Economic Developments

• Economic developments in Russia up to 1914

  Under the reign of Nicholas II
• Industry and agriculture


  • Focus on Stolypin's land reforms
• There was growth and change, but not always at the right pace
• The rural economy was vital to economic development, involving 80-90% of the population
• Many remnants of the reigns of Nicholas II's father and grandfather made further progress difficult
• Redemption payments


  Payments made by freed serfs to the government
• Nicholas II abolished redemption payments following the 1905 revolution, but there were still major issues
• Mir


  The local commune that administered and thought about agriculture
• Land was subdivided amongst all males in the mir, causing average holdings to fall from 35 to 28 acres
• Farming was technologically backwards, using wooden plows and medieval crop rotation
• British farms were producing 4 times the amount of grain on an equivalent amount of land compared to Russia
• Kulaks


  Peasants who had improved their position by buying up enough land to set up independent farms and use more efficient methods
• Stolypin


  Transformed agriculture and identified land reform as key to improving the economy and the regime's survival
• Stolypin's reforms


  1. Make more land available

  2. Peasants given equal rights in local administration

  3. Peasants could leave the mir and consolidate land into individual farms

  4. New peasant land bank created to lend money
• Stolypin said he needed 20 years of peace to fully implement his reforms, but was killed in 1911 and World War I broke out in 1914
• Stolypin's reforms continued after 1911, but the full 20 years he requested was not achieved
• Successes of Stolypin's reforms

  • 3.5 million peasants migrated to Siberia, which became a major producer
  • Percentage of land owned by peasants increased from 20% in 1905 to nearly 50% in 1915
  • Grain production increased from 56 million tons in 1900 to 90 million tons in 1914
  • Russia became the leading exporter of grain in 1909
• Failures of Stolypin's reforms

  • 90% of peasant land still used traditional strip farming methods
  • Only 1.3 million of 5 million applications to consolidate land were processed by 1913
  • Only 10% of land had moved from communal to private farm ownership by 1914
  • Nobles resisted giving up land, leading to legal battles
• Many of the peasants remained highly traditional in their farming methods, and it was needed to have more education and technological development to really take the people out of their normal way of doing things
• The way things would run might shift, but what they did day in day out didn't change, and they didn't in most cases want it to change
• 5 million applications were made to consolidate land into hereditary tenure, but only 1.3 million of those 5 million applications were actually processed by 1913
• Only 10% of land had moved from communal to private farm ownership by 1914
• The nobles who didn't want to give up the land caused lots of difficulties, and there were also difficulties in dividing common land with long legal battles over what land could be taken and whether the nobles would fight to keep hold of it
• The process of land reform was not very smooth
• Less than 1% of the peasantry became kulaks, and many of the rest were forced off their land and often set out looking for work either as migrant workers in other farms or going into the industrial areas
• This group were often highly embittered against the Tsarist regime, storing up problems and causing some problems in the industrial areas as the people often arrived already dissatisfied with the Tsar
• If the 20 year timeframe had been achieved, the progress might have been more successful, but in the actual timeframe, the progress was rather patchy
• There was success in terms of industrial growth, and the displacing of people to Siberia created another area of agricultural production and better distribution of land in the areas they left
• The big thing that remained unchanged was the attitude of the peasantry, who seemed to have limited ambition and simply wanted to subsist, continuing what they had always done in terms of growing food and trying to make sure they had enough to survive
• This can be seen as a problem in terms of education
• Heavy industry


  Substantial growth from 1890 to 1910, with coal production tripling, pig iron production tripling, and crude oil production more than tripling
• By 1914, Russia was the 5th biggest industrial producer behind Britain, America, and Germany
• Much of the heavy industry was funded by foreign investment, with 2000 million rubles invested in Russia in 1914
• Much of the heavy industry was state-owned, as there was not a well-developed capitalist class in Russia like in other countries
• The growth in heavy industry was uneven, depending on the region, with the Donbass region producing most of the coal, the Baku region being the most impressive in oil production, Moscow becoming a rail hub, and St. Petersburg being home to the Putilov iron works
• About 66% of the railways were state-owned, and they connected the different industrial areas and key agricultural areas to the Black Sea ports for grain exports
• Building the railways stimulated heavy industry, and the growth of industry meant the railways could be built and were needed
• In 1913, Russia had the second largest rail network in the world, but it was still 8 times smaller than the USA's network, despite Russia being a larger country
• The Trans-Siberian Railway was seen as a great triumph, but it was largely a single line, which caused problems during the Russo-Japanese War
• Russia's national income grew by 50% from 1894 to 1913, which was impressive but behind the growth rates of other major industrial countries like Britain, Austria, Italy, Germany, and France