Read the following passage carefully.
1. Russia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a massive empire, stretching from Poland to the Pacific, and home in 1914 to 165 million people of many languages, religions and cultures. Ruling such a massive state was difficult, and the long term problems within Russia were eroding the Romanov monarchy. In 1917 this decay finally produced a revolution which swept the old system away. Several key fault lines can be identified as long term causes, while the short term trigger is accepted as being World War-I. It’s important to remember Tsarist Russia collapsed under its own flaws, with the top rending, not by an attack from people at the bottom, e.g. workers. That (and Lenin) would come later in 1917, when the Tsar was gone. The revolution was also not inevitable: the Tsars could have reformed, but the last ones didn’t want to and went backwards. It cost them their lives.
2. In theory their life had improved in 1861, before which they were serfs who were owned and could be traded by their landowners. The year 1861 saw the serfs freed and issued with small amounts of land, but in return they had to pay back a sum to the government, and the result was a mass of small farms deeply in debt. The state of agriculture in central Russia was poor, using techniques deeply out of date and with little hope of improving thanks to widespread illiteracy and no capital to invest.
3. Families lived just above the subsistence level, and around 50% of the families had a member who had left the village to find other work, often in the towns. As the central Russian population boomed, land became scarce. Their life was in sharp contrast to the rich landowners, who held 20% of the land in large estates and were often members of the Russian upper class. The western and southern reaches of the massive Russian Empire were slightly different, with a larger number of better off peasants and large commercial farms. The result was, by 1917, a central mass of disaffected peasants were angry at increased attempts to control them, and at people who profited from the land without directly working on it. The common peasant mindset was firmly against developments outside the village, and desired autonomy.
4. Oddly, although the vast majority of Russia population was rural peasants, and urban ex-peasants, the upper and middle classes knew little of real peasant life, but a lot about myths: of down to earth, angelic, pure communal life, etc. Legally, culturally, socially, the peasants in over half a million settlements Were organised by centuries of community rule, the mirs, which were separate from elites and the middle class. But this was not a joyous, lawful commune, it was a desperate struggling system fuelled with the human weaknesses of rivalry, violence and theft, and everywhere was run by elder patriarchs.
5. A break was occurring among the peasants between the elders and a large number of young literate peasants, due to the culture of deeply ingrained and frequent violence. The peasants were not without a world view, and it was a mixture of old folk memory, custom, and opposition to the interference of the Tsar—Inside vs outside. Stolypin’s land reforms of the years before 1917 attacked peasant concept of family ownership and tried to capitalise it; revolutionary peasants often went back to communal systems. This wasn’t so much class but a view based on justice of poor vs strong.
6. In central Russia the peasant population was rising and land was running out, so eyes were on the elites who were forcing the debt-ridden peasants to sell land for commercial use. Even more peasants travelled to the cities in search of work. There they urbanised and looked negatively on the peasants left behind.
I. On the basis of your understanding of the passage, answer the following questions by choosing the most appropriate option.
(a) The decay that caused the Russian revolution was due to:
1. massive empire.
2. failure of the czars to reform themselves.
3. World War-I.
4. all of the above.
(b) The agriculture was in bad condition as:
1. farmers were in debt.
2. techniques were outdated.
3. both (1) and (2).
4. serfs could be traded by their landowners.
(c) Which of the following was the trigger for the revolution?
1. World War-I.
2. urbanisation of the peasants.
3. break between the elders and the young.
4. excessive control of the upper classes.
(d) The peasants were organised into communes by:
1. mirs.
2. farmers.
3. middle classes.
4. elites.
II. Answer the following questions as briefly as possible.
(a) Why were the Russian peasants dissatisfied?
(b) What was the myth about the commune? In which classes was it prevalent?
(c) What was the reason for the frequent violence between the young and the old peasants?
(d) Why were the peasants forced to sell their land in central Russia?
(e) How did the attitude of the peasant change once they urbanised?
III. Find words from the passage which mean the same as:
(a) wearing away (para 1)
(b) dissatisfied (para 3)
(c) head of the family (para 4)
