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The First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907
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"All revolutions occur because governments do not meet the urgent needs of the people in time.
They come from the fact that governments remain deaf to the needs of the people."  (S. Yu. Witte)
Plan:
1. The causes of the revolution.
2. "Bloody Sunday".
3. The development of the revolution:
a) the rise of social forces;
b) The manifesto of October 17 and the reaction of society to it;
c) the December armed uprising in Moscow;
d) I State Duma.
4. Activity of the cabinet of P. A. Stolypin.
5. "The Third June Coup d'etat".
6. The results and nature of the revolution.
1. The causes of the revolution
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The XX century began with a severe economic crisis, which quickly turned into a political one, which peaked in 1905.
The depression in which the Russian economy found itself was prolonged, which exacerbated all the contradictions that had accumulated in society.
Discontent covered various strata of society:
the peasantry, robbed by the reform of 1861, was dissatisfied with the lack of land and the temporarily obligated position; hired workers, who were most affected by the economic crisis, demanded higher wages, reduced working hours, fines, etc.; the army was dissatisfied with the stick discipline and the unpopular Russian Japanese War; the liberal intelligentsia and the nobility were burdened by the absolutism and conservative policies of Nicholas II.
A social explosion was brewing among the people, which the government tried to bring down with a "small victorious war", but it turned into a failure and only pushed the people to speak out.
All that was needed was an excuse, which was "bloody Sunday" on January 9, 1905.
2. "Bloody Sunday"
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The history of "bloody Sunday" is connected with the names of the head of the Okhrana, Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov, and pop Gapon, whose personality is so contradictory that it generated a huge number of negative opinions.
The economic crisis of 1900 led to the activation of the Social Democrats, who intensified agitation among the workers, which worried the authorities.
The struggle against the strengthening of the influence of the Social Democrats was led by the head of the Moscow Okhrana, Sergei Vasilyevich Zubatov, who went down in history as the organizer of legal, police controlled workers ' associations.
In 1902, Zubatov reported to the Minister of Internal Affairs V. K. Plehve:
"Half of the workers cannot understand the ideas of the Social Democrats at all because of their peasant underdevelopment.
At this time, we offer them a legal way to improve their economic situation that is not connected with the danger of being hit by the police."
As a result, Zubatov received permission to create workers ' organizations that keep workers from political struggle, which went down in history as the "Zubatovskys".
These legal organizations were indeed more attractive than the social democratic ones, which led to a rapid increase in their composition.
In 1903, the attention of Zubatov was attracted by the priest Gapon, who, with his sermons and simple conversations, managed to win the sympathy of the workers – so the rapprochement of these two people began.
Gapon, covered by Zubatov, began to create a legal workers ' circle, and in 1904 he headed the "Meeting of Russian Factory Workers in St. Petersburg" approved by V. K. Plehve.
Zubatov very well guessed the adventurous interior of Gapon, who aspired to leadership, but did not want to quarrel with the authorities.
And his phrase: "I will be a great man or a convict", can be regarded more as bravado, an element of his new role.
Zubatov's proposal completely satisfied Gapon.
Gapon openly urged the workers not to succumb to the revolutionaries and not to get involved in politics, which irritated the Social Democrats, who declared pop an agent of the Okhrana.
And although Gapon did receive a salary in the police, he did not give out to the Okhrana a single socialist worker who was part of the "Assembly".
The basis of the "Assembly", which had many branches, was the Putilov plant, which unnerved the directorate.
In the end of 1904, 4 workers were dismissed from the plant – all members of the" Assembly", which caused a spontaneous demonstration.
Gapon, in order to keep the workers from revolutionary action, proposed to draw up a petition and send deputations to the factory and city authorities.
At the heart of the petition, the workers put forward purely economic demands:
restoration of dismissed workers; dismissal of the master who organized the dismissal of workers; restoring order in fines.
The first demand was satisfied, but the authorities refused to consider the issue of fines, saying that they consider them a legitimate means of collecting for bad work.
