Bloody Sunday had a huge impact on the Russian people, the trauma of the massacre caused the people to look upon Nicholas as a killer, and gradually fall into a full-scale mutiny against him. Several sections in the Russian society were created and became involved in revolution. When the industrial workers began to go on strike causing the factories to close down and somewhat ‘paralyse’ the economy and performance of the country; the newly formed Soviets were now recognised as the new government. Middle classes and the peasants also joined due to their shock from Bloody Sunday. Other revolutionary groups were introduced such as the S.R’s, the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. This was exceptionally dangerous for the Tsar, as there were alternative forms of government being created. Even the army showed some signs of revolt when naval mutinies took place on Potemkin and three soldiers were thrown over-board. By October, Nicholas II found himself facing “the most united opposition in Romanov history” (Lynch).
Although it took a long time for the Tsar to respond to these events, many of the Soviets’ revolutionary acts failed to succeed. All the different revolutionary groups’ frustration and keenness of rebellion was recognized between one another, but it was not united. It is stressed that the key constituent to this revolution was the instability of economical progress such as peasants losing their land and having bad working conditions; not the political regime. This led to various concessions being made by the government in order to calm the objectors. The October Manifesto which was a booklet of concessions made by the Tsar (not reforms) was an advisory act from De Witte. “Personal inviolability…conscience, speech, assembly and union” was promised, along with the formation of a parliament or Duma, elected by the population. The St. Petersburg Soviet, lead by Trotsky stopped its strike on October 19 and people went back to work. Signs of the succession of the concessions begun to arouse.
Nicholas made sure that his armed forces remained loyal by ending the war with Japan, thus putting an end to the loss of hundreds of peasants’ relatives. He paid the soldiers all the wages that he owed them and improved army conditions. The soviets however, still did not trust Nicholas and carried out further strikes and demonstrations in revolt against him. The Moscow soviet called a general strike, which resulted in a 10-day fight between the Russian troops and the soviets- 10,000 workers were killed. He also had various members of the soviets captured and arrested. By the end of 1905, the Tsar started to re-gain his control over Russia.
Thus, we have established that Nicholas survived the 1905 revolution because:
- His opponents were not united
- There was no central leadership (the whole thing having flared up spontaneously)
- He had been willing to compromise at the critical moment
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Most of the army remained loyal
To preserve his gain in control over Russia, Nicholas appointed a chief minister whom he desperately needed in order to keep himself clear of any more revolts against the Tzar and his government. The man he chose was Peter Stolypin, a former governor of one of Russia’s provinces. He was rather forceful in his tactics used to repress revolution in Russia and if he had lived longer, these tactics would have fully succeeded. He dealt with revolutionaries and strikers quite harshly and allowed generals to trial, sentence and execute suspected revolutionaries when he sent the army to the countryside. He also controlled the movement f revolutionaries by issuing internal passports to citizens who travelled around within Russia. Stolypin completely banned articles issued in newspapers which criticized the Tsar and his government. These acts of repression had some advantages and disadvantages. They reduced the amount of assassinations of government official, and decreased the population of revolutionaries (they began to leave Russia). However, this also made the Tsar more unpopular and large groups such as the Bolsheviks were revived and became more organised in the sense that they began to use more effective anti-Tsarist propaganda.
Despite his harshness, Stolypin did give the peasants what they wanted, and that was land. He created Kulaks, which were a large number of mediocre land-owning peasants who supported the Tsar. He allowed them to buy land from village communes, leant money to increase the size of their farms and encouraged Nicholas to offer some of his land in Siberia, where peasants could move and set up their own farms. The only success was that these reforms made many kulaks, which occupied a larger percentage of the peasant population. Other than this, the reforms were very poorly handled with for the workers in the cities, and none of the peasants got what they were promised. This led to his assassination in 1911.
Nicholas was now in trouble. The conditions for another revolution began to accumulate once again, even before the First World War, which merely accelerated the revolution. This was because Russia’s structural problems were not solved after 1905. The only way they were dealt with was by sending the peasants back to work and away from the necks of the government
“The revolution, if that’s what it truly was, was a revolt driven by discontent with living—not discontent directed squarely at the government in and of itself. Or discontent fuelled by the horrors of a war yet to come.”
The peasants were still unhappy, as no serious attempt was made to share out land, regardless of Stolypin’s reforms. The Tzar began to break the promises he made in the October Manifesto. Industrial workers still worked long hours with low wages and poor factory conditions. Strikes were inclining once again between 1913 and 1914. Nicholas went through three Dumas before he approved of one (worked for more than one year) and even with this, he made his own rules. Therefore, there was no idealistic sense of democracy as he was still a strong autocratic monarch.
