How was the Tsar able to survive the 1905 revolution?
Despite the failure of Russia in the war against Japan, the Tsarist regime survived the revolution remarkable unscathed. There are a number of reasons for this. Although a large proportion of the Russian population expressed their opposition to the Tsarist regime during events of 1905 it was not organised protest. Each group had its own grievances and separate set of demands. The nationalities in the Baltic area, the Ukraine, Poland and the south were each angry with the policy of Russification but their grievances were their own and they did not co-ordinate their activities or produce a unified programme. In Poland, Catholic ...view middle of the document...
They were to play a key role in the putting down of disturbances and the reassertion of the Tsarist authority in the towns; the military was utilised to break up and imprison the leadership of the Petrograd Soviet and then fought running battles with workers in Moscow who had occupied factories. Keeping the Liberals satisfied was easy for the Tsar by dealing with the rioting peasantry, promising to progressively reduce mortgage repayments and the abandon them altogether. This did not greatly affect the Tsar as they were not being paid anyway. The immediate response to this was a drop in the number of land seizures across Russia. Following the year 1905, there was a very large increase in the number of peasant households becoming independent, although this number is still small when put into scale with the 12 million peasant households. Yet it was enough to appease the peasantry who still believed their Tsar to be a father figure in society and trusted in his making improvements and concessions.
Finally, a true revolution was avoided because the government made, intelligent concessions to two of the main opposition groups thus isolating the third; the industrial working class. The middle class were granted the October Manifesto, which established fundamental civil and political rights, extended the franchise and set up an elected parliament, the Duma that...
