In December 1905, the First Russian Revolution reached its climax. An uprising broke out in Moscow. Partisan warfare in the city lasted two weeks. At the same time, riots took place in some provincial cities of the country. Nevertheless, the Moscow riot, the victims of which were hundreds of people, was suppressed. After this victory, the tsarist government took the initiative and eventually crushed the revolution of 1905-1907.
Reasons and background
The famous December armed uprising began as a result of a chain of events. The famous Manifesto on October 17 has already been adopted, which granted the country some freedoms and established a parliament. However, discontent among the population continued. On December 4, 1905, a plenary meeting of the Council of Workers' Deputies convened in Moscow. On the eve of the First Throne there was an uprising of the Rostov regiment stationed there. The soldiers demanded better nutrition, an end to censorship of letters, etc. Against the background of this event, many workers began to break into battle. Moscow proletarians gathered to organize a strike. It was for this purpose that the Council was convened.
The center of the December armed uprising in Moscow was located in the Fidler School on Chistye Prudy. Here the Council of Workers' Deputies met and the Bolshevik Conference was organized here. On the evening of the 5th, representatives of factory and factory party cells began to arrive at the school. All of them supported the strike. However, the supporters of the revolution had many problems. There wasn’t enough weapons, and party influence in the Moscow garrison remained weak. Nevertheless, there were more enthusiasts among the Bolsheviks than skeptics. The Mensheviks made a more vague decision the day before. They advocated increased agitation. After the uprising began, they joined the strike without reservation.
Among the Social Revolutionaries, controversy continued in the first December days. Young people from among the maximalists (Vladimir Mazurin, etc.) advocated the most decisive actions. More experienced revolutionaries (Viktor Chernov and Yevno Azef) believed that rebellion was impossible. In the end, the Social Revolutionaries decided to act on the situation and wait for the events to set in. Meanwhile, the December armed uprising was inexorably approaching.
Strike
On December 7, 1905, the main events of the December armed uprising began. On this day, a general political strike was declared in Moscow. Initially, the leadership of the strike was carried out by the executive committee of the Council of Workers' Deputies. The city, in which more than a million people lived, began to change right before our eyes. The largest enterprises stopped their work, the power supply stopped, shops closed, and trams got up. On the first day, Muscovites cleared all the counters: no one knew how long the confrontation between the dissatisfied and the authorities would last.
Schools and theaters closed, newspapers stopped publishing (the exception was Izvestia Moskovskogo Soveta). No trains arrived or departed. Only the Petersburg-Moscow highway operated - it was served by soldiers. In the evening, the city plunged into darkness. The Council banned the lighting of lanterns. December 10 in the bakery ran out of bread.
On the 8th, the number of strikers in Moscow reached 150 thousand (50 thousand more than on the first day). The situation in the city was becoming increasingly uneasy. In the evening, the police stopped the thousands-strong revolutionary rally in the garden "Aquarium". Law enforcement officers demanded to surrender weapons and began to detain people. Most of the protesters disappeared. As a result, the police action failed, and the indignation of people only intensified.
The December armed uprising began to acquire that very armed character on the night of the 9th. A group of Socialist-Revolutionary militants raided the security department, which was located in Gnezdnikovsky Lane. The attackers threw two bombs. The victims of the attack were 3 people.
The beginning of bloodshed
By the evening of December 9, the December armed uprising led to new dramatic events. On Strastnaya Square, dragoons shot the protesting workers (Maxim Gorky, who was in the city, mentioned a blood-drenched square in one of his letters). The first barricades appeared on Tverskaya Street. They were made in haste in order to block the roads of the cavalry, and therefore did not last long. However, even then it became clear to everyone that before the peaceful strike finally turned into an armed uprising.
That same night, artillery was first used against the revolutionaries. At the headquarters, located in the real school of Fidler, there were about 500 people. The pro-government troops surrounded the building and demanded that the audience surrender their weapons. The besieged were given an ultimatum of one hour in length. At the end of this period, combatants fired at soldiers and bombarded them. In response, shelling of the school began with shells. 5 people died, another 15 were injured. Under arrest were 100 rebels. They were sent to Butyrka prison. Nevertheless, the majority of those gathered at the school managed to escape.
Barricades in the streets
The night of December 10 was a turning point for Moscow. The spontaneous erection of barricades began throughout the city. The Social Democrats supported this initiative. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks even issued a joint directive of the Federal Council of the RSDLP. The document called for the construction of barricades and rallies in front of the barracks in order to attract soldiers to their side.
The fortifications hastily built by the protesters were made from telephone and light poles, house gates, sawn trees, barrels, boxes and billboards. Naturally, they could not, with all due reliability, protect the strikers from enemy fire. Nevertheless, the barricades not only interfered with the advancement of government troops around the city, but also had a serious psychological impact on officers and soldiers, inspiring fear in them. They demonstrated that the December armed uprising in Moscow was not a trifle. Frozen, wire-wrapped, snow-lined and water-flooded barricades turned into real ice shells.
According to various estimates, about 1,500 various fortifications were built. But only a few dozen of them were erected by specialists who knew their business. For the most part, the Moscow barricades resembled little of the buildings of the times of the 1848 revolution and the commune in Paris (it was then that the term "barricades" was born).