The workers were not satisfied with such a response, and from January 3, 1905, a strike began at the plant, supported in the following days by other enterprises of the capital, and by January 8, it covered the entire St. Petersburg.
Gapon was faced with a choice: either to lead the strike and go against the Okhrana, or to step aside and lose his leading role.
Gapon's adventurism and vanity pushed him towards the first alternative, and he, imagining himself almost the leader of the revolution, developed a violent activity, surrounded himself with bodyguards.
Even the Okhrana believed that Gapon was the main revolutionary.
Now it is difficult to say who and when the idea came to go with a petition to the tsar himself, but it was in the spirit of the Gaponites, who remained deeply monarchical.
The march to the tsar did not suit the Social Democrats, who sought to direct the workers to a political struggle.
On January 8, 1905, they distributed a leaflet "To all St. Petersburg workers", which read:
"/...
/The liberation of the workers can only be the work of the workers themselves, you will not get freedom from the priests or from the tsars.
On Sunday, in front of the Winter Palace, if only you are allowed there, you will see that you have nothing to expect from the tsar /.../".
But the idea of going to the tsar so captured the workers that, in order not to stay away, the Social Democrats took part in the development of the petition and achieved the inclusion in it of the requirements for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly, an 8 hour working day and political freedoms.
Such a policy gave the Social Democrats advantages with any result:
if the march ends with concessions, then their demands were also included in the petition; if the march ends with bloodshed, then the authority of the Social Democrats will increase, because they foresaw this.
On the morning of January 9, work columns in festive clothes, with icons and portraits of the tsar moved to the city center.
At the outposts, a crowd of 140 thousand people was stopped by the troops, but the workers in groups and alone filtered through alleys and courtyards to the palace.
And then the soldiers began an operation to clean up the city center, and simply opened fire, which claimed the lives of thousands to 5,000 people, according to various estimates, including many women and children.
Nicholas II wrote in his diary:
"Hard day!
There were serious riots in St. Petersburg due to the desire of the workers to reach the Winter Palace.
The troops had to shoot in different places of the city, there were many dead and wounded.
My God, how painful and hard it is!".
Bright and at the same time terrifying pictures of what is happening on January 9 on Palace Square were described by Maxim Gorky in the essay "January 9":
"People fell in twos and threes, crouched on the ground, clutching their stomachs, ran somewhere, limping, crawled through the snow, and everywhere on the snow bright, red spots flashed abundantly.
They were spreading out, smoking, attracting the eyes to themselves.
The crowd leaned back, stopped for a moment, froze, and suddenly there was a wild, amazing howl of hundreds of voices."
Not only the Russian, but also the foreign public reacted with indignation to this inhuman and senseless massacre.
The parliaments of France, England and Germany in protest halted loans to the Russian government, the party and public organizations of Russia sent in telegram to protest the government and sympathy to the workers.
The main initiator of the peaceful march to the tsar, Pop Gapon, escaped death and left the capital with the help of Maxim Gorky, to whom he fled after being shot.
The writer later recalled that he was surprised how such a "plucked chicken" could lead so many people.
In 1906, Gapon's associates, having learned about his connections with the Okhrana, sentenced the priest to death and, having deceived Gapon into some village, hanged him.
3. The development of the revolution
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The plans of the Social Democrats were justified – "Bloody Sunday" finally undermined the people's faith in the" good tsar " and turned them away from the Zubatov societies.
The workers switched to revolutionary methods of struggle against the promotion of not only economic, but also political demands.
a) the rise of social forces
The revolutionary movement in Russia developed in waves, then fading, then flaring up with a new force.
The workers of large industrial cities were the first to join the revolutionary struggle.
In January–February 1905, strikes swept St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Moscow region, and soon spread to the Volga region.
In February 1905, the village began to rise, when a "golden letter" began to go around the Kursk province, allegedly written by the tsar himself and calling for the extermination of all landowners and officials who oppress peasants.
