By the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian state was among the five largest industrial countries in the world. However, discontent reigned among all walks of life within the power. Part of the nobility and the intelligentsia advocated the introduction of a constitution, the peasants desired the land of the landowners. The workers, however, sought to improve working conditions and raise wages. A cup of discontent was overwhelmed by the unsuccessful war with Japan.
The 1905 revolution in Russia began on January 9. About one hundred and forty thousand people came to the Winter Palace under the leader of the priest Gapon. They walked with portraits of the king, with icons. Among them were old people, children, women.
Nicholas II orders the dispersal of the demonstration. The tsar himself left Petersburg. Troops were already on the streets.
The demonstrators were met by volleys of weapons. As a result, more than a thousand people died on Bloody Sunday , and about five thousand were injured.
These bloody events immediately stirred up the whole country. Strikes began, workers began to build barricades.
The revolution of 1905-1907 developed rapidly. About sixty thousand workers took part in the strike in Ivanovo-Voznesensk. In 1905, on the first of May, mass demonstrations took place in many cities, peasant demonstrations in many counties. Suddenly, a revolt broke out in the navy. The battleship "Potemkin" approached Odessa on June 15, accompanied by the destroyer No. 267.
In the summer of 1905, the Peasant Union was formed. This first major organization was led by the Social Revolutionaries and liberals. Already by the fall, uprisings swept the whole country. The first Russian revolution of 1905 numbered about five million people. The middle strike — students, doctors, and employees — joined the general strike of the workers, begun on October 15.
By November, the Peasant Union had merged with the working class. Mass unrest took place in the army and navy. The largest uprising was the performance of sailors on the cruiser Ochakov, led by Lieutenant Schmidt.
After the October events, the party of Lenin, with the support of the Soviets of People’s Deputies, is organizing preparations for a massive armed uprising. It was assumed that the performance would begin workers in St. Petersburg. But the St. Petersburg Mensheviks did not act very decisively. This is what the Russian government took advantage of. In early December 1905, most of the deputies of the capital were arrested. St. Petersburg strikers were left without leadership.
Under these conditions, the revolution of 1905-1907. reached its peak. Moscow organizations took the lead in holding a general uprising. It was assumed that the strike on December 7 would develop into a large-scale armed uprising.
At noon on December 7, the locomotive and factory hooters of Moscow hummed. Four hundred enterprises have stopped working. Rallies were held in the city, military squads were formed. The government tried to crush the rebellion with the help of the troops, but the soldiers of the Moscow garrison refused to oppose the workers. The servicemen were disarmed and locked in the barracks.
In December, following the example of Moscow, uprisings broke out in Rostov, the cities of Transcaucasia, the Baltic states, Siberia, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Perm.
However, the leaders of the uprising in Moscow were arrested. By order of the tsar, the Semenovsky regiment arrived from Petersburg . Barricades set up by the workers were destroyed as soon as possible. On December 19, by order of the Moscow Council, the armed struggle was stopped. Everyone returned to their jobs.
In the following year, 1906, more than a million workers participated in the strike. Flaring uprisings were quickly suppressed by the government.
The tsar dissolves the State Duma in July 1906. At the same time, unrest occurred in Kronstadt, Revel, Sveaborg. In June of the following, 1907, the tsar dispersed the second, even more oppositional, than the first, State Duma. The electoral law was also amended.
The revolution of 1905-1907 characterized by contemporaries as a bourgeois-democratic speech. The main goal of this mass uprising was the desire to destroy the landlord tenure and autocracy.
The revolution of 1905-1907 formed the prerequisites for the armed uprising of 1917.