Sunway College

A Level – History 9489/2

Russian Revolution - Chapter 3- Part 2

How far had the economy improved by 1914?

Agrarian reforms
Stolypin saw his land reforms as the key to transforming Russia into a stable and prosperous country.
Peasants were allowed to leave the Mir (commune), to consolidate their strips of land into a single unit and
build a farmhouse on it. He called it ‘a gamble not on the drunken and feeble but on the sober and strong’.
A land bank was set up to help the independent peasant buy land.

Stolypin believed that the Mir with its antiquated farming methods ‘paralysed personal initiative’. Also,
making peasants into independent property owners and giving them full civil rights would give them a
stake in the country and lead to them becoming supporters of the regime. There were also schemes to
re-settle peasants in Siberia which had been opened up by the Trans-Siberian Railway. This was in order to
use peasants to create new food-growing areas.

The view of Abraham Ascher in his major study of Stolypin is that, ‘given more time for implementation,
the agrarian reforms might have contributed to a more moderate revolution than the one of 1917.’
However, by 1914 only about 10 per cent of households in European Russia lived on farms separated from
the commune. Only a minority lived on farms in the West European sense with a cottage and fields fenced
off from their neighbours. Communal institutions remained strong, embodying the peasants’ notions of
social justice, and the Mir was appreciated by many peasants as a ‘life jacket’. Those who left – the
‘Stolypin separators’ – were seen as traitors to the peasant tradition. The reform was more successful in
the west – in the Ukraine and Belorussia – than in other parts of Russia where reform was most needed.

Judith Pallet argues that, ‘Stolypin’s reform was “in essence a utopian project”, and too narrowly conceived
to create a loyal peasantry and modernise peasant farming – there were alternatives which could have
done as much if not more to increase peasant farm productivity.’ (J. Pallet: Land Reform in Russia 1906–
1917, 1999, pp. 30–31). She points out that the commune was not always backward: new crops, seeds,
crop rotations and fertilisers were being employed in some go-ahead communes. Also, some ‘separators’,
eager to make a quick profit, used poor farming methods that exhausted the soil.

By 1914, the vast majority of agricultural production, in what was still an overwhelmingly agricultural
country, was the responsibility of 20 million peasant households, most of whom were still organised in
rural communes using the inefficient strip system. Helped by loans from the state bank and migration to
new farms in Siberia, the amount of land held by peasants increased, and by 1916 less than 10 per cent of
the sown area was directly cultivated as landowners’ estates.

Progress in industry
After 1907, industrial production grew steadily at a rate around 6 per cent per annum until 1914, although
this high rate was largely due to the fact that it started from a low base. Although well behind the major
Western industrial powers, the achievements were impressive. By 1914, Russia was the world’s fourth
largest producer of coal, pig-iron and steel, and the Baku oilfields were only rivalled by Texas. Heavy
industry was still the driving force. This was in large part due to the government’s rearmament programme
with huge orders for metallurgical companies to rebuild the Baltic fleet after the losses of the Russo-

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Japanese War and also to re-stock with weapons generally. The downside of this focus on rearmament was
that industry could not meet the demand for agricultural tools and machinery.

Industrial development was still largely state sponsored with companies dependent on government
contracts. Foreign loans were still important but less so than they had been. In Russia there was a growing
internal market and the production of consumer goods rose. Demand was coming from the peasants
as the agricultural sector became more successful and prices for farm produce increased. However, as a
proportion of total industrial production, the share of consumer goods actually fell from 52 per cent to 45
per cent.

Some historians consider that the economy was stabilising and set to do well if growth rates had continued
at the same pace. Alexander Gerashchenko, a Russian-American economist, thought that the signs were so
encouraging that, if the First World War had not occurred, Russia was well on the way to developing into a
successful modern industrial state. Others, more pessimistic, contend that, despite her growth, Russia was
still backward in many respects and falling behind more advanced industrialised countries, especially in
terms of production per head of the population. A third view is that the boom was likely to be short-lived
and that Russia would soon face another crisis. Alcove, one of the most highly regarded historians of the
Russian economy, highlights the uneven nature of Russian industry and points out that the question of
whether Russia would have become a modern industrial state had it not been for war and revolution is, in
essence, meaningless. It assumes that the regime would have proceeded on an orderly path and adjusted
to the strains of a changing society. Nove quotes Gerschenkron: ‘Industrialisation, the cost of which was
largely defrayed by the peasantry, was itself a threat to political stability and hence to the continuation of
the policy of industrialisation.’

How revolutionary was Russia in 1914?

The workers
By 1914, the industrial workforce had established itself as a distinct section of the population: a majority of
workers who began employment between 1906–13 were the children of workers. The level of literacy
among workers was high, reaching 64 per cent in 1914 compared with less than 40 per cent for the adult
population in general. Things had not improved much for most of them since 1905; they had seen
very little reward from the growth in industrial production. Workers’ wages were less than one-third the
average in Western Europe and the Russian government had made no real attempt to improve their
conditions in contrast to the social reforms enacted elsewhere in Europe. In 1912, limited insurance had
been introduced for accidents and sickness but this covered only a minority of the workforce. People still
worked long hours for low pay. In some workplaces their hours had actually been increased since 1905 and
others had been put onto piece work. For old age, occupational disease and unemployment there was little
or no support.

