Russian Empire - Society

Society

See also: History of Russian culture, Russian literature, Russian opera, Technology in the Russian Empire, and Cinema of the Russian Empire

It was a rural society spread over vast spaces; in 1913, 80% of the people were peasants. Soviet historiography proclaimed that the Russian Empire of the 19th century was characterized by systemic crisis, which impoverished the workers and peasants and culminated in the revolutions of the early 20th century. Recent research by Russian scholars disputes this interpretation. Mironov assesses the effects of the reforms of latter 19th-century especially in terms of the 1861 emancipation of the serfs, agricultural output trends, various standard of living indicators, and taxation of peasants. He argues that they brought about measurable improvements in social welfare. More generally, he finds that the well-being of the Russian people declined during the most of the 18th century, but increased slowly from the end of the 18th century to 1914.

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Famous quotes containing the word society:

    “Every society consists of men in the process of developing from children into parents. To assure continuity of tradition, society must early prepare for parenthood in its children; and it must take care of the unavoidable remnants of infantility in its adults. This is a large order, especially since a society needs many beings who can follow, a few who can lead, and some who can do both, alternately or in different areas of life.”
    —Erik H. Erikson (1904–1994)

    “We Americans are supposed to be overly concerned about the child. But actually the intelligent care of children in our society is balanced by a crass indifference to the helplessness of infancy and youth. Cruelty to children has become more widespread but less noticed in the general unrest, the constant migration, the family disintegration, and the other manifestations of a civilization that has been torn away from its original moorings.”
    —Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)

    “A society that has made “nostalgia” a marketable commodity on the cultural exchange quickly repudiates the suggestion that life in the past was in any important way better than life today.”
    —Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)