3. Problems in industry and agriculture

Question 1

How did the Feb Revolution transform the political environment that the Russian labour movement operated?

Answer 1

• Under Tsarist - treated w/ suspicion and hostility
• After Feb Rev - due to power of Soviets - had nothing to fear from authorities
• TU membership rose rapidly through 1917

Question 2

Factory committees

Answer 2

Emerged in 1917:

- Elected bodies of senior workers - spoke on behalf of factory workers

Question 3

How did workers take advantage of changed circumstances in 1917?

Answer 3

• Petrograd, and elsewhere, used new-found strength to get rid of unpopular foremen and managers (often carting them out of factories in wheelbarrows)
• Turned attention to redress of long-standing grievances - demanded big pay rises + 8-hour days

No Tsarist army/police force - employers felt powerless to resist

Question 4

Result of more bargaining by workers

Answer 4

• Petrograd - workers’ wages doubled, even trebled, in early 1917 + 8-hour day became the norm

Question 5

How did the changes by workers prove illusory?

Answer 5

• Benefits of wage increases quickly wiped out by rampant inflation
• Prices in cities soared in 1917 - due to ongoing shortages in supply of food

Mid-1917 - workers began demanding further wages to compensate

Question 6

How much did inflation rise by?

Answer 6

Inflation 1913 - 1%

Inflation Jan 1917 - 3.5%

Inflation Oct 1917 - 14.3%

Question 7

Impact of inflation in Russia

Answer 7

• Businessmen complained higher wage costs and falling productivity left them facing bankruptcy - workers called strikes to force employers’ hands

Large number of employers gave up - shut down - added to employment

Question 8

Implication of economic problems

Answer 8

Inflation, strikes, unemployment, falling productivity - major factor in rising class tensions
- Evident in summer 1917

Question 9

‘Social polarisation’

Answer 9

• Middle and upper class Russians - accused industrial workers of unpatriotically refusing to make sacrifices required by war effort
• Workers - retorted that the propertied classes, clinging to wealth and privileges, failing to come to terms w/ revolution

Undermines PG

Question 10

How did ‘social polarisation’ undermine the PG?

Answer 10

• PG preached co-operation between classes - benefitted Bolsheviks (advocated class war)

Question 11

Agriculture problems w/ peasants

Answer 11

• They had long insisted that all land owned by private landlords, Orthodox Church, etc., should be confiscated and handed to village communities

Patience wore thin for PG to come forward w/ land reforms
- Spring 1917 - peasants’ resort to direct action

Question 12

How did peasants resort to direct action in 1917?

Answer 12

• Illegally gathered landowners’ timber and grazing cattle on landowners’ estates w/ no permission
• Whole estates seized by force

Rebellion gathered momentum through 1917

Question 13

PG reaction to peasant unrest?

Answer 13

Looked on impotently - neither will nor means to impose order
- Landowners appealed to it for support - were disappointed

Failure to uphold property rights - contributed to growing upper and middle class disenchantment with revolution in late 1917