Tsar Nicholas II ruled over the Russian Empire from 1894. He inherited an empire with significant
structural problems regarding land and the peasantry, ethnic friction, a rapidly growing
urban proletariat and a similarly growing educated middle class with liberal leanings.
Eventually, Tsar Nicholas was disposed of during the 1917 February Revolution,
only to be executed by the Bolsheviks, who grabbed power and unleashed a civil war in October.
These revolutions ended the Russian Empire, but one significant revolution preceded them.
The 1905 Russian Revolution was referred to by Vladimir Lenin as the 'Great Dress Rehearsal',
paving the way for the eventual installation of a communist state over a decade later.
The 1905 Revolution, in contrast to the later ones, began in a non-violent manner.
In February that year, a peaceful procession of over 100-thousand
unarmed civilians made their way towards his Winter Palace. But true in the Russian spirit,
that day would enter the history books as Bloody Sunday. Imperial soldiers managed to… well,
turn it bloody with the indiscriminate slaughter of protesting civilians.
Massive strikes and protests, obviously, ensued. The aftermath of what happened that day was an
extraordinarily complex event that radically changed Russia's political culture and society.
Historical Background
On January 22 1905, the first clash between parties occurred in Saint Petersburg.
The two parties facing each other on this cold, wet winters day were working-class citizens
and soldiers loyal to the Tsar. Five colonnes of working-class citizens slowly made their way
to the city centre, where the Palace Square and Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II were located.
It was a peaceful demonstration, and nothing gave any indication that this day
would enter history as "Bloody Sunday". The group of protesters was unarmed,
showcasing icons and images of Tsar Nicholas II, chanting the Russian anthem "God Save the Tsar".
The crowd was led by a youthful priest of the Orthodox Church, Georgy Gapon.
He wasn't a revolutionary but an organiser of the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers,
which had its goal to hear and contain the growing dissatisfaction of the proletariat
instead of antagonising it. This Assembly was even patronised by the police and secret
service, the Okhrana, of which Gapon, not entirely coincidentally, was an informant.
Now, the core of the strike consisted of workers of the large railway and artillery factories
of Putilov, and this strike was characteristic of the sentiment throughout Russia. Low wages,
long working days, increasing tax pressure due to the Russo-Japanese war and the lack of civil
rights and means to voice political opinions all made for a near revolutionary sentiment
among the Russian people. Gapon was to hand over a petition, signed by 135.000 people, requesting
the Tsar for an eight-hour working day, a minimum daily wage of one ruble (about fifty cents) and
a democratically elected Constituent Assembly to introduce a representative government gradually.
The strikers figured that if they were to turn up at the Tsar's palace
and see they were peaceful instead of aggressive, he would show solidarity with the working class.
Once the Tsar realised their situation wasn't their own fault, he would surely give in.
Bloody Sunday
Well, Tsar Nicholas II wasn't too enthusiastic about tearing down the 'wall' between the monarchy
and its citizens. On the night before the worker's procession, Nicholas and his family abandoned
the Winter Palace and left for the Tsarskoye Selo palace a few kilometres outside the city.
He tasked his Minister of Interior, Pyotr Sviatopolk-Mirsky, Grand Duke Vladimir
Alexandrovich, his generals and police commissars to maintain order in the city.
Just as every Imperial civil servant, they feared any form of public protest,
no matter how peaceful the intentions were. As the procession grew more discontent and
voiced their anger and frustration over the rising taxes, lack of food
and horrible working conditions, these men became more and more concerned over the crowd.
The atmosphere in Saint Petersburg was the same as in the rest of Russia:
tense. Strikes erupted in towns and villages, and due to a strike at printing presses, there hadn't
been a newspaper for two days. As I mentioned, the workers of the Putilov factories went on strike
as well. Government officials figured that under these circumstances, violence could quickly erupt.
As over 100.000 people held the procession through Saint Petersburg, the men in charge figured
the only response to these events was with brutal force, re-establishing the autocratic authority
over the masses. Orders were given to the soldiers not to let the masses come too close to the Winter
Palace, though long before the procession had reached the square, people were forced
to a halt by heavily armed police detachments. It isn't exactly clear what happened; all that
is known is that the soldiers suddenly started firing at the crowd without provocation. Within
several minutes between 100 and 1000 people were dead and the crowd fled in turmoil. The autocracy
sure displayed her power, but this was merely the first collision between the Russian people
and the Russian monarchy. What happened today had long-lasting effects on Russian society.
