1905 RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
1856: End of Crimean war
1861: Emancipation of the serfs
1864: Zemstva set up; reform of judicial system
1881: 1 March: Alexander II assassinated
1893-1903: Witte as finance minister, industrialisation
1902-3: Peasant unrest
1904-5: Russo Japanese war
1905 22 Jan: ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre
1905 August: Treaty of Portsmouth, ending war with Japan
17 Oct: Tsar’s October Manifesto
1905 Dec: St Petersburg and Moscow Soviets suppressed
Tsar Nicholas II and family
Violence & Nonviolence in 1905
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1905 is seen as an antecedent to the violent 1917 Russian Revolution which
successfully ousted the Romanov dynasty. Lenin referred to 1905 as the “dress
rehearsal” for 1917. Yet at the time it would have been seen as a valid attempt
at revolution in itself, not merely a test run for the forceful and violent one to
come.
The years preceding the 1905 Revolution had seen great disruption and conflict
within the Russian government and people. The regime refused to recognise the
dire need for change in Russia and this failure to act was perhaps the main
means by which tsarism prepared its own downfall.
The 1905 revolution was driven forward by the – often spontaneous – impulse
the grass roots gave it, and was a key part of the struggle of ordinary Russians
to loosen government control in the only way they could in the face of ruthless
repression, through the tools of nonviolence.
Though the people engaged in some violence arising as part of protests and
peasants tended to riot, and though at its points of weakness the government
did promise the people concessions, the underlying relationship was non-violent
protest versus violent repression by state forces.
Father Georgii Gapon
• In December 1904, a strike occurred at the Putlilov plant
in Saint Petersburg. Sympathy strikes in other parts of
the city raised the number of strikers above 80,000.
Father Georgii Gapon, a priest, organized a peaceful
"workers' procession" to the Winter Palace to deliver a
loyal petition to the Tsar on Sunday, January 22 1905).
The petition asked for reforms such as an end to the
Russo-Japanese war, expanded suffrage, an 8-hour
work day, higher pay and the end to forced overtime in
factories. The procession was well stewarded by
followers of Gapon and any terrorists and hot-heads
were removed and all the participants checked for
weapons. Troops had been deployed around the Winter
Palace and at other key points.
• On 22 January, a Sunday, striking workers and their
families gathered at six points in the city. Clutching
religious icons and singing hymns and patriotic songs,
they proceeded towards the Winter Palace without police
interference. The demonstrators brought along their
families in hope of arousing the Tsar's sympathy and the
women and children were placed at the front of the
demonstrations. However, the Tsar had left the city on
January 8. Army pickets near the palace fired warning
shots, and then fired directly into the crowds. Gapon was
fired upon, and although around forty people surrounding
him were killed, he was uninjured.
Bloody Sunday – 22 January 1905
The number killed is uncertain. The Tsar's officials
recorded 96 dead and 333 injured; anti-government
sources claimed more than 4,000 dead; moderate
estimates still average around 1,000 killed or
wounded, both from shots and trampling.
Resistance
Strikes
• Strikes had long been part of the workers’ repertoire of self-defence
tools. In 1905, and especially in the intense aftermath of Bloody Sunday,
use of this nonviolent tactic grew to an unprecedented level. Strikes took
place all over the country protesting politics as well as economic
grievances.
• Small revolutions were taking place all over Russia. Universities closed
down when the whole student body complained about the lack of civil
liberties by staging a walkout. Lawyers, doctor, engineers, and other
middle-class workers established the Union of Unions and demanded a
constituent assembly. Leon Trotsky and other Mensheviks established
the St. Petersburg Soviet. Shortly over 50 of these soviets were formed
all over Russia, forming the new repositories of authority for the working
class and as a result beginning to assume some government
prerogatives.
• With the establishment of the Moscow Soviet came the great October
Strike. Industrial workers and railwaymen all over Russia went on strike –
this paralyzed the whole Russian railway network and communication
lines came to an abrupt halt in all the major cities of the Baltic region,
leading to the “Days of Freedom” which ended in the failed, violent
Moscow Uprising, an event which exemplified the new radical violent
wing of the political opposition.
Russian peasants in 1905
The revolution of 1905 marked a turning point in peasant life.
Whatever remnants of the Tsar myth that survived among the
peasants were smashed on Bloody Sunday when troops fired
on a large crowd of unarmed workers. Even before 1905
peasant riots and estate burnings had grown dramatically. By
the late summer of 1905 the countryside was in full scale
revolt. Organized by intellectuals into a Peasant Union,
peasants increasingly discovered how to express their
demands.. In order to pacify the peasants the government
moved to remove all remaining feudal restrictions on peasant
and equality with other citizens. It followed up with a law
permitting peasants to withdraw their land holdings from
communal ownership and consolidate them under their own
private ownership.
Concession & Repression
The October Manifesto
The October Manifesto is “a whip wrapped
in the parchment of a constitution”
Trotsky
• Sergei Witte, Chief Minister, advised Nicholas II to make
concessions. He eventually agreed and published the
October Manifesto. This granted freedom of conscience,
speech, meeting and association. He also promised that in
future people would not be imprisoned without trial. Finally he
announced that no law would become operative without the
approval of a new organization called the Duma.
• With the Manifesto, the government did go a long way
towards fulfilling the wishes of the opposition, as far as it
could go without dissolving itself – if the terms of the
agreement were kept.