The peasant movements developed most strongly in the chernozem provinces, where the landowner's oppression was stronger.
The most revolutionary forms of struggle were pogroms of landowners 'estates (they were not widely spread), seizures of mowing, landowners' crops, deforestation, etc.
In the non Chernozem provinces, the peasants preferred passive types of struggle – non payment of taxes and the direction of "sentences" with demands for the gratuitous distribution of state, specific and church lands.
Many sentences referred to the partial alienation of landowners ' lands, but the peasants did not touch on the question of the form of government (monarchy or republic).
At the beginning of spring, there was a slight decline in the revolutionary movement, associated with the diversion of peasants to spring field work and private economic concessions by individual entrepreneurs, frightened by the scale of the strike movement, which, however, could only temporarily calm social tension, but not solve the labor problem.
A new round of the revolutionary struggle occurred at the end of spring, which was triggered by the news of defeats on the fronts of the Russian Japanese War and especially about the Tsushima disaster.
The beginning of the revolution clearly showed the weakness of the speeches, and, above all, the fragmentation.
That is why the liberal narodniks began work on uniting the peasants, as a result of which the All Russian Peasant Union was created (the prototype of the peasant party), which put forward its socio economic program:
destruction of the remnants of serfdom (i.e., temporarily obligated status); confiscation of monastic, church and specific lands without redemption; seizure of landlords ' lands partly for ransom, partly without it; democratization of the village and its administration.
The level of organization among the workers also increased.
In May 1905, during the 72 day strike in Ivanovo Voznesensk, the 1st Council of Authorized Deputies was created, which united the workers of the entire city.
Following their example, Soviets began to arise in other cities, becoming the main organizing force of the workers.
In the summer of 1905, the army and Navy began to join the revolution.
The first major performance was the uprising on June 14 on the battleship "Potemkin", the impetus for which was borscht with rotten meat.
Having seized the ship, the sailors first wanted to land a landing in Odessa, but abandoned their plans, fearing that a counter coup would take place on the ship in their absence.
The command did not want to sink its battleship and waited, and after 10 days of cruising by sea, the Potemkin surrendered to the Romanian authorities.
By the same time, the liberal part of society began to speak out more and more actively, demanding liberal democratic transformations and a transition to parliamentarism.
Thus, by the summer of 1905, unrest had engulfed almost all segments of the population, which forced the government to make concessions.
b) The manifesto of October 17 and the reaction of society to it
In place of Svyatopolk Mirsky, A. G. Bulygin was appointed Minister of Internal Affairs, to whom Nicholas II instructed to develop a draft Regulation on the legislative Council Duma.
In anticipation of the results of the government's work, the summer passed in a certain lull.
The meetings on the bill were painful – Nicholas II was against any restriction of the monarchy, which led to the development of a formulation that preserves the autocratic power:
"The State Duma is established for the preliminary development and discussion of legislative proposals that go back through the State Council to the supreme autocratic power."
The electoral right was limited by the property qualification and a multi stage system.
The draft of the "Bulygin Duma" was published on August 6, 1905, but since it could only satisfy the right wing liberals, all the democratic parties announced a boycott of the elections – the revolution moved to a new stage.
Autumn was marked by a new upsurge, the peak of which was the All Russian October Political strike.
The strike began on October 7 with a strike by an employee of the Moscow railway junction.
After 3 days, they were supported by the St. Petersburg railway node, and then the workers of factories and factories, Universities and gymnasiums, etc., and even theaters.
The main demand of all the strikers was to convene a Constituent Assembly.
In many cities, demonstrators clashed with the troops, when the deputy (comrade) Minister of Internal Affairs, D. F. Trepov, issued an order:
"do not give empty volleys, do not spare cartridges."
When the order became public, she was shocked by an explosion of indignation.
The situation was getting out of control, and the court saw only two ways out of the crisis:
The granting of dictatorial powers to a trusted person and the suppression of the revolution by force, which the reactionaries insisted on.
