Industrialization Process in Early 20th Century Russia

The accelerated pace of urbanization and industrialization in post-reform Russia had a profound impact upon urban society--its size, structure, power and group cohesion. . . . Despite legal, economic and public health barriers, large numbers poured each year into the city in search of food or fortune (Freeze 248).

Just as the reforms of the 1860s were instituted by Alexander II in response to fears that the nation would otherwise lose its status as a world power, so were industrialization and modernization embraced by leaders in the early twentieth century in order to prevent the same loss of status. Cracraft calls industrialization "the most important of the major economic and social developments" of the end of the Imperial era (441). As in other nations, industrialization in Russia brought tremendous social and economic upheaval, bringing not only urbanization but also "the growth of new social classes--an industrial proletariat and a new class of capitalists" (Cracraft 441). Industrialization, modernization, Westernization and urbanization were forces which altered the nation irrevocably. The incompetence of the bureaucracy and the very viability of the autocracy were called into question as

. . .
e "new merchant princes." At least in their cultural views and practices, these industrialists "did not much like Western ideas and . . . instead . . . clung to native Russian culture and artistic forms, respecting the traditions of long ago" (Massie 398). If art patrons among the industrialists remained traditional, little else did in the Russia of the new century. Industrialization threw the country into turmoil and forever altered many basic elements of the nation, including the lives of workers, the role of the nobility, the centers of population, and the agricultural base of the country. There was no group or class which did not express its discontent with the system and outright violence when it came was not completely unexpected. However, rebellion and revolution in 1905 hardly accomplished much of a positive nature, and certainly not from the perspective of the nobility, a class with continuing and significant power in the industrial era. Even though the nobility itself at first supported action against the government's haphazard industrial policies, the nobles quickly changed their views: . . . The harrowing experiences of 1905, when the countryside exploded in violent disorders, was sobering experience for many nob
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Approximate Word count = 1923
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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