The Russian Revolution of 1905 challenged the absolute power of Tsar Nicholas II (reign 1894-1917) as ruler of the Russian Empire. Bloody Sunday in 1905 started the year disastrously for the tsar when soldiers fired upon an unarmed crowd outside the Winter Palace. Strikes, protests, and mutinies followed, which involved peasants, industrial workers, the urban middle class, intellectuals, students, and elements of the military. The tsar held on to power by promising reforms and a new representative parliament, but he soon lapsed back into his autocratic ways until he was deposed in the Russian Revolution of 1917.
The Romanov Autocracy
Tsar Nicholas II had reigned over the Russian Empire since 1894, but his right to absolute rule began to be questioned by many sections of Russian society. That society had been changing rapidly through the last quarter of the 19th century. A working class of factory workers had sprung up since industrialisation, while many peasants had gained the right to work their own land. The student class had also grown significantly. Then there was the growing number of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers. Non-Russians were increasingly calling for better national rights within the Russian Empire, this was particularly so amongst the Finns, Poles, and Georgians, and in the Baltic states.
None of the above groups was directly represented in Russia's legal classification of society into four tiers: the nobility, gentry, townspeople, and peasantry. Trouble against the tsar's authoritarian rule had been simmering away for quite some time, with various public disturbances breaking out against state authority. As the historian C. Read notes, "the army dealt with 19 disturbances in 1893; 33 in 1900; 271 in 1901 and 522 in 1902" (74). Politically-motivated assassinations were not uncommon and claimed victims in the police force, local government, and at ministerial level.
The bubbling discontent was raised to boiling point by several new factors from 1901 onwards. The formation of worker unions led by police officials – an idea of 'police socialism', which came from Sergei Zubatov, the Moscow police administrator – backfired as these associations hid radicals in plain sight. The global economic slump of 1901 to 1905, which greatly increased unemployment, and Russia's losses in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5) further dented the tsar's prestige and added to the woes of those who called for political and economic change. Actions of protest became increasingly violent. Vyacheslav Plehve (1846-1904), the hated conservative minister of the interior, was assassinated by a member of the Union of Social Revolutionaries in July 1904. In the first days of January 1905, more bad news came to the tsar; Port Arthur (in Manchuria), one of Russia's key fortresses and a major naval base, had been captured by the Japanese armed forces.
Bloody Sunday
In Saint Petersburg, on 22 January 1905, a crowd of workers and their families, led by Father Georgy Gapon (1870-1906), wanted to present to the tsar a petition for reforms. Gapon had already formed (with state permission) a union of factory workers in St. Petersburg called the Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers. Gapon's petition carried an impressive 150,000 signatures. The demands included a more representative system of government and greater freedom of speech and press. Workers wanted the right to form trade unions, the end of 12-hour working days, better pay, and insurance against accidents, an all too common occurrence in factories. Workers were not happy with secret police interference in their affairs, either. Peasants wanted more land and cheap credit to buy it, a fairer tax system, and better education provisions for their children.
The Sunday crowd was unarmed, and many even carried photographs of the tsar. When the crowd would not disperse, soldiers fired on them as they approached the Winter Palace. The demonstrators were then charged down by Cossack cavalry. Over 1,000 people were killed, and many more were wounded in the incident, which immediately became known as 'Bloody Sunday'. Shock over Bloody Sunday quickly turned to a determination by all kinds of social groups to push harder for change. In case the tsar was not yet aware of the seriousness of the situation, on 17 February, his uncle, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia (1857-1905), governor-general of Moscow, was assassinated when a bomb was thrown into his carriage. Russia, for the first time in its history, was about to experience a prolonged and society-wide uprising against authority.
Worker Strikes
Following Bloody Sunday, a general strike was called in St. Petersburg. Students similarly went on strike, shutting down high schools. The tsar's ideal image as a just and rightful ruler had been shattered, at least in the cities. As one worker at the Blood Sunday march recorded: "On this day I was born a second time, but now not as an all-forgiving and all-forgetting child, but as an embittered man, prepared to struggle and to triumph" (Hosking, 409).
In May, the Union of Unions was formed led by the liberal Pavel Nikolayevich Milyukov (1859-1943), a "federation of recently formed associations of lawyers, engineers, school teachers, professors, doctors, pharmacists, veterinarians, journalists, agronomists, railwaymen, peasants, feminists, and Jewish activists" (Shukman, 107). This Union was born from the League of Liberation, which had been led by Milyukov and called for a representative parliament in 1904.
