Russia was humiliatingly defeated by a relatively small enemy through a combination of arrogance, stupidity and poor preparation. This defeat was crushing to the self-esteem of the Russian people, it also left the country feeling vulnerable in the light of the defeat of its army and navy. It made Russia weak to potential enemies. It was huge empire and yet its armed forces were unable to defeat even a relatively small and insignificant enemy. And internally to the minority states such as Ukraine and Georgia, which could potentially want independence, the weakness would be obvious.
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The 1905 Russian Revolution was triggered by became known as Bloody Sunday. Led by Father Gapon (an Okhrana double agent whose job was to hunt down people who challenged the regime), workers and their families marched on the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. It was a peaceful march where people carried portraits of the Tsar and orthodox saints in the hope that their ‘Little Father’ would listen to their problems and rectify their grievances. The police misunderstood the situation and panicked. They sent armed guards who opened fire on the marchers, killing and wounding many and then the Cossack cavalry charged on the demonstrators. It was estimated that hundreds were killed and thousands wounded.
This injustice and brutality convinced people that the Tsar was no longer their guardian and protector. This was the catalyst to a series of events which have been described as the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Throughout the whole of Russia there was growing disorder and anti-government action. In all the main cities and towns strikes broke out. Across the countryside landlords and government officials were targeted in ongoing terrorist activity. Matters were made worse as news of the fall of Port Arthur into Japanese hands and the humiliating defeat of Russian forces filtered through bringing further discredit and blame on the government.
Chaos and anarchy threatened. The government struggled to hold power but was unable to prevent some ethnic minorities such as the Georgians from declaring independence. Many non-Russians such as the Jews and Poles whose national identities and religions had been suppressed for a number of years through Russification saw their opportunity to reclaim their identity.
In this time there was a growth in the number of liberal groups. A middle class began to emerge as land owning peasants and merchants looked beyond their basic needs and turned their attention to politics. They were bolstered by some of the previously rich upper classes whose descendants who didn’t inherit wealth found themselves coming down the social ladder. These people were traditionally better educated and more politically aware.
During this time a powerful political force known as the Kadets, was growing. The Kadets, or constitutional democrats were made up of the intelligentsia, consisting of progressive landlords, professionals such as doctors and lawyers, academics and smaller industrial entrepreneurs. The Kadets were the largest party of liberals.
In May 1905 the Kadets, who had been pressing for a constitutional rather than an autocratic monarchy, under the leadership of Milyukov, persuaded other liberal groups to join together to make one large and loud liberal voice, the ‘Union of Unions’ which would represent both peasants and factory workers.
Summer 1905 brought yet more bad news to the Tsarist regime of mutinies in the army and navy. This brought concern that the defeated and dispirited troops returning from the Russo-Japanese war would join the revolutionaries, which as former finance minister Sergei Witte said “then everything would collapse” this would spell the beginning of the end for the Tsar.
By autumn the industrial unrest turned into a general strike and in major cities this saw the beginning of the creation of ‘soviets’ which were councils or unions which worked for better conditions for workers. Soviets represented workers’ demands for better working condition but to revolutionaries their real strength lay in their potential as organised bases for political agitation. This time saw the emergence of Trotsky who became chairman of the St Petersburg soviet and was the organiser of the general strike.
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A critical point was reached in October when the Tsar was faced by huge united opposition, the greatest opposition in the history of the Romanovs. With its back to the wall, the government had no alternative but to make considerable concessions to the demands of the opposition groups.
The government’s strategy was to divide its united opposition by making concessions to individual groups. The liberals were granted their main goal of a legislative duma, a parliament made up of an upper and lower house. Other concessions included freedom of speech, assembly and worship and the legalisation of trade unions. Overall the liberals believed the outcome to be very successful.
The peasants were appeased by the announcement that the feared and hated mortgage repayments which threatened to take away their livelihoods, were to be reduced and eventually abolished. This brought about a reduction in the peasants’ land seizures and an improvement in law and order in the countryside and so could be judged by both sides to have been a success.
The next challenge was to deal with the industrial workers. Here the government decided to suppress opposition and in a firm way presumably in order to not be seen as a soft touch. The regime took a bold gamble on the troops’ loyalty to the Tsar, given that they had just returned defeated from a pointless war, this was a bold gamble indeed. However the troops stayed loyal and laid siege on the soviet in St Petersburg which resulted in the arrest of Trotsky when it fell. The Moscow soviet was burned to the ground in December.
Did Tsarism come out of the experience of 1905 alive and strong as Trotsky claimed? Certainly the Tsar had been forced to make major concessions to both the liberals and the peasants to subdue the revolution and hold onto power but in fact they were not concessions which undermined his ultimate power. For example, the Tsar had ultimate veto in the duma which only sat for only two months of the year and in the remaining months, full power reverted to the Tsar. All the ministers were Tsarist puppets and all legislation was either initiated by the Tsar of by these ministers. Between 1906 and 1914 there were four Dumas, each of which was successively more right wing.
Another interesting outcome was that the liberals who had advocated the cause of the peasants found they didn’t enjoy mixing with the workers who they found coarse, vulgar and frightening.
After 1905 the Tsar still held onto absolute power. He had successfully dealt with the demands of the liberals and peasants, at least in the short term. The loyalty of the armed forces had been tested and proved strong in time of need. The concessions he had granted had not affected his position. In the context of the peasants, to some extent he had also restored the belief that he was the guardian of the nation and their ‘Little Father. The peasants, were also, at least for the time being, happy with their lot. In 1906 Pytor Stolypin was appointed president of the Council of Ministers. He used a two handed approach to the peasants – on one hand he tried to get them on the Tsar’s side by abolishing redemption payments and extending credit through the Peasant Land Bank. On the other hand he repressed the peasants. His aim was to encourage peasants to leave their collective communes for a more capitalist approach with the intention that by working for themselves in their own self interest they would be more efficient and less discontented. He sold crown land to peasants and lift restrictions on their movements. This approach was successful to an extent, partly because harvests were good but as things changed and others began to resent Stolypin and the Tsar’s personal life, so he came under pressure and was eventually assassinated in 1912.
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However, the fact remained that for the first time in Romanov history, in 1905 the position of the Tsar had been seriously threatened. It was a powerful warning and the people’s belief in his position had been undermined. Although he was able to keep a lid on discontent, he hadn’t actually won any friends and supporters, the liberals would soon find their gains were not as great as they had thought. And most important of all, the Tsar had made many serious and potentially powerful enemies for the future by his brutal suppression of the workers in the cities, the revolutionaries, whose rights had been suppressed and who were a time bomb waiting to blow the top off the Romanov empire. Modernisation of Russia brought more peasants to the cities to become industrial workers and in turn this would bolster the body of discontent among workers who had been crushed by the Tsar in 1905.
In reality Russia wasn’t ready for revolution in 1905. For a revolution to succeed all the orchestrators of change have to be in accord. In 1905 such powerful figures as Lenin and others like him were not even in the country and other potential adversaries were, for the time being, appeased. The time was not right for a full-scale revolution and the uprisings were really no more than a wake up call for Tsardom. However, it was the beginning of the end and 12 years later after the Great War had further dented the confidence of the Russian people, the time came for revolution and everything changed forever.
