The most pathetic fact of all the facts was that there was going to be no change about the peasants and workers. One main reason for that was that the Tsar simply did not know about the real life in Russia. He did not visit factories or villages, or go on tours. His information about what was going on came from a small number of people, who were quite happy to protect him from the realities of life in Russia. In addition, because Russia was such a large country to run, there were thousands of civil servants, from top officials down to tax collectors and customs officers. Getting things done was such a slow job and since the wages of the people at the bottom were very low, there was a great deal of bribery and corruption. There was no parliament to represent the views of the people, and there was no way for people to get their views heard, anyway. Newspapers and books were censored; they had to be sent to the government for approval before they could be printed. Tsar was very cruel to his opposition and the Okhrana, the secret police dealt with them. If there were strikes, protests or riots, which often took place in times of famine, the much-feared Cossacks stopped them with great force and brutality. However, no efforts stopped the formation of groups who opposed the Tsar, such as Socialist Revolutionaries, Social Democrats and the Liberals.
On top of all these chaos, Russia got involved in yet another chaos. Russia got involved in a war with Japan at 1904 over the land of Manchuria. The Tsar, at first, thought that a war was the solution to bring people of Russia together and to stop the people criticising his government. However, he had to admit that he was wrong shortly after, for the war made the conditions worse then ever before. Prices rose in the cities, as the war cause shortages of food. Lack of industrial materials cause factories to close, also causing the unemployment of workers at the same time. What was even worse for the Tsar was that the Japanese inflicted defeat after defeat on the Russians. Being defeated by a country that was so small in comparison with Russia was about the most shameful thing the Tsar could imagine. As the war progressed, Russia was forced deeper and deeper into disaster. In 1905, Port Arthur fell to the Japanese, bringing renewed protest about the incompetence of the Tsar and his government.
I think there is no need to mention the conditions in Russia in 1905. It was, in one word, awful and the tension was high. To somewhat ease the tension, a priest called Father Gapon organised a march to deliver a petition to the Tsar, asking for his help. It is evident that he respected Tsar and meant this to be a peaceful event as the extract from the workers’ petition shows,
“Sire – We, working men and inhabitants of St Petersburg, our wives and our children and out helpless old parents, come to You, Sire, to seek for truth, justice and protection. We have been made beggars, we are oppressed; we are near to death…”
On Sunday 22 January, about 200,000 people marched towards the Winter Palace to deliver the petition. As the marchers approached the palace, they were met by troops who, in confusion, shot them down without a second thought. Therefore, the peaceful march ended up as a massacre and was named ‘Bloody Sunday’.
Bloody Sunday was the final trigger and by the end of January, there were more than 400,000 workers out on strike. They demanded an eight-hour day, higher wages and better conditions. For the rest of the year, strikes, demonstrations, petitions, peasant uprisings, student riots and assassinations became rather common in Russia. On 4th February, the Tsar’s uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei, was assassinated in Moscow. In June, sailors of the battleship Potemkin mutinied. This was rather worrying event for the government, for it was easy for ideas to spread in armies and there were possibilities that other sections of the army might also mutiny. By May and June, different groups were demanding changes. Middle-class liberals demanded an elected parliament, freedom of speech and the right to form political parties. National groups, such as Poles and Finns, demanded their independence. The Jews wanted equal civil rights. During all these disorders, in September, a peace treaty was signed between the Russians and the Japanese. Thousands of troops were now free to help the government and the Tsar put down all the demonstrations in Russia. The government paid them all their back pay and promised better conditions of service so that they would remain loyal to the Tsar. In October, a general strike spread from Moscow to other cities. All opposition groups were united in demanding changes. On 26th October, the St Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies was formed. Representatives from factories met to organise the strike action. Soviets were group of ordinary people such as peasants, workers and soldiers. Soviets were also formed in other cities. This was a great threat to the Tsar’s government. The whole situation left the Tsar with two choices. Giving in or using force, with the possibility of massive bloodshed. Eventually he gave in and issued the ‘October Manifesto’ on 30th October. This promised:
- A parliament or Duma elected by the people
- Civil rights – e.g. freedom of speech and conscience
- Uncensored newspapers and he right to form political parties
As a result, the liberals and middle classes were convinced that they had won democratic government and they stopped their protests and supported the government. By December, with all the troops back in Russia, the Tsar felt strong enough to take back control. He used force to close down the St Petersburg Soviet and crushed an armed uprising in Moscow. He sent out troops to take revenge on workers and peasants who had rioted and bring them under control.
