As such, the lackluster amount of industrial development caused by limited exports subsequently created a negative domino effect for the rest of the economy.
An example of this domino effect was Russia failing to capitalize on its immense amounts of natural resources, such as iron ore and precious gems in the Ural region or coal in Ukraine. The lack of industrial development explained in the paragraph above proved to be the reason why the Russian government was unable to create a wide-spread extraction program across the empire - only allowing the extraction and processing of the resources in areas such as St. Petersburg, Moscow, and few parts of the Ukraine. Thus, these economic problems were a key cause of the people's unhappiness by 1881 as the national output was not enough to satisfy the demands of the population. On top of economic problems, social problems were a huge contributor to the 1881 dilemma. The first of these social issues concern the serfs (usually agriculture laborers who were tied to an area of land - working for the landowner) who were a product of feudalism in Russia. Although Serfdom was prevalent in Russia since the 11th century, it only became an integral part of Russian society in the 17th. By then, up to 80% of Russian population consisted of peasants, of which half were serfs. This created a situation whereby social injustice towards the peasants would have affected the entirety of the country in almost every regard.
The main problem was how the serfs were oppressed by the autocratic hierarchy in terms of education, practical use of productivity, and social development. The majority of the oppression was a product of the economic problems and political problems facing the Russian empire. Firstly, the inefficient usage of productivity was caused by the majority of the country being subsistence farmers. This made it difficult to stimulate an economic situation benefitting the people, which led to a greater pressure on the serfs to cooperate and produce higher amounts of crops.