Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar Nicholas II faced a lot of major problems in Russia in the 20th century. These problems were; the size of Russia, the many different languages and cultures, the lack of industrialization, poor farming techniques and the unfair class system. Nicholas responded to these problems by introducing Russia to Russiafication, Industrialisation and the use of ideological state repression + the church.

As most people know Russia is big, real big. The Russian empire filled up one-sixth of the worlds land. If you want to communicate with someone on the other side of Russia you can use the internet or a phone. But it hasn’t been like that forever. In the early 1900 the way of sending a message to the other side of Russia was to go on a steamboat.

Tsar Nicholas II delegated his responsibility to his advisors so he wouldn’t get the blame for it. From this you can see that he did not care about his people as a Tsar should.

The second problem that Tsar Nicholas II had to solve was the mixture of cultures and languages spoken in Russia. Less than half of the population were Russians. This was a problem because if more languages were spoken in Russia it would be harder to communicate with anyone. That means that they would have to build more schools, librarys, shops etc. to please everyone.

Nicholas delt with this problem by introducing Russiafication. Russiafication was used in Russia before Nicholas II, but Tsar Nicholas II brought it up again. Russiafication was a policy that united everyone in Russia under one language and religion. Non-Russians such as Jews, Ukraines, White Russians and more were forced to adopt the Russian language along with the religion.

The class system in Russia was very unfair in the 1900. Over 80% of the population were peasants. The peasants had a hard time earning money and food for themselves. Buying a little piece of land was expensive. The peasants had to loan money from the government. This was a big problem because a lot of the peasants could barely pay off the loans.

Tsar Nicholas II told the orthodox churches across the land to make the peasants believe that after their lives as hard working peasants they would go to a better place. This made the peasants stick to their rank in the society and not argue as much.

Compared to most countries in the world in the 1900 Russia were cavemen in farming techniques and farming tools. They lacked industrialization. This was a big problem because the farmers weren’t getting as much crops as they could have gotten. 400,000 people died in 1891 because their harvest failed.

Tsar Nicholas II tried introducing industrialization but it was a bit too late. Nicholas invested in new tools and factories to make Russia a more developed country.

Tsar Nicholas II faced a lot of challenges and responded to them in a variety of different ways. He improved Russia (or atleast tried) in the size of Russia, the many different languages and cultures, the lack of industrialization, the poor farming techniques and the unfair class system.