More general and local strikes followed in October. Printers in Moscow went on strike on 19 September, and soon other professions joined them. St. Petersburg workers also went on strike. Things really became problematic for the authorities when the Moscow railway workers went on strike in the first days of October. Moscow was the railway hub of the empire, but within days, railway workers in other cities joined the strike, which became hugely disruptive. Other professions, such as coal miners, tool makers, bakers, printers, textile workers, and dock workers, joined in, as did students and intellectuals, not only in Russia but across the empire. By the middle of October, many cities came to a complete standstill. In Moscow, one newspaper reported:
Neither gas nor electric lights work…A majority of the shops are closed, and the entrances and windows are boarded up with grilles and shutters…In various parts of the city, water is available [only] at certain times.
(Hosking, 410-11)
In St. Petersburg, the Soviet of Workers' Deputies was formed. This soviet (meaning 'council'), led by Georgy Stepanovich Khurstalev-Nosar (1877-1919) as chairman and with Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) as deputy, "began as a central coordinating strike committee and developed into the mouthpiece for the entire revolutionary labour movement" (Brown, 97). Soviets sprang up everywhere, organising striking workers at a local level and representing the workers' demands to business owners and local authorities. The soviets called for change, in particular, an 8-hour limit to the working day. The problem for the revolutionaries, though, was that they had no unified and central organisation and no undisputed leadership. The left had been divided since 1903 between the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) and the Mensheviks led by Julius Martov (1873-1923), two groups who fundamentally disagreed on how broad a membership base to foster and what the best means to secure change in Tsarist Russia was.
Peasant Revolts
In the early 20th century, Russia remained a semi-feudal society, even if serfdom had been abolished in 1861. A national census conducted in 1897 revealed that over 85% of the population were peasants. The general population had increased by 300% over the 19th century, and land shortage was a real problem.
There were numerous peasant revolts through 1905 as peasants, traditional supporters of the tsar if anyone was, seized land they believed was theirs by right since they were the ones who worked it. The "peasants dispossessed private landowners of their land, livestock and implements, often destroying their houses and killing those landowners in the process" (Shukman, 13). Parts of the countryside were soon out of control, particularly in western Russia. So many farmhouses and manor houses were burned, the red glow the flames created in the night sky became known as the 'red cockerel'. As with the workers, the peasants lacked both weapons (beyond farming implements) and a centralised structure that could coordinate the uprisings into a more serious challenge to the government. As it was, the police and army easily quashed the rebellions, and tens of thousands of peasants were arrested, exiled, or flogged in punishment.
The Potemkin Mutiny
On 14 May 1905, the terrible news was received at home that the Imperial Baltic Naval Fleet had been destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima in the ongoing Russo-Japanese War. Russia lost 21 ships, including six battleships, while the Japanese lost just three torpedo boats. Odessa, home of the Black Sea Naval Fleet, experienced eruptions of street fighting amongst protestors, and martial law was declared there on 15 June. This was the day the battleship Potemkin, flagship of the fleet, arrived in port. Earlier in June, sailors of the Potemkin had staged a mutiny and taken over the ship. The sailors were tired of the harsh discipline in the navy and poor food, and there had long been tensions between the aristocratic officers and ordinary seamen. Fortunately for the tsar, the Potemkin mutineers did not fire the battleship's guns at any government forces, and they failed to convince sailors on other ships to join them. The Potemkin sailed off to Romania. There were, however, riots in the military bases at Kronstadt (October) and Sevastopol (November).
Compromise: The October Manifesto
Initially, the tsar wanted to use force to repress the revolution. Detached from the real world in his autocratic cocoon, Nicholas convinced himself it was his duty to maintain the system as it was: "I swore at my accession to guard intact the form of government that I received from my father and to hand it on to my successor. Nothing can relieve me of my oath." (Service, 10). Further, the tsar believed autocracy was actually the best form of governance. Nicholas once confided to a relative: "I'll never agree to a representative form of government because I consider it harmful to the people whom God has entrusted to me" (Montefiore, 521).
