Long-term Causes of the Russian Revolution

Long-term Causes of the Russian Revolution

1. Proletariat

   • Russia was industrialising, but workers were poor and oppressed
   • Bloody Sunday 1905
     • Cossacks attacked the strikers
     • Proletariat went on a peaceful strike to request help from the Tsar

2. Disunity

   • Multiple languages, nationalities and religions in the country

3. Bourgeois

   • Representative of the new middle classes - called Kadets
   • Wanted Russia to have a constitution like England
   • 1905 revolution led Tsar to create a Duma (parliament), did not have any real power

4. Autocrat

   • The running of the Russian government, by Tsar Nicholas II alone, was too much

5. Size

   • Russia was too big a territory to rule
   • 1913
     • The empire was 4,000 miles long
     • 125 million people

6. Development

   • Underdeveloped
   • Few roads and limited industrialisation
   • Majority of the population were peasants

7. Revolutionaries

   • Split into various groups: Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, Bolsheviks

8. Weak

   • Militarily weak
   • Lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1904