Europe, 1914 – 1930: Upheaval And Change

12 Pages 3037 Words

The years of 1914-1930, spanning World War I and the Great Depression, no doubt changed the world. The great nations of Europe were up heaved both socially and economically. Change permeated every aspect of life. As a result, great experiments in social order took place. In some instances, history has proved them successful. Others proved dismal failures. For the purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on the economic and technological changes and social changes in Great Britain and Russia/USSR as demonstrative socio-political archetypes.
Before we can discuss change, we must know what existed before, what was there to change. Great Britain and Russia were both monarchies before 1914. However, Great Britain had switched to a constitutional monarchy where the monarch was little more than a figurehead and answered to Parliament while the Russia’s Tsar was more of an absolute monarch. The Tsar had advisors, but was not legally bound to follow their advice. Both Great Britain and Russia were empires. Russia covered much of Eastern Europe and the areas commonly referred to as Eurasia and the Middle East today. Great Britain was composed of the primary islands of England and Ireland with colonies spread across the globe. Needless to say, both contained and controlled multiple ethnic and racial populations. Both empires had begun swapping from agrarian to industrial economies. However, Great Britain maintained the lead in technology. The island centers of the British Empire did not contain enough farmable land to maintain the population. Thus, raw materials were brought from abroad to fuel the factories and feed the citizens of the British Empire. Russia had vast tracts of farmable land in close proximity to the urban areas. Thus, there was not the same urgency and demand for industrialization in Russia as seen in Great Britain. As their respective economies industrialized, new classes of citizens were created, f...