Industrialization

   Another factor in the country's growing agitatin was Russia's plan for industrialization. Launched by Count Witte, the finance minister proceeding Stolypin, the plan for industrialization was started after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War. However, Russia was not quick to solve its industrial relations problems. Since Russia was late in entering the industrial revolution, its productivity was low on the global scale. To make up for this lag, employers sought to hire many workers at low costs and at high intensity (Keep 19).

   Labor unions were restricted by the government, who feared that they encourage revolt. Therefore, there were no legal ways in which workers could settle their grievances. In 1912 alone there were 2,032 incidents of strike, many of which were in response to a massacre of striking workers in the Lena gold fields in East Siberia. The one massacre cost 170 lives and was typical of how the government responded to industrial uprisings (Keep 21). It is not surprising that the working classes felt alienated from their government and clamored to the cause of revolution in response.

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