By 1903 the activities of the opposition parties, added to the appalling conditions in the towns and the countryside, led to a wave of strikes, demonstrations and protests, The Tsar’s ministers warned him that Russia was getting close to revolution.
Ideological Causes:
RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION
WHY DID THE 1905 REVOLUTION FAIL TO OVERTHROW TSARDOM?
(I) Although the political parties shared the same ultimate goal of overthrowing the existing order--Tsardom, they were divided from one another. The Liberals, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks and the Social Revolutionaries had different political programmes. In 1905 each political party made its own struggles against Tsardom. Thus the Czarist government could suppress these political parties one by one. Besides the division between the political parties, there was much dissension within each of the political parties: the right-wing Liberals disagreed with the radical Liberals, the Mensheviks disagreed with the Bolsheviks, and the moderate Social Revolutionaries disagreed with the radical Social Revolutionaries. The internal division within each party gravely weakened the strength of its struggle against Tsardom.
(2) The chief driving force of the 1905 Revolution was the masses. But the masses were not properly led by the political parties to seize power. Both the Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries had wrong conceptions of the role they should take in the 1905 Revolution. They believed that the bourgeois revolution should precede the socialist revolution and that they should wait for the liberals to establish a bourgeois government in 1905. Thus they did not make use of the potential revolutionary strength of the masses to capture power from the Tsarist government as soon as the 1905 Revolution broke out. But the Liberals were too weak in number that they could not become an independent political force to replace the Tsarist government.
(3) The political programmes of the political parties failed to secure wholehearted support from the masses because their programmes did not represent the wishes of the masses. The Liberals did not include social and economic reforms in their programme. The programme of the Social Democrats advocated the establishment of a Socialist State through a class struggle but few of the workers understood revolutionary theories and they just wanted a better economic livelihood. The Social Revolutionaries advocated the nationalization of land, but the peasants just wanted the division of large estates among themselves. In 1917 the Bolsheviks could secure temporary support from the masses because Lenin changed part of the Bolshevik programme. He promised 'Land and Peace' to the people.
(4) The revolts of the national minorities were in the borderland areas. They were too localized in nature. These revolts chiefly aimed at obtaining local autonomy and not the overthrow of Tsardom.
(5) With the promulgation of the October Manifesto, concerted opposition to the government melted away. The landed proprietors, the liberals and the less radical socialists were at least partially satisfied. They were afraid of going too far. Only the radical socialists, radical workers and hungry peasants continued the revolution.
(6) The dynasty retained the support of the bureaucracy, the major part of the army and the nobility. Thus the Tsar was able to suppress the strikes and the revolts after the division had appeared among the opposition forces.
In short, the opposition forces, divided, unprepared to seize power, unable to represent the wishes of the peasants and the workers, failed to overthrow the decadent and demoralized dynasty which retained the support of the nobles, the bureaucrats and the army.
THE REIGN OF CZAR ALEXANDER II ( 1855-1881 )
Czar Alexander II began his reign in 1855 when Russia was defeated by Britain, France and Piedmont in the Crimean War. He thought that the chief reason for Russian defeat was her backward economic and social system -- most of the labour force were serfs who were ignorant and superstitious. In order to strengthen the dynasty, he decided to carry out a number of reforms to modernize the archaic institutions of Russia.
( 1 ) The Reforms of Alexander II
(i) Emancipation of the serfs (1861):
According to the Emancipation Edict of March 3,1861, the serfs were not only freed but granted a certain portion of the noble's estates. The nobles who lost their estates were to be compensated by the government. To the government, the peasants were to pay an annual sum for 49 years, at the end of which time the land was to be their property. In the meantime, the land was not the private property of the peasants, but was to be kept by the village communities. The village communities would allot a share of the village land to each peasant; in return, each peasant was compelled to repay the annual sum to the government.