Although most of the problems in the cities had stopped by the end of 1905, violence continued in the countryside until 1906. The Tsar appointed Peter Stolypin as Prime Minister to deal with this matter. Stolypin was a tough man, and he set up military courts, which could sentence and hang a person on the spot. These courts executed thousands. The Okrana, the secret police, were still very active at this point, with thousands of informers. Everybody had to carry internal passports and travellers had to register with the police in order to travel outside their home districts. Newspapers were often fined for writing articles offending the government and frequently appeared with white spaces where material had been censored even though freedom of the press had been guaranteed in 1905. The Duma, which appeared in April 1906, was absolutely powerless. They could not pass laws, could not appoint ministers and could not control finance in important areas such as defence, and the Tsar could dismiss them whenever he wished. In addition, the elections favoured the nobles; there was one representative for every 2,000 nobles, but one for every 90,000 workers. Despite these disadvantages, the first two Dumas of 1906 and 1907 were quite thorough, demanding more power for themselves and rights for ordinary people. They also demanded that more land should be given to the peasants. However, the Tsar dissolved both Dumas after a few weeks. Stolypin changed the way of the election of the third Duma to favour the gentry and urban rich even more and as a result, the third Duma was more conservative than its previous ones. Even this Duma, though, who lasted for about 5 years, was often critical of the government and some good things were done through them. The fourth Duma did not have enough change before the war broke out, but at least, the Tsar was starting to work with it.
Fortunately for the Russian people, there were some changes after the 1905 revolution. One of them was the change in the countryside. Stolypin, to make the agriculture more efficient, introduced reforms amongst the peasantry. Peasants were allowed to buy up strips of land from their less enterprising neighbours to make one single land holding, which they owned individually. Stolypin set up a peasants’ bank to provide loans for them to do this. He thought that peasants would want to improve their own land and use modern methods to produce more food. He also wanted this to create a new class of prosperous landowning peasant-kulaks-who would be loyal to the government and not wanting changes. Consequently, about 15 % of peasants took his offer and there were improvements. Production of grain increased and there was a record harvest in 1913. However, the reforms had another consequence; many poorer peasants were forced to sell their land and became labourers.
Between 1906 and 1914, there was an industrial boom in Russia. Total industrial production increased by 100% between 1905 and 1914. Russia became the world’s fourth largest producer of coal, pig iron and steel. Many of the factories were very efficient, using the most updated methods of mass production. However, the actual workers did not benefit much from the boom. Working conditions improved a little over the period. The wages were lower than those in 1903 were. Prices had risen so much that workers could only just manage to buy the bread they needed.
In 1912, an important strike took place in the Lena goldfield in Siberia. The workers protested about degrading working conditions, low wages and a working day, which lasted for fourteen hours. They came into collision with troops, and 170 workers ended up killed and 373 wounded. The Lena Goldfield Massacre had a similar effect to Bloody Sunday and showed the people that nothing had really changed after the 1905 revolution. The Massacre proved that the Tsar still had ultimate power and that he could force anything on his people.
When war broke out against Germany in 1914, the Tsar became popular in no time. The Russian people united in their support for him and all the problems were set aside. St Petersburg was renamed as Petrograd, for ‘burg’ means town in German and ‘grad’ means town in Russian. Another positive result of the outbreak of war was that the Tsar learnt how to work with the Duma. Able people from the Duma began to be appointed to important posts. However, the war did more bad than good. Enthusiasm for the war did not last for very long for after some initial successes against the Austrians, the Russians were heavily defeated y the Germans. Over on million soldiers were killed, wounded or taken as prisoner by the end of 1914 and this number had risen to eight million by March 1917. The reason for such great loss was that the soldiers were not even armed or dressed properly for the war. The army had neither wagons nor horses nor first aid supplies. Some of the soldiers did not even have boots to wear in the freezing cold weather and a third of the soldiers were not equipped with rifles. They were told to get the rifles of the dead. The army was also very badly let by the officers. This is evident in the story of a frontal attack on the Rai-Mestro heights, ordered by a Grand Duke who had been told not to attack from the front because of a swamp.
“The troops found themselves in a swamp, where many men perished…The wounded could not be brought out, and perished in the swamp. Out artillery fire was weak…the shells fell short and dropped among out own men...Nevertheless, the gallant guards fulfilled their task, though bled white, and succeeded in capturing the heights, WHICH THEY WERE THEN ORDERED TO ABANDON.”
Things got worse as the war went on, without showing a single hope for victory.
