... the ever waiting floodgates of change. To begin with the standard of living that was already incredibly hard to maintain for the peasants of Russia was ever deteriorating since 1861 when Russia was left behind in industrialisation. In the 19th century Russia still had a form a feudal social system, where the nobles, clergy and the King (Tsar) were all maintained by the peasants. The upper classes usually contained no more than three or four percent of the population, but they controlled more than eighty percent of the countries wealth. This left the majority of the population; the peasants extremely poor. In the country peasants had to work with land of poor quality and there were often food shortages. In the cities a worker had a normal working day of more than eleven hours, while their wages were very low. To add to that the scarcity of accommodation forced them to ...

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