughout the week and 10 hours on a Saturday. However, there were several other important factors that led to the 1905 revolution such as the Russo Japanese war in 1904-1905, The policy of Russification and the events of Bloody Sunday. All of these factors will be discussed in the
The Soviet economy was highly centralized with a “command economy” (p.1). fsmitha.com), which had been broken down due to its complexity and centrally controlled with corruption involved in it. A strong government needs a strong economy to maintain its power and influence, but in this case the economic planning of the Soviet Union was just not working, which had an influence in other communist nations in Eastern Europe as they declined to collapse. The economic stagnation led to the frustration of the workers because of low payments, bad working conditions, inefficiency, corruption and any lack of incentive to do good work. There were lots of frustrations among the workers in the working field who began to express their feelings and emotions towards the Soviet government.
In the years leading up to the revolution, Russia had been involved in a series of wars. The Crimean war, The Russo-Turkish war, The Russo-Japanese war and the First World War. Russia had been defeated in all except the war with Turkey and its government and economy had the scars to prove it. A severe lack of food and poor living conditions amongst the peasant population led firstly to strikes and quickly escalated to violent riots. Tsar Nicholas II ruled Russia with an iron hand while much of Europe was moving away from the monarchical system of rule. All lands were owned by the Tsar’s family and Nobel land lords while the factories and industrial complexes were owned by the capitalists’. There were no unions or labour laws and the justice system had made almost all other laws in favour of the ruling elite. Rents and taxes were often unaffordable, while the gulf between workers and the ruling elite grew ever wider.
January 22, 1905, commonly known as Bloody Sunday, was the beginning of the Russian Revolution. “Father Gapon led a group of demonstrators to bring economic grievances to the tsar. Police fired upon the demonstrators as they approached the Winter Palace.”(Outline, 2) The revolution started with a priest leading demonstrators to the Winter Palace, not the working class or the peasantry. The peasants living conditions were bad, and the government was making the situation worse by taxing harshly. “The urban revolution of 1905 stimulated the most serious peasant uprising since the Pugachev revolt in the late eighteenth century. Peasant rioting consisted of the sacking and burning of manor houses and attacks on landowners and officials.”(Fitzpatrick, 34) The peasantry was showing signs of rioting behavior, but not revolutionary change. During October of 1905 the Tsar Nicholas the II agreed to an elected parliament called the Duma.
They seeked better lives and work improvement long before the Communist rise to power. The Communists promised equality where there would not be any classes between the people. (History of the World) This appealed to those who had little who saw the rich getting richer. But the problem was that classes didn’t disappear they just changed. The only people that had any real privileges were the limited ruling class or the Communist leaders. (America Land I Love) The working class still had to work but instead of being controlled by royalty they were controlled by Communists. Like the farm animals kicking out the humans only to have pigs ruling them. The role of the work force in the Russian Revolution was to do all of the labor for the country ranging from simple farming to constructing buildings. They provided the country, mainly its leaders, with what was needed. But the system betrayed them and didn’t give back what they needed. Communism was full of empty promises. Like Boxer giving his all to the cause, he expected a peaceful retirement instead he got the glue
The Russian Revolution began in 1917. However, many factors led up to this revolution and there were also several effects. For instance, absolute monarchy, World War 1, and philosophy. Accordingly, the fact that Czar Nicholas II lacked leadership skills was also a cause. The Bolsheviks led the Russian Revolution. At the beginning, there was absolute monarchism which meant that the authority to run a state was completely in the hands of a king who ruled by divine right.Later on, there was a Priest that brought a list of grievances and he also represented workers on strike. The workers felt that they were treated unfair and had no rights. This led to January 22, 1905, also known as Bloody Sunday. Thousands of workers went to the Czar’s palace petitioning for better working conditions, to which then riots broke out. The outcome of Bloody Sunday was that to end the revolution, Nicholas II agreed to create a Duma.
As communication was poor to the rural areas of Russia, the peasants had little or no knowledge of political parties and so did not support the Bolsheviks in their takeover. When the Bolsheviks changed to the Communist party in 1918, many peasants believed these to be a new party challenging Bolshevism and so made banners saying ’Down with the Communists, Long live the Bolsheviks!’ The national minorities currently part of the Russian empire, predominately Finland and Poland, were demanding independence and Russia’s allies, Britain, France, USA, Japan, etc. were growing ever suspicious of Bolshevism and so were set to intervene if the Bolsheviks were to pull out of World War 1.