Dissociation of the rebels
The riot in Moscow was really big, but what are the reasons for the defeat of the December armed uprising? The mistake of the revolutionaries was that they did not have a clear plan of action. There was no one who led the Moscow December armed uprising in the full sense of the word. After the troops defeated Fiedler's school, centralized coordination disappeared.
From the first days of the confrontation, the rebels controlled the outskirts of the city, where there were factories, factories, etc. It was assumed that the combatants would gradually advance to the Kremlin, and after capturing it, they would impose their will on the authorities. In the Simonovo settlement, on Presnya and in some other places “republics” arose. The power in them actually belonged to the revolutionaries. These "republics" acted independently of each other. On December 10, the Moscow City Council delegated leadership of the fighting squads to the regional Soviets, as its connection with the city outskirts remained too weak and ineffective.
"Stranglers" of the revolution
Just a few days before the uprising, Vice Admiral Fedor Dubasov was appointed Moscow Governor-General. The 60-year-old military man became famous during the Russian-Turkish war in 1878-1879. However, after that company, the officer was not distinguished by anything remarkable. In 1905, at the very beginning of the revolution, he took part in the suppression of peasant riots in the central provinces.
Thanks to the patronage of Sergei Witte, Nicholas II appointed Moscow Governor-General of Dubasov. Upon assuming office, the military promised not to disdain even the most severe and extreme measures in the fight against the revolution. And so he acted in December 1905, becoming for the rebels the main personification of the tsarist reaction. Dubasov was not distinguished by the breadth of political thinking. He was an anti-Semite and believed that Jewish organizations were behind the revolution.
The suppression of the Moscow December armed uprising would not have taken place without Moscow Governor Vladimir Dzhunkovsky. The 40-year-old colonel served as an adjutant to the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who died in early 1905 as a result of a terrorist attack on Red Square. Compared to Dubasov, he was a much more flexible and energetic person. During the uprising, Dzhunkovsky survived several failed assassination attempts.
The number and arsenal of rebels
Historians do not have accurate data on how many armed revolutionaries the December armed uprising in Moscow brought to the streets of the Mother See. In short, according to various estimates, at the beginning of the riots the number of such militants was 1,700. At the peak of the confrontation, this figure rose to 8 thousand. To help his comrades-in-arms, warriors from Moscow cities near Moscow arrived: Kolomny, Mytishchi, Perova, Lyubertsy.
Armed rebels were divided into several large detachments. There were "specialized" squads: Bolshevik, Socialist-Revolutionary, Menshevik, Caucasian, student, printing, railway, etc. The armament of the rebels left much to be desired - it was noticeably inferior to the ammunition of government troops. For the most part, the rebels went into battle with revolvers, hunting rifles, and combat rifles. Edged weapons and hand bombs, which were called "Macedonians," were popular.
Many combatants mistreated their arsenal. Unlike professional soldiers, they clearly lacked experience. While the December armed uprising was taking place in Moscow, more skillful revolutionaries trained their comrades in shooting and other important skills. However, the rioters did not have time to consolidate these lessons.
Chronicle of Confrontation
In the hottest days of 10-19, the December armed uprising, in short, was a typical urban guerrilla warfare. It was a colorful panorama, consisting of a huge number of details. The actions of both sides were often chaotic and stupid, which could not but lead to casualties among the civilian population. It should be noted that in the early days, ordinary citizens of Moscow, if they did not sympathize with the combatants, at least maintained a benevolent neutrality. However, when the conflict began to drag out, many residents naturally tired of bloodshed.
On December 10, the most dramatic events took place in the city center. On Kalanchevskaya Square and Tverskaya Street there was a massacre. A crowd of thousands of workers from the Three-Mountain Manufactory squeezed Cossacks from Presnya. December 11-12, battles swept the whole city. The Moscow December armed uprising entered its climax. By the order of Dubasov, from the 12th day the searches of any passers-by who appeared on the street after 18 hours were legalized. The most striking episode of that day was the battle on Pyatnitskaya street, next to the Sytin printing house (the building burned to the ground).
Citizens were ordered to close the gates of the houses so that the revolutionaries could not escape the chase. People who went outside in the evening or at night received a fine of up to 3 thousand rubles or were arrested for 3 months. A person could be executed for damage to telegraph and telephone lines. As a result of these and some other measures, the authorities managed to intimidate the townsfolk and stop the growth of the rebellious mass of Moscow residents.
Many revolutionaries who were at the very center of Moscow events later became the heroes of state propaganda in the Soviet era. At the same time, the merits of the Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were eroded and deliberately forgotten. Nevertheless, in 1905, all opponents of the tsarist regime demonstrated devotion to their ideals. Miracles of courage were also remembered by women. Among them were the sisters and wives of workers, female students, and even some gymnasium students. The girls provided first aid to the wounded and participated in the catering of combatants.
