Russian Revolution of 1905

On Sunday, January 22, 1905 (January 9 in the old Russian calendar), a crowd of workers led by the priest Georgy Gapon walked to the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to hand Tsar Nicholas II a petition asking for better conditions and a representative assembly. Troops fired on the marchers and killed and wounded many, with estimates of the dead ranging from about a hundred to several hundred. The massacre, called Bloody Sunday, destroyed the trust many workers and peasants had in the tsar as their protector.²

Russia in 1905 was an autocracy with no elected parliament, a poor peasantry and a young industrial workforce in crowded cities. Emancipation in 1861 had left peasants burdened with redemption payments and short of land. Liberal critics, socialist parties and national minorities were all pressing for change. The war with Japan, which began in 1904, had gone badly, with the fall of Port Arthur in January 1905 and the destruction of the Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in May, and defeat showed the regime's weakness.²

Strikes spread across the empire and peasants attacked estates. In June, sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied at Odessa. In October a general strike shut down rail and industry, and workers in St. Petersburg created a council, a soviet, whose chairman for a time was Leon Trotsky. On October 30 (17 O.S.), Nicholas signed the October Manifesto, written by Sergei Witte, which promised civil liberties and an elected Duma. Moderates were satisfied, and the army crushed a Moscow armed uprising in December. The tsar kept control of the army, ministers and foreign policy, and the Duma had limited power, so the revolution remained unfinished.¹²