The Revolution of 1905, most historians would agree, was the beginning of a revolutionary period that lasted well past 1917; MacKenzie and Curran, in their Russia and the USSR in the 20th Century call it "the dress rehearsal for the 1917 revolutions"

The reasons for the revolution of 1905 are numerous: disgust at the failings of the Russian military in the war against Japan, distrust of the government and its enormous bureaucracy, depression resulting from the downturn of the economy in 1900-1903. As numerous as the charges were the groups who wanted change: intellectuals, peasants, ethnic minorities, industrial workers, soldiers and sailors, and virtually everyone else in society that was not a member of one of the privileged classes.

The revolution began on January 9th, 1905, with an event that became known as Bloody Sunday. Father Gapon, an Orthodox priest, led a group of factory workers and others to the Winter Palace in a peaceful march designed to ask the tsar for several concessions, including an 8 hour work day and a constituent assembly. The marchers, carrying icons and singing hymns, approached the Winter Palace, where they believed their petitions would be heard by the tsar, when they were ordered to stop by the tsar's uncle. When they refused, the tsar's uncle ordered the guards to open fire, and several hundred workers were cut down. The public, upon learning of the slaughter, turned against the tsar, and by mid January over a half million workers were on strike. The tsar refused to deal with the revolutionaries, and the public responded by expanding the strike. By June, the professional unions in St. Petersburg had joined together to become the Union of Unions, which gave them much more power to wield in strikes, etc. The workers began to form councils, or soviets, to make their demands known to the government. In addition, several of the military garrisons mutinied in favor of the strikers, including the battleship Potemkin, which forced the Russian government to deactivate the Black Sea fleet for fear of continued mutinies.

The final blow came in September, when a general strike spread from Moscow to St. Petersburg and beyond; by mid-October, only one paper was being published daily in all of Russia, and the streets in most of the urban centers were controlled by the striking workers. The government could no longer trust the military, and the tsar and his ministers were, for all intents and purposes, paralyzed into inaction. Count Witte, the minister of Finance under Nicholas, argued that the only possible actions were to create a constitution, or to create a military dictatorship. Nicholas conceded, and issued what became known as the October Manifesto.

The October Manifesto and the Failure of the Revolution

The October Manifesto, which Nicholas agreed to in October 1905, promised a constitution, civil liberties, and a Duma, or national parliament. The Duma would, according to the Manifesto, be responsible for signing bills into law, and would be chosen by vote, although universal suffrage was not promised. Nicholas named Witte as the premier of the Council of Ministers, and then suffered a near breakdown due to his despair at being forced to limit the powers of the autocracy.

The problem, in addition to Nicholas's despair, was that no one was particularly happy with the Manifesto; the liberals did not believe it went far enough, and the conservatives were disgusted with the "popular" elements of it. Most of the liberal leaders refused to join the government, and the violence in Russia, especially in the rural areas, reached new heights. However, the regime had begun to regain its composure, and when another workers' rebellion broke out in Moscow in December, the state sent troops in and shot or deported the striking workers. The revolution petered out, the tsarist government began to regroup.

One of the most important results of the revolution was the dissolution of the idea of the tsar as the benevolent father figure of the Russian people. This notion, coupled with the idea that he was being misled by his advisors (which helped to explain away bad policy) had been a constant one in Russian history, but the 1905 Revolution ended those myths. Instead, Nicholas was seen as a true autocrat with little love for his people, which made it far easier to hate him. Because of his disgust with the October Manifesto, Nicholas attempted to retain as many features of the autocratic government as he could; this helped to alienate him not only from the general populace, but also from those, like Witte, who could have potentially enabled him to stay in power.

The other results were also less than satisfying. The mortgages owed on the land of the former serfs were cancelled, although these amounts were negligible at that point. The government created a bicameral Duma, with only about half of the representatives elected through partial male suffrage; the other half of the legislature, the upper house, was appointed by the tsar himself. Thus, the body was basically guaranteed to be conservative, and its powers were severely limited. Despite this, the election to choose the new ministers was an exciting one, with many of the radical (and still illegal) political parties gaining seats, including the Kadets (Constitutional Democrats, 180 seats) and the Trudoviks (Labor Party, 100 seats). A Kadet, Sergei Muromtsev, was chosen as the speaker of the lower house, but the delegates were given no direction and no power by the tsar. When they attempted to go directly to the Russian people, the tsar dissolved the Duma, and allowed Peter Stolypin, who had become the premier and minister of the interior in mid-1906, to rule virtually by decree. The second Duma, which began to serve in February 1907, was even more radical, and it was quickly dissolved after only four months. Stolypin then pulled off what has become viewed as a coup d'etat, altering the electoral laws that had been created in the October Manifesto to allow for the election of a Duma which was "Russian in spirit". This allowed for the creation of a significantly weakened Duma that attempted to carry out reforms but was largely ineffective. Stolypin was ruthless in dealing with those he thought threatened the government, and by late 1907 the revolutionary movement in Russia was essentially dead.