unrest among peasants and workers

• Crop rotation

  A practice designed to ensure that soil retains its fertility. The three-year system of crop rotation widely used in Russia was antiquated: in western Europe it had been abandoned in favour of more sophisticated arrangements and the use of fertilisers
• Redemption payments

  A payment that a peasant community had to make to the government as a result of the 1861 land settlement
• Peasants

  Outbreaks of unrest were frequent but localised. They were not explicitly anti-government even though government policies (redemption payments) were partly to blame for the worsening conditions.

  Underlining cause of peasant unrest was poverty and desperation
• Environmental factors was one reason for rural poverty

  • northern districts the soil was poor and the growing season short
  • ‘black earth’ region to the south the climate was erratic, leading to periodic crop failures and famine
• Method of production (strip farming was inefficient)

  • time wasted from strip to strip
  • some land was wasted as it was left uncultivated to mark the borders between strips
  • periodic reallocation of strips meant that households had no strong incentive to improve their land
  • crop rotation arrangements involved one of the three fields being left to fallow each year, with the result that only 2/3 of a village’s land was under cultivation at any one time
• Workers

  • worker unrest took form in strikes
  • army called out to deal with 300 strikes in 1901 which increased to 500 strikes in 1902
  • reasons for strikes was a result of grim living and working conditions