The effects of the war on the people back at Russia were not any better than the effects it had on the army. Food was getting short for one thing. Millions of male peasants had been conscripted into the army, so there was a shortage of farm workers and less food was being produced. In addition, food was not getting to the cities for the Russian railway system was being used to carry supplies to the war front, and so trains carrying food to the cities had been reduced. Coal and industrial materials were also short. Many factories closed down, making their workers now unemployed and causing even greater poverty. Now people in the cities were cold as well as hungry. Because of the shortages, the prices of good were rising continually, while the wages were hardly going up at all. To make matters worse, the workers were being asked to work even long hours. Sale of vodka was stopped during the war and left the people not allowed forgetting their terrible situation even if it was only for a moment. As defeat piled on defeat and the number of casualties increased, Russian government began to lost support of the people.
In the midst of all these difficulties, Nicholas II made a terrible mistake; in September 1915, he decided to take over the running of the war and to go to the war front himself. This had serious following consequences, which the Tsar may not have thought of at the time. Firstly, the Tsar would be blamed for all the defeats in the war now that he has taken the responsibility of it. Secondly, while the Tsar was away in the war front, the Tsarina, who was mistrusted because of her German background, was to rule the whole country. Her close relationship with Rasputin, who was known to be a sex maniac, did not do any good to her reputation. Just as expected, the Tsarina made a total mess of running the country. She would not work with Duma at all. She still believed that the Tsar and herself was appointed to rule Russia by God and dismissed all the able ministers, who were then replaced by ‘our men’, meaning men who would do what they were told without arguing or who were friends of Rasputin. Some of them being incompetent and others being downright scoundrels did not matter. There were so many changes of ministers that nobody could organise food, fuel and other supplies for the cities properly. The railway system fell into chaos and trainloads of desperately needed food were left rotting in the sidings.
By March 1917, the situation could not get worse. There was a serious mood of discontent and the workers wanted political changes as well as bread and fuel. On 7 March in Petrograd, 40,000 workers from the giant Putilov engineering works went on strike for higher wages. The next day was International Women’s Day and thousands of women joined the strikers in demonstrations all over the city, shouting ‘Down with hunger! Bread for the workers!’ In the following two days, thousands of workers, men and women, joined in demanding food, fuel and better conditions, and most of all, a new government. The Tsar ordered that the demonstration was to be put down by force. He thought that this strike was like any other strikes, nothing new or special. Therefore, he was not very much alarmed when Rodzianko, leader of the Duma, sent a telegram saying that the situation was getting out of hand. The Tsar decided to ignore this, which again was a very big mistake.
What is the difference between the revolution in 1905 and the revolution in 1917? It was the army. In the revolution in 1905, the army had remained loyal to the Tsar and helped him put down all the demonstrations. However, it was different in 1917. 12 March was a decisive day and changed the character of the riots. Soldiers in Petrograd refused to fire on crowds, and some regiments shot their officers and joined in the demonstrations. They had had enough of the war and the way they were treated. They wanted some change too. Now that they had the armed forces on their side, the strikers marched to the Duma to demand that it take control of the government. The Tsar tried to get back to Petrograd, but it was too late. Railway workers refused to let his train into the city. In the train, on 15 March, the Tsar finally made his mind to abdicate. However, he still did not get the idea of no royal family ruling and decided to abdicate in favour of his brother Michael. Nevertheless, the people had had enough of the royal family and anyway, Michael did not want to be the Tsar in the first place.
What was the main cause of the revolution in 1917? What caused the ultimate ruler to abdicate? Were the failures of the Tsar before and during the war the main cause, or was the army taking side the main cause? I think it is impossible to settle on one cause and say that this was the main cause. It is true that the Tsar has been making many mistakes and caused his people to suffer, which made him very unpopular. It is also true that the army had taken a crucial role in the revolution by changing their sides and supporting the people instead of the Tsar. This is a very important part for the revolution of 1917 differs from the revolution of 1905 because of this. If the army did not support the people, the revolution may not have happened. If the army agreed to crush the demonstrations down, it may have finished just like any other riots. However, if it did finish that way, would it carry on that way forever? I think not. I think the revolution must have happened at some point to change all the unfairness and injustice. The Tsar has been suppressing his people for too long just like a lid of a saucepan without a hole. As the food cooks inside the saucepan, the pressure inside it will also increase. If this process carries on, the pressure inside the saucepan becomes unbearable and eventually, the whole thing explodes. I think this is what happened in Russia. Long time of suffering and unfairness has eventually led into a revolution to change the country into a better one. I would not blame the Tsar either, even though he did make some obvious mistakes such as taking the charge of the army, because it was a very difficult time to rule with the war going on. There are some things that have to happen as the time changes, and I think the revolution of March 1917 was one of them.
