Why was Russia difficult to govern

1
Why was Russia difficult to govern?
2
? Your task

• Read the introduction to this new module on p.102
  of Modern World History
• Copy the timeline into your notes leaving spaces
  to add further events and details as you work
  through the module.

3
? Your task

• If you were to describe the population of UK
  today using the categories below what would you
  say?
• Read p.103 -104 and complete the table below

Extension task answer questions 1-3 on p.104
4
Population
Gurians, Caucasus

• Cossacks, fierce warrior race
• Byelorussians, White Russians
• Great Russians, Slav Viking mix
• Georgians, fiercely independent

Muscovites
Evenki, Siberia
Jews, central Asia
5
Geography
Invicta Grammar School

• Tundra, nearly always frozen
• Taiga, impenetrable forests
• Russian steppes, grasslands
• Desert

6
Communications

• Hard-paced mud roads
• Wooden platforms in cities due to mud
• Longer journeys by river, e.g. passenger steamers
  on River Volga
• Expansion of railways, e.g. Trans-Siberian
  Railway, 1904
• Moscow to Vladivostok took 1 week!

Peasant women pulling boats on the River Volga
7
Government

• 1894, Tsar Nicholas II, Romanov dynasty
• Autocrat
• Divine right to rule
• Governed through a council of ministers
• 1000s of civil servants
• No parliament
• Newpapers books censored
• Okhrana
• Order enforced by Cossacks

Tsar Nicholas II Tsarina Alexandra
8
Agriculture

• 90 population peasants
• Medieval strip farming
• Inefficient
• Little investment
• Average life expectancy of peasant farmer, 40
  years

Interior of Russian peasants cottage
9
Economy

• Beginnings of industrialisation
• Coal mining, iron, steel textiles
• Economic migrants peasants to cities
• Poor housing living standards
• No trade unions

Canteen in Moscow
10
Did the difficulties in Russia make it easy or
difficult to govern?