Was 1905 a Revolution?

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Dave Bawden

Was 1905 a Revolution?

“These days we call anything a revolution…”

To decide whether or not any event is a revolution I must first set some parameters to define my personal idea of what a revolution is. I believe a revolution to be a radical change of anything, not just political. I believe this as from history labelling the Renaissance as a revolution, yet it lacked political change. In my opinion hindsight is very important to whether or not something is a revolution. I think you can only decide if something was revolutionary if you can see its consequences. I do not think revolutionary thought is essential to whether or not an event is a revolution. To discover whether or not 1905 was a revolution I will have to study what happened, what people wanted to happen and the outcome.

         Any revolution has to be precipitated by political, social or economic problems. All of these were present in 1905. General unrest had been felt throughout Russia for years socially, politically and economically.

 1904 saw workers working eleven-hour days and the rise in prices of essential goods forced a twenty- percent drop in wages creating strong social unrest in the proletariat working classes. Consequently, men were laid off sparking Father Gapon, a priest who predominately preached in the workers areas of St. Petersburg, to march on the Winter Palace. This peaceful protest ended in bloody massacre when the Tsar did not prevent the guards from firing on the crowd. Hundreds were killed. What made 9th January 1905 so interesting was “many of the victims belonged to the ostensibly monarchist Assembly of Russian workers”. The fact they were loyalists to the Tsar, as was the Father Gapon, meant the Tsar demonstrated in the broad public eye that he had no sympathies for any of his population however loyal they were. This resulted in a generalised feeling of resentment towards the Tsar even amongst his supporters.

The political unrest was present through the survival of a poor Minister of the Interior, Viacheslav von Plehve, until 1904 when he was assassinated. This was the Tsar’s chance to quell the political unrest. He chose a new minister in Prince Sviatopolk-Mirskii. However, he had “political innocence” and promised vague reform. Basically he was weak and this weakness annoyed both wings of the political spectrum sustaining the political unrest throughout 1905.

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Economical unrest is best shown through the peasants. They were heavy under the weight of redemption payments and oppressive taxes and their economic unrest was definitely evident preceding 1905, and throughout 1905 they vented their anger. “The ferment in the countryside grew in a menacing way”, is a good quote describing their movements as the word ‘menacing’ seems to suggest they were very dangerous and seems to have connotations supporting the large numbers that there were. The word ‘ferment’ supports the fact it peasant unrest had been building up. One major achievement I can see from the peasant uprisings was ...

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