I completely agree with Richard Pipe’s statement that “revolution in 1905 was the result not of insufferable conditions, but of irreconcilable attitudes.”
To first understand this statement we must look at the political system the recent Tsars of Russia had adopted. Russia was run as an autocracy. Nicholas II who was in power during the revolution very much embraced this system. He, like his father, wanted Russia to follow the principles of ‘nationality, autocracy and orthodoxy.’ To bring Russia to follow this model, many areas of government where reforms had been previously made, were rolled back to bring back the old style of Autocratic rule. However many people liked the added freedom that these reforms brought, and wanted to continue in the general direction with the liberalisation of the autocratic rule. This already shows the irreconcilable attitudes between the Tsar and the people of Russia, as they both had differing ideas on how Russia should be run.
The irreconcilable attitudes were shown in the growing number of political parties opposing the Tsarist rule of Russia. The main political opposition of the Tsar came from the liberals, the socialist revolutionaries, and the divided social democrats. The common theme all this groups had was that they were to the left politically compared to Nicholas II, and that all of them, bar the Bolsheviks, wanted a democratically elected government, instead of one that was born into power. These groups had growing numbers, and obvious discontent with the Tsarist rule at the time, and despite that Nicholas II’s stubbornness to adapt in a similar way the rest of Europe had prevented him from listening to the people and weakening these parties. The longer he failed the people, the larger the support for these parties grew, and the harder it became to prevent an uprising. These people were not distraught with the Tsar because of the harsh conditions they were facing, as they had faced them for the majority of their lives, but because of his unwillingness to listen to the people and give them the freedoms his grandfather had.
At the turn of the century Sergei Witte had been the finance minister for around 20 years, and had implemented drastic policies so that Russia could be brought quickly into an Industrial age similar to the other empires in Europe. He did this by increasing the size of Russia’s railway, and subsidising industries in the cities. The result of this increase in spending was an increase in taxes. These taxes were mainly aimed at the peasants that lived in the countryside, which encouraged them to work in the cities industries to support their families. Nearly everything that they bought was taxed, and in the early days of Russia’s industrialisation this helped keep high growth. Then in 1902 problems with Russia’s trade caused an economic slump for the industry in the cities, and ultimately the peasants were the ones that had to pay, after they had just suffered poor harvests from 1900 and 1902 that led to starvation.
This new demographic that appeared in the city created a class of poor people in poor conditions that not only could easily attain information on the running’s of Russia through newspapers, but also had a connection with many peasants that lived in the countryside and usually could not get such information. The sudden change in the availability of information for the majority of Russia’s population was bound to breed change. This also caused a spike for attendance in political groups, as more workers wanted to be politically involved in the country, to try and improve the conditions that they were working, and living in.
The government policies, though, did not reflect this changing demographic in the cities, and were still very old and out-dated. The system was still a hierarchy, and this meant that for such a large empire many things took considerable amounts of time to be completed. Also there was a strict restriction of opposition to the autocratic