Adam Middleton
Assess the reasons for the 1905 Russian Revolution
Throughout the period leading up to the 1905 revolution there was increasing unrest among the peasants and the middle and working classes of Russia due to the mistreatment by Tsar Nicholas II.
One of the most important reasons for revolution in 1905 was the mistreatment of the peasants. The peasants were promised many things by the tsar such as more land and more food and the tsar promised that the peasants could live free without the fear of their land being repossessed by the tsar. However the tsar didn’t see through this promise and only gave the peasants a small strip of land to farm and many peasants died of malnutrition as they thought the tsar would give them food as he was rich and wealthy however this didn’t happen. The peasants were always scared that the tsar was going to take their land off them as they didn’t completely trust the tsar. This created mass tension because the peasants made up 95% of the overall population of Russia however the tsar wasn’t looking after them. The working classes were another group of people who were growing increasingly angry towards the tsar because they were being forced to work for hours on end for very little pay and in poor conditions. Also the fact that the working class were forced to live in cramped dirty overcrowded conditions. Also due to the industrialisation of Russia many of the workers in the country had come into the cities so this led to mass overcrowding of the cities and the tsar didn’t care. As a result of this famine strangled Russia and caused the peasants and the working classes more unrest and angst towards the tsar all of this coinciding with the peasants’ anger all created a dangerous environment for the tsar. It wasn’t just the working classes and the peasants who were becoming disgruntled with the tsar it there was a new middle class forming out of the intelligentsia who were the students who had travelled to other parts of Europe which were more politically advanced like the UK and had seen how successful democracy had been and how successful their countries were without autocracy and the intelligentsia wanted to live in a country where they had more of a say so this meant that educated people were also becoming more unhappy with tsarism which added more to the general unrest in the country. However despite all these factors there was no real push for revolution as of yet and to kickstart revolution a big event would need to happen.
