The 1905 Russian Revolution· built byUuser-e8a0f3

The 1905 Russian Revolution 16

• 1904 – 1905 Russo-Japanese War First modern defeat of a European power by an Asian one Japan's victory over Tsarist Russia in 1904–05 — culminating in the naval triumph at Tsushima — was the first time in the modern era that an Asian nation defeated a European great power. It confirmed Japan's status as a major military force and reshaped the balance of power in East Asia.
• 1905 Bloody Sunday A petition, and a volley Some tens of thousands of workers process to the Winter Palace behind Father Georgy Gapon, carrying icons and portraits of the Tsar, to hand over a petition asking for an eight-hour day, a living wage and an elected assembly. The Guard opens fire. Estimates of the dead run from around a hundred to several times that. Nicholas II is not even in the city. The petitioners had addressed him as their father, and by the evening that relationship is finished. Old Style 9 January.
• 1905 Assassination of Grand Duke Sergei A bomb in the Kremlin The Socialist Revolutionary Ivan Kalyayev throws a bomb into the carriage of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the Tsar's uncle and former Governor-General of Moscow, inside the Kremlin walls. Sergei's widow visits Kalyayev in his cell and offers a pardon if he will repent. He refuses and is hanged.
• 1905 The Battle of Tsushima A fleet that sailed round the world to be sunk The Russian Baltic Fleet, having sailed eighteen thousand miles round Africa over seven months, meets Admiral Togo in the Tsushima Strait and is annihilated in an afternoon. Russia loses most of its battleships. It is the first time in the modern era that an Asian power has decisively beaten a European empire at sea, and the news reverberates from Persia to India to Turkey. At home it removes the last argument for continuing the war.
• 1905 The Lodz insurrection Barricades in Russian Poland Three days of street fighting in Lodz, in Russian-controlled Congress Poland, leave several hundred dead. It is the bloodiest single episode of the revolution outside Russia proper, and a reminder that the empire's national minorities have their own reasons for rising. Special punitive expeditions are later sent to Poland, the Baltic provinces and Georgia.
• 1905 Mutiny on the Potemkin Over rotten meat The crew of the battleship Potemkin refuse borscht made with maggoty beef, an officer threatens to shoot them, and the ship ends the day under the control of its sailors with seven officers dead. The Potemkin steams to Odessa, where the city is already in revolt, and troops fire on crowds at the harbour steps. The ship eventually surrenders in Romania. Eisenstein films it twenty years later and the sequence on the steps, which he largely invented, becomes better known than the mutiny.
• 1905 The Treaty of Portsmouth Roosevelt brokers the peace Russia and Japan sign peace at the navy yard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with Theodore Roosevelt mediating — work that earns him the Nobel Peace Prize. Russia cedes southern Sakhalin and its position in Korea and Manchuria. Japanese crowds, expecting an indemnity, riot in Tokyo. For Nicholas II the war is over, which means the army is coming home and can be used at home.
• 1905 The October general strike And the first soviet A railway workers' strike spreads until the empire stops: no trains, no telegraph, no newspapers, no schools, no water in parts of St Petersburg. Around two million people are out. In St Petersburg the strikers elect a council of delegates — the first soviet — with a young Leon Trotsky soon at its head. For a few weeks it is effectively a rival government.
• 1905 The October Manifesto A constitution, signed under duress Drafted by Sergei Witte and put to the Tsar on 14 October, the manifesto grants freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association, and an elected Duma without whose approval no law may take effect. Nicholas argues for three days and signs on 30 October, writing afterwards that he felt sick with shame. Liberals accept it and go home. Socialists call it a trick. The opposition coalition breaks, which was the point. Old Style 17 October.
• 1905 The Sevastopol uprising Lieutenant Schmidt and the Ochakov Sailors and workers at Sevastopol rise, and the retired naval lieutenant Pyotr Schmidt takes command of the cruiser Ochakov and signals that he is in charge of the fleet. The revolt is shelled into submission within days. Schmidt is shot the following March and becomes one of the revolution's martyrs.
• 1905 The Moscow uprising is crushed Artillery in Presnya With the St Petersburg Soviet arrested and Trotsky in custody, Moscow calls a general strike that turns into ten days of barricades. The government brings in the Semyonovsky Guards and shells the working-class Presnya district with field artillery. Around a thousand die. It is the end of the revolution as an armed movement.
• 1906 The Fundamental Laws Autocracy, restored in writing Days before the first Duma meets, Nicholas issues Fundamental Laws that keep the word "autocrat" in his title, reserve foreign policy, the army and the budget to the crown, give ministers responsibility to him alone, and hand him power to legislate by decree whenever the Duma is not sitting. The constitution promised in October is delivered with its teeth removed.
• 1906 The First Duma Seventy-three days Russia's first elected parliament opens in the Winter Palace. The liberal Kadets dominate it, and it immediately demands land reform, a full amnesty and ministers answerable to the chamber. The government refuses everything.
• 1906 The Vyborg Manifesto The deputies find the doors locked The First Duma is dissolved by decree. Around two hundred deputies cross into Finland and issue an appeal from Vyborg urging Russians to refuse taxes and conscription. Almost nobody does. The signatories are prosecuted and barred from standing again, which removes much of the liberal leadership from public life in one stroke.
• 1906 Stolypin's land reform A wager on the strong Pyotr Stolypin lets peasants leave the village commune and consolidate their strips into private farms, betting that a class of independent smallholders will have too much to lose to make revolutions. He asks for twenty years of peace to finish it. He is assassinated in 1911 and the war comes in 1914. Alongside the reform runs the repression: field courts-martial hang enough people that the noose acquires the nickname Stolypin's necktie.
• 1907 The Coup of the Third of June Rewriting the franchise Stolypin dissolves the Second Duma and, in plain breach of the Fundamental Laws, rewrites the electoral system by decree so that landowners return a majority. The Third Duma is compliant and runs its full term. The revolution's one durable achievement is now a managed assembly, and the constitutional route to reform is closed. What remains is 1917.