Was Russia ripe for revolution in the 19th and early 20th centuries?

Essay by manchildHigh School, 11th gradeA+, April 2005

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Even in the very beginning, to the observant eye, telltale signs of discontentment hung in the air. Eventually, you could argue that it would have been impossible to overlook the unprecedented social and political uproar in the country. No one event would be able to bring down a government which had ruled for so many years, but this was not the case. The crisis began many years before, with its roots deep into the nineteenth century. The storm clouds gathered very slowly, as a front of despondency blew in from the west. It chilled the people to the notion of contentment and forced them to seek shelter under Marx's beliefs. The Czar and his government brought the cloudburst upon themselves, as their policies added more fuel to the already raging political fire. Clearly the Russian Revolution or something equally extreme had already been conceived in the politcally charged environment of the time.

Within the years preceding the Revolution, many events shaped the future of the Russian government, including the first Russian Revolution in 1905. The reasons for which were largely associated with a growing rural crisis, falling international grain prices, archaic technology in agriculture, and drastic increases in the rural population that due to many factors could not be supported by the land.

The Russian revolution was caused by the continual breakdown of the governments in Russia and the incompetency and authoritarian views of it's Czars. Their failures as leaders included policies that neither pleased nor benefitted the people. By the end of the nineteenth century, Russia's economy, government, military, and social organization was at an extreme decline. Russia had become the least advanced of the major European nations in terms of political and social development. There was no parliament, and no middle class. The Church, officers, and other...