Moreover, the World War in 1914 came along, and this accelerated the uprising of another revolution. Instead of humility, this time there were numerous and more dramatic casualties, military defeats and territorial loss. The Russian people gave full support to Nicholas at this time, in hope of Russia’s success in defeating Germany and Austria-Hungary but this once again failed. Russia’s army was seriously weakened after the 1905 Russo-Japanese war. They lacked equipment, had poor medical care, poor tactics, poor commanding officers and many desertions. There were many bad consequences from this war and the frustration of the Russian people was heightened; they could no longer tolerate Nicholas’s ignorance. 87% of imports could no longer reach Russia because the western frontier was closed and railways were inconvenient most of the time. The back sea and Dardanelles were impassable because of the Germans and the Turks. It was chaos and the whole economy was reduced. To create more frustration, taxes were raised due to high war payments and Russia’s economy suffered inflation. The cost of living, demand of food, lack of man power, fuel; was all increased drastically. All was made even worse by the increase of the urban population during the war years. There were more factory strikes, and trade unions were banned. Could the circumstances been any worse? Russia was now economically and socially trashed.
Military status in 1915 was disastrous; it was so serious that Nicholas had to leave Petrograd to lead the army himself. The Tsar appointed himself as commander chief and became associated with military failure- what more to make his popularity deteriorate was the fact that he left his wife in charge of the government.
Stolypin’s replacement was Rasputin. He was holy man who had great influence on the Tsarina, as he had the power to heal her haemophiliac son. He had a firm religious background but his behaviour was very queer, and many Russians couldn’t understand why the Tsar and Tsarina were so fond of him. His continuous drunkenness and disgusting sex crave did little to enhance the reputation of the royal family. Rasputin interfered with the running of the country and most of his ideas were taken into action by the Tsarina. One big mistake she made was electing his “healing friends” as ministers. This badly affected her reputation as a German, as these actions were considered to be her own ideas, and she was suspected to be a spy. These ministers were incompetent and caused to government’s work to fail.
Yet, Nicholas still chose to rule as an autocrat and gave no concessions to the people. His way of governing turned the vast majority of Russia’s population against him. The government was failing miserably. Various organisations of factory owners were set up to arrange a supply of raw materials but Nicholas refused their help and did not want to be overthrown by the organisations as it challenged his authority. Many of the middle and working class were exasperated by then. Nicholas once again turned down his only form of help to control war effort from the Duma and by doing so, turned it against him.
“…the establishing of a responsible ministry,” wrote the Grand Duke George, “…is considered to be the only one which could avoid a general catastrophe”
By March 1917, the people in Petrograd became fully deprived of warmth and food, and lost many of their relatives to the war. They could no longer tolerate their conditions and the Tsarist regime. The steel works strike at Putilov on the 7th of March put 20000 of “the most politically conscious, and revolutionary workers in Russia.” By March 10th, great demonstrations were carried out in the streets of Petrograd, demanding for the abdication of the Tsar. Funnily enough, when Nicholas sent in his troops to stop them, they too, mutinied and joined the riots. Several soviet groups were reformed and the Duma chose a group of men to take over the government. Nicholas refused to resign and decided to go to Petrograd and stop this catastrophe himself nevertheless, his train was detoured and sent to meet with generals and advisors who could not and would not support him, having a strong belief that his abdication would fully divert revolution. Thus, on March 14th, Tsar Nicholas was forced to resign and formally abdicated the thrown.
Hence, it is established that the reasons why Tsarist rule ended in Russia in 1917 were:
· The influence of Rasputin
· The collapse of the Army
· Strikes and Food Shortages
It is therefore concluded that the 1917 revolutions were inevitable considering Nicholas’ deliberate violation of the 1905 promises and the failure of land reforms, industrial unrest, government repression and the revival of revolutionary parties. It was inevitable that the government was just unfit to deal with the crisis- whether it was through force or concessions.1905 bringing itself to the end of a humiliating war, while the 1917 revolution finding itself in the middle of a catastrophic war; 1905 had a military prepared to fight and support the Tsar, whereas the 1917 had no will power to defend the Tsar or itself. World War one, was by far, the worse economical impact Russia had to go through and thus abolishing the Tsar’s useless and inept control over Russia.
Quoted from the petition presented by the people led by Priest Father Gapon.
Quoted in The Revolution of 1905, A. Ascher
p.g 301- notes from “Mastering Modern World History”
quote from an essay found on www.courseworkbank.com
quoted in Nicholas II, Dominic Lieven
p.g 64 “Russia in Revolution