Industrialized Russia-An Ideological Shift

The industrialization of Russia can be traced back to the reforms of Alexander II in 1860.  It was clear to him the Russia's current agrarian economy was bogging the nation down both politically and economically.  Russia had suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Crimean War because their military was not on par with the other belligerents.
Alexander II set Russia down the path of industrialism that would be continued well into the 20th century.  Understanding that Russia's economy was sluggish, Alexander initiated the building of railroads which allowed farmers to ship their crop further, a much needed boost in the economy.  The expansion of the railway system breathed life into the coal, iron, and steel industries, therefore, increasing the number of factories in major cities and the number of industrial workers.  In the early 1860s, Russia had about 1,200 miles of railroad track.  By the 1880, there was 15,500 miles of track.  Although Alexander III introduced a significant amount of counter-reform that reversed much of his father's policy, Alexander III continued to pursue Russia's industrialization process by further expanding the railway system and under the Minister of Finance, S.I.u Witte, the Trans-Siberian Railway was initiated while the metallurgy and textile industries also experienced a significant boost (by 1899 the state purchased one-third of all metallurgical products and by 1894 72 percent of workers in the textile industry were employed in factories with a minimum of one hundred workers).  It is important to note, however, that by the onset of the 20th century only 2.4 percent of Russian population was employed in factories yet there was a growing movement for the advocacy of worker's rights.  The government did virtually nothing about the poor conditions under which industrial laborers worked and by 1905 failed to acknowledge that there was even a growing problem regarding worker's rights.  This was fertile ground for the democratic movements that would arise with the onset of the 20th century (with influence from the populists).  The new democratic movements, however, focused more on the growing (but still very small) bourgeois that was heavily concentrated in Russia's major cities.  Although they still advocated a violent revolution, the new democrats shifted their focus from encouraging the proletariat to revolt to the bourgeois, the opposite of their populist forefathers.