The Russian Revolution and Terrorist Activity
To Russian revolutionaries, the events on Bloody Sunday were a reason to rejoice:
the first signs of the imminent revolution were finally showing. Leon Trotsky concluded: "The
revolution has begun", although the Bolsheviks would not seize power for another twelve years.
Tsar Nicholas, writing in his diary about that day, had a different vision of events.
The deaths saddened him, but the diary entry emphasised his mother visiting him and his family.
Talk about priorities. Now, the result of Bloody
Sunday was a cataclysmic eruption of social disorder, and all social strata,
regions and nationalities of the empire were involved one way or the another.
And as time went on, the government started losing its grip on events more and more,
and Russia plummeted into a state that could be described as anarchy. The most serious development
was not just that industrial workers went on strike, but civil servants, students, peasants,
and even servants joined the movement. By the end of January, over 400.000
people were on strike, which would increase up to 2.5 million later that year.
Non-Russian territories were affected most, in Poland with the Lodz insurrection, Finland and
the Baltics. Nationalist feelings increased among the non-Russian population and increased hostility
against the government. In regions such as Bessarabia, the antisemitic and far-right
elements were utilised to create the Union of the Russian People, a pro-monarchist political
party. In other parts, such as Charkov and Yekaterinoslav, street fighting was no rare sight.
And the Tsar and the Russian government? They grew increasingly isolated. To complicate things even
further, the Russo-Japanese war was still waging on. Russia suffered significant losses during
the Battle of Mukden, denting the prestige of the Tsar and government even further.
Around this time, the workers began organising themselves. Peasants, living nearly below the
means of existence and in practice existing as if they were serfs, began plundering the
properties of their landowners. The liberal middle classes generally supported all these upheavals,
if only passively, and blamed the government for the bloodshed. As for the war with Japan, Tsar
Nicholas sent the Baltic Fleet on an epic voyage to Vladivostok to replace the lost Far Eastern
Squadron. The Japanese navy nearly completely destroyed the Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in May
1905, and the Tsar and his government had no other option at this point but to sue for peace.
These events took place against the background of rapidly growing civil unrest. During spring, over
a million workers struck in St Petersburg alone. The peasant and worker strikes went combined with
organised terrorist attacks on government officials. On June 30, Nikolai Bobrikov,
the Governor-General of Finland, was killed. Vyacheslav von Plehve, the minister of interior,
was killed shortly after. A surprising assassination was the murder of Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich of Russia, the uncle of the Tsar and not much later, Viktor Sakharov. Terrorists killed
the former Minister of War. Unrest spread all over Russia and reached its peak over summer as Central
Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic Provinces, and the Caucasus saw strikes, rebellion and mutinies.
Perhaps the most well-known event was the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin of the Black Sea Fleet.
During this mutiny, the entire crew of the battleship rose against its officers, killing
seven out of eighteen of them. Sergei Eisenstein has immortalised the entire event in his 1925 film
The Battleship Potemkin. Anyway, this mutiny, together with several other insurgencies around
this time, was a warning sign to Tsar Nicholas that even his loyal troops could turn on him.
Opposition closes ranks
Chaos, turmoil and strikes caused industry and production to halt throughout Russia.
Taxes and prices increased, causing inflation and economic unrest. As the year progressed,
the resistance against the autocratic regime kept growing. Now teachers, technicians, doctors,
lawyers and people from all walks of life joined the unions of workers in solidarity. Eventually,
fourteen of these unions allied themselves in the Union of Unions under the liberal politician Pavel
Milyukov. These liberal movements supported constitutional reform and a representative
government. They voiced their ideas at numerous congresses and lectures at universities, which
became the centres for revolutionary meetings. There were other openly revolutionary parties,
following the Marxist and socialist thought with the support of the masses instead
of the middle-class. The Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, established in 1898, was split
between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. These contained future leading figures of the Soviet Union:
Lev Trotsky, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. At this stage, these leftist parties
didn't have that much influence yet, though they certainly shouldn't be underestimated.
Both Lenin and Trotsky were abroad in 1905, and only Trotsky returned upon hearing of the
revolution. He played an important role later that year. There were other groups on the left;
Members of the Socialist Revolutionary party had their supporters base among the peasantry
and not the proletariat. There wasn't much cohesion among the left-wing and definitely not
among the opposition, making it difficult to organise an all-out revolution.