Petersburg events
On December 13, the city again drowned in the noise of artillery fire. So continued the December armed uprising in Moscow. Briefly reporting to St. Petersburg on the state of affairs in the old capital, Dubasov continued to increase pressure on the rebels. On December 13, fighting continued near the Prokhorovskaya factory on Presnya. The clashes did not stop on the 14th and 15th, but it was then that the first signs appeared that the parties were tired of guerrilla warfare. The uprising began to lose momentum and now continued rather by inertia.
Although bloodshed took place in Moscow, the fate of the confrontation was decided in St. Petersburg. A strike was also organized in the capital, in which 130 thousand people took part. However, in St. Petersburg, revolutionary events began to decline even earlier than Moscow. As a result, residents of the city on the Neva could not support the rebels in the Mother See.
The armed conflict did not even come to light because the authorities had carried out mass arrests of Social Democrats and Socialist-Revolutionaries in advance. Law enforcement officers captured the workshops where dynamite was produced. The police discovered about 500 finished bombs. This entire arsenal in Petersburg was never used. Largely due to the failure of the capital's revolutionaries, the Moscow December armed uprising also naturally failed. A brief respite was enough for the royal court to send reinforcements to the rebellious city on December 15. By that time, two centers of revolution remained in Moscow - the Kazan railway and Presnya. The military got there too.
The defeat of Presnya
When the center of the December armed uprising in Moscow was still in Fidler’s school, and the riots only reached a serious scale, Nicholas II began political maneuvers. According to his decree of December 11, the circle of voters expanded, whose vote was taken into account in the elections to the State Duma (after the reform, many workers of medium and small enterprises got the right to vote). Then the troops were allowed to shoot at the rioters with live ammunition.
On December 15, the Semenovsky Guards Regiment arrived in Moscow from the capital . The next day, the operation began to clean Presnya from the warriors. On the 21st, the last center of resistance was eliminated. The day before, the troops crushed the uprising on the Kazan Railway. Many revolutionaries were shot without trial. The bitterness on both sides has reached the limit. Patrols shot in the back, carried out judicial executions and revolutionaries. The government troops that cleaned Presnya were led by the commander of the Semenovsky regiment, Georgy Min, to which another regiment joined - Ladoga. The resistance of the rebels was desperate. Each house had to be taken by storm. The fire that swept Presnya on December 17 illuminated all of Moscow.
The center of resistance of the army was the Prokhorovskaya Trekhgornaya manufactory. It was there that the remaining Moscow maximalists gathered. They rallied around the figure of the Bear. So supporters called the Social Revolutionary Mikhail Sokolov. By the end of the uprising, Presnya was defended by 200 people.
Denouement
With the arrival of capital reinforcements in Moscow, it became clear that sooner or later the December armed uprising would be defeated. The end date of the fighting, on which almost all historians agreed, is December 21. Another 15 numbers were the first to decide to end the resistance of the Mensheviks. Then they called on their supporters to lay down their arms and Socialist-Revolutionaries with the Bolsheviks.
The Union of Physicians, who worked in the city during the most fierce battles, calculated that the confrontation claimed the lives of a little more than 1 thousand people. At the same time 86 children and 137 women died. Many of the victims were civilians and bystanders. The troops lost 28 people killed, the police - 36 people.
Soon after the riot suppression, it was Christmas. Festive bustle swept Moscow. Most ordinary people tried to forget what had happened and return to peaceful life as soon as possible. So gradually the December armed insurrection became the property of history. The reasons and results of the confrontation forced the supporters of the revolution to weaken their activities. The uprising was the peak point of the events of 1905-1907. Then came a state reaction. At the same time, among the Social Revolutionaries, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, contrary to custom, there was no internal conflict and the search for those responsible for the defeat. Opponents of the authorities were convinced that the whole struggle with the tsarist regime was yet to come.
Unrest in the province
Although any characterization of the December armed uprising is based precisely on the events in Moscow, in those days riots also occurred on the periphery of the country. This happened even in spite of the fact that neither the Social Democrats nor the Socialist-Revolutionaries were planning to organize insurgent actions throughout Russia. In the province, they learned about the Moscow bloodshed with the help of avaricious reports in newspapers, visitors or personal letters.
Nevertheless, the whole country experienced a sense of proletarian solidarity. Therefore, centers of small uprisings appeared in many cities of the country. In December, unrest swept Rostov-on-Don, Sormovo, Kharkov, Novorossiysk, Donbass Gorlovka. The largest in the province was the December armed uprising in Motovilikha, an industrial village near Perm.
The consequences of the December events
As mentioned above, the Moscow events of December 1905 forced Nicholas II to make several political concessions. The proletarians and the bourgeoisie got their representation in the State Duma. Workers who opposed the government primarily fought to alleviate working conditions. After the uprising, wages everywhere increased, and the working day was reduced to 10 hours. In the village, the peasants succeeded in abolishing the redemption payments to the landlords.
The uprising in Moscow again spurred political life in Russia. Like mushrooms after rain, parties began to appear. On the eve of the revolution, there were about 35 such organizations in the country. After the Moscow riot and other events of 1905-1907. parties began to number in the hundreds. At the same time, the popularity of the ultra-left grew at an unprecedented rate in Western countries: Bolsheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc. It was they who stood at the forefront of the uprising and gained steady popularity in broad proletarian circles.