There were not only social problems in Russia, but also economic problems. Russia was suffering at the time a large Recession, making their economy very poor. This created mass unemployment, which made would-be workers very angry because they could not get money to fund their own houses or food. Many workers were struck by poverty due to the recession and unemployment. The lack of the minimum wage, which was not introduced to Russia until later in the 20th century, was another reason for the revolution. Those who could get jobs were paid very small amounts, some too small to survive with even very basic luxuries like two meals a day. This caused indignation on a very large scale, large enough that a revolution might be able to take place because of it. The poor working conditions were an additional problem to the non-existence of a minimum wage, which made workers feel like they were not being treated fairly, and that they should have basic rights, which meant that they were paid reasonable amounts and worked in conditions that were not harmful to them.
Reformers were very common in the months prior to the 1905 revolution. A Union of Unions was created to enforce fair workers rights, but the Tsar did not meet this with much delight. Many reformers stirred up commotion between the ruler and the people, in an attempt to bring the monarchy down and begin a reformation of the country. The government proceeded to relax censorship to try to appease opposition – but this just led to a flood of anti-Tsarist propaganda. A reformer called Egor Sazanov on 28th July 1904 through a bomb into the carriage containing Vyacheslav Plehve, the then Secretary Of State for Finnish Affairs. The head of the Terrorist Brigade of the Social Revolutionary Party ordered the assassination. Many of the lower classes were very happy that this happened, because Plehve played a large part in the attempted Russification of other cultures, which resulted in him persecuting many Jews, Armenians and other poor cultures living in Russia at the time.
Tsar Nicholas II made a huge gamble from day one when the Russo-Japanese War came about in 1904. The war was initially greeted with some enthusiasm, but not long after that Russia began to slowly lose the war. The Japanese were, although lacking in numbers, better trained and better equipped. A lot was at stake for the Tsar but he wanted to go to war so that he could gain control of Korea and Manchuria. The lower classes were outraged by this spurt of idiocy. The peasants were even more aggravated because the Tsar injected huge amounts of money into the war with Japan, which turned out to be a complete waste. This money could have been used to help to sort out the social inequality that was so clear in Russia at the time. The money that was put into the war also made the economy even weaker. Not only the money wasted was an issue, but also the country’s humiliation and the follow on of huge amounts of unemployment in Russia. Mutinies and unrest followed as the people of Russia became restless and called for reform.
Bloody Sunday was Russia’s equivalent of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, which in turn was arguably the main reason for the start of the First World War. Bloody Sunday occurred on the 9th January 1905. Huge groups of protesters gathered in St. Petersburg, the capital of Russia, demanding a list of things from the Tsar in a position. The people did not realise that the Tsar was not actually in St. Petersburg at all. The protest was unarmed and peaceful, which is one of the reasons why there was such a huge outcry after hundreds of people were killed and possibly thousands more injured, due to shooting by the Tsar’s security and by trampling from the mass panic of the event. The people of Russia knew revolution must be secured for the madness to end, and Bloody Sunday was the beginning of it.
To conclude, the evidence shows that there were many different reasons for the 1905 revolution in Russia. Bloody Sunday in my opinion was the most important, due to such a large amount of people being killed after a peaceful protest. Temperatures between the government and its people had been rising for a long time, back before 1850, and the peasants’ problems and the very weak economy were also major factors into the reasons for this reformation.
