Social conditions in eastern and southern Europe differed substantially from those of the west, but there were some common elements. Middle- and upper-class women in Russia, for example, surged into new educational and professional opportunities in some numbers. Growing cities and factories produced some trade union activity, on the part of skilled groups such as the printers and metalworkers, that resembled efforts elsewhere.

Rural conditions, however, were vastly different from those in western Europe. Eastern and southern Europe remained dominated by the peasantry, as urbanization, though rapid, was at a far earlier stage. Peasant conditions were generally poor. Amid growing population pressure, many peasants suffered from a lack of land in areas dominated by large estates. One result was rapid emigration, to the Americas and elsewhere, from Spain, southern Italy, and eastern Europe. Another result was recurrent unrest. Peasants in southern Spain, loosely organized under anarchist banners, rose almost once a decade in the late 19th century, seizing land and burning estate records.

The social and economic situation was most complex in Russia. Stung by the loss of the Crimean War (1854–56) to Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire, literally in their own backyard, Russian leaders decided on a modernization program. The key ingredient was an end to the rigid manorial system, and in 1861 Alexander II, a reform-minded tsar, issued the Emancipation Manifesto, freeing the serfs. This act sought to produce a freer labour market but also to protect the status of the nobility. As a result, noble landlords retained some of the best land and were paid for the loss of their servile labour; in turn, serfs, though technically in control of most land, owed redemption payments to the state. This arrangement produced important changes in the countryside. Peasants did develop some commercial habits, aided by gradually spreading education and literacy. More and more peasants migrated, temporarily or permanently, to cities, where they swelled the manufacturing labour force and also the ranks of urban poor. Rural unrest continued, however, as peasants resented their taxes and payments and the large estates that remained.

From the 1870s the Russian government also launched a program of industrial development, beginning with the construction of a national rail network capped by the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Factory industry was encouraged; much of it was held under foreign ownership, though a native entrepreneurial class emerged. Large factories developed to produce textiles and to process metals. Conditions remained poor, however, and combined with the unfamiliar pace of factory work and rural grievances to spur recurrent worker unrest. Illegal strikes and unions became increasingly prominent after 1900. A minority of urban workers, especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow, were won to socialist doctrines, and a well-organized Marxist movement arose, its leadership after 1900 increasingly dominated by Vladimir Ilich Lenin, a creative theorist who adapted Marxist theory to the Russian situation and who concentrated single-mindedly on creating the network of underground cells that could foment outright revolution. Russia was embarked on a genuine industrial revolution; with its massive size and resources, it ranked among world leaders in many categories of production by 1900. However, it operated in an exceptionally unstable social and political climate.