Though these may seem upon superficial analysis as a mainly social, and not political underlying causes of the revolution, all of the social discontent (which then led to the formation of revolutionary groups such as the Social Revolutionary Party) are in fact consequences of political laws and autocratic policy. Rural disintegration was significantly caused by the policy of Tsar Alexander II which included annual redemption payments for 49 years that ruined millions in the countryside. Unemployment in towns had it’s root in politics also ,where trade unions were not allowed by law and strikes were made illegal. The social discontent of the “revolutionaries” and much of the peasants and working class was therefore able to grow because of these autocratic measures and lack of political reforms that prevented them from improving their living conditions in the fear that the Tsar would loose power himself. The power of this political cause was seen best with the most immediate cause of the 1905 Revolution, Bloody Sunday. This event was intended to be a peaceful protest for the Tsar to act on their social conditions as Nicholas was still respected as a Tsar with divine importance, where many marchers at St. Petersburg carried pictures of him, so it could have been evidence for the claim that they did not want “to overthrow the Tsar” in the sense the protest was not against him personally. However Father Gapon’s March at St. Petersburg led to the dreadful massacre of 500 marchers shocking all of Russia and causing many agrarian riots and industrial strikes. Most significantly, Bloody Sunday became a turning point for many of the revolutionaries and working class, were more wanted more aggressive action and thus starting the revolution against Tsar Nicholas II. It is upon this analysis that one can safely say that to say that causes were not political is not only completely false, but immoral in removing any political responsibility in events so terrible in Russian history.
In addition to social discontent among civilians, was the great dissatisfaction among the military. Though weaknesses had always been evident with the lack of financial support and structure from the Tsar’s government, this was fully realised in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) where the army was substantially unprepared and suffered 50,000 casualties. In addition to this, the war worsened working and living conditions with reduced food supply leading to malnutrition and their loss was also a large blow to Russian nationalism and pride as a great power. Another immediate cause, indicative of military discontent was the mutiny on the Potemkin, which not only had the political cause in anger towards the lack of autocratic support, but also has the political consequence of threatening the Tsar as it showed he could not trust the armed forces. Examining the very much political nature of this key cause again shows the great unreliability of the claim.
The later part of the claim, which makes the mass generalisation that revolutionists did not want to overthrow the Tsar, is undeniably invalid. Firstly, to categorize all revolutionists with the same intention to maintain the Tsar’s autocracy is simply untrue. It is true that some of protesting groups, more specifically the liberals, did not want to overthrow the Tsar but wanted him to share power with a democratic parliament. However to even identify these liberal groups as “revolutionary” is highly questionable, where they were a relatively smaller group than the more aggressive revolutionaries (e.g. the Socialists) with little impact on any revolutionary actions after the assassination of the supportive Tsar Alexander II. For these reasons, the statement contains a little truth in acknowledging that the desire for mainting the Tsar existed, however still remains inaccurate as the majority of the revolutionaries had much different intentions.
In contrast to the liberals wanting to preserve the autocracy, was the Social Revolutionary Party who in wanting all land in Russia to be given to the mirs, wanted clearly to take land from the Tsar, the nobles and the orthodox church by overthrowing autocracy. Their policy platform differed from that of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Parties – both Bolshevik and Menshevik - in that it was not officially Marxist and the SRs believed that the 'labouring peasantry', as well as the industrial proletariat, would be the revolutionary class in Russia. However all three groups even though uncoordinated and differing in desired methods of revolution, still all wanted to overthrow the Tsar – unmistakably refuting any claim they did not.
The vitality of evaluating such bold claims such as ‘the underlying causes of the 1905 Revolution in Russia were not political. Whatever else the revolutionaries wanted, it was not the overthrow of the Tsar’ should always be greatly emphasized. This is for obtaining true accounts of the events themselves and to do so in the awareness of the existence of historical narratives which aim to wrongly alter historical events with intentions to form desired perceptions of certain figures and events for their own benefit. This has been previously evident in Russian history textbooks, memoirs and historical literature which could very well contain similar claims. It is then key in this particular instance that one limitedly appreciates , that although all underlying (and immediate) causes were essentially political, they did contain key social or economic elements that the claim unfortunately overstates ;such as social discontent due to autocratic policies and military dissatisfaction due to the weak management by the government. These were ‘brought to the surface’ by the triggering events Bloody Sunday and the Russo-Japanese War respectively. The second part of the claim, does have minor merits in acknowledging that the desire for the Tsar to be overthrown was not universal, however makes the crucial error in generalizing this to all of the 1905 revolutionaries, where the much more numerous and effective Social Revolutionary Party, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks clearly intended to overthrow the Tsar. One is therefore justified in disagreeing with the claim to a very great, even complete extent.
