The grievances that the workers wanted to change were that they wanted their hours of work reduced and there pay increased to a rouble a day. The workers also wanted better living and working conditions. The workers wanted to change the law as the workers couldn’t go on strikes because trade unions were prohibited. The workers couldn’t be represented in parliament, because parliament had not been created by then.
A grievance that the workers, peasants and the middle class suffered from was that the government’s policies to develop industry had disastrous effects on the people. Even though oil and coil production trebled, and the iron production quadrupled, the peasants that moved to the major cities realised that they would have found themselves better off staying in the countryside as their conditions hardly improved. The workers couldn’t change their conditions, as trade unions were banned.
In Russia, there was this organisation called the Okhrana, this was the Tsar’s secret police whose job was too seek out opponents to the Tsar and imprison them. The workers found it hard to order a strike or a march, as they didn’t know if a member of the Okhrana was about as well as there not being trade unions.
During the spring and summer, peasants moved into the city to earn more money for the family before the harvest. This brought overcrowding and disease into the cities and in some cases, even death.
In 1904, the Tsar (Nicolas II) declared war on Japan because he wanted to draw away the attention of the unpopularity of himself. The unpopularity was that the industrial workers blamed the Tsar for their problems. These problems included the their awful lifestyles. Before this war, there were rumours of the Russian people organising to take action against the Tsar. The Tsar, at that time, needed a plan to “shine the light” away from him. A war with Japan seemed a good idea as the Japanese were trying to invade Manchuria. He thought that if Russia won, that would please the Russian people and put him in a good “light”. This was not to happen as Russia lost dreadfully. This war was at the front of the Russian peoples minds as the war ended a week before the 1905 revolution.
There were a quite few direct results from the war that included the tax rise on food, the reduction of wages for workers, and the decline of conditions in and around the city. Also there was a lack of food and supplies in the city so people were gradually becoming malnourished. Because of the war in Japan, people in the cities were getting less and less amount of food as lots of food had to be sent to the front lines of the war by the Trans-Siberian Railway. In the beginning of 1905, people felt that the only way to get their problems across would be to sign a petition and march to the Tsar’s residence, Winter Palace. When they arrived, they came met rows upon rows of armed troops who fired on the marchers. This event was known as the “Bloody Sunday” massacre. People felt that their lives would never change unless they tried to start a revolution.
By Andrew Riddell – 5P
