Pre-Revolutionary Russia: Structure Socioeconomic
On the eve of the First World War, Russia had the largest population in Europe (174 million) and also the biggest problems: the complaining peasants land and the working class lived in precarious conditions, stirring often, in what was stimulated by illegal parties opposition. In the provinces, the Russian non-population, social problems mingled nationals.
The Agrarian Question
The servile ties in Russia began to strengthen at exactly the time when the Western European feudalism began its decline. Strengthening serfdom was matched to the political level by the State centralization, since the end of the sixteenth century: from 1580 to Ivan IV of legislation prohibiting the farmer to leave the land of the Lord.
The feudal serfdom is superimposed to an existing community structure before: the mir.The mir was the village community where there were no social differences, and shared land annually among its members, who had collectively. The village community maintained strong ties of solidarity, being at the same time the economic cell and basic social peasantry.
In the nineteenth century, the trend has been towards the development of capitalist relations, which led to growing social differentiation within the peasantry, becoming serfdom an obstacle to the development of those relations. This situation explains the progressive reduction of the nobility of opposition to reforms in agriculture and a possible emancipation of the serfs.
In 1861 it was abolished serfdom and gave the peasant ownership of the land on which built his house.
The reform intensified the social crisis since the social organization based on the mir was broken. The reform in 1861 transformed the mir in an administrative cell because the community was collectively responsible for paying the debt to the State: this had assumed the payment of indemnities to the lords of the nobility. At the same time, increased the purchase and sale of land by urban elements or outbound enriched peasants of the village community itself - were the kulaks, the rural bourgeoisie owns more vast lands.
A lot of the rural nobility has not adapted to the "conversion to a market production": In zemstvos, provincial assemblies, representatives of the nobility constituted government of moderate opponents: protesting against rising policy of tariffs intended to promote industrialization, but that did not benefit agriculture; They showed up also favor the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. The agrarian question has worsened with the reforms undertaken by the Minister Stolypin, from 1906, allowing the farmers to leave the community with its share of land and seek fortune with the help of the Bank Peasants. This only encouraged the "kulaks" because the mir proceeded to the final sharing. Disappearing the villager solidarity, the poorest peasants were forced to sell their lot to address the risk. It was created in this way, a ditch in the countryside between the poor peasants and landless and the rural bourgeoisie, increasingly rich.
The Workers' Issues
From the late nineteenth century began the Russian industrialization process. This industrialization was dependent character of foreign capital. The production was directed for export. It was favored by the huge supply of hand labor generated by the rural exodus and was limited geographically to major urban centers, Moscow and Petrograd, and the Legion of Don, highlighting its high degree of concentration. The Tussas companies were comparable in complexity to large US and German industrial companies: trusts and holding companies.
These conditions have important social consequences: the proletariat, although few in number, despite the obvious numerical growth, concentrated in some cities. Although it was of peasant origin, soon hung up the field, not only by working conditions as well as the action next to it brought the revolutionary parties.Strikes and riots were constant. The difficult living conditions deteriorated from the 1905 with the devaluation of wages and the constant rise in prices, and high unemployment.
"We do not and can be taught because there schools and from childhood we work beyond our strength for a tiny salary. When since the nine years we are forced to go to the plant, what awaits us? We sell to the capitalist for a piece of black bread; guards attack us punches and clubbed to get used to hard work; we feed us badly, we suffocate with dust and stale air, to sleep on the floor, tormented by worms (...) "(Declaration of a Russian worker. Quoted by DEFRASNE, J. DEL and Laran, M., op. M., p. 227)
Noticed an immense weakness of the Russian bourgeoisie, since most of the land was with the nobility and the big industrial capital was in foreign hands. From the development of industrialization, small businesses have been phased out and the Russian capitalists had to settle for control of small and medium enterprises, with no possibility of competition with foreign firms.
The petty bourgeoisie could not find a derivative in professional and administrative positions, and this social via increasingly obstructed, although from 1908 the government had made great efforts to increase education and modernize the administrative structure.
Much of the bourgeois elements turned to Liberalism towards the establishment of a constitutional regime, but the very political structure of the Tsarist regime precluded the existence of a moderate opposition in bourgeois molds.
Russia Pre-Revolutionary: Political Structure and Formation of Revolutionary Parties
The Czarism
In the twentieth century the Russian state was still an absolute monarchy. The Czar ruled socially supported in the rural nobility and bureaucracy ( "nobility function").
"The Emperor of all the Russias is an autocrat and unlimited monarch. God himself states that his supreme power to be obeyed by both awareness and by fear. "(Article I of the Fundamental Laws of Empire, published in 1892. Quoted by Kochan, L., Origins of the Russian Revolution, Zahar Editores, p. 60.)
In this climate, they organized the opposition political parties that by not having freedom of speech, worked clandestinely until 1905 and in support of imported Western ideologies.
During the 1840s, the development of opinions had originated in Russia two general attitudes, conventionally called Slavophilism and Westernism.
Westerners considered the top European horn Western culture, wanting to spread it in Russia;They believed in science, the constitutional government in liberal values and were against serfdom.
The Slavophiles asserted the uniqueness of the Russian national past, resisting the penetration of Western ideas, which they considered "decadent and in the grip of a materialistic nationalism"; endowed with mystical fervor linked to the official Church, eventually identify with the Czarism , making the Pan-Slavism propaganda justifying a Russian expansionist policy in the Balkans.
Political Parties
The opposition to the tsarist regime began to grow since the late nineteenth century and sought to better work through the organization of political parties, which remained illegal until 1905.
In 1898 it was founded the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. They soon stood out Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) and Julius Martov. While following the ideas of Marx and Engels, the party split into two trends: that of the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and advocates the formation of a combative, centralized and disciplined party; and the Mensheviks, led by Martov, who wanted an open party to any sympathizer and moderate activities, including alliances without socialist ideas parties.
Another organization was the Revolutionary Socialist Party, which is also divided into two trends, one of which followed the ideas of Michael Bakunin (1814 - 1876), partisan Russian anarchist violent tactics to destroy the tsarist regime, not disdaining the use of attacks on czars, Ministers, Governors etc .;the other adopted the guidelines of Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Russian anarchist who advocated nonviolence in order to disaggregate Tsarism, adopting the non-payment of taxes, refusal to military service and the non-recognition the state courts.
The Constitutional Democratic Party, better known as Cadet, gathered elements of the bourgeoisie and some sectors of the nobility.He defended the liberal ideology and wanted to establish in Russia a government system similar to that of England.
Revolutions: the "dress rehearsal" of 1905 to the Seizure of Power (1917)
The Russian government was unable to solve socio-economic problems, which tended to worsen when the Empire went to war. At that time the crisis was accentuated, creating revolutionary junctures; so happened to:
1) the 1905 Revolution, called "Dress Rehearsal";
2) the Revolution of March 1917 that overthrew the monarchy;
3) the November Revolution of 1917, which brought to power the Bolsheviks.
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