Russian Revolution of 1905

The bourgeois-democratic revolution that occurred in Russia in 1905. At the beginning of the 20th century, as a militarist-feudal imperialist country, Russia also preserved the land tenure of large landlords and the autocratic rule of the Tsar and became an extremely reactionary and economically backward country. The Tsarist government was dependent on foreign financial capital and was indulged in foreign aggression and expansion; and applied a brutal class oppression, economic exploitation and coercion on minority nationalities.

In 1905, a series of wide-ranging revolutionary events targeting the government took place in the Russian Empire, such as workers’ strikes, peasants’ unrest, students’ and soldiers’ riots and so on. Tsar Nicholas II was forced to issue an imperial edict on October 30 (October 17 of the Russian calendar), promising to convene a state Duma with legislative power and allowing the people freedom of speech, assembly, publication, association and so on. The Bolshevik Party headed by Lenin, called on the people to push the revolution to a climax, initiate an armed uprising and overthrow the Tsarist autocracy. On December 26, workers held a general political strike under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party and established a workers’ council of representatives on behalf of the Moscow Soviet. Armed workers-built barricades and fought with the reactionary army and police and once occupied almost all stations, and armed uprisings also took place in Don Cossacks, Nizhegorod, Yaroslavl and other places, and in Chita and Novorossisk, the revolutionary people once seized political power. The peak of the 1905 revolution was the armed uprising in December 1905. The people’s uprising was suppressed by the Tsar government due to the lack of centralized and unified leadership, scattered uprisings, the lack of close cooperation and coordination between the workers’ and peasants’ movements, lack of close cooperation between urban and rural struggles, and the lack of effective work among the soldiers. In 1907, the Tsar government staged the June 3rd coup, tearing up the declaration it made in October 17 of the previous year, and the revolution had failed.

The revolution in 1905 made the working-class of Russia attain a profound revolutionary education and training, workers creatively used the struggle methods such as the general political strikes and armed uprisings during which they had created a new organizational form, the Soviets, also it was a “general exercise” for the proletarian revolution. This revolution also inspired a series of revolutionary developments and struggles in Europe and Asia. It was the first people’s revolution in era of imperialism and marked the ending of the peaceful capitalist development period which had succeeded the failure of the Paris Commune.