NICHOLAS II SOCIETY Flashcards
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
In Russia’s major cities, the arrival of new large factories, in addition to the growing numbers of smaller workshops, swelled the urban population. There were two million factory workers in Russia by 1900, and six million by 1913.
Between 1867 and 1917, the Empires urban population
quadrupled from 7 to 28 million, and this was mainly the result of the influx of peasants looking for work in the cities.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
Some only settled temporarily, retaining their land and returning to their villages to help out their families for the harvest. Some joined the bands of migrants who might stay in one place for a few years before moving on, while others put down roots and produced children who grew up to think of themselves as urban workers. By 1914, three out of every four people living in St Petersburg were
peasants by birth, compared with just one in three, 50 years earlier: What is more, half the city’s population had arrived in the previous 20 years. The situation in Moscow was much the same and here an even more ‘peasant’ atmosphere surrounded the workers’ quarters in the city. Livestock roamed the streets and there were numerous outdoor ‘peasant’ markets, including one on Red Square.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
The facilities needed to provide for this growing urban class were grossly inadequate. Workers often found themselves living in barrack-like buildings, owned by the factory owners, and dangerously overcrowded and lacking in adequate sanitation. These workers had to eat in canteens and wash in communal bathhouses. Even those who managed to find ‘private city accommodation fared little better. In St Petersburg at the turn of the century, for example, about
deaths caused by cholera due to…
40 per cent of houses had no running water or sewage system. Excrement was simply set in piles in the back yards and collected by wooden carts at night. It is hardly surprising that 30,000 inhabitants died of cholera in 1908-09.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
Yet the demand for work and accommodation was such that rents remained high, often taking half a worker’s wages. Those who could not afford rents simply lay down in the factory alongside their machines, or lived rough on the streets.
Workers’ wages varied tremendously, of course, according to whether they were skilled or unskilled, the occupation followed, and the amount of overtime put in, or, conversely, the amount deducted in fines. Women, who
comprised one fifth of the industrial workforce in 1885, but one third by 1914, were among the lowest paid, earning less than half the average industrial wage.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
Conditions were, perhaps, at their worst during the industrial depression of 1900-08. However, even when industry began to revive, the wages of industrial workers failed to keep pace with inflation. The average industrial wage increased from just
compare to inflation
245 to 264 roubles per month in the years down to 1914, while inflation was running at 40%
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
It was easy for towns and cities to become breeding places for political discontent. Political activism was comparatively rare before 1905 - partly because strike activity was illegal and the Secret Police efficient - but also because of the relatively small numbers of workers and their own desperation to get and retain jobs. The strike activity of that year was also followed by a fall, despite the legalisation of trade unions, but from 1912 escalated again and in 1914 there were
3574 stoppages.
The governments only response to such activity was repression. When workers at the Lena goldfields in Siberia went on strike for better wages and conditions 1912, for example, troops were sent in and 270 workers were killed and 2 injured.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
workers legislation
1892-1912 4 points
Date Law
1892 Employment of children under 12 forbidden and female labour banned in mines
1897 Hours of work reduced to 11 and a half
1903 More efficient system of factory inspection
1912 Sickness and accident insurance for workers
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
Conditions for peasant farmers did not improve substantially. Strip farming persisted on 90 per cent of the land and there was still widespread rural poverty.
The gap between richest and poorest sections of the peasantry became wider as
the wealthier peasant entrepreneurs or kulaks took advantage of the position of the less favoured and, sometimes with the help of loans from the peasant banks, bought out their impoverished neighbours.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN TOWNS
Normal factory working hours were reduced to reach ten hours by 1914, although this did not apply to workshops, which were far more common.
Education also spread. There was an
% rise in primary schools, % of children in education
85 per cent rise in primary school provision between 1905 and 1914 and the government promoted the development of technical schools and universities. Investment in education was, however, far less than that in the railways and only 55 per cent of children were in full-time education by 1914. Nevertheless, for some workers, city life offered a new range of opportunities.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
Living standards varied in different parts of the country, with more prosperous commercial farming in the peripheral regions in parts of the Baltic, western Ukraine, the Kuban and northern Caucasus to the south and in western Siberia. The continuation of nobles’ landowning and backward farming methods was mainly concentrated in the Russian heartland.
There were other reasons for the differences too.
private and state serfs different because
Areas of former state peasants tended to be better off than those of the emancipated privately owned serfs, because they had been granted more land.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
In contrast to the upward mobility of the kulaks, however, the poorest peasants found life getting harsher. A minority migrated to Siberia, encouraged by government schemes from 1896 to sponsor emigration from the over-populated rural south and west to the new agricultural settlements opened up by the Trans-Siberian Railway. However, only
how many took advantage?
3.5 million, from a peasant population of nearly 97 million, were able to take advantage of this and the scheme was clearly inadequate to alleviate the pressure of a growing population on resources.
DEVELOPMENTS IN WORKING AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE
The peasants’ lot remained a hard one and despite improvements in health, there were too few doctors. Teachers were also in short supply. Few received much more than the most basic elementary education and in 1914 there was still around
illiteracy, where were they socially? what did they belive in etc.
60 per cent illiteracy. With large families, living in their primitive wooden huts, eating a monotonous daily diet, and with few possessions beyond their tools and icons, Russia’s land-hungry peasantry remained at the bottom of the social ladder; even though their sense of community and their loyalty to Church and Tsar was largely unblemished.
SOCIAL CHANGE
THE MIDDLE CLASSES
The traditional legal structure of Russia had been based on four groups - nobles, merchants, clergy and peasantry - but this structure was challenged by the emergence of a small but influential middle stratum that expanded as the pace of economic change quickened.
New business and professional men were able to carve out comfortable lives for themselves. There was some social mobility as
nobles’ sons chose to join the business world, or those of peasant stock rose through hard work and enterprise to join the ranks of middle management and, perhaps within a generation, to become factory proprietors.
SOCIAL CHANGE
THE NOBILITY
The position of the nobility as a whole had suffered as a result of Emancipation, but some had thrived on the favourable arrangements for land distribution or involvement in industrial enterprises and financial speculation.
Others, perhaps serving in
government office or with strong military connections, retained much of their former influence and lifestyle.
SOCIAL CHANGE
Around one third of all nobles’ land was transferred to townsmen or peasants between 1861 and 1905, and there were certainly nobles who struggled to meet debts, and failed to understand modern money management, investment for the future and the need to adjust living standards accordingly.
However, there was no
taxation/influence?
redistributive taxation or attacks on landed wealth to diminish their incomes or substantially harm their traditional ways of life. Indeed Nicholas, like his father, encouraged noble influence and was keen to see their power within the local zemstva retained.