The path of concessions leading to the constitutional path of development, for which Count Witte, who returned from Portsmouth, campaigned.
Nicholas II followed two paths at once, on the one hand instructing Witte to develop a Manifesto, and on the other – looking for a person to play the role of dictator.
However, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich, whom the tsar had predicted for the dictatorial post, said:
"We must save the sovereign!
If he doesnot sign the manifesto today, I will shoot myself in his office!"
The Minister of the Yard V. B. Fredericks summed up the sad result:
"Everyone shies away from the dictatorship, they are afraid, everyone has lost their heads, they have to surrender to Count Witte."
On the evening of October 17, 1905, Nicholas II signed the Manifesto, after which he wrote in his diary:
"After such a day, my head became heavy and my thoughts were confused.
Lord, help us, pacify Russia."
The manifesto of October 17, 1905 proclaimed the granting to the population of "unshakable foundations of civil freedom": the inviolability of the individual, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, unions, the expansion of the right to vote and, most importantly, giving the Duma a legislative character.
At the same time, in contrast to the Duma, a united government was created – the Council of Ministers, whose chairman was appointed S. Y. Witte.
The elections remained multi stage, but the right to vote was significantly expanded, which worried Nicholas II.
However, the emperor received the right to dissolve the State Duma and, according to article 87 of the Basic Laws, during the holidays of deputies or in the inter duma, the legislative power completely passed into his hands (i.e., this allowed him to dissolve the Duma and adopt the necessary laws before the elections of a new one).
On October 21, a political amnesty was declared, and on November 3, a Manifesto was issued on reducing the redemption payments by half since 1906, and their complete abolition since 1907.
The manifesto of October 17 led to a detente, the population reveled in the "days of freedom", and political forces were preparing for elections to the First State Duma.
But, at the same time, the Manifesto also split society, which was most clearly manifested in the liberal camp.
Back in March 1905, the Union of Liberation adopted the draft Constitution and the Program of the Constitutional Democrats, and after October 17, on the basis of the Union of Liberation, the Cadet party headed by Milyukov was finally formed.
The program of the party provided for:
constitutional and parliamentary monarchy; universal, equal and direct suffrage; democratic freedoms; cultural self determination of the peoples of the Russian Empire; partial nationalization of the land; 8 hour working day, freedom of trade unions and strikes.
This program clearly shows the desire of the Cadets to unite representatives of all segments of the population – from landowners to workers.
But, basically, she represented the interests of the liberal intelligentsia and landowners.
At the same time, the" Union of Constitutionalist Zemstvos", satisfied with obtaining broad rights for legal activity, formed the" Union of October 17 "("Octobrists") party headed by Guchkov.
The Octobrists, who expressed the interests of the large commercial and industrial bourgeoisie and the landowners of entrepreneurs, did not advocate social, but political transformations, and did not want to expand the right to vote.
In addition to the liberals, peasant deputies and rural intellectuals from the All Russian Peasant Union went to the elections, which adopted a program close to the Cadet one:
constitutional monarchy; confiscation of landlords ' lands for ransom.
Already in the Duma, peasant deputies (mainly rural intellectuals) formed the "Trudovaya Gruppa" ("Trudoviki") faction headed by Kerensky, which later turned into one of the most influential parties in Russia.
As for the Socialists (Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries), they believed that the elections distracted the masses from the revolutionary struggle, and therefore the majority boycotted them, calling on the workers to an armed uprising.
In addition to the left wing opposition, after the October 17 Manifesto, the government also received a powerful right wing opposition.
Supporters of autocracy, opponents of democratic transformations from the nobility and the bourgeoisie moved to the creation of their own monarchist parties.
The largest of them was the "Union of the Russian People" headed by A. I. Dubrovin.
We can also distinguish the "Union of Mikhail the Archangel" (V. M. Purishkevich) and the Russian Monarchist Party.
