THE CRISES OF 1905…
• Sergei Witte:
• Finance Minister
• Responsible for
industrialisation
reform in Russia
RUSSIAN INDUSTRIALISATION

Rapid industrialisation brought with it virtually
no legislative or regulatory controls on the
treatment of labour

By the first years of the 20th century, Russia’s
three million industrial workers were one of the
lowest paid workforces in Europe
WORKING CONDITIONS:

The average working day was 10.5 hours, six
days a week

15-hour days were not unknown.

There were no annual holidays, sick leave or
superannuation.
WORKING CONDITIONS:

Workplace hygiene and safety were poor; illness,
accidents and injuries were common-place and
with no leave or compensation available, sick or
injured workers were summarily dismissed

Factory owners often imposed arbitrary fines for
lateness, failing to meet production quotas or
more trivial ‘offences’ like toilet breaks and talking
or singing while working
DISSATISFACTION GROWS

Living conditions were overcrowded because
there was not enough infrastructure to support
the peasants moving to the cities looking for
industrial work

1904 survey: An average of 16 people per
apartment
DISSATISFACTION GROWS…
The dissatisfaction of factory workers grew steadily
but became particularly acute in the final months of
1904 because:

Russia entered the difficult and disastrous war
with Japan

The national economy slipped into a severe
recession where trade declined, where companies
to dismiss thousands of workers and increase
pressure on those they retained.
DISSATISFACTION GROWS

There were significant increases in
homelessness and poverty; the tsarist
government’s only response was to ask
zemstvo leaders to organise charitable relief.

Food prices in the cities increased by as much
as 50 per cent, however wages failed to
increase correspondingly.
SACKING OF WORKERS FROM THE PUTILOV
STEEL PLANT
In early 1905, 5 men were sacked from the
Putilov Steel Works, one of the largest factories
in St Petersburg
 This resulted in massive strikes of sympathy
throughout the city, growing to 105 000
workers by Friday, 7 January 1905

BLOODY SUNDAY

On a freezing Saturday morning on the 9th January
1905, the largest strike in Russia’s history occurred

111 000 men, women and children started to march in
different sections of St Petersburg aiming to march to
the Tsar’s Winter Palace on the Neva River

The Putilov strikes and Sunday march were organised
by Father Georgy Gapon, a Ukranian-born priest and
head of the radical Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill
Workers
BLOODY SUNDAY

The aim of these strikes was to present the
Tsar with a petition signed by 135 000 workers
outlining their grievances and requesting
significant reforms, including

The marchers carried religious symbols and
carried portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina
BLOODY SUNDAY





Nicholas II was in his palace 25 miles south of the
capital
As several thousand workers approached the Winter
Palace, officers called out the palace’s security garrison
(comprised of soldiers and cossacks) to guard its entry
points
As the workers approached, the soldiers opened fire on
the crowd
It is not known whether the soldiers fired spontaneously
or in response to aggression
The number of victims is also unclear, estimated
between 96 and over 200
WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE PICTURE?
CONSEQUENCES






Nicholas was condemned in much of the Western world
as a tyrant
The Tsar was given the name of ‘Bloody Nicholas’ within
Russia
Father Gapon: “there is no God…there is no Tsar!”
The next day, 150 000 workers showed their disgust by
not working
The Tsar lost his benevolent image and lost the support
of a large proportion of the workers
Over the coming days these strikes expanded
throughout St Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Warsaw and
the Baltic states
CONSEQUENCES: A BRITISH CARTOON OF THE
TSAR
CONSEQUENCES

February 17th: Grand Duke Sergei
Alexandrovich, the Tsar’s uncle and brother-inlaw and former governor of Moscow, was
assassinated in the Kremlin

The murder was carried out by the SR party’s
terrorist arm
BATTLE OF TSUSHIMA: MAY 1905

Last class: we saw that this was the turning point in the
Russo-Japanese War

Japan sealed the humiliating military defeat of Russia

Exposed weaknesses in infrastructure

Contributed to economic recession and rising of food prices

Exacerbated existing discontent from ‘Bloody Sunday’
massacre
MUTINY OF THE BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN AND
OTHER MUTINIES

Another worrying sign for tsarism was a spate of mutinies that erupted in military
units through the middle and end of 1905, spurred by a drop in morale after the
Battle of Tsushima

The most famous of these occurred aboard the battleship Potemkin on the Black
Sea, triggered by officers with a liking for corporal punishment and the serving of
maggot-ridden meat to mistreated sailors.

In June 1905 the sailors, inspired by civilian uprisings in the cities, rebelled and
killed or expelled the ship’s officers.

Now in command of the Potemkin, they sailed it first to Odessa (which was under a
general strike) and then to Romania, where most of them disembarked.

Another mutiny broke at in November at the naval depot in Sevastopol, where
several thousand sailors formed their own worker’s representative council and
demanded the abolition of tsarism, a constituent assembly and improvements to
their conditions.
OTHER MUTINIES

In September, on return from fighting the
Japanese in the east, army troops mutinied and
occupied a section of the Trans-Siberian
Railway

These mutinies: Nicholas was losing support of
some of the armed forces, unable to restore
order given the random nature and location of
armed opposition
ESTABLISHMENT OF UNIONS AND SOVIETS




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Miliukov (Menshevik leader) establishes a worker’s
union in May, the All-Russian Union of Peasants in June
The St Petersburg Soviet (representative worker’s
committee) is established by Leon Trotsky in October,
containing 500 delegates elected by 200,000 workers
in almost 100 different factories –to represent industrial
workers
The Mensheviks were the dominant political group in
this new body
The Bolsheviks and SRs were also well-represented
Factory workers and peasants were now formally
represented so their grievances could be heard
GENERAL STRIKES

Within a month of Bloody Sunday an estimated 800,000
industrial workers were striking across Russia, around
half of these in St Petersburg alone

By October, the widespread nature of these halted the
economy

The Tsar was forced to act –issued the October
Manifesto on 17th October 1905 promising a parliament
to represent the Russian people, called a Duma
A BARRICADE ERECTED BY REVOLUTIONARIES
IN ST PETERSBURG
A TRAIN OVERTURNED BY STRIKING WORKERS
AT THE MAIN RAILWAY DEPOT IN TIFLIS IN 1905
SUMMARY
1. Russian industrial workers endured low wages, poor working conditions and
appalling treatment from employers.
2. Conditions worsened in 1904 due to the war and economic recession,
leading to the formation of workers’ sections.
3. In January 1905 workers at the Putilov plant, led by Georgy Gapon, drafted a
petition intended for the tsar.
4. When they attempted to deliver this, scores of workers were gunned down in
the street by tsarist soldiers.
5. ‘Bloody Sunday’, as it became known, eroded respect for tsarism and
contributed to a wave of general strikes, political demands and violence that
became the 1905 Revolution.
SUMMARY
5. The 1905 Revolution that followed was not a coordinated revolution
but a series of anti-tsarist strikes, protests and actions.
6. Triggered by the Bloody Sunday shootings in the capital, it began as
general strikes imposed by industrial workers.
7. There was also political violence, such as the assassination of the
tsar’s uncle Grand Duke Sergei.
8. Other features of the revolution were military mutinies and the
formation of workers’ soviets.
9. The tsar responded by promising a representative Duma but this was
not done either promptly or sincerely.
‘MOTHER RUSSIA IN CHAINS’
US CARTOON