Russian Revolution of 1905
The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, the country's first. The revolution was characterized by mass political and social unrest including worker strikes, peasant revolts, and military mutinies directed against Tsar Nicholas II and the autocracy, who were forced to establish the State Duma legislative assembly and grant certain rights, though both were later undermined.
In the years leading up to the revolution, impoverished peasants had become increasingly angered by repression from their landlords and the continuation of semi-feudal relations. Further discontent grew due to mounting Russian losses in the Russo-Japanese War, poor conditions for workers, and urban unemployment. On, known as "Bloody Sunday," a peaceful procession of workers, led by Georgy Gapon, was fired on by guards outside the tsar's Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Widespread demonstrations and traditional strikes spread all over the empire and were brutally repressed by the tsar's troops. In June, sailors on the battleship Potemkin undertook a mutiny, and in October, a strike by railway workers turned into a general strike in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The striking urban workers established councils, including the inaugural St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, in order to debate their course of action. The influence of revolutionary parties, in particular the Socialist Revolutionary Party and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, quickly escalated. At the same time, the reactionary pro-monarchist Black Hundreds began attacks on intellectuals, revolutionaries, and the Jewish population.
In response, the tsar issued the "October Manifesto," a pledge to create a legislative assembly, halt censorship and violations of freedom of association, and expand the right to vote. The constitution, drafted by Sergei Witte and enacted on 6 May 1906, did not bring an end to the turmoil, as anti-monarchist revolutionaries continued to rally for a constituent assembly. The movement for reform fragmented into conservative Octobrist and liberal Kadet factions, and the left split into moderates content with the reforms and those who desired a full overthrow of the tsar. The revolution slowly fizzled out in the face of harsh repression as troops returned after the end of the Russo-Japanese War in September 1905. Despite popular participation, the Duma was unable to issue laws of its own and often came into conflict with the tsar, who in July 1906 dissolved the first Duma and appointed Pyotr Stolypin as prime minister, who set about restoring autocratic rule. In June 1907, the second Duma was dissolved and an electoral reform which favored the propertied classes was decreed.
Many historians contend that the Revolution of 1905 set the stage for the Russian Revolution of 1917, which saw the monarchy abolished, the tsar executed, and a socialist state established. Calls for the peasantry and workers to take power by force were present in the 1905 revolution, but many of the revolutionaries who were in a potential position to lead were either in exile or in prison while it took place. Vladimir Lenin later famously described the Revolution of 1905 as the "dress rehearsal" without which the "victory of the October Revolution in 1917 would have been impossible."
Causes
Because the Russian economy was tied to European finances, the contraction of Western money markets in 1899–1900 plunged Russian industry into a deep and prolonged crisis; it outlasted the dip in European industrial production. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the Revolution of 1905.The Tsarist government did recognise some of these problems, albeit shortsightedly. The Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve had said in 1903 that, after the agrarian problem, the most serious issues plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools, and the workers, in that order.
Any residual popular loyalty to Tsar Nicholas II was lost on 22 January 1905, when his soldiers fired upon a crowd of protesting workers, led by Georgy Gapon, who were marching to present a petition at the Winter Palace.
Agrarian problem
Every year, thousands of nobles in debt mortgaged their estates to the noble land bank or sold them to municipalities, merchants, or peasants. By the time of the revolution, the nobility had sold off one-third of its land and mortgaged another third. The peasants had been freed by the emancipation reform of 1861, but their lives were generally quite limited. The government hoped to develop the peasants as a politically conservative, land-holding class by enacting laws to enable them to buy land from nobility by paying small installments over many decades.Such land, known as "allotment land", would not be owned by individual peasants but by the community of peasants; individual peasants would have rights to strips of land to be assigned to them under the open field system. A peasant could not sell or mortgage this land, so in practice he could not renounce his rights to his land, and he would be required to pay his share of redemption dues to the village commune. This plan was intended to prevent peasants from becoming part of the proletariat. However, the peasants were not given enough land to provide for their needs:
Their earnings were often so small that they could neither buy the food they needed nor keep up the payment of taxes and redemption dues they owed the government for their land allotments. By 1903 their total arrears in payments of taxes and dues was 118 million rubles.
The situation worsened as masses of hungry peasants roamed the countryside looking for work and sometimes walked hundreds of kilometers to find it. Desperate peasants proved capable of violence. "In the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava in 1902, thousands of them, ignoring restraints and authority, burst out in a rebellious fury that led to extensive destruction of property and looting of noble homes before troops could be brought to subdue and punish them."
These violent outbreaks caught the attention of the government, so it created many committees to investigate the causes. The committees concluded that no part of the countryside was prosperous; some parts, especially the fertile areas known as the "black-soil region", were in decline. Although cultivated acreage had increased in the last half century, the increase had not been proportionate to the growth of the peasant population, which had doubled. "There was general agreement at the turn of the century that Russia faced a grave and intensifying agrarian crisis due mainly to rural overpopulation with an annual excess of fifteen to eighteen live births over deaths per 1,000 inhabitants." The investigations revealed many difficulties but the committees could not find solutions that were both sensible and "acceptable" to the government.
Nationality problem
Russia was a multi-ethnic empire. Nineteenth-century Russians saw cultures and religions in a clear hierarchy. Non-Russian cultures were tolerated in the empire but were not necessarily respected. Culturally, Europe was favored over Asia, as was Orthodox Christianity over other religions.For generations, Russian Jews had been considered a special problem. Jews constituted only about 4% of the population but were concentrated in the western borderlands. Like other minorities in Russia, the Jews lived "miserable and circumscribed lives, forbidden to settle or acquire land outside the cities and towns, legally limited in attendance at secondary school and higher schools, virtually barred from legal professions, denied the right to vote for municipal councilors, and excluded from services in the Navy or the Guards".
The government's treatment of Jews, although considered a separate issue, was similar to its policies in dealing with all national and religious minorities. Historian Theodore Weeks notes: "Russian administrators, who never succeeded in coming up with a legal definition of 'Pole', despite the decades of restrictions on that ethnic group, regularly spoke of individuals 'of Polish descent' or, alternatively, 'of Russian descent', making identity a function of birth." This policy only succeeded in producing or aggravating feelings of disloyalty. There was growing impatience with their inferior status and resentment against "Russification". Russification is cultural assimilation definable as "a process culminating in the disappearance of a given group as a recognizably distinct element within a larger society".
Besides the imposition of a uniform Russian culture throughout the empire, the government's pursuit of Russification, especially during the second half of the nineteenth century, had political motives. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, the Russian state was compelled to take into account public opinion, but the government failed to gain the public's support. Another motive for Russification policies was the Polish uprising of 1863. Unlike other minority nationalities, the Poles, in the eyes of the Tsar, were a direct threat to the empire's stability. After the rebellion was crushed, the government implemented policies to reduce Polish cultural influences. In the 1870s the government began to distrust German elements on the western border. The Russian government felt that the unification of Germany would upset the power balance among the great powers of Europe and that Germany would use its strength against Russia. The government thought that the borders would be defended better if the borderland were more "Russian" in character. The culmination of cultural diversity created a cumbersome nationality problem that plagued the Russian government in the years leading up to the revolution.