After 1905 the labour movement had retreated due to the repression of trade unions and strikes, but there
was a revival of militancy from 1912. It started with the Lena Goldfields Massacre in April 1912. Striking
workers, protesting about degrading working conditions, low wages and a 14-hour working day,
clashed with troops and over 200 people were killed and many injured. This opened the floodgates to
workers’ protests.

Strikes grew in militancy from 1912 to 1914. July 1914 saw a general strike in St Petersburg involving
barricades and street fighting. However, only a quarter of the work force were involved, compared with
four-fifths in February 1917.Students, whose relationship with the government had become increasingly

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embittered in the years leading to 1914, supported the workers. The regime was right to be worried by
industrial and urban unrest but was not likely to be toppled by it in 1914.

Some historians argue that workers in larger factories were turning towards the Bolsheviks who supported
violent upheaval and armed struggle and that this indicated a similar situation building to that of 1905.
However, R. B. McKean in his study of St Petersburg Between the Revolutions: Workers and
Revolutionaries June1907–February 1917 argues that most workers did not work in the larger factories
targeted by the socialists but in the domestic and service sectors. He maintains that most workers were not
socialists and the strikes were mainly about pay and working conditions; only a relatively small number,
predominantly male metalworkers, were engaged in radical activity before 1917.

The peasants
Some historians contend that recent evidence suggests that living standards were rising amongst peasants
in the years leading to 1914. Several years of good harvests certainly helped. They point out that the
villages were relatively quiet before 1914 and militancy was to be found in the cities rather than the
countryside.

However, it is difficult to generalise about the standard of living for peasants because there was so much
variation between and even within regions. It seems likely that while a minority prospered, others
remained impoverished. Although there had been no major upheavals and disturbances, some historians
have noted simmering resentment in the countryside. The divisive nature of the Stolypin reforms was
shown by conflicts over enclosure between 1906 and 1914. In some instances, the separators faced
violence and intimidation from the older entrenched peasants and troops had to be brought in to make
sure the reforms went ahead. The peasants had not been tied closer to the Tsar as Stolypin hoped. Their
expectations of change had been dashed after 1905 and the growth in population had only increased their
hunger for land, particularly in the central agricultural province. Their main aims had not changed: getting
their hands on the nobility’s land and farming it free from government interference. Orlando Figs’ research
suggests that landowners felt that, ‘the next – and imminently more powerful revolutionary outburst by
the peasantry would only be a question of time.’

Stolypin’s reforms had other consequences

The peasants who had left the land as a result of the reforms were often full of resentment and many of
these had gone into the towns and cities to become industrial workers. Also, thousands of peasants who
had been encouraged to go to Siberia returned home, having found the land inhospitable or been cheated
by land speculators. They also were resentful. The net result was to increase a section of the labour force
that was rootless and disoriented and who provided good material for revolutionary propaganda.

The liberals
The liberals were in a weak and uncomfortable position sandwiched between the Right, who firmly
supported the autocracy, and the radical workers and peasants. The liberals were divided and no real
threat. The Motorists and thecae distrusted each other, were out of touch with the masses and refused
to seek their support. They feared mass anarchy and did not support the strike movement. They depended
on the government to implement their programmes so they needed the Tsar more than he needed them.
However, Gorchakov, theosophist leader, told his followers in November 1913 that he was reminded
of 1905 but this time the danger came from a government whose actions were revolutionising society and
the people. ‘With every day, people are losing faith in the state and in the possibility of a normal, peaceful
resolution of the crisis’ the probable outcome of which was ‘a sad unavoidable catastrophe’.

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How strong were the revolutionaries?
The SRs and the Mensheviks had both been weakened in the years before 1914.The SRs were in turmoil
after 1908 as a result of the exposure of Asif, especially as the party’s terrorist wing had such prestige
within the party. The Rebecame obsessed with the issue of double agents and party organisation broke
down. There were divisions amongst the leadership, and between the leadership and the rank and file. The
party was unable to take advantage of the revival in militancy after the Lena Goldfields Massacre. Until that
event the Mensheviks, with their emphasis on the creation of a legal labour movement taking advantage of
the new political freedoms won in 1905, enjoyed more support inside Russia. Lena was a blow to any
illusions about the regime and peaceful change, and gave the more radical Bolsheviks their opportunity. By
1914 the Bolsheviks had more influence in the trade unions than the Mensheviks, gaining control of some
of the
biggest unions in St Petersburg and Moscow, like the Metalworkers Union. The Bolshevik paper, Pravda,
had achieved a national circulation of 40,000 copies per issue, over twice that of its Menshevik rival.
However, the workers were generally not housed in large factories, radicalised and under Bolshevik control
as some Soviet historians claimed them to be. The leadership was either in exile or, like Lenin, isolated
abroad. Lenin had failed to build a national illegal party organisation. Even in January 1917 Lenin said, ‘We,
the old people, perhaps won’t survive until the decisive battles of the forthcoming revolution.’ A huge
problem for the Bolsheviks as well as the SRs was that they were thoroughly infiltrated by
the Okhrana.

How reliable was the army?

The events of 1905 had shown that the regime could survive if it could rely on the army, and in 1914 the
army remained loyal. However, Edward Acton points out that the experience of 1905–6 and the
subsequent reforms had weakened the reliability of the army as an instrument of control. The mutinies in
1905
and 1906 could not be easily forgotten. Cutting the period of service to three years brought the army into
much closer contact with the stresses and strains of civilian society. Also, as the officer corps became more
professional, it became more determined not to be used for crushing civilian disturbances.