The tsar's advisers, including the respected statesman Sergei Witte (1849-1915), persuaded Nicholas of the folly of meeting violence with violence since this could surely only end in a country-wide civil war. The tsar must give some concessions, said his advisors. In mid-February, Nicholas went for the absolute minimum and offered the people an elected parliament that would offer advice to the tsar and his select council of ministers regarding legislation. When this was rejected as nowhere near what was expected, Nicholas created a list of tame proposals, the August Manifesto. These proposals were, predictably, also rejected by most liberals. The tsar then saw sense and announced on 17 October an amnesty and deeper reform measures, all set down in a document which became known as the October Manifesto.
This October Manifesto at least divided the opposition to the tsar, since the manifesto largely satisfied the more moderate liberals and those in society who were neither peasants nor workers. The latter two groups and certain radicals were prepared to fight on, but Nicholas was aided by the continued loyalty of the police and the return of the army following the end of the Russo-Japanese War (which Russia had humiliatingly lost by August 1905). The army remained loyal to the tsar, and to be sure of this, soldiers' pay was doubled and their food improved. The army was used with the police and secret police (Okhrana) as a triple-edged tool to brutally repress opposition.
Nicholas' October Manifesto guaranteed certain civil rights for his subjects; there was a greater freedom of the press and assembly. Trade unions, political parties, strikes, and student political meetings were all now allowed. The police and other authorities did keep a close watch on political activities of any kind, and journalists received fines or were imprisoned for anything deemed too radical. Nicholas also created a new parliament, which consisted of the Council of State (upper house) and the Duma (lower house). Half of the upper house members were nominated, and the rest came from the upper classes. Members of the Duma were elected by the general population, although most of the voting was indirect. The Duma would be involved in the creation of all future laws. In effect, the tsar had promised the people he would become a constitutional monarch.
The general strike ended, and the middle classes welcomed a restoration of law and order. Some workers wanted more, and there were several lesser strikes, but the authorities now had the upper hand. Countless arrests were made of trouble-making ringleaders. The exception was Moscow, where a strike turned into an armed uprising in December 1905. The tsar's Semyonovsky Guards, armed with artillery and machine guns, brutally repressed the uprising and killed 3,000 civilians.
The first Duma met in April 1906 but did not offer very much by way of an independent political body, since ministers were directly responsible to the tsar, and their powers concerning finance were limited. The Duma became even less representative when the electoral system was altered to greatly favour better-off landowners in 1907 (women could not vote, and neither could soldiers and some workers). The landed gentry might have been appeased, but the peasantry and working class continued to simmer with discontent. In contrast, right-wing supporters of the tsar were outraged he should have been made to bow to the masses, and they blamed a Jewish-led conspiracy for bringing about such an intolerable situation. Far-right and anti-Semitic organisations, collectively called the Black Hundreds, sprang up and attacked not only Jewish people but also workers, liberals, and students.
Aftermath
The Revolution of 1905, then, had failed as a revolution in the sense that it did not replace one power with another. It had been a close thing, though, as the historian C. Read notes: "Autocracy was under assault from all quarters and it only escaped by the skin of its teeth" (75). Despite the warning, Nicholas never saw the precariousness of his position, and he blithely carried on ruling Russia as he and his ancestors always had done. Pyotr Stolypin (1862-1911) was made prime minister in 1906, and he wasted no time in employing the police force to brutally repress any lingering revolts across Russia. Stolypin declared martial law in August 1906, rounded up rebels, and had them tried in military courts where appeals were forbidden. Key members of the St. Petersburg Soviet were arrested, and many were exiled from December 1906.
After the violence, Stolypin did set about reforming Russia. The health service was improved and the education system, too; over the next decade, 50,000 new primary schools were created. Stolypin's land reforms permitted peasants greater freedom of movement; they could now acquire cheap loans to buy land and better equipment, and they could consolidate disparate strips of land they worked into single, more efficient farms. Taxes were reduced, and migration to new farmlands in unexploited places like Siberia was encouraged. Stolypin's reforms were, unfortunately, only partially effective. The tsar's determination to avoid any deeper reforms, the weakness of the Duma, the unsavoury relationship between the royal family and the self-proclaimed holy man Grigori Rasputin, and then Russia's disastrous entry into the First World War (1914-18), culminated in the violent Russian Revolution of 1917 (actually two revolutions, one in February and the second in October), when the Tsar was deposed and Soviet Russia was established with Lenin as its leader. It was Lenin who recognised that the events of 1905 had been a "dress rehearsal for revolution" (Wood, 34).
