Was Russia stable in the year 1914?
Russia was going through many changes before 1914 with agriculture and industry being improved at different rates and different periods. Overall the feelings towards the Tsar were pretty tense he had promised major changes to the lives of the Russian people but failed to deliver these changes he made in the October manifesto. Although there was major upset throughout Russia the Tsar’s most able ministers Witte and Stolypin managed to control the population desire for revolution by handling each group at a time and slowing decreasing the Tsar’s opposition and the effectiveness a revolution would have.
There is a lot of evidence to support that Russia was becoming more stable as the war was approaching and that they were catching up to their western countries they had been behind by for so long. From 1907-1913 the membership of the trade union was decreasing rapidly it went from 300,000 members to 40,000 members over the six year span this shows that the working classes were becoming less aggravated by the Tsar and no longer saw the need to revolt against him. As well of the membership of the trade union decreasing the membership of the radical political parties also decreased showing that the people who were against the Tsar the most were seeing enough change in Russia in order to stop the militant actions and have faith in the Tsar once again this also shows that the political support for the Tsar was also increasing. The peasant were also starting to gain faith in the Tsar after Stolypin was appointed minster even though not all of his reforms were effective he still managed to de-revolutionised a large proportion of the country this may have been due to the good harvests they had over the four years of 1909-1913. As well as agriculture being improved the industry was also improving over the years 1905-1914 their industrial production increased by 6% each year. Both the figures from agriculture and industry show that changes are happening in Russia but these were not down to the Tsar they were because of his minister Witte and Stolypin who both had the vision of seeing Russia as a great power once again. A. Gerschenkron wrote in his book, Economic backwardness in historical perspective, “They see the increasing economic maturity of Russia, based upon industrial development and sound agrarian reform as a guarantee of peacetime stability one might summarise that in the absence of war Russia could have continued on the road of progressive westernisation”
Even though there is a lot of evidence to support that Russia was