How Did The Tsar Survive The 1905 Revolution?

There were many concessions made by the Tsar in a bid to save his regime and for what he gave the people, he had a lot of support for the concessions. Although there were some people who began to see that they were not all what they were meant to be and much of the concessions still did not in fact reduce the Tsars power. This would be realised by many of the people and would once again produce unrest in the system 11 years later in 1917.  

The greatest reason that the tsar stayed in power, in my opinion, was probably most likely the failings of the opposition. Unlike during the revolution of 1917, the opposition were not one big group and worked more or less against each other instead of joining powers and uniting against the Tsar. In this effect, if the opposition had have become more organised I think that the Tsar would indeed have been overturned in 1905 but the opposition did not organise themselves in the proper way and so the Tsar had the upper hand. When the tsar issued the concessions in the October Manifesto, all the social groups thought that this was their chance to make a difference and so they all had their own agendas. These did not all go together and so much of the Duma, which the Tsar had set up, was groups arguing over things and actually rarely getting things done. This could have been sheer luck for the Tsar or he might have planned it to go this way as he knew that the groups would not have got along or agreed on matters. Nevertheless this was a good move on the Tsars hand and once again he had the upper hand. Many of the motives that were passed in the Duma were also far more economical than they were political. This meant that in actual fact the tsar still held a lot of power. According to article 87 the Tsar had the power to pass laws when the Duma was in recess. He was still in charge of foreign policy and was still able to rule his empire. This put him in virtually the same amount of control as he had before as he now had the deciding decision on every matter no matter what the duma said. The only real major change that the Tsar’s concessions made to the people were that land was now more efficiently used by the peasantry, universal suffrage was available and freedom of speech was now available. Political parties could meet and there were now unions for the working class. There were many changes to the system but as far as how much power the Tsar had, virtually nothing had changed.

In order for a leader of an autocracy, such as Russia’s Tsar, their use of force is imperative for them to keep control of the people and the interests of the country. The Tsars use of force was crucial during the times leading to 1905. The troops were relied upon to disperse the crowds of protestors prior to the making of concessions. Father Georgi Gapon led one of these protests in January 1905. He led the crowd to the winter palace, where the Tsar was thought to be residing at the time, to hand him a petition of the people. More than 150 000 people attended the march. The Tsars army met them and they shot at the people before they were able to reach the gates of the winter palace. This was to become known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. This caused mass unrest among the people because at the time it was thought that the orders to fire on the protestors was given to the soldiers directly from the Tsar himself, although recent evidence shows this to be untrue. There were many protests going on all the time but this one had a dramatic impact as it was thought that the Tsar was so heartless he didn’t even care about the lives of his own people. The army was persistently used to break up strikes by opening fire on them and there were many people killed during the protests. The Tsar also had another method of force, which he used many times during these periods of unrest. These were the Okhrana. These were the Tsars secret police that he used to neutralize any opposing political party which were spreading distrust of the Tsar among the people of Russia. The Tsars survival depended on his use of force and once again if he had not made any concessions than he would have been unable to keep the power of his country in balance.

The Tsar was on the blink of being overthrown in 1905 – 1906 had he not made the concessions to his people that he did. They were his lifeline and helped him gain his control back of Russia. The concessions did not meet the wants of the people as intended they did however hold back the unrest that the people felt for the Tsar for another 11 years. In the space of those 11 years many things were done to try and keep the unrest of the people at bay but it was “Too little, too late”. The revolution of 1905 wasn’t really a revolution at all but was more of an uprising against the system of leadership at the time and the term revolution suggests that the system is totally turned around and a new governing body is brought in. this however was not the case in Russia. After this so called revolution the Tsar still held most of his powers he did before the revolution and so it in fact did nothing to take away any of his powers. All the concessions did was to grant the people the right to a duma and the freedom of speech and meeting for political parties. But the Tsar watered down the Duma so much that no one voter really had much effect in the way the country was run and if the Tsar didn’t like what the duma was doing than he had the power to dissolve it at his own will. The people that did eventually make it to the Duma found that it was mostly run and controlled by the nobility. This eventually led to the unrest of the people emerging again in the years leading to and during the war and an eventual revolution.