Social Structure in Pre-Revolution Russia
"We rule over you"
The ruling class was composed of the Czar and his family. Of course, they made up the smallest fraction of the population. Generally, the imperial Czar ran a fairly autocratic state, making all decisions, and didn't take input from lower ranks. "We govern you" The upper classes contained a wide assortment of different people. From bureaucrats to hereditary landowning boyars and high ranking army officials, this group accumulated income disproportionate from their actual workload. This income connected the diverse multi-professional faction was unified by protecting them against the harsh livelihood of Russian peasants. "We pray for you" The upper clergy lived lives similar to those of the higher political classes. Because the monarchy had fairly direct control over the Church (since the early eighteenth century), many high Church officials were treated as influential political figures. This control also caused the Russian Orthodox Church played a major role in suppressing early revolution. It taught many core conservative values to Russian citizens to suppress such revolutionary thought. It also reinforced the Czar's link to God and his (or her, in the case of Catherine II the Great) rule by divine right. |
"We shoot you"
The military was composed mainly of peasants and serfs that had been drafted. By the time the revolution came around, the draft was based on population and the term of service had been reduced from life (early 1700s) to only 12 years. Surprisingly, even Jews were part of the military draft. A police force, Okranka, was also in existence to protect the 'interest of the state.' This group was in charge of not only regular police work, but also surveillance of perceived enemies of the Czar. However, police were generally few and far between (some sources citing the ratio of police to peasants was close to 1:4000). To accomodate for this lack in law enforcement, the Czar employed a personal guard and cavalry, the Cossacks.
"We eat for you"
The bourgeoisie of Imperial Russia is difficult to categorize, due to its small size and lack of much unity. It was made up of white collar workers, factory managers, well to do merchants, as well as thinkers, authors and artists. This class began developing in the mid to late 1800s with the second industrial revolution.
"We work for you"
The working class had also began to grow during the years following Industrialization in Russia. As the population exponentially increased, the living conditions plummeted. They often lived in overcrowded flats in the cities, and worked horrifically long hours in unsafe environments. While the rest of Europe was already beginnings to pass labor laws to protect such workers from those kinds of living conditions, due to Russia's slow industrialization, the country was still far behind other nations. The industrial working class was also among the most heavily suppressed groups.
"We feed you"
Contrary to the image above, which depicts a single peasant, the peasant class was by all accounts the largest, totaling 90 million before 1905. This was in the middle of huge population growth, where the population jumped 122.2% between 1863 and 1913. However, despite the bounty of available land in Russia (the largest country in existence today, even after it lost its imperial territories), only the Western parts were fertile. Do to Northern Russia's cold, the crop growing window lasted only a few months, leading to long periods of constant food shortages. Thus, the incredible magnitude of the population went only to hurt the peasants. Further, peasants were highly illiterate, making them naturally more conservative and resistant to change. The upper classes were fairly content with these aspects of peasant life, many considering it politically dangerous to educate the masses.
The military was composed mainly of peasants and serfs that had been drafted. By the time the revolution came around, the draft was based on population and the term of service had been reduced from life (early 1700s) to only 12 years. Surprisingly, even Jews were part of the military draft. A police force, Okranka, was also in existence to protect the 'interest of the state.' This group was in charge of not only regular police work, but also surveillance of perceived enemies of the Czar. However, police were generally few and far between (some sources citing the ratio of police to peasants was close to 1:4000). To accomodate for this lack in law enforcement, the Czar employed a personal guard and cavalry, the Cossacks.
"We eat for you"
The bourgeoisie of Imperial Russia is difficult to categorize, due to its small size and lack of much unity. It was made up of white collar workers, factory managers, well to do merchants, as well as thinkers, authors and artists. This class began developing in the mid to late 1800s with the second industrial revolution.
"We work for you"
The working class had also began to grow during the years following Industrialization in Russia. As the population exponentially increased, the living conditions plummeted. They often lived in overcrowded flats in the cities, and worked horrifically long hours in unsafe environments. While the rest of Europe was already beginnings to pass labor laws to protect such workers from those kinds of living conditions, due to Russia's slow industrialization, the country was still far behind other nations. The industrial working class was also among the most heavily suppressed groups.
"We feed you"
Contrary to the image above, which depicts a single peasant, the peasant class was by all accounts the largest, totaling 90 million before 1905. This was in the middle of huge population growth, where the population jumped 122.2% between 1863 and 1913. However, despite the bounty of available land in Russia (the largest country in existence today, even after it lost its imperial territories), only the Western parts were fertile. Do to Northern Russia's cold, the crop growing window lasted only a few months, leading to long periods of constant food shortages. Thus, the incredible magnitude of the population went only to hurt the peasants. Further, peasants were highly illiterate, making them naturally more conservative and resistant to change. The upper classes were fairly content with these aspects of peasant life, many considering it politically dangerous to educate the masses.
