Russian Revolution of 1905

The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, the country's first. The revolution saw mass political and social unrest, including worker strikes, peasant revolts, and military mutinies directed against Tsar Nicholas II and the autocracy, who were compelled to establish the State Duma legislative assembly and grant certain rights to the population, though both were later undermined.

In the years leading up to the revolution, Russian peasants had become increasingly aggrieved by repression from their landlords and the continuation of semi-feudal relations. Further discontent grew due to mounting losses in the Russo-Japanese War, poor conditions for workers, and urban unemployment. On 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1905, known as "Bloody Sunday," a peaceful procession of workers, led by Georgy Gapon, was fired on by guards outside the tsar's Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg. Demonstrations and strikes spread across the empire, and were brutally repressed by troops. In June, sailors on the battleship Potemkin mutinied, and in October, a strike by railway workers turned into a general strike in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Workers established councils, including the inaugural St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies, to debate their course of action. The influence of revolutionary parties, in particular the Socialist Revolutionary Party and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, escalated; at the same time, reactionary pro-monarchist Black Hundreds began attacks on revolutionaries and the Jewish population.