Before 1917, there was 1905. It was the beginning of the 20th century, and pretty much all of western Europe had embraced industrialization and modern forms of government, and had shed away old practices of serfdom and other old social norms. Russia however, was an exception. It was only during Tsar Alexander II’s reign, which started in 1855, that thousands of serfs were liberated. But even after Tsar Alexander II’s assassination in 1881, many of the freed serfs were struggling economically. Russia had also been involved in the Crimean war and the Russo-Japanese war (more on those in the future!), both of which Russia lost. During the first stages of Russia’s attempt to industrialize, workers were suppressed and riddled with debt.
By the time of the revolution, the Tsar of Russia was Nicholas II. He was a weak and childish ruler, and he would bring the Romanov dynasty to an end, a dynasty that established dominion over Russia for about 3 centuries.
In 1905, thousands of peasants came together to hold a strike at the Winter Palace. They demanded what most of western Europe had established to an extent already: a national assembly, universal suffrage, and civil liberties. The Tsar’s armies opened fire on the crowd, killing many of the protestors. This would become known as Bloody Sunday, and the event would cause the lower classes of Russia to develop social consciousness, which would ultimately lead to Lenin’s revolution in 1917.
In response to Bloody Sunday, Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto, which formally ended autocracy in Russia. The Manifesto guaranteed some civil liberties to the people of Russia, such as freedom of speech. It also created the Duma, which acted kind of like a Russian Parliament. The October Manifesto would quell the revolutionary fervor of the Russian people.
However, a year after, Nicholas also issued the Fundamental Laws, where half of the Duma was filled with the Russian nobility, and put a fine limit on the civil liberties guaranteed to the people. The lower classes took the laws as a sign that their revolution must ultimately continue: in about ten years, Tsar Nicholas II would abdicate the throne and give up his power to Lenin and his Bolsheviks…
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