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Was the size of Russia the main reason for making it difficult to rule?
like Ukrainians, Polish, Jewish, German and so on. As there were so many different national groups, this also meant that many of the people who lived in Russia didn’t speak Russian, and most were illiterate. Russia had around 130 inhabitants, and less than half were not Russian. The different nationalities were spread over Russia in different areas, and this caused problems because the Tsar should’ve tried to unite the different nationalities. Instead, friction might’ve occurred between different national groups. This is a reason that does link to the size of Russia, but can also be another reason to show that the Tsar did not really care about the people, if he did he would have tried to unite them into one group instead of many different groups.
To make matters worse, some of the national groups deeply resented the Russian control. ‘Russification’ was introduced, which meant that non-Russians were made to speak Russian, wear Russian clothes and follow Russian customs. Russians were also given important jobs in non-Russian areas. This is a reason that is not linked to the size of Russia, but another fault of the Tsar’s. It shows that the Tsar was not up to the job of ruling such as big country, if he was that heartless to inflict this on non-Russian people.
Because of the different languages, communication was a much bigger problem as well. There was a lack of telephones, televisions, radios and the Tsar didn’t help the situation by only knowing Russian. By learning new languages would have eased the problem. The lack of communication meant that ruling a country the size of Russia would have been almost impossible. Travelling around the country to deliver news would have been a task in itself; it took a week to travel from one side to the other. The Tsar also made the mistake of basing the Government in St Petersburg and not spreading it out. As he did not do this, he had no idea of what was happening. This is an example of the size making Russia to rule, but the Tsar could have eased the problem by spreading out the Government, learning new languages and so on.
The geography of Russia did not help Tsar Nicholas II. In 1900 only 5 percent of all Russian land was good enough to farm on, the rest lay waste. Most of the population only lived on the 5 percent, which was good for farming, so the streets of the cities were often overcrowded. The many peoples of the Russian Empire were not evenly spread throughout the country. If the land were overcrowded, this would probably have meant that the living conditions would have been poor, especially if you were someone of a lower class. It was only the regions in the southwest, which were warmer [next page]