|
Soviet Union [USSR] The Revolution of 1905 and Counterrevolution, 1905-07
The Russo-Japanese War accelerated the rise of political
movements among all classes and the major nationalities, including
propertied Russians. By early 1904, Russian liberals active in
zemstvos, assemblies of nobles, and the professions had formed an
organization called the Union of Liberation. In the same year, they
joined with Finns, Poles, Georgians, Armenians, and with Russian
members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party to form an
antiautocratic alliance. They later promoted the broad,
professional Union of Unions. In early 1905, Father Georgii Gapon,
a Russian Orthodox priest who headed a police-sponsored workers'
association, led a huge, peaceful march in St. Petersburg to
present a petition to the tsar. Nervous troops responded with
gunfire, killing several hundred people, and thus the Revolution of
1905 began. Called "Bloody Sunday," this event, along with the
failures incurred in the war with Japan, prompted opposition groups
to instigate more strikes, agrarian disorders, army mutinies, and
terrorist acts and to form a workers' council, or soviet, in St.
Petersburg. Armed uprisings occurred in Moscow, the Urals, Latvia,
and parts of Poland. Activists from the zemstvos and the Union of
Unions formed the Constitutional Democratic Party, whose members
were known as Kadets.
Some upper-class and propertied activists were fearful of these
disorders and were willing to compromise. In late 1905, Nicholas,
under pressure from Witte, issued the so-called October Manifesto,
giving Russia a constitution and proclaiming basic civil liberties
for all citizens. The constitution envisioned a ministerial
government responsible to the tsar, not to the proposed national
Duma--a state assembly to be elected on a broad, but not wholly
equitable, franchise. Those who accepted this arrangement formed a
center-right political party, the Octobrists. The Kadets held out
for a ministerial government and equal, universal suffrage. Because
of their political principles and continued armed uprisings,
Russia's leftist parties were in a quandary over whether or not to
participate in the Duma elections. At the same time, rightists, who
had been perpetrating anti-Jewish pogroms, actively opposed the
reforms. Several monarchist and protofascist groups wishing to
subvert the new order also arose. Nevertheless, the regime
continued to function, eventually restoring order in the cities,
the countryside, and the army. In the process, several thousand
officials were murdered by terrorists, and an equal number of
terrorists were executed by the government. Because the government
was successful in restoring order and in securing a loan from
France before the Duma met, Nicholas was in a strong position and
therefore able to dismiss Witte, who had been serving as Russia's
chief minister.
The First Duma, which was elected in 1906, was dominated by the
Kadets and their allies, with the mainly nonparty radical leftists
slightly weaker than the Octobrists and the nonparty centerrightists combined. The Kadets and the government were deadlocked
over the adoption of a constitution and peasant reform, leading to
the dissolution of the Duma and the scheduling of new elections. In
spite of an upsurge of leftist terror, radical leftist parties
participated in the election and, together with the nonparty left,
gained a plurality of seats, followed by a loose coalition of
Kadets and of Poles and other nationalities in the political
center. The impasse continued, however, when the Second Duma met in
1907.
Data as of May 1989
|