• By now the opposition was wary of false promises by the
government, and wanted to continue its struggle, but the
movement was coming to a natural halt. It could have
declared victory, in fact; it had achieved some real change
through noncooperation.
Concession & Repression
Dumas & Government
“To the Emperor of all the Russians belongs
the supreme autocratic and unlimited power.
Not only fear, but also conscience commanded by God Himself,
is the basis of obedience to this power”
The Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire
• The first meeting of the Duma took place in April 1906. The composition of
the Duma had been changed since the publication of the October
Manifesto, and the tsar’s Fundamental Laws were in full effect. Tsar
Nicholas II had also created a State Council, an upper chamber, of which
he would nominate half its members. He retained for himself the right to
declare war, to control the Orthodox Church and to dissolve the Duma.
The Tsar also had the power to appoint and dismiss ministers.
• At their first meeting, members of the Duma put forward a series of
demands including the release of political prisoners, trade union rights and
land reform. Nicholas II rejected all these proposals and dissolved the
Duma. In April, 1906, Nicholas II forced Sergi Witte to resign and replaced
him with the more conservative Peter Stolypin. Stolypin attempted to
provide a balance between the introduction of much needed land reforms
and the violent suppression of the radicals (execution for sedition - the
hangman’s noose was referred to as “Stolypin’s Necktie”). The next Duma
convened in February, 1907. This time it lasted three months before the
Tsar closed it down.
Legacy
“Although with a few broken ribs,
Tsarism had come out of the experience
of 1905 alive and strong enough”
Trotsky
• The 1905 Revolution involved several forms of empire-wide resistance
with no real single aim or cause. In the longer term, the revolution can
be seen as the culmination of intense social unrest which stemmed
from the Tsarist regime and the “backwardness” of the Russian state.
• The autocratic government were able to crush the revolution using a
combination of offering concessions and using repressive tactics, but
the opposition could easily have been successful had it employed a
more coherent nonviolent strategy. Due to the Tsarist regime’s
employment of ruthless repressive tactics to ultimately crush any and
all popular opposition, the 1905 Revolution has to a great extent only
been remembered as a violent and bloody struggle, a “massacre of the
innocents”.
• It is possible to say, however, that there has been little correlation in
movements since between the level of violence employed toward
nonviolent protesters and their success, and the ultimate failure of
nonviolence in 1905 to achieve its stated aims can be attributed to a
variety of other factors.
• Undoubtedly, a revolutionary mood permeated urban Russian society
until this point as a result of government economic and political policies.
Given such circumstances it seems unlikely that nonviolence would
emerge as the chosen expression of social discontent, yet factors
including a strong initial faith in the divine right Tsar and the vision of
opposition leaders including Gapon made it so.
• Had the government acknowledged the extensive grievances of the
people in the pre-revolutionary period there would have been little cause
for such widespread opposition to form at all and therefore no need to
deploy such repressive tactics as those the autocratic regime resorted to
at Bloody Sunday. This is not to imply that opposition to the Tsarist
regime in 1905 steered entirely clear of violence and threats of such.
Arguably violence breeds violence and it can be said that in response to
government use of intensely violent repressive tactics to thwart earlier
efforts the opposition thought perhaps fighting fire with fire would yield
more satisfactory results.
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For the most part, it is difficult to say that nonviolent tactics were chosen by the
leaders and organised opposition of the 1905 Revolution for moral reasons, but
rather as a pragmatic strategy. Nonviolent tactics were taken up by the masses in
good faith, in support of their leaders’ vision, rather than as a result of any moral
attachment and as such were in constant jeopardy of being abandoned for any
other workable strategy if they were seen to be failing.
Certainly, the revolution as a whole failed in the short term, yet retrospectively it is
difficult to ignore its long term effects. Despite many of the concessions it granted
being later taken away by the Tsar in a desperate effort not to concede any power
to the people, the October Manifesto represented a definitive step toward reform.
The Revolution of 1905, as Lenin contended, provided a model for February and
October 1917 in that it demonstrated that something could be done to alter the
nature of government, providing the impetus for further revolutionary action.
It can also be considered an antecedent for later nonviolent movements in
general as - despite the revolution as a whole being looked upon as unsuccessful
- it demonstrated that rulers can only be genuinely powerful if the ruled give their
consent through its effective use of strike action.
• Ultimately, though it set a precedent for 1917 through very nearly bringing
down the regime, the non-violent tactics did not work as far as achieving
the goals the resistance desired. Among several reasons, this may have
been due to:
– The government’s smart move of making concessions when weak then
snatching them away once it had recovered (in the October Manifest and then
the Fundamental Laws).
– The economic situation that triggered the whole revolution was getting better
as 1906 approached, and troops returning home could restore order (at the
end of the Russo-Japanese war).
– The political demands thrown into the mix by the intelligentsia and small new
class of proletarian workers were not the cause the less revolutionary-minded
majority (the peasants) were protesting or cared much for, especially after their
original leader, Gapon, left the scene.
– There was no real cohesion between the different groups in the vast country,
and thus little organisation, strategy etc.
– The people recognised the government would simply continue to crush any
opposition ruthlessly and quit before they ended up dying for the cause,
especially when the movement turned violent around the time of the Moscow
Uprising.
“Russia lives under emergency legislation,
and that means without any lawful guarantees… Autocracy is a
superannuated form of government…
That is why it is impossible to maintain
this form of government except by violence”
Tolstoy in “An Open Address to Nicholas II”