Tale of Cossacks and Men #5 Notes and thoughts

The following is the various points of interest pulled from Chapter 1 of "1917: Russia's Year of Revolution, a chapter that focused on the conditions of the working class people prior to revolution and the underlying foundations upon which revolution would rise:

• The average temperature in Petrograd between January-March 1917 was a bone-chilling minus 12.1 degrees Centigrade.
• It was on the 30th December 1916 that Rasputin was assassinated by Prince Felix Yusupov, an assassination that was not surprising, and ended with a fatal gunshot wound.
• Some in Russia's middle classes viewed the Tsar as having a soft character
• At the time of Rasputin's death, the ordinary people of Petrograd focused on concerns of bread, firewood and the daily tragedy of news from the Eastern front.
• Many peasants would travel from the countryside to the industrialized cities to try find a solution to their poverty, and work in the industries of textiles, automobiles, armaments and chemicals. However, the work was hard, wages poor and things like bread, egg and meat had become luxuries.
• In other parts of the city however, fine hotels truly captured the contrast between the still prospering upper classes, and the decomposing society with it. By 1917, the tram system in Petrograd was operating 710 cars, and despite the struggles of revolution, the resilient, tough drivers kept the service running.
• Few workers in the city cared for revolution, and would have been satisfied with a decent pay rise, three square meals, an eight-hour working day and a return of their loved ones from the front. Eg, the Putilov arms factory with a 30,000 work force.
• One day, peasants would be chopping wood, planting crops and feeding cows. The next, they would be crammed into rough uniform into a tropp train bound for the front, often without arms or ammunition.
• After the 1905 revolution, Stolypin would be involved in the brutal repression of criticizers, and the Tsar would also reverse much of the concessions he had made to revolutionaries.
• By 1917, men were deserting from the trenches in droves, those going home on leave failed to return to the front, thousands languished in German prison camps, and food was not getting through to urban populations due to the railway system always being used by the military.
• On the advice of Rasputin, Tsarina Alexandra placed Protopopov in charge of both the secret police, Okhrana, and food distribution. He came to see holding back food supplies as a way to lure revolutionaries into the open, and many questioned his sanity.
• In the countryside, peasants were usually superstitious, religious, illiterate and conservative, but at the same time, tough, resilient, distrustful of townsfolk and a fierce hatred for the landlords. However, many had began to mistrust priests and seek other education.
• Kulaks, coming from the word "first", were the prosperous Russian peasants, known by the Bolsheviks as the "rural bourgeoisie, cruelly exploiting farm labourers, which the Bolsheviks hoped to liquidate as a class".
• After emancipation peasant land was property of peasant communes known as Mirs, however opportunistic Kulaks often imposed taxes on peasants attempting to cross their own lands or use pastoral land, even making some work in order to use Kulak forests. By 1917, the Kulaks owned 90 per cent of arable land as a result of the deaths of many smaller peasant landowners. It allowed them to basically dictate grain/bread prices.
  
• Patrolling police and Okhrana who watched over the long breadlines in the cities would know something was coming, since the bread lines would stretch for miles, and gave people an opportunity to talk to spend time.
• While revolutionary groups were no doubt active (eg the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the Social Revolutionaries, the Constitutional Democratic Party etc) to some extent, all were caught seriously off guard by the sudden explosion of discontent to come.

Having read the first chapter of the book, I can clearly see how important it will be for my book to capture the psychological demands of the people from the view of the Cossacks, demands for bread, better working conditions and an eight-hour working day, recognizing how suddenly these demands can snap into revolution. For instance, I am really interesting in the contrast and interaction of rural and urban populations in the revolution. I really look forward to showing how the tragedy leading to revolution was felt up and feared by all classes of society, from the upper classes (eg killing Rasputin to try save the tsar) to the lower classes (eg becoming more and more desperate that their pleas be hurt).