These parties stood on rigid monarchical principles and nationalism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the Manifesto and other concessions of power to the revolutionaries.
During the revolution, the Black Hundred movement was used by the authorities to fight the revolutionaries.
Historical background:
The Black Hundreds
The first Black – Hundred organization, the Russian Assembly, appeared in January 1901.
The patron and honorary member of this society was the Minister of Internal Affairs V.Plehve.
The First Russian Revolution of 1905-07 was the impetus for the development of the Black Hundred movement.
The most famous was the "Union of the Russian People", created in October 1905, which considered the most healthy society of pre Petrine Russia (before the Europeanization of Peter the Great).
This organization considered the bureaucracy to be its main opponents, they had a negative attitude towards the intelligentsia and the bourgeoisie.
They saw a way out in a return to "the primordial principles: Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality."
The slogan of the Black Hundreds is " Russia is for Russians!".
The Black Hundreds opposed "foreign influences".
They considered Jewish influence to be the most dangerous of them, which is why they advocated the total eviction of Jews from Russia to their "own state".
There were two wings in the Black Hundred movement:
– the first direction protected the privileges of the nobility, landowners (V. Purishkevich, N. Markov);
– the second direction was closer to the lower classes of society, and its leader A. Dubrovin opposed the destruction of the peasant community during the Stolypin reforms.
After the February Revolution of 1917, the Union of the Russian People and other Black Hundred organizations were banned.
(Dictionary of terms and concepts on the national history of the XX century / Scientific ed. V. F. Krivosheev.
- M.: "TID" Russian word RS"", 2003. p. 202.)
One of the most famous ideologists of the Black Hundreds can be called V. V. Shulgin.
Thus, the political structure after the Manifesto of October 17, 1905 can be represented as follows:
The manifesto did not give anything to the army, which led to the continuation of the speeches of soldiers and sailors.
On October 14, 1905, the Bolshevik agitation among the sailors of Kronstadt led to an uprising, which, however, was brutally suppressed by the authorities.
On November 11, several ships of the Black Sea Fleet rebelled in Sevastopol, led by the idealist and romantic Lieutenant Pyotr Petrovich Schmidt.
Attempts to raise the entire squadron were unsuccessful, and on November 15, after an unequal battle, the rebels were defeated, and the instigators led by Schmidt were shot.
The work in the Soviets also continued.
Lenin was still in the capital, and his name was known only to a narrow circle of social Democrats, and more widely known and influential in St. Petersburg.
The Council was used by Plekhanov and Lev Trotsky (Bronstein).
The result of the activities of the metropolitan Council was the unauthorized transition of all metropolitan enterprises to an 8 hour working day.
However, this was a clear mistake, because the Russian industry was not ready for this.
Such an action led only to a new round of price growth, a decrease in competitiveness and the closure of many enterprises.
This alienated the factory owners who sympathized with the left from the Soviets.
At the same time, with the connivance of the authorities, the Black Hundred terror intensified.
In such an environment of St. Petersburg.
The Soviet, the Peasants ' Union, the Social Democrats and the Social Revolutionaries called on the population not to pay taxes and to withdraw their deposits from savings banks, which led to arrests and the relocation of active actions from the capital to Moscow.
c) the December armed uprising in Moscow
The socialists decided to move the revolutionary struggle from St. Petersburg, which had completely switched to the election campaign, to Moscow, where they had a majority in the Council.
In alliance with the Social Revolutionaries, the Bolsheviks began active agitation for a general strike, planning its development into an armed uprising.
On December 7, a general strike began in Moscow, which naturally turned into an uprising: workers demonstrated under red flags, barricades appeared after the first clashes, the first victims appeared and the workers took up arms.
To suppress the uprising, the government brought troops and artillery into Moscow, and, despite desperate resistance, by December 19, the uprising was over.
The workers of Presnya resisted the longest, as the name "Krasnaya Presnya" reminds us today.
