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Background – Politics, Geography and Philosophy
Elizabeth A. Wood
Russian geography has greatly influenced Russian politics and society over the
centuries. For starters, it is and was the largest country in the world. At its greatest
extent the former Soviet Union encompassed one-sixth of the Earth's land mass. It
spanned 11 time zones and straddled two continents, Europe and Asia, bringing Russia
into contact with both European and Asian civilizations. It had 37,000 miles of borders
with oceans and other countries which always needed guarding. It was larger than all of
North America, three times the size of the continental United States, forty times the size
of France and seventy times larger than the British Isles. It took ten days by train to travel
from Leningrad (modern day St. Petersburg) in the West to Vladivostok in the Far East.
The Soviet Union was also one of the most multinational countries in the world.
It had at least 125 distinct nationalities, each speaking its own language. Twenty-two of
these nationalities numbered over one million in population. Fifty-four had their own
national territories. Almost all of the world’s dominant religions were represented
within its borders in substantial numbers.
The fact that Russia is one of the two most northern countries in the world
(together with Canada) has greatly affected its economic development. Only 12-15% of
Soviet land was arable, the rest being tundra (arctic climate characterized by lack of
forests, permanently frozen subsoil; supporting principally the growth of mosses and
lichen); taiga (the subarctic evergreen forest of Siberia) and desert (especially in
Kazakhstan and Central Asia more generally). The rains have always been erratic, so
even arable land in certain parts of the country have been prone to crop failures every
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nine or ten years. The winters are long so the growing season is extremely short. The
resultant low agricultural productivity meant that even in the late 19th century Russian
peasants were only able to harvest three seeds of grain for every seed planted, a rate of
agricultural productivity so low it could only be compared to Western Europe in
medieval times. Lack of access to the seas also dramatically hindered the development
of trade networks and the development of national wealth. As a result the country
supported quite a low population density in comparison to Western Europe.
In terms of natural resources the country was a mix of wealth and poverty. Its
wealth lay in oil (Baku), coal (the Ural Mountains), gold, platinum, diamonds (far
northeast), and furs (especially prior to the 19th century). The country had also developed
some concentrated, large-scale agriculture in the 19th century so it was possible to export
grain in large quantities in order to gain hard currency reserves and invest in the
advanced technology that was necessary for the country, though periodically there were
huge famines (1891, 1921, as well as the famous famine of 1932). By 1900 the country
was among the top five powers in the world in terms of iron, steel, oil, and textile
production. Yet, at the same time, the country experienced abject poverty and
technological backwardness. The income per capita in Russia was 3 times lower than in
Germany, four times lower than in the United Kingdom, and one-third lower even than
the regions of the Balkans (modern Yugoslavia). There were four opera houses in
Moscow, yet whole regions lacked state-run secular schools.
The fact that the country experienced rapid expansion in virtually every century
from the 13th century on meant an intense demand for extensive defenses, as well as labor
shortages in agriculture and the army. From the 15th century to the second half of the 19th
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the peasant population was bound to the land by the system of serfdom. Serfs could be
bought and sold much like American slaves. The elite nobles became increasingly
alienated from the rest of the population in the 18th and 19th centuries because they
primarily spoke French (with some English and German) rather than Russian at home and
they lived in the city for at least the winter months rather than on the land like the
peasants.
The state meanwhile existed primarily to extract revenues and men from the
populace in order to feed the northern cities (which could not produce sufficient grain in
their surrounding areas) and to staff the armies (for border guarding and fighting wars).
By the end of the 19th century the state, which was governed by a monarch known as the
tsar, was the largest landowner, the largest employer, the largest investor, and the largest
supporter of industry in the country.
As the gulf between nobility and peasantry widened, a small group of educated
people began to hold views that were critical of the state and the organization of the
society; they were known as the intelligentsia. Over time they became increasingly
alienated from both the state and the society. Some of them, infected by radical ideas
from Western Europe (where there were revolutions in 1848 and 1871, as well as in
1789), became committed to revolutionary causes and began to ponder the overthrow of
the system since they saw no hope of peaceful reform.
Until 1905 the country had no Parliament, no elected offices except at the local
level, and no political rights or civil liberties. Only after 1905 did the citizens of Russia
gain the rights to freedom of the press, peaceful assembly, labor organizing, and universal
suffrage. Many thought that these gains meant that the country would quiet down.
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Unfortunately, Tsar Nicholas had no confidence in the rights he had granted to his people
and he especially loathed the Duma (Russia’s new Parliament). After 1906 the regime
responded to all organizing attempts with renewed vigor and even violence. For a few
brief years the country was relatively passive. However, on the eve of World War I all
classes in the country became increasingly disaffected and a new round of radicalism set
in.
The legacy of the revolution of 1905 was one of swirling currents that juxtaposed
radicalism and conservatism, disaffection with the regime and the defense of it, or at least
of the ideas of the unification of the Slavs, the ethnic majority in Russia. The net effect
was to enhance the precariousness of the tsarist regime and to set the stage for the
February and October Revolutions in 1917.