IB History Causes of the 1905 Revolution Notes

Russia Under the Tsars

1. Nicholas II became tsar in 1894 with no training for rule. He was deeply committed to autocracy, believing God had given him absolute authority over Russia.
2. Russia had no parliament, no free press, and no legal political parties. The Okhrana (secret police) monitored dissent, arrested activists, and ran informers inside opposition groups.
3. Russia had a population of approximately 125 million by 1900, of whom roughly 80% were peasants living in rural poverty.
4. The empire was ethnically diverse. Russification policies imposed Russian language and culture on Poles, Finns, Ukrainians, and Jews, creating resentment among national minorities.
5. Industrialisation accelerated under Finance Minister Sergei Witte in the 1890s. Railway mileage doubled; factories expanded in St Petersburg, Moscow, and Baku.
6. St Petersburg's population grew from around 700,000 in 1870 to over 1.4 million by 1900. Workers crowded into unsanitary tenements with multiple families sharing single rooms.
7. Russia's defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1856) exposed military backwardness. Alexander II's emancipation of serfs in 1861 modernized the peasantry but introduced crippling redemption payments.
8. The emancipation of the serfs (1861) required peasants to pay redemption payments for 49 years. These annual instalments drained peasant incomes and were not abolished until 1907.

Long-term Economic and Social Causes

1. By 1900, Russian peasants farmed under the commune (mir) system, which prevented individual land ownership and limited agricultural innovation. Strip farming remained widespread.
2. Land hunger was acute. The nobility owned roughly 77 million desyatinas while millions of peasants had tiny, insufficient plots. Peasant uprisings occurred as early as 1902 in Poltava and Kharkov.
3. The famine of 1891-92 killed an estimated 500,000 people and exposed the government's failure to protect the rural population. Resentment towards the state deepened across the countryside.
4. Industrial workers typically worked 12-14 hours per day for wages of 10-15 roubles per month. Factories lacked safety regulations; child labour was common in textile mills.
5. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was founded in 1898. At its 1903 congress it split into Bolsheviks (Lenin) and Mensheviks (Martov).
6. The Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs), founded in 1901, advocated peasant revolution and used political assassination. They killed Interior Minister Plehve in 1904 and Grand Duke Sergei in 1905.
7. By 1900, Russia's national debt required nearly a third of state revenue to service foreign loans, mostly from France. This left little for social reform or improving workers' conditions.
8. Middle-class liberals, organized in the Union of Liberation (1903), demanded a constitution and elected parliament. They added political pressure from educated professionals alongside worker and peasant unrest.

Political Opposition and the Crisis of Autocracy

1. Nicholas II dismissed calls for political reform in his January 1895 address, calling demands for constitutional government "senseless dreams." This set the tone for his entire reign.
2. The Okhrana infiltrated opposition groups through agents provocateurs. Despite this, socialist and liberal movements continued to grow through underground cells and illegal publications.
3. Father Georgy Gapon founded the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers in 1903. Initially tolerated by the government, it grew to over 11,000 members by early 1905.
4. In 1903, strikes affected over 200,000 workers across Russian cities. The government's response was repression - organizers were arrested and trade unions remained illegal.
5. Censorship prevented open political debate. Newspapers required government approval, political meetings were illegal, and universities were subject to police surveillance.
6. Suppression of Polish autonomy and the forced Russification of Finland after 1899 fuelled nationalist resistance alongside class-based unrest, broadening the anti-tsarist coalition.
7. The intelligentsia - Russia's educated professional class - played a key role in organising opposition. Many became revolutionaries after seeing the impossibility of legal reform under Nicholas II.