The" December armed uprising " received an ambiguous assessment in social democracy.
Lenin, despite the defeat, highly appreciated these events, seeing in them an example for revolutionaries and experience for the future.
Plekhanov, on the other hand, considered this unprepared and obviously doomed to failure uprising to be erroneous, which brought nothing but blood.
In addition, ordinary people in the Moscow events saw all the horrors of a possible civil war, which alienated them from the revolution, and the ability of the government to suppress an armed uprising restored its authority.
The society renounces revolutionary methods of struggle and switches to parliamentary methods, focusing all its activity on the Duma elections.
Thus, the December 1905 armed uprising in Moscow, being the peak of the revolution, marked the beginning of the decline of the revolutionary movement.
I State Duma
After the December events in Moscow, the government tried to seize the initiative, turning away the most significant part of the population – the peasantry from the revolution with agrarian reforms.
But the main concern of the authorities remained the elections to the First State Duma.
Nikolai was afraid of the left wing composition of the parliament, but Prime Minister Witte convinced him that in the conditions of the Socialist boycott of the elections and after the Moscow December events, the population would vote for the right.
After such assurances, the election results caused a shock in the government – the majority turned out to be for the left liberals, who together with the Trudoviks made up the Duma majority:
153 seats (more than a third) – left liberals ("Cadets"); 107 seats peasant deputies ("Trudoviks"); 16 seats – right wing liberals ("Octobrists"), etc.
Such a Duma led to the April resignation of Witte and the appointment of I. L. Goremykin to the post of Prime Minister.
The first State Duma, which began its work on April 27, 1906, lasted only 72 days.
The conflict unfolded because of the most painful issue of the revolution – the question of landowners ' land ownership.
The Cadet labor majority approved the principle of compulsory alienation of part of the landowners 'lands, but the government declared that it would not allow attempts on landowners' property.
And then the Duma, violating the law, directly appealed to the population with an appeal for support, which was the reason for its dissolution on July 8, 1906.
4. Activities of the Cabinet of P. A. Stolypin
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After Witte's resignation, Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin, appointed to this post on the day of the dissolution of the First State Duma, became the most progressive head of the government.
In response to the dispersal of the parliament, strikes began again in many cities, a new surge of protests swept the village, military riots broke out in the Sveaborg fortress in Finland, in Kronstadt and on the cruiser "Memory of Azov".
A broad wave of individual terror was unleashed by the Social revolutionaries – in the period from 1906 to 1907, as a result of terrorist acts and revolutionary actions, 4,126 officials were killed and 4,552 wounded.
Stolypin was a follower of the policies of Loris Melikov, Svyatopolk Mirsky and Witte, believing that in the fight against the left (radicals), the government should unite with the right (liberals).
Therefore, he wanted to include liberal representatives in the government.
However, the emperor did not want to see the left liberals in the government, and the right put forward conditions unacceptable for Stolypin.
Stolypin's policy changed dramatically after August 12, 1906, when the Srs blew up the minister's dacha, where 27 people were killed (among them 3 terrorists), and his children were injured.
Using Article 87 of the Basic Laws, a decree on military field courts was adopted on August 19, according to which the trial was carried out in 48 hours, and the execution of the sentence was carried out in 24 hours.
From 1906 to 1909, 2,825 people were executed, which is 58-59 people per month (this policy was popularly called the "Stolypin tie").
But, being an educated man, Stolypin understood that repression can only temporarily stabilize the situation, and reforms are necessary to solve problems.
And the period of "inter thought" (between the I and II Dumas) became the most fruitful in Stolypin's reform activity.
The situation favored the minister, frightened by the scope of the revolutionary movement, Nicholas II weakened his resistance to reformism.
In the autumn of 1906, the agrarian reform of P. A. Stolypin began.
Considering the peasant question as the main one, November 9, 1906 Stolypin issued a decree on the right of peasants to leave the community.
