Social Division + ROC

• The nobles and the landowners have always been a really important part of Russian society
• Emancipation changed some things for the nobility


  In a negative way
• Many nobles faced financial difficulties as the land they owned was not making the same kind of rewards that they had been getting in the past
• The lack of competitiveness of Russian agriculture was a reason for the financial difficulties faced by the nobility
• Nobles received compensation from the emancipation proclamation but many spent this on repaying existing debts
• A third of all nobles' land was sold between 1861 and 1905
• The decline of the nobility did not impact all nobles, and they retained their social and political dominance throughout this period
• The political authority of nobles who remained in rural areas was strengthened by Alexander III's introduction of land captains in 1889
• In 1855, the middle class in Russia was pretty much non-existent and had very little power or influence
• Industrialization and urbanization led to the size and importance of the middle class growing
• The introduction of the zemstvos and urban dumas gave the growing middle class an opportunity to play more of a role in local government
• The middle class in Russia was still very small compared to Western Europe, reaching only about half a million by 1897
• Russia often looked outside for foreign experts to fulfill many middle class roles, which limited the natural development of the Russian middle class
• The middle class had no voice in central government and was almost non-existent outside of towns and cities
• The urban working class, often referred to as the proletariat, grew as Russia industrialized
• Initially, the movement of peasantry to towns and cities was often seasonal, with people returning to their villages for harvest time
• Later in the century, increasing numbers of peasantry moved more permanently to the towns and cities, especially to Moscow and St. Petersburg
• A significant portion of the new urban workers were female, making up 20% of the workforce in 1885 and a third by 1914
• The conditions in the towns for urban workers were often absolutely shocking, with overcrowded barracks, inadequate sanitation, and poor housing
• The Tsarist government introduced some limited reforms to protect female and child labor, such as prohibiting night-time employment and banning the employment of children under 21 and women in mines
• The government was reluctant to intervene too much in labor conditions, fearing it would drive up the cost of labor and frighten off foreign investors
• The Russian peasantry was so used to a very harsh life, very hard work, and very little in terms of comforts and sanitation that they did not protest as much as one might have expected
• There was a gap developing between richer and poorer peasants in Russia, and this grew wider and wider
• Kulaks


  A group of peasants who took advantage of the freedom of emancipation, invested in buying more land, used new methods of production, borrowed money, and employed other poorer peasants as laborers
• The kulaks would buy grain from poorer peasants in the autumn, then sell it back to them in the spring at inflated prices
• The peasants who did not do as well were burdened with high taxation and redemption payments, farming very small plots of land, and struggling to survive
• Many of the poorer peasants moved to the growing industrial towns and cities, competing for work there
• The government's policy of grain exporting in the late 1880s left many peasants starving, culminating in the famine of 1891
• Average life expectancy for the peasantry at this time was below 30, due to poor diets, starvation, malnutrition, and disease
• Many peasants were unfit for military service due to their poor physical condition
• The Russian Orthodox Church played an important role in supporting the tsarist system, teaching that the tsar was appointed by God and that people should accept their conditions as the will of God
• The church's grip on Russia was weakening as Russian society industrialized and urbanized, with the church having less influence in the cities and many workers attracted to the atheist ideology promoted by radical socialist groups