The 1905 Revolution

Revolution flared in Russia after a peaceful protest came under fire by imperial troops in St. Petersburg in January 1905. But another factor in the unrest was the Russo-Japanese War, which by then had been underway for almost a year.

Russia had gone to war against Japan with high hopes for success. As Minister of Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Plehve cynically put it, “What we need to stave off revolution is a triumphant little war.” Instead of triumph, Russia was facing catastrophe in the Far East. The surrender of Port Arthur in December 1904 provoked a great outburst of anger against the government. Caught off guard by both the burgeoning revolution and the danger of defeat at the empire’s eastern end, the imperial authorities struggled to find solutions.

In February 1905, the tsar ordered the recently installed Minister of Internal Affairs Alexander Bulygin (Plehve had been assassinated a few months earlier) to prepare plans for a Duma, a representative assembly. It appeared that the government was prepared to make substantial concessions. Meanwhile, the Second Pacific Squadron, which had set out the previous fall under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, was making its way from Kronstadt to the Sea of Japan – essentially an around-the-world voyage.

As winter turned to spring, the forces of revolution gained momentum and strikes and demonstrations spread. Bulygin continued work on his plans for the Duma. Rozhestvensky’s squadron traversed the globe.

In May, after completing its long journey, the Russian squadron faced the Japanese fleet in the Tsushima Strait and was destroyed. In Russia, armed clashes had begun, and peasants were setting fire to aristocratic estates.

Two key events took place in August 1905. A draft of Bulygin’s plan for the Duma was released. It turned out that the body was to be consultative rather than legislative, in other words it would have no real power. If this plan had been offered a year or two earlier, it would have been enthusiastically welcomed. Now, in the whirlwind of revolution, it was essentially ignored. On the 23rd (September 5th New Style), the Treaty of Portsmouth brought the Russo-Japanese War to an end. Russia conceded much of its sphere of influence in the Far East and relinquished half of Sakhalin. In the end, the war was not all that little, and, for Russia, it certainly was not triumphant.

Neither the consultative Duma, too little too late, nor the peace concluded after a year and a half of bloody war, managed to stop the slow advance of revolution, which continued to gain momentum. The moral is... Well, perhaps we should leave it to those in power to ponder what the moral of this tale might be.