Unrest as Caused By:
POPULATION GROWTH AND POVERTY
Russian population jumped 122.2% between the years of 1863 and 1913. This surge disproportionately affected rural peasants, as opposed to urban dwellers, which exacerbated the issue that was overpopulation of the countryside. Further, the government encouraged movement of European Russians to the country's Asian territories, like Siberia, where food didn't grow particularly well, causing even higher rates of starvation and poverty. EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS A pivotal turning point in Russian history, the emancipation of the serfs was not the sudden liberal change it was often said to be. This is because, despite it's outward appearance of progressiveness, the Emancipation was drafted by Alexander II as a way to gain popular support from the nobility. Following an embarrassing defeat in the Crimean war, Alexander II knew that the only way to force Russia to keep up with her Western enemies and allies, she would need to be modernized, and for that, it was necessary to remove the longstanding feudal system. However, he allowed the landowners to help him draft the Emancipation Statute. Of course, the landlords benefited themselves as much as they could, hurting the former serfs. This is because to regain the rights to live on their land, ex-serfs would have to buy it, and since none of them had any saved up money (without the need of real currency among feudal lower classes), this task proved nearly impossible. Fortunately for them, they received loans from not only the government, but from the nobles that used to own them. Unfortunately, as is the nature of loans, they had to be repaid with unaffordable interest. Often, the peasants were stuck with loans that would carry down to their children. Further, the landowners kept to themselves the 2/3 of the best land. This meant that peasants were stuck on nearly infertile land, unable to grow crops to raise money to pay off their debts. To make matters worse, the government, intent on keeping the ex-serfs tied to their land, encouraged them to stay by forcing them to purchase the land that they'd lived on prior to their emancipation. A reorganization of local government brought to Russia 'commandants,' officers that promoted mir, meaning peacefulness and community togetherness. The idea of mir was not a cultural one, but rather a political movement, in order to make administration of the emancipated serfs easier. This meant that now there were ways to enforce the new taxes that serfs had to pay (with the money they didn't have) and to keep order in the countryside. In many ways, the newly freed serfs lived no less restricted lives than before the emancipation. |
NATIONALISM
At its height, the Russian Empire had territories as far west as Finland, and east as Alaska. The sheer size of the country was such that its Westernmost territories in Eastern Europe were closer to modern day New York than they were to the Eastern borders of the same country. Administration of such a large area must've been nearly impossible, meaning that the Czars may have been unable to put much care into governing the far corners of the Russian Empire. Vast borders also meant that the empire was comprised of many different ethnic groups (as shown in Prokudin-Gorsky's works), some of whom resented Russian rule. The following series of photographs is the artwork of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. He was an early color photographer whose color portrait of Leo Tolstoy inspired Nicolas II, leading him to provide Prokudin-Grotsky with enough funding to travel the entire Russian Empire, and take tens of thousands of full color photographs, only a recent invention. This series, selected from Mashable's Russia Before the Revolution, In Color, shows how incredibly diverse Imperial Russia was, prior to the revolution. 2606 of his surviving photographs can be found at the Library of Congress's Collection here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=prok |
Early Attempts at Revolution
Even after the Emancipation of the Serfs, social reform was difficult to come by. Especially because the vast majority of Russian peasants remained illiterate, liberal ideas were slow to spread. By the end of the nineteenth century, revolutionaries had developed a strategy they hoped would bring reform to Russia: assassinations. Some revolutionaries hoped that unpredictable and rampant assassinations would instill enough fear into the government to force change. Others thought that simply assassinating the Czar would be enough to topple the government. Finally, in 1881, revolutionaries succeeded in killing Alexander II (the same czar that had emancipated the serfs). Unfortunately, the revolutionaries had forgotten about the line of succession, so rather than causing sudden reforms or ending the monarchy, the throne simply passed to Alexander III, who was scared enough by the assassination of his father that he did make changes. But instead of the liberal ones the assassins had hoped for, the new policies were mainly ones that cracked down on all types of revolution. Soon, however, he died of kidney inflammation, passing the throne to woefully unprepared and inexperienced Nicolas II.
Nicolas II's reign sustained itself until 1905, when the czar had his first look at revolution.
Nicolas II's reign sustained itself until 1905, when the czar had his first look at revolution.