Industrialisation

• Industrialisation helped strengthen the economy in Russia and it brought about change.
• The middle and urban working class proved detrimental to the Tsarist regime.
• Owners, managers, traders and professionals became more prominent in society with many of these people playing a role in the zemstva.
• The lack of an elected national assembly made the middle class opponents to Tsarism but a Duma was finally established in 1906.
• The urban population increased from 7 to 28 million between 1867 and 1917 with 10% of the population being factory workers.
• The urban working class suffered from appalling living and working conditions and high mortality rates.
• Some of the urban working class rented rooms in overcrowded blocks and barracks.
• 40% of rented houses in St Petersburg had no running water and sewage was collected through handcarts.
• Employers could pay the minimum wage due to limited regulation which failed to keep pace with inflation.
• Women made up 20% of the workforce by 1914.
• An industrial depression hit between 1900 and 1908.
• Strikes were officially banned before 1905 but some strikes took place illegally and violently.
• Education and social welfare were improved by 1914 with every change leading to more demand for change.
• Work was restricted in 1885 when a new law was introduced that only allowed men to work at night.
• Contracts of employment had to be drawn up by law in 1886.
• Employment of under-12s and females in labour was banned in 1892.
• Working hours were reduced to 11.5 per day by a law in 1897.
• The factory inspectorate was expanded by a law in 1903.
• Trade unions were made legal in 1905.
• Sickness and accident insurance was introduced for workers as a law in 1912.
• Factory hours were legally reduced to 10 hours per day in 1914.
• Real wages declined in 1910-13 because of inflation and employers not increasing wages.
• The Lena goldfield miners in Siberia went on strike in 1912 because of long hours and poor pay.
• Lena strikers demanded better pay and living conditions and 500 were killed by the army.
• 2,000 strikes took place alongside Lena in 1912 but there 24,000 in 1913.
• Over a million strikes took place in 1914 with a general strike in St Petersburg taking place in July 1914.
• Edward Acton said that unused land was "brought under cultivation".