Russia on the edge of the twentieth century

Vladimir Makovsky painted 9 January 1905 on Vasilyevsky Island: troops, a crowd, a winter street that is not yet the cellar of 1918. Later oil of a massacre, not a police count. Use it for Bloody Sunday, then return to the dated day. The last article left a lost fleet and a phrase about dreams. This page is the year that followed. For several years before 1905, and especially after the humiliating Russo-Japanese War, diverse social groups demonstrated their discontent. Their protests ranged from liberal rhetoric to strikes and included student riots and terrorist assassinations. Those efforts, coordinated by the Union of Liberation, culminated in the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in the square before the Winter Palace, St Petersburg, on Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, 22 January New Style.

In January 1905 a wave of strikes, partly planned by a legal organisation of workers — the Assembly of Russian Workingmen — broke out in St Petersburg. The leader of the assembly, the priest Georgy Gapon, hoping to present the workers’ request for reforms directly to Nicholas II, arranged a mass demonstration. Having told the authorities of his plan, he led the workers — peacefully carrying religious icons, pictures of Nicholas, and petitions citing their grievances — toward the square before the Winter Palace. Nicholas was not in the city. The chief of the security police, the emperor’s uncle Grand Duke Vladimir, tried to stop the march and then ordered his police to fire. More than a hundred marchers were killed, and several hundred were wounded. The massacre was followed by strikes in other cities, peasant uprisings, and mutinies. That is Britannica’s Bloody Sunday, not a novel of the square.

In St Petersburg and other major industrial centres, general strikes followed. Nicholas responded in February by announcing his intention to establish an elected assembly to advise the government. The proposal did not satisfy the striking workers, the peasants whose uprisings were spreading, or even the liberals of the zemstvos and of the professions, who by April were demanding that a constituent assembly be convened. The revolt spread to non-Russian parts of the empire, particularly Poland, Finland, the Baltic provinces, and Georgia, where it was reinforced by nationalist movements. In some areas the rebellion was met by violent opposition from the antirevolutionary Black Hundreds, who attacked socialists and staged pogroms against the Jews. The armed forces joined in as well: army units along the Trans-Siberian Railroad rioted, and in June the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutinied in the harbour at Odessa.

A later view of the opening of the State Duma. Use it as the hall the manifesto had to promise, then return to October 1905. A packed gallery is not yet May 1906’s Fundamental Laws. It is what a general strike extracted from a man who still called himself autocrat.

A government decree of 6 August, 19 August New Style, announcing election procedures for an advisory assembly stimulated even more protest. The rebellion reached its peak in October and November. A railroad strike, begun on 7 October, 20 October New Style, swiftly developed into a general strike in most of the large cities. The first workers’ council, or soviet, acting as a strike committee, was formed at Ivanovo-Vosnesensk. Another, the St Petersburg soviet, was formed on 13 October, 26 October New Style. It initially directed the general strike; as social democrats, especially Mensheviks, joined, it assumed the character of a revolutionary government. Similar soviets were organised in Moscow, Odessa, and other cities. On the advice of Sergey Witte, Nicholas issued the October Manifesto on 17 October, 30 October New Style, promising a constitution and an elected legislature, the Duma. He also made Witte president of the new Council of Ministers — prime minister.

These concessions did not meet the radical opposition’s demands for an assembly or a republic. The revolutionaries refused to yield; even the liberals declined to participate in Witte’s government. Some moderates were satisfied, and many workers, interpreting the October Manifesto as a victory, returned to their jobs. That was enough to break the opposition’s coalition and to weaken the St Petersburg soviet. At the end of November the government arrested the soviet’s chairman, the Menshevik G. S. Khrustalev-Nosar, and on 3 December, 16 December New Style, occupied its building and arrested Leon Trotsky and others. In Moscow a new general strike was called; barricades were erected, and there was fighting in the streets before the revolution was put down. Special military expeditions were sent to Poland, the Baltic provinces, and Georgia. By the beginning of 1906 the government had regained control of the Trans-Siberian Railroad and of the army. The revolution was essentially over.

The uprising failed to replace the tsarist autocracy with a democratic republic or even to convoke a constituent assembly. It did force the imperial regime to institute extensive reforms, the most important of which were the Fundamental Laws of May 1906, which functioned as a constitution, and the creation of the Duma. Nicholas, however, cared little for keeping promises extracted from him under duress. He strove to regain his former powers and ensured that in those Fundamental Laws he was still designated an autocrat. He blamed Witte for the October Manifesto and soon dismissed him. The first two Dumas were prematurely dissolved as insubordinate. Keep 1914 out of this page. Keep a cellar in Yekaterinburg out of it. This chapter’s last title is 1905 to a shot in a Kiev opera in 1911, not the war that would finish the dynasty.

Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin replaced Witte. He dismissed the first Duma on 22 July 1906, 9 July Old Style, because it demanded a determining voice in agrarian reform, and by executive decree introduced his own. The decrees of October and November 1906 gave peasants greater freedom in choosing zemstvo representatives, removed restrictions that had excluded them from ordinary judicial procedures, and, most importantly, provided an opportunity to leave their communes, acquire private ownership of consolidated plots, and become, in Stolypin’s wish, a prosperous, stable, and loyally conservative class of farmers. He also instituted courts-martial authorised to try accused rebels and terrorists. Within the few months of their existence they used Stolypin’s necktie — the noose — to execute several thousand defendants. The prime minister gained the enmity of the left and much of the centre.

The manifesto promised that no law would take effect without a Duma. The Fundamental Laws still named him autocrat.

He swiftly dismissed the second Duma, which met from March to June 1907, because it refused to endorse his agrarian proposals. On the day of its dissolution, 16 June 1907, 3 June Old Style, he issued — in complete disregard for the recently adopted constitution — a new electoral law reflecting his conservatism and Russian nationalism and restricting the franchise of peasants, workers, and national minorities. Nicholas’s life calls that act the coup of 16 June 1907. The third Duma, elected under the new law, proved more workable. Stolypin was loyal to the dynasty and a capable statesman, but the emperor distrusted him and allowed his position to be undermined by intrigue. It is probable, the same life of Stolypin records, that Nicholas was considering his dismissal when, while attending an operatic performance with the emperor, Stolypin was fatally shot on 14 September 1911, 1 September Old Style, by Dmitry Bogrov, a revolutionary who had used his police connections to gain admittance to the theatre in Kiev.

Keep barge haulers out of this page except as the labour that had already struck. Keep 1861’s redemption tables out of it. Keep Karakozov’s 1866 shot out of it except as an earlier hunt that had killed a different emperor. This title is Bloody Sunday, Potemkin, soviets, a manifesto, a constitution that still said autocrat, two dissolved Dumas, agrarian decrees, a necktie, a coup of the franchise, and a death in a theatre. Readers who want 1914 will not find a next chapter yet. This book stops here on purpose. The edge is 1905–11. The fall is another book.

Do not invent a death count beyond more than a hundred killed and several hundred wounded. Do not invent Gapon’s petition clauses beyond grievances and desired reforms. Do not invent Bogrov’s last words. Do not write Lenin’s return. The Union of Liberation, the Black Hundreds, Ivanovo-Vosnesensk, Khrustalev-Nosar, Trotsky’s arrest, and Stolypin’s necktie are already a crowded last page. Leave Rasputin to a later reign this site has not written. Leave the Straits and Sarajevo unopened. The large Russia of the nineteenth century has reached a hall it did not want and a village it hoped to remake as private farms. That is enough ending for a chapter called Russia changes.

A 1906 portrait of Stolypin as the new prime minister. Use it for the man of decrees and nooses, then put it aside. A stiff collar is not 14 September in Kiev. It is the face of the years after the manifesto, when autocracy learned to share a room and then packed the seats.

Stop this page before a general mobilisation. Russia on the edge of the twentieth century here is a Sunday of icons and rifles, a battleship in Odessa, a railroad that stopped the country, soviets, 17 October, Fundamental Laws, Stolypin, a third Duma, a shot at the opera. Makovsky’s street is the massacre. The Duma’s opening is the hall. Stolypin’s photograph is the aftermath. Alexander II had changed Russia from above. 1905 changed it from a square and a strike. The grandson still signed himself autocrat. The book does not follow him into 1917. It leaves him in a constitutional room he did not love, with a minister already dead, on the edge of a century this chapter will not finish.

The chapter began with a son who inherited a lost Crimean war and chose emancipation without a parliament. It ends with a grandson who inherited a lost Japanese war and conceded a Duma without ceasing to be an autocrat. Between them sit redemption, zemstvos, bombs, a cancelled ukaz, gold, mills, and a working class that had learned to stop. That sequence is the story this vertical slice was built to tell. The next Russian century is not yet written here. The last dated fact on this page is 14 September 1911 in Kiev. After that, for now, the book is silent.