Before the revolution it was easy to call Russia’s economy backward. This is because the only main export of Russia was grain. This meant when they exported grain and tried to import machine parts the economy was negative. To make matters worse Russia only received the old useless machining parts from Western Europe. It was therefore quoted as the dumping ground of Europe. This lead to unrest within the masses as Russia wasn’t advancing and this lead to famine at the turn of the century. The tsar was also spending most of the countries money on the Army, and therefore he decided to use the emancipated serfs redemption repayments.
Another cause of the revolution was Russia’s backward social structure. This is as the minority, the tsar, ruled. However 85% of the population, were the peasants or Serfs. The peasants despised the hierarchical structure of the country as they felt they were doing all the work. This lead to the original riots that were involved in the trigger cause of the war, ‘Bloody Sunday’.
Finally the last long-term cause of the 1905 revolution was the weaknesses of Tsar Nicholas II. When Alexander III died in 1894, his son, Nicholas II, succeeded him. He was the last Tsar. He still believed that it was his sacred duty to uphold the principle of autocracy, but he was unsuited to be an autocrat, as he was weak and indecisive leader. His unadvised decisions as the Tsar led to the rapid growth of a proletariat class in industrial towns, and both middle class and Marxist political parties.
The short-term causes of the war were firstly the Russo-Japanese war and secondly, and the trigger cause, ‘Bloody Sunday’.
The Russo-Japanese war was purely used by the Tsar to gain public support for himself. He used the possibility of a successful war to divert the discontent of the Russians from his tyrannical rule. In February 1904, He chose to go to war with Japan.
The Russo-Japanese War was a disaster to the tsar. The Russian armies suffered a number of defeats in the battlefields because they were ill equipped, badly armed and poorly trained. The corruption and inefficiency of the government, and tsar were exposed in the conduct of the war. Transportation broke down, and food prices soared up. The tsarist government was totally discredited in the eyes of the Russian people. In July 1904, shortly after the Russian defeat at the Yalu, Social Revolutionary terrorists assassinated the hugely unpopular Minister of the Interior, Plehve. As war continued, discontent multiplied.
When Port Arthur fell in the worst defeat in the Far East, which determined the outcome of the Russo-Japanese War, discontent reached almost the breaking point. There was also much unrest in St. Petersburg, due to a rise in food prices and other daily necessities.
In such an atmosphere, on January 22, 1905, a priest, Father Gapon, who was one of the organizers of the pro-government trade unions, decided to lead a group of workers to present a petition to the Tsar at the Winter Palace. The petition included political and economic demands.
Political demands were the calling of an elected duma, freedom of speech and assembly, guarantee of fair trials and an amnesty for political prisoners.
Economic demands were more labour legislation, the eight-hour day, a reduction in the redemption repayments and the introduction of an income tax. The petition also demanded to end the war immediately, and 135,000 people signed the petition.
Gapon hoped that the tsar would grant reforms to lessen the discontent of the workers, and about 150,000 peaceful and orderly demonstrators followed Gapon’s group. The demonstrators, who were carrying the portraits of the tsar, and of the orthodox saints, assembled on the square in front of the Winter Palace. At this moment, the crowd still thought that they were “the children of the tsar” who would rectify their grievances.
Suddenly the guards of the Winter Palace fired on the crowd, and the still loyal Cossack soldiers charged into the thousands of demonstrators. More than a hundred people were killed, and several hundreds wounded. After the massacre, the Russians lost their age-old faith in the Tsar as the great guardian of the people. This was the beginning of a new age for Russia.
There was a revolution in Russia in 1905, because of the many long and short term causes. The most important long-term cause was most probably Russia’s backward, and rigid social system. The most important short-term was obviously the trigger and beginning of the revolution, the Bloody Sunday massacre. All of the long-term causes suggest that at some stage there will be a mass rising of the people, but the trigger cause showed that a revolution was imminent.
