Political and Social Issues of Industrialisation

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  • Political and Social Issues of Industrialisation
    • Social
      • It bred the new middle class and urban workers
        • Middle class
          • Were able to influence local decisions however before 1905 had no voice in central government
            • The new middle class had no voice in central government and so fostered many revolutionaries
          • Professionals like bankers and doctors in great demand
          • Growing middle class found home in councils of Zemstva
        • Urban workers
          • 1900: 2 million factory workers. 1913: 6 million workers
            • Women were 1/3 workforce by 1914, but paid less than half average wage
              • Women comprised about a fifth of the workforce and were amongst the lowest paid with no pensions and they suffered from premature decrepitude.
          • 1914: 3/4 of people in St. Petersburg were peasant by birth
          • The facilities were barely adequate as were cramped with low sanitation
          • They lived in barracks were the bosses could monitor them with little privacy
            • St. Petersburg: 40% of houses had no running water or sewage system
              • 1908-09: 30,000 died of cholera
              • 1904: St. Petersburg had average of 16 people in apartment
            • Rents were high, often half of workers wage
          • 1900-08: Industrial depression, wages didn't keep up with inflation
            • Some feared if labour costs rose, foreign investors and factory owners would withdraw
          • Development of large working class was gravest mistake
            • Overthrew regime 1917
      • Shanty towns were set up to accomodate the influx of migrant workers into cities, where workers lived in 'appalling and overcrowded conditions' John Morison.
        • Migrant workers tended to be young and literate so their grievances were voiced through strike action
          • e.g. at the large scale strike of the St. Petersburg textile workers in 1896.
      • Diseases flourished and work was unrelenting with long hours, low wages and harsh discipline, reminding workers of the days of serfdom
        • Town authorities faced 'large numbers of rootless and disaffected workers who had had their expectations of a better life raised
          • only to be dashed by harsh economic realities' Lynch
            • The regular presence on the streets of thousands of unemployed and embittered workers
              • played an important part in the growth of serious social unrest in Russia between 1900 and 1917
        • Industrial workers did not gain from the industrial and financial expansion
          • The absence of effective trade unions and lack of legal protection left the workforce at the mercy of the employers
        • Indirect taxes rose 450% and inflation rose by 40% whilst the average industrial wage only rose from 245 roubles to 265 roubles
          • making workers dissatisfied and reducing their purchasing power
      • In 1914 about four-fifths of the population were still peasants which would seem to discredit any claim that there had been significant industrial development
        • 20-30% of Russia's grain was exported whilst peasants in the countryside suffered famine
          • The argicultural sector squeezed by the increase in taxation to pay for industrial development
        • The aim was to bolster the Tsarist regime so industrialisation was only successful in enriching a few people at the top
          • some peasants were even worse off than before
      • Random
        • Led to social tensions and labour unrest that periodically threatened to undermine to autocracy
          • Railways facilitated the spread of news and ideas, not all supportive to the Tsarist regime
        • Rapid population growth in towns was not organised or supervised and led to acute overcrowding
        • Putting the rouble on the gold standard kept it at a high value which, together with the tarriff policy, resulting in scarce goods and high costs within Russia so the poor suffered, increasing discontent
    • Political
      • Voting
        • Liberals wanted stronger parliaments and wider protection of individual rights
          • They also sought a vote for the propertied classes
            • They wanted commercial legislation that would favour business growth
      • Economic
        • increased production and higher demand for raw materials
        • exploitation of mineral resources
        • population explosion and expanding labor force
      • Old ideas about how countries are run - such as absolute monarchies - are questioned by new political ideas
      • Middle-class people joined political protests hoping to win new rights against aristocratic monopoly
        • Workers increasingly organized on their own despite the fact that new laws banned craft organizations and outlawed unions and strikes
      • The sheer intensity of work constrained leisure
        • city administrations tried to limit other traditional popular amusements, ranging from gambling to animal contests to popular festivals
          • Leisure of this sort was viewed as unproductive, crude, and—insofar as it massed urban crowds
            • dangerous to political order
      • there was an emerging, vibrant, economic and politically powerful independent class known as merchants
        • This group made money by moving goods and services through the economic system of the preindustrial world
          • They were an urban class, acquiring charters from nobles that allowed them to incorporate towns
            • Many of these urban centers were guaranteed political autonomy and were run by a group of the most successful merchants, known as Burgers

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