How Did The Tsar Survive 1905?

Some say the Tsar was lucky to survive the revolution of 1905. There are many different reasons why the Tsar survived and there are also many different reasons his position was put under threat in the first place.

Russia at the time before its split was a huge country and consequently this would have meant the people would have a diverse opinion on how the country should be run and who should run it. This would have also meant a lot of different groups of people causing problems like conflict and lack of communication. The problem that this raised was there lack of unity and unorganised, this posed little threat to the tsar as there was simply no coordination between the groups and they did not react as a unit at the same time. The tsar’s opposition failed to put forward an alternative to Russia’s political state. Many historians feel that if the groups had leadership and a direction as one then the outcome of 1905 could have been completely different. The Tsar was lucky in the sense that some groups strived for better economical reasons over political, the peasants were keen on obtaining land, workers and soldiers wanted better working conditions and pay and the middle class sought a constitutional monarchy.

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Bloody Sunday was a good example of the Tsar’s strengths. By January 1905 there were 120,000 workers on strike, they were planning to hand the Tsar a petition, but as the Tsar had the army on his side this crushed any violent opposition quite easily, but this also contributed badly for the tsar’s reputation as women and children were killed during the attacks. Although the opposition to the Tsar wanted him out they never really suggested a viable alternative to the Tsar and what could be done about recovering Russia from its current state, plus the opposition was seen as judicious other than an uprising force. The civilians of Russia were angered at the losses made in the Russo-Japanese war, as they felt it was a pointless war. One of the primary reasons the Tsar survived 1905 was his determination to survive, he believed that Russia’s size meant that the only effective way of ruling was by an autocracy and that any other way would result in Russia falling apart. The Tsar employed Durnovo as an internal minister who applied repression to stop anyone rising up to the Tsar, he was later replaced by Stolypin who was notoriously harsh and ruthless, his figures of 1,114 by prosecution was proof of this and this figure was almost certainly greater.

When uprising did occur they were small number and not collective and were easily dealt with. A good example of this was in October 1905 when the workers and the liberals struck together but the Tsar had little problem in containing this threat. Too many people took the Duma for granted as if it would be the way that the Tsar would collapse but this was not the case as the Tsar was separate from the Duma.

The Tsar made timely interventions to control attempted revolutions the October Manifesto was created so the Tsar basically unified his cabinet enabling Witte to become Prime Minister. The Tsar tightened his grip on the country when he introduced the Fundamental Laws in April 1906. The tsar could now veto any legislative measures made by the Duma and he also placed restrictions on the Duma such as controlling the budget. So if the Duma stepped out of line the Tsar was not afraid to dissolve it. The army was very loyal to the Tsar and with them under command of the Tsar large crowds were easy to deal with as people were afraid to stand up to the Army in fear of being killed.

In conclusion it was not necessarily the Tsar’s strengths that kept him in power it was the lack of organisation with the opposition. The army played a major part in the Tsar surviving the revolution of 1905, timely decisions (not always be the Tsar himself) that were made helped him to keep a hold of the country for longer.