In 1905 there was a revolution. This was mainly brought about because the Tsar was new and inexperienced. The Tsar went to war with Japan to make a good impression on Russian citizens and make a name for himself. This was not a clever move. Japan was far more advanced than the Tsar thought, he expected Japan to be an easy win situation. Russia was ill equipped, for war against a more organized and fully equipped Japanese army. Russia lost the war and the Tsar became very unpopular within Russia.
The other reason which led to the revolution was the fact that Tsar invested all the of the money Russia had into the war effort. This caused many factories to close due to the lack of raw materials and also due to the fact that most of the workers were away fighting the war against Japan.
The revolution started in St Petersburg on 22 January 1905 when troops shot at a defenceless crowd of workers. This “bloody Sunday” was continued for months by a series of strikes, riots and assassinations. This and the war defeat at the hands of Japan led to the Russian people to rebel against the Tsarist system. A manifesto was issued in October. The Tsar granted civil liberties and a representative duma was elected democratically.
The people who were satisfied with the manifesto formed a group called the Octoberist party, and for those unhappy with the manifesto the liberals, formed a group called the Constitutional Democratic Party. Social democrats who had organized a workers council in St Petersburg made an attempt to continue the constant days of strike and social reforms. The government arrested the workers group in December 1905 and put down a workers insurrection in Moscow.
When order had been restored the Tsar laid down the basic laws. The Tsars’ minister Stolypin made some attempt at economic reform. The attempts made failed miserably.
The Tsar had introduced a new police service called the Okhrana, these were a special police used for internal security affairs. The Okhrana was in a network with the civil service and the Cossacks. The Cossacks were Russian mounted police officers. The Tsar also demanded that the Russian Orthodox Church preach to the citizens that the Tsarist system was the right way to be governed and ruled and the Tsar believed that because these words were spoken in the house of god people would think they were the truth. This was an attempt to make the Russian citizens have more faith in the Tsar.
Stolypin was an important person during The Tsars rule over Russia. Stolypin was important because he was the one who clamped down on terrorism within Russia. He was the one who came up with the idea that terrorists should be tried in a military court, these courts are courts were the judges are all military officers, there are no outside influences within the court. It was very hard to win a case as a defendant in the military courts. The courts led to the execution of 1008 terrorists and also to 21000 terrorists being exiled to Siberia.
Stolypin abolished redemption duties on the peasants land, he also abolished mirs, allowing peasants to have bigger farms, therefore making them more profitable.
This made industry grow and subsequently wages of the peasants to rise. In 1911 Stolypin was assassinated. The Tsar lost his one and only strong minister. Stolypin was then replaced by a very untrustworthy figure Gregory Efimovich more commonly know as Rasputin.
Rasputin was a monk from Siberia; he claimed he was a mystic who had healing powers.
Stolypin had made the Tsar seem untouchable because of the special police forces he had introduced this had worked effectively and completely took out the possibility of any of the political groups challenging him.
Stloypin demanded that all opposition must be exiled out of Russia or even executed in some cases. All the social democrats split into different groups called Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The Mensheviks were the larger of the two groups. This group has the belief that Russia was ready for a violent revolution. The Mensheviks were obviously the smaller of the two groups. They thought Russia was still not ready for a revolution. The social revolutionists were stopped from the potential of rebellion by Stolypins' special police forces. The Russian liberals had limited opposition because of a hatred of violence. This problem prevented them from being an influential group because there was political violence in Russia. The social revolutionists could not react in a peaceful manner and make their voice heard.
