developments in working and living conditions in the countryside

Question 1

conditions for peasant farmers did not improve substantially. strip farming persisted on?

Answer 1

90% of land
-still widespread rural poverty

Question 2

gap between richest and poorest sections of peasantry=wider
why?

Answer 2

the wealthier peasant entrepreneurs (kulaks) took advantage of the position of the less favoured and sometimes with help of peasant banks bought out their impoverished neighbors

Question 3

in contrast to the upward mobility of the kulaks, the poorest peasants found

Answer 3

life getting harsher

Question 4

increasing numbers forced to leave their farms and join

Answer 4

bands of migrant labourers looking for either seasons farming work or industrial employment

Question 5

a minority migrated to Siberia encouraged by?

Answer 5

government schemes from 1896 to sponsor emigration from the over-populated rural south and west to new agricultural settlements opened by the trans-siberian railway

Question 6

only how many peasants from a population of nearly 97 million were able to take advantage of this scheme

Answer 6

3.5 million
-scheme=clearly inadequate to alleviate the pressure of a growing population on resources

Question 7

what was mainly concentrated in Russian heartland?

Answer 7

the continuation of nobles landowning and backward farming methods

Question 8

areas of former state peasants tended to be better off than those of emancipated privately owned serfs because?

Answer 8

they had been granted more land