Nicholas' Reaction
The first response of Tsar Nicholas after Bloody Sunday was on March 3,
after receiving advice from Sergey Witte. He advised the Tsar to publish a manifesto. Nicholas
did so, confirming his faith in the autocratic regime and condemning all those who violated
the fundamental laws of the Russian state. At the same time, he published a contradictory
manifesto in which he promised to establish a consultative body based on some form of election.
The election procedure for this body was anything but representative, as it became known in August,
and its powers appeared to be limited. It thus had no effect, and in autumn, the strike movement
in the cities resumed with even greater force. The Tsar wasn't willing to give in,
disregarding widespread peasant uprisings across the land. At the end of September,
it wasn't just peasants anymore, but once again, people from all walks of life joined the strike,
among which bakers, railway employees and the postal telegraph employees,
bank clerks and what not. In October, the strikes turned into a general strike,
directed against the Tsar and demanding a democratic republic. It was at this point, due to
the absence of other organisations, the workers in Saint Petersburg began forming a Soviet.
The Saint Petersburg Soviet
Workers did what they could to organise themselves. They improvised meetings, protests
and strikes and got in touch with the workers. Organisation took place, and the result was a new
type of workers association, the Soviet (Council) of Workers' Deputies. The Social Democrats
remained dubious about these soviets at first, but the Mensheviks realised their potential.
According to Geoffrey Hosking, the first one was set up in the textile town of Ivanovo-Voznesensk
to coordinate a general strike. Still, the one established in Saint Petersburg would experience
one of the greatest moments of the soviets in October 1905. As leaders of the strike slowly
trod forward, the Saint Petersburg workers soviet held a meeting. It was a rough meeting with some
resemblance to primitive democracy. Subsequently, similar soviets emerged throughout the country.
Eventually, the Saint Petersburg soviet had around 560 delegates, each representing
approximately 500 workers. Because these Soviets could convince the workers to get back to work,
even the government recognised their authority. The soviet organised a general strike that
disrupted normal production and communications around large parts of the empire. The Russian
economy, once again, came to a standstill. Even the imperial ballet refused to perform. The
soviet became the vanguard of the attack on the autocracy. The powers of revolution in Russia had,
in a way, shaped their own institutions when other institutions did not represent their interests.
And its Chairman? It was Leon Trotsky. After the arrest of its former chairman,
Georgy Nosara, Trotsky was elected under the name of Yanovsky.
The Aftermath
The general strike throughout the country paralysed virtually every industry. It twisted
the Tsar's arm, and he could do nothing but grant the strikers and revolutionaries what they wanted.
Finally, on October 17, the Tsar conceded that Russia would receive a representative legislature,
named the Duma, and some sort of constitution. So, in short, this October Manifesto promised civil
liberties and an elected legislative assembly. On October 18, huge crowds took to the streets
their celebrations as Leon Trotsky spoke to them from the balcony of the university building.
The strike ended. Later that year, the Bolsheviks tried to use the momentum they thought they had.
Now was the time to ignite a proper revolution and overthrow the Tsar. The result was an insurrection
in the factory districts of Moscow in December, which failed, and was suppressed mercilessly
by the army and police. That same month, Trotsky was arrested and sent into exile.
It didn't matter for the revolution, though, as the Russians would finally receive their
civil liberties and elected body. It cost the Russian population over 15.000 lives.
And that was, in fact, the revolution of 1905. The revolution's climax was reached during the
late summer when nearly every facet of life in Russia came to a standstill.
The government was without power, and the Russian people were openly rebelling against the monarchy.
So… what about this elected body, the Duma? And what about the civil liberties the
Russians would receive? And what about the Tsar? Did he finally liberalise his policy?
Well, in short, yes and no. The Tsar's October Manifesta was a precursor of the first Russian
constitution, issued in 1906. This rendered the Empire a constitutional monarchy. The Duma,
the body that resembled a parliament, was instated as well. But Tsar Nicholas, together with Minister
Sergei Witte, rewrote the constitution. You're probably not surprised by this anymore, but
they significantly curbed the Duma's influence. There is an older video on my channel detailing
the workings of the Duma and effects it had on the Russian monarchy, I'll link it on screen shortly.