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The Problems Before The First World War Were Entirely The Fault Of The Tsar.

Before the First World War the Russia was an autocracy country. This meant that one man governed it only. From about 1480 the tsars ruled the Russia. These tsars were he autocrats. They had total power over Russia. Before the First World War Russia faced many political, social, and economic problems because of this.

In this essay I am going to explain why all these problems were entirely the fault of the tsars.

The political situation in Russia before First World War was very bad. As I have said before Russia was completely ruled the tsars who were autocrats. They had total power over Russia. They did not had to take advice from anyone and they made all the decisions about Russia on their own. For their own perous they did not let anyone made any sort of parliament or any political party. Tsars believed that it was necessary for them to take total control over Russia to prevent greedy, rich landlords from having too much power and running the country. Political parties were made illegal until 1905 when parties were made legal. The reason why this happened lay back in 1812 when Russian defeated the French army. During this campaign some Russian officers in army saw the glimpse of life in European countries. Thy found that these countries were better off than Russia. They saw that people were involved in helping to run their own countries. Because of this many secret societies were set up to make Russia more like countries in Europe. These societies had many missions such as getting more power for serfs (peasants). The people of Russia stared to believe that parliament should be made and government of Russia should be shared out. All the tsars faced these problems. People wanted parliament and freedom to any thing they want.

But after when political parties were made legal, the situation got worst. The political parties such as liberals and socialists wanted to get rid of tsarism. All these parties had many differences in there beliefs and always tried to improve that one is better than another. The tsars saw this happening but they tried nothing to remedy this situation.

They were more interested in protecting their position rather than taking a look what’s happening in their country.

Socially the Russia had record of having poorest living standards. They were so much far away compared to the standards of rest of the Europe. The Russia had population of over 125 million people and it was growing very fast. It had people of over hundreds of different nations who spoke different languages, dressed differently, and they had their own way of living. Different types of landscapes, climate, vegetation and different languages spoken brought different types of problems.

The literacy rate of the country was badly low compared to Europe. Only few people were educated and had good jobs. 80% of the people were peasants who worked under landlords. Thee way of living was to grow and sell. In 1891 and 1900 there was big migration in Russia. Large of peasants moved to cities and towns in order to look for jobs in growing industries and to escape feminine. But they found nothing there. The situation was the same. The people worked long hours and the wages were low. There were problems of shortages of houses. They living standards were very low. Up to 20 people shared one room and one toilet.

Although some tsars did tried to improve situation and took interest such as Alexander

Passed a law to free all peasants in Russia from the control of landlords. Also he helped to set up zemstuos, which were local with limited control over tax collection, school buildings, roads in the villages of Russia. However all this was not enough.

Another problem that Russia faced was that their economy was very poor. Although Russian empire was rich in natural resources, but still they made less from these resources. Their industry was not growing fast enough. This was because of the growth of industry was planned and promoted by the government. Russia’s main source of wealth was farming, as the 80% of the population were peasants. However old-fashioned methods and local weather caused obstacles in growing of economy and caused terrible Famine because of all this farming did not produce enough money to buy new machinery. More ever natural resources and cheap labour encouraged forgivers to set up their industry in Russia. All these foreign industries took all the profits, leaving Russia depending on other countries.

Again tsars did nothing to improve the economy of Russia and like the rest they ignored this problem as well.

In conculation all these social, political, and economic problems were in effect the fault of the tsars. All these problems were inevitable. If they could have allowed parliament and have taken more interest in their country, the Russia might have been a successful country (politically, socially, and economically) like USA and U.K.