so in this first introduction lesson we're going to take just a basic overview of the the sort of socio-economic and political uh state of russia as we come to 27 1917 sorry and as we go into looking at the events that led up to the russian revolution and the russian civil war so we're going to take a look at the sort of the geography of russia we're going to look at the sort of political situation and a number of the political actions a number of political events that happened in around 1905 that really lends itself to having a significant impact on the events of 1917 so as an introduction we should know that the russian empire at its peak at its peak in size made up nearly one-sixth of the world's land surface one-sixth so as you can see here so this is the russian state if we look around here okay and it expanded all the way down here in through near the middle east and then up around into serbia and then you know cuts off around mongolia and up all the way up here so you've got a huge land mass most of the population of russia would uh live in this sort of region here as you can see the lines and stuff um you know looking at roads and railways and then this area was a lot more a lot more sparsely populated and so as peak this was a huge piece of land and effectively when you have such a large piece of land with a you know great many people living in there the the russian empire was uh home to a vast diverse range of a different climates so you've got you know warmer areas down here towards the mediterranean and into the middle east as well as ridiculously cold areas up near the arctic uh you've got different cultures ethnicity and economics so there's a huge disparity within um you know within the diversity of of the state and because of uh difficult climate though the empire was uh effectively inhabitable so places like serbia and stuff places like that were very very sparse uh very um you know scarcely populated and it's for this reason that most of russia lived in the russian uh western areas which i circled here and so by 1900s the russian population was around 126 million people which is a you know a very a large number and russian society as a society was dominated mainly by the influence of the orthodox church and so really this is where we start to see um and we start to look at the political problems that existed in russia at the time so russian politics was very very interesting uh in this sort of the early 20th century so it was not until 1906 that political parties were even legally permitted so political parties were illegal so no political parties no political parties before 1906 before 1906 and up to the year 1917 a number of political parties were increasingly popular so you had the octoberists the cadets the srs or the social revolutionaries and then you've got two um quite important groups when it comes to looking at the revolution the mensheviks and most importantly the bolshevik party and we're going to talk a lot about the bolsheviks as we go on and when you've got a very high industrial you know starting to a building an industrial state you start to have a an increased um problem with worker strikes and this is what happened in russia especially with poor working conditions so from 1906 to 1914 russian russia's workers were increasingly unionized unionized meaning um you know grouped together into unions where the unions represent their interests and at the same time um people organize you can organize strikes and stuff through unions if you've er you know ever been to school you'd know that there's um sometimes teacher strikes through teachers unions and that's effectively what a union was and if you unionize your workers you're almost collectivizing um the you know the collective conscious of of that workforce and as a result of this unionization of workers they became more common it became more common for there to be strikes and so for example in 1912 okay there were 750 000 workers on strike and by 1914 just two years later that number had gone up to 1000 for 1 million sorry 450 000 and so you can see an increasing number of worker strikes to strike against the poor workington conditions poor poor working conditions poor working conditions poverty in general you know low wages high hours all these kind of things and so this became an ever-increasing problem uh as russia uh became more and more industrialized in the 20th century okay so let's go down here and it got to a point that in 1905 we see a revolution so we have the 1905 revolution and the 1905 revolution was a result of a number of issues uh one of them being the failing of russia in the russo-japanese war which happened uh before the revolution and they failed and you know it was a it was a pretty embarrassing loss for the state and so a revolution you know came about from that and there were a number of other um a number of other political issues including you know the unionization of workers as well and many had actually hoped that there had been radical changes following the 1905 revolution as the tsar the the the leader the king of the russian state uh did promise radical changes and what was really uh problematic is that these changes were merely symbolic and one of them was the october manifesto the october manifesto created a national parliament which was called the duma so you start to see you've got parliamentary representation following the october manifesto so we've got some parliamentary parliamentary representation which you know on the face of it is a good thing however in reality uh the the power of the duma was actually incredibly limited in reality uh the tsar the tsar still had the power basically so there's our uh retained retained uh authority so this was a problem since you know amelia's symbolic change there wasn't actually any um you know institutional systemic changes going on within russia at the time and the tsar's head of government between 1906 and 1911 was someone called peter stelipping okay peter stalin and what sleeping did was uh restore order through a policy of what you what were known as small reforms and what led to brutal repression okay so for example philippines courts found over 37 000 people guilty of so-called political crimes and the punishment for political crimes was to be sent to labor camps or be resettled in deserts or siberia so effectively uh removed from the population so effectively removed removed from the population and this was a common tactic um in russian history to be to be sent in exile to siberia or to be sent to a labor camp and as a result of the these labor camps and these this resettlement program of people committed of political crimes and a lot of other crimes in general uh the prison population in russia had risen from 98 000 people in 1905 to 250 000 people by 1913 so there's a a an a vast increase in the number of um prisoners within the russian state and there was also the use of political represent repression as well so by 1907 the head of the russian police okay uh maximilian uh trump trusted okay instituted a policy of surveillance and subversion so we start to see policies of political repression here okay policies of political repression policies of political repression and this was a big problem since these changes that were supposed to have occurred under the october manifesto never really came into effect and with that being said we're going to look really quickly at the end of this lesson at the political authority that the tsar had so uh czar nicholas ii had been the monarch of russia since 1894 okay and he was the last uh ruling uh monarch of the romanov dynasty and they ruled russia since mikhail the first in 1613. following the death of ivan the terrible in 1547 i believe it was and there was a subsequent what was known as the time of troubles so a time of famine and you know dynastic dynastic problems where you know there were a number of people who claimed to be um heirs to the throne trying to get on the throne and subsequently um the sort of political powers that be at the time in 1613 almost chose mikael the first to be the next ruler of russia and create a new dynasty that's just a little backstory you don't really need to know that for the history in the 20th century so the tsar himself was our nicholas ii was a family man he believed in uh in autocracy and he resisted any real kind of reform which means when the october manifesto was created the october manifesto was created the tsar didn't really like it so there's our didn't like it it was a he was very very reluctant to introduce the october manifesto and as a result everything from the october manifesto purports to have created a number of um interesting changes but actually didn't change anything uh effectively you have a duma that you know they wanted to take away some of the political authority from the tsar and so the tsar created a representative parliament but at the end of the day the czar was still in charge at the head of this parliament the tsar's government was made up of a cabinet a senate and a state council and these were simply advisory institutions and what was important is they had no power so they could only advise the tsar only advise the tsar and at the end of the day at the end of the day the tsar always had the most political control and that was effectively the state of russia as of the turning point of 1917 okay we've got a number of geographical uh effectively a number of geographical anomalies with the state of russia because of its size there are a number of things that other countries don't seem to have like the you know the the vast changes in climate and the vast population diversity and stuff some countries have that however russia is exacerbates um this diversity with its size you have a number of political parties uh one of which being the most important that we're going to look at later the bolsheviks and then we also have the working conditions and working problems within the russian state looking at the problems of worker strikes and the increasing unionization of workers as well as the 19505 revolution and the political repression from uh people likes to leaping and in the next lesson we're going to start to look at the the events that led up to the start of the russian revolution and the subsequent civil war