Russian Revolution of 1905

In 1905 defeat by Japan ignited strikes, mutinies, and peasant risings across the Russian Empire and forced Nicholas II to grant a constitution.

Overview

On Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, troops fired on peaceful petitioners marching to the Winter Palace with Father Gapon, shattering popular reverence for the tsar. A general strike in October, coordinated through the first soviets, the councils of workers deputies, forced the October Manifesto promising civil liberties and an elected Duma. Mutiny broke out on the battleship Potemkin in June, and peasants seized land across the countryside all year. The regime recovered its nerve, arrested soviet leaders including Trotsky, and restricted the Duma in the 1906 Fundamental Laws. The year served as the dress rehearsal whose lessons in mass strike, soviet power, and army loyalty Lenin and others applied in 1917.