ABSTRACT
These years saw the rapid and disruptive growth of urbanization and social mobility as the policies of Sergei Witte led to a sudden growth in heavy industry. Combined with population growth, these policies forced peasants to find new sources of income. The belief in an ‘agricultural crisis’ has been shown to be false. On the whole, peasants adapted well to the changing circumstances, finding new techniques to increase production and new areas of work. Many young males flooded into the growing cities, bringing their own attitudes with them, and working, travelling, and living in kinship groups from their own areas. An essentially migrant labour force, few stayed longer than five years in the large urban factories. The peasantry were still a separate estate and were tied by family and land obligations to their villages.
They organized their own lives in the cities and developed their own ways of putting pressure on their employers, but many also were influenced by the new revolutionary groups vying for their support. These were the years when revolutionary organizations coalesced into nascent, and illegal, parties. For some workers these became substitute families. Many found urban factory life alien, others saw it as an opportunity to better themselves.
