Bread, Peace and Land.

The Russian revolutions 1905-1917

One of the slogans thrown around by Lenin after his return to the Finland station in April 1917 was “Bread, Peace and Land”. These were the three things that the Russian people wanted, the three things they had ben trying to get for at least a decade and the state had been unable or unwilling to give them all three.

The October Revolution of 1917 in Russia is one of the events that shaped the twentieth century, it destabilised Europe, caused the Cold War and it is something that we still feel the ramifications of to this day but how did the Russian Empire collapse so spectacularly and how did a minority group of political hardliners wrestle control from established elites, larger political parties and impose their will when only four years ago the whole country had come out to celebrate three hundred years of Romanov rule?

1905 - The precursor

Russian politics of the late nineteenth century is not a subject you simply browse for fun (usually) and it is a complicated affair which boils down to, as Marx would put it, a class war between the haves and the have nots.

Russia is also quite peculiar in that it is one of the most powerful nations in Europe and Asia, her military might is enough to concern the British enough that when they wrote the Naval Defence act of 1889 the two powers they had in mind were France and Russia. All of Europe is wondering how long before Russia gets involved in Asia by trying to take Afghanistan or carve a sizable chunk out of China unopposed.

But…

It is also incredibly backward. The nation has failed to really embrace the Industrial Revolution, vast swathes of the country are still feudal agricultural economies and the farming peasants are still serfs and wear a metal collar to show their indenture to their landlord until 1861.

Going into the twentieth Century the nation relied heavily on foreign investments and direction when it came to industry and the careful counsel of a few progressive Liberal ministers such as Sergei Witte, but by the rest of European standards Russia was miles behind and even the Second Reich had more democracy, freedoms and better working conditions.

By 1905 things were coming to a head with unrest amongst the peasantry about incomes, not having rights over their lands, a right to vote or serve in the Imperial Guard or Navy to improve their lot. With European powers having money problems it also affected the Russian economy causing a financial crisis causing more poverty for those at the bottom.

The Czarist government relied on the military and its commanders to maintain order but the Russo-Japanese War, which had started the year before was going horrifically for the Russian military with the Japanese besieging Port Arthur and the defeat of the Pacific fleet at the Yellow River. There were questions of competence, poor conditions and pay shortages which did not endear the Government to the Armed services.

The usual and only recourse was for the poor to petition the Czar personally with their grievances and then the Czar would address them as he saw fit, often promising aid and deliverance.

Bloody Sunday at the Winter Palace

On January 22nd, a Russian Orthodox Priest led a large group of protesters to the Winter Palace to present one such petition to the Czar which, politely, called for improved working conditions and hours, better pay, universal suffrage and an end to the War with Japan. Workers and their families marched singing patriotic songs and holding religious icons, though numbers are a little hazy the estimates ranged from 3000-50,000 men, women and children. The Government had taken steps to meet the marchers with extra soldiers being brought in and the marchers told to stay at a set distance from the Winter Palace, however, the government and army’s response was somewhat muddled and confused. At around mid morning the shooting started and in the panic the crowd turned and fled. Again estimates are wildly different with suggestions of up to 4000 dead against the Czar’s official number of 96 dead and 333 wounded. As St Petersburg descended in to looting and sympathetic striking the touch paper to a revolt had been lit.

What would follow would cover the whole Empire, from Warsaw to Batum, Vilna, Riga, Revel and Baku. There were 414,000 strikers that January alone and during the protests Nicholas II’s uncle, Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, was killed by a Socialist Revolutionary, Ivan Kalyayev.

The Government responded in two very different ways. The Carrot was to look at consultative assemblies for religious tolerance and free speech as well as looking at worker’s rights and the Czar also looked at forming an assembly of People’s representatives. In St Petersburg the people had formed a Soviet of elected workers representatives to act as a workers council and organise strikes.

The stick came in the form of brutal suppression, executions and imprisonments of rioters but it could have been a lot worse. When the peasants rebelled in the countryside the army was sent in but because it was made up of mainly peasants who were sympathetic to the rioters, morale quickly collapsed and they refused to follow orders with 400 mutinies taking place between 1905-6 which nearly brought the Army to a collapse.

Nicholas II was handed a manifesto for a new Russia along Liberal lines written by Witte and Alezis Obolenskii which set in stone the Civil liberties agreed to earlier in the year, a promise for the election of a State Duma as well as setting the Duma’s power to create laws taking it away

from the Czar (unless the Duma agreed to it) and Universal suffrage for all men. Nicholas was not happy about the document and rallied against it for three days, angry and not understanding why the people would want to limit his power and change a system which had been in place for centuries. Eventually he gave in.

Following bloody Sunday and the embarrassing defeat of the Russian Baltic fleet at Tsushima on 24-5 May, the war with Japan already unpopular, began to go beyond the pail and the Czar accepted President Roosevelt’s offer of mediation to bring the war to an end so that his government could concentrate on the issues at home.

Peace had been achieved, the promise of a Duma and the petition to the Czar promised land reforms and better conditions and bread. The future looked good for them.