These arrangements proved very unsatisfactory to the peasants. Firstly, their share of the village land was often insufficient to keep them above the level of grinding poverty. (It has been estimated that only 1/3 of the total area of agricultural land was given to the village communities; while more than 1/3 was kept by the state and the Imperial family, and ¼ was till kept by the nobles.) Secondly, their annual sums to the government were often heavier than the dues (or rents) they had formerly paid to the nobles. Thirdly, the land of the village communities was often infertile because the nobles were allowed to give up the poorest parts of their estates to the peasants and kept the best parts for themselves. Fourthly, the village communities kept the village land as collective property. As the population of the village continued to increase, at each re-allotment of land the share of land granted to each peasant would become smaller and smaller. After the emancipation, peasant discontent increased and peasant riots continued up to 1917.
(ii) The creation of the Zemstva (1864) and the Town Councils (1870):
Before the reform, the administration of countryside was dominated by the nobles. The reform of 1864 created district and provincial assemblies (zemstva). The members of the district assemblies were elected by the inhabitants of each rural district, peasants and nobles alike. Members of the district assemblies then elected delegates of the provincial assemblies. This system of election tended to cut down the power of the nobles and gave more political right to the non-noble classes.
The assemblies were responsible for the administration local education and public health, the upkeep of roads and bridges, the encouragement of industry and agriculture and the election of the Justices of Peace. This was the first experiment in self-government in Russia and encouraged the Russians to demand for more political power in the future. Some zemstva members even thought of creating a constitutional monarchy to replace Czardom.
Like the zemstva in the countryside, there were also the town councils in the towns. They were elected by property owners and taxpayers. The town councils were responsible for the general welfare of the towns. Thus town councils served the same function as the zemstva in providing valuable lessons in self-government for the Russians and became the hotbeds of liberalism, challenging the rule of the Czar.
(iii) Other reforms:
The Czar also attempted to modernize Russian legal system by providing for open trial, the use of jury and the appointment of trained judges who were to be freed from government control. Other reforms included the introduction of a national conscription system, abolition of military colonies, a relaxation of the censorship of books and periodicals and an attempt to re-establish university autonomy and widen the basis of entry to secondary schools. The government also tried to stimulate economic development by building more railways and by giving financial subsidies to industry.
The intellectual classes thought that the reforms were too piecemeal and not radical enough. The emancipation of the serfs did not solve the land problem of the peasants. The creation of the zemstva system did not lead to the formation of a national parliament in Russia. As a result of their disappointment with the reforms, the intellectual classes formed secret revolutionary societies, aiming to overthrow Czardom.
THE REIGN OF NICHOLAS II (1894 -- 1917)
When Alexander III died in 1894, he was succeeded by his son, Nicholas II. He was the last Czar. He still believed that it was his sacred duty to uphold the principle of autocracy, but he was unsuited to be an autocrat. He was weak and indecisive in character. He easily succumbed to the influences of stronger personalities--the most important one was his wife, Princess Alexandra. She was most eager to preserve the full autocratic power for her husband, and later, for her son.
While the Czar clung steadfastly to the principle of autocracy, there was the emergence of more virulent discontented groups which presented a greater challenge to Czardom. The five discontented groups were: the proletariat class in the industrial towns, the Marxist-oriented revolutionary parties (Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries), the middle-class political parties, the subversive groups among the national minorities and the peasants in the countryside. Thus a revolution was bound to take place in Russia. It took place when Russia was defeated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.
( 1 ) The Rapid Growth of a Proletariat Class in the Industrial Towns
1890 marked off the great breakthrough in Russian industrialization (which began in Alexander II's reign) as a result of French loans. (After signing the Dual Alliance with France in 1893, Russia was provided with huge French loans for industrial development.) The state took the leading role in building up, financing and managing nearly all the new industries. As a result, big industrial towns sprang up rapidly and the proletariat (the factory workers) became an important social class in Russian society. By 1914, their number probably reached about two and a quarter million. By 1917, Russia had about three million workers.
Although by 1914 Russia ranked fifth among the industrial nations of the world in terms of industrial production, the conditions of the workers were bad. Their wages were low just about 25 to 30 per cent of the British workers. Their working hours were long -- usually 15 hours a day. Their living conditions were intolerable--they were crowded together in barracks where there were no healthy and sanitary facilities. Conditions in the factories were also unsatisfactory there were no safety devices to protect the workers. Since 1882, the government had passed laws prohibiting employment of children under 12 and night work for women, laws creating a corp of factory inspectors and laws concerning labour contracts, but there was little improvement in the poor working conditions of the workers. (One reason might be that as the owners of the factories had to sell their manufactured goods to overseas markets, they had to reduce the wages of the workers and so to keep the price of their goods low -- the Russian goods were often of inferior quality. Another reason might be that workers had no collective bargaining power they had no right to strike and to form trade unions.)
