Account for the Political Situation in Russia on the eve of the 1905 Revolution.
Russia’s political situation on the eve of the 1905 Revolution was very tense, conservative and hostile. Reasons for this were: the continuous Autocratic rule believing that the Tsar was in control of the empire by divine rights, the backwardness of Russia compared to Europe, the Industrial development in 1980 which brought the Growth and Population booms in the city towns and Russia’s overestimation of their military forces.
When in 1894, Tsar Alexander II died suddenly of kidney failure his son Nicholas Romanov succeeded him as Nicolas II (1894-1917). Like his father before him he ruled under the conservative Autocratic rule. However unlike his father, Tsar Nicholas was ill-prepared to be Tsar and payed little attention to the political and social status’s of Russia. This was the main reason of Russia's Backwardness compared to the modernized, democratic Europe in the 19th Century. Tsar Nicholas with the help of his mentor Pobedonostev, focused on a Conservative Empire where the Tsar had all power. However he found the Russian Empire hard to control as it was a huge land mass and was very multicultural - the main religions being: Russian Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Islamic.