social change by 1914 Flashcards
Social divisions 1855-1894
Landed elite
Middle class
Urban working class
Peasant change
Landed elite change
Landholdings declined, some sold to pay off debts, abandoned farming in favour of other activities
Saw future in business , by 1882 more than 700 owned own businesses in Moscow
Middle class change
Grew due to urban and industrial expansion + increase in education opportunity
Railway stae laons for factories = great opportunites
Urban working class change
Still small, 2% pop
Changes – sold up left countryside to join migrant group building railways or be workers
Peasant change – life getting harsher
1855-1914 developments
Church dominating 70% population
Close bond with tsarist regime
Tsar=saint on earth
Superstition and ill educated people = control over peasants
Significant part life – each peasant hut has icon
Role of priest - close ties to village – root out opposition, inform police of sus, inform and spy oh local community
Strict censorship controls
Offence to convert faith
Over 8500 Muslims and 50000 pagans converted to orthodoxy
Typical worker by 1914 =
born peasant, low paid, pay high rent, protected by some laws, potentially politically active
Typical peasant by 1914 =
varied living standards depending on location, worse off than peasant, farms strips still, small kulak minority doing well, thoguhts of moving to city, was at bottom of social ladder
Culture =
dominated by russian orthodox church new influences and opportunities, opportunities for women, growth of education, ‘silver age’ experienced
Middle class =
more influential, challenge existing social structure, growing opportunities in professions and local councils, likely ot be factory owners, treat workers harshly
Nobility =
branched out into newer , non trad professions, still powerful in go vof russia, detemrneied to protect status, lost some trad land owning status
Benefits of urban life for factory workers
- 85% rise in primary school provison
- Sunday courses to meet needs, social actvites like dances or walks
Disadvantages of urban life for factory workers
- Facilities inadequate
- Barracklike buildings
- Dangerously overcrowded, lacking in sanitation
- 40% houses with no running water or sewage system
- 30000 dued of cholera in 1908-09
- Rents remained high, often half a workers wage
- Women 1/3 among lowets apid, less than half avg industrial wage
- Conditions at worst industrial depression of 1900-08
- Only 55% children in full-time education by 1914
Developments of towns
New large factories swelled pop
2 mill factory workers in Russia by 1900, 6 mill by 1913
Entire pop quadrupled, mainly peasants looing for work in cities
1914 – 3out of 4 people in St Petersburg = peasants by b irth
Towns/cities = easy to breed political discontent
Political activism rare before 1905 – strikes illegal, secret police efficient
1912 = escalated 1914 = 3574 stoppages
Gov response = repression
Peasant communities
Benefits
- Village commune heart of peasant life
- Peasants supported one another
- Religion helped cohesion
- Festivals, vodka helped
- Gov schemes encourage dmigartion 1896 to Siberia to new agricultural settlements opened up by trans siberina railway
Disadvs peasant communities
- Strip famring 90%,
- widespread rurall poverty,
- gap peasant and rich = wider
- increasing numbers forced to leave farms
- only 3.5 mill of 97 mill took up gov schemes
- peansats lot = hard
- large prop unfit for military service
- too few doctors, teachers
- 1914 60% illiterate
Nobility
Position suffered after emancipation
Some thrived on arrangements for land distribution and industrial involvement
Others ( in gov office or military connections ) retain much of former influence and lifestyle
1861-1905 1/3 nobles land transferred to townsmen or peasants , some nobles struggled to meet debts, couldn’t adjust accordingly – money management, investment
Nothing to harm trad way of life or incomes
Power in zemstvo sustained, appointed provincial governorships and vice governships , each province district had own noble assembly met once a year
Middle clsses
Small but infliuentail group emerging as econ change quickened
New business prof men carved out lives for themselves
Some social mobility
Grew as force as management and prof positions more demanded in industrialsing society
Fueled by growth of education and demand for administrators
Found home on zemstvo and in town/ state dumas
Workers and peasantry
Pop growth and econ development most affected these groups
Countryside= social adjustments
Slow process of awakening peantry om political inertia
In urban areas, lost former identity, easy target for political agitators
Cultural changes
Continuity
- Fundamental patriarchal structure
- 40% illiteracy rate
- Secondary and higher education = elitist
- 1913 tercentary year celebrated with trad jubilee rituals, trad muscovite costume, orthodox ceremony
- Autocracy retained hold on Russia
- Church influenced gov and community = brought outpouring of patriotism and support for the tsar when decision for war in 1914 – carries icons of Nicholas as they marched
cultural changes
Change
- New opportunities and aspirations for women
- Increasing no women found greater independence through factory work
- Dec 1908 – first all russian congress of women
- Primary education grew 5 million roubles in 1896 to over 82 million in 1914
- Increasing sense self worth among literate
- Number book publications esp. 1905 onwards when press boomed. 1767 newspapers being published weekly by 1914
- Reading rooms established
- 1905 relax of censorship = ‘silver age’ of Russian culture
- By 1914 had broadened and diversifies to wider group than intelligentsia elites