To express their grievances, the workers organized strikes, even though they were illegal. In the 1890's the first organized mass strikes took place. The main aim of the strikes was betterment of the livelihood of the workers. As the 19th century came to a close, the main aims of many of the strikes were not only economic improvement but political reforms of the Czarist government as well. (Mass strikes took place among the workers in 1890 especially in St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1903, there was said to be more than 85,000--87,000 strikers.)
Some of the workers became the members of the secret and illegal revolutionary parties--for example the Social Democratic Party. But some of them were enticed into the 'pro-government trade unions'. (The Czarist government also formed trade unions in the factories. The purposes of these pro-government trade unions were to find out the political sentiments of the workers and to find out antigovernment revolutionary leaders in the factories. Father Gapon led one such trade union.)
(2) The Middle-class Political Parties
Professional men and many members of the zemstva were liberal reformers. They opposed the idea of a revolution to overthrow Czardom. Some of them (the right-wing Liberals) hoped to establish a consultative representative body in the central government so that the Czar could always consult the people's representatives. Some of them (the left-wing Liberals) were more radical. They wanted the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, with universal, secret and direct suffrage .
3) The Marxist-oriented Revolutionary Parties.
(i) The Social Democratic Labour Party:
Although the ideas of Marxism were known to the Russians as early as 1870's, the first Marxist group was formed by Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism, as late as 1883. In 1898, Lenin formed another Marxist party, known as the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. In August 1903, the Social Democratic Party held a party congress in London. This congress was important not only because all Russian socialist groups attended but also because it marked the important split among the Social Democrats into the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Both the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks agreed to overthrow Czardom, transform Russia into a democratic bourgeois republic and in turn overthrow it by a socialist revolution. But they had great differences on the means to achieve their goals. This revealed two opposing ideas concerning the personnel who would make the socialist revolution. The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin (Lenin's view had more support at the Congress, so his group was called the Bolsheviks (Majority Men) and the opposing group the Mensheviks (Minority Men)), wanted a small party consisting of highly-disciplined and devoted professional revolutionaries. The Mensheviks wanted a mass party consisting of both active supporters and non-active sympathizers. This split between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks was formalized in 1905 and deepened in 1912 when the Bolsheviks expelled the Mensheviks from the party.
(ii) The Social Revolutionary Party:
While the Social Democratic Party appealed to the workers for support, a new party arose, which appealed to the peasants for support. This was the Social Revolutionary Party. Like the Social Democratic Party, the Social Revolutionaries believed in an imminent bourgeois revolution and the subsequent overthrow of the bourgeois government by a socialist revolution. But the Social Revolutionaries differed from the Social Democrats in three ways: first they gave to the peasantry a greater and more independent role in the revolutionary process; secondly, they thought that all land should be the property of the State and the State should parcel out land to all peasants on the basis of their labour ownership (In other words, those peasants who had greater labour force would be given more land); thirdly, they concentrated on assassination and other terrorist methods to achieve their goals.
How did the Revolution of 1905 lead to the 1917 Russian revolution?
The Tsar survived the 1905 revolution, but some serious questions remained. The most serious was the possibility of another revolution. If he was to prevent this, Nicholas needed to reform Russia and satisfy at least some of the discontented groups that had joined the revolution in 1905. The Duma deputies who gathered for its first meeting in 1906 were hopeful that they could help to steer Russia on a new course. They were soon disappointed. The Tsar continued to rule without taking any serious notice of them. The first and second Dumas were very critical of the Tsar. They lasted less than a year before Nicholas sent them home. In 1907 Tsar Nicholas changed the voting rules so that his opponents were not elected to the Duma. This third Duma lasted until 1912, mainly because it was much less critical of the Tsar than the previous two. But by 1912 even this ‘loyal’ Duma was becoming critical of the Tsar’s ministers and policies. However, it had no power to change the Tsar’s policies and criticism alone was not a serious threat to the regime so the Tsar’s rule continued.
