Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Economy + Witte
- Economy focused on agriculture
- Difficult to sell enough grain at export
to raise money for large scale industrial
development
- Backward
and
unproductive
- 1881 – Russia was a great power
of Europe, along with Britain,
France, Germany and
Austria-Hungary
- Largest in terms
of physical size
and population but
was the most
underdeveloped
economically
- To maintain this the economy
needed to be improved,
modernised and increase wealth
- Nikolai Bunge –
Alexander III’s first
finance minister
- Introduced laws to reduce the tax
burden on the peasants - 1882
- Peasant bank 1882 – Loan facilities to
peasants to help them increase the size
of their landholdings and make them
more productive
- Ivan
Vyshnegradsky
replaced Bunge
- Financed Russia’s
economic development from
foreign lands
- Most came from France and Britain by
the late 1890’s
- Foundations laid for the rapid economic development of Russia
- 1889 – Financial incentives for
peasants to migrate to the Eastern
lands of Siberia to farm
- Took some pressure off land
demand but could not prevent
catastrophic famines in 1891
- Minister of Finance Sergei
Witte responsible for
modernisation (1892-1914)
- Russia needed to rapidly industrialise BUT:
Lacked a large business class
Lacked a large urban workforce
Lacked enough money to invest in industrialis
- Good development in coal,
iron, petroleum and steel
- Industrial
expansion –
“The Great
Spurt”
- Attempt to attract massive foreign
investment
- Peasants forced to
pay extra taxes
- Exports mainly
agricultural produce
- Exports 453
million roubles.
Imported 652
million roubles
- Development controlled
directly by the Government
- Development of railways
produced impressive growth
statistics (but in comparison
with other countries, not very
good)