During the revolution, he managed to achieve the abolition of certain restrictions on the rights of peasants, the reduction of the arbitrariness of the zemstvo chiefs and the return of the right of peasants to choose their vowels.
At the same time, draft laws were also being developed for hired workers:
introduction of workers ' insurance against accidents, illness, disability and old age; legalization of trade unions and economic strikes; introduction of universal primary education; establishment of personal inviolability.
As a result, the government not only achieved a decline in the revolution, but also finally seized the initiative in its own hands.
5. "The Third June Coup d'etat"
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The government's policy, which led to the decline of the revolutionary movement, forced the Social Democrats to change their tactics and move the revolutionary struggle from the street, where it was already fading, to the Duma halls (i.e., they took part in the elections to the Second State Duma).
In the new composition, the Cadets lost their majority, alienating the landowners from themselves with policies on the issue of landowners ' land ownership, which strengthened the right:
104 seats – "trudoviki"; 98 places cadets; 65 seats – Social Democrats; 54 seats – "Octobrists" and the right; 16 seats – social revolutionaries.
And again, from the very first meeting on February 20, 1907, the main issue became the agrarian one.
The Cadet labor majority, supported by the Socialists, again advocated the partial alienation of the landlords ' lands, which led to a new conflict.
Since the agreement of the authorities with the Second Duma did not take place, the government began preparations for the dissolution of this composition, at the same time starting work on changing the electoral law.
3 projects were prepared, one of which cut the voting rights of peasants and workers so much in favor of landowners that it was called "shameless".
When Nicholas II got acquainted with all the projects, he expressed his choice with the phrase:
"I'm also for shameless."
The pretext for the dissolution was the accusation of the Social Democrats of preparing a military mutiny and the demand to the Duma to deprive all deputies of the Social Democrats of immunity.
On June 3, 1907, without waiting for the Duma's decision, the government announced its dissolution and a new electoral law.
These events went down in history as the "Third June coup d'etat", which marked the end of the First Russian Revolution.
There was no new surge, and spontaneous and unorganized unrest was quickly suppressed.
There were several reasons for such passivity of the population:
the fatigue of the population; the way out of the depression and the beginning of a new economic recovery; the onset of the deadline for the abolition of redemption payments and Stolypin's reforms, which alienated the peasantry from the revolution; liberals and ordinary citizens, frightened by the December armed uprising in Moscow, turned away from the revolution.
6. Results and nature of the revolution
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Both the results and the nature of the revolution are multifaceted and closely related to each other.
Assessing the results of the revolution, we determine its character.
Economic results of the revolution:
In the socio economic sphere, the peasantry achieved the greatest gains – the rights of peasants were expanded, peasant self government bodies were restored, bonded rent was weakened.
But the main result is the destruction of the temporarily binding position and the abolition of redemption payments, which gave an impetus to the development of peasant farms and the transformation of the village into a market for industry.
And this, in turn, gave an impetus to the development of capitalism in Russia.
Thus, the bourgeois character of the revolution is revealed.
Political results of the revolution:
In political terms, the revolution ended with the defeat of the revolutionary forces.
Despite the fact that society achieved some liberalization during the revolution, as a result of the "third June coup d'etat", power was returned to the right forces.
Thanks to the new electoral law, the composition of the subsequent III and IV State Dumas turned out to be Octobrist black Hundred, which retained power for the nobility.
The manifesto of October 17 left enough opportunities for the emperor and the government to put pressure on the Duma until its dissolution, which preserved the autocracy.
However, the very fact of the introduction of moderate civil and political freedoms and the creation of a legislative representative body marked the transition of Russia to the constitutional path of development.
Thus, the revolution was also democratic in nature.
However, this is a simplified approach.
During this revolution, various social forces tried to solve their problems, so in addition to the bourgeois democratic nature, it was also popular, national and religious.
The first Russian Revolution did not solve most of the socio economic problems, the most acute of which remained: the lack of land of the peasants, the social insecurity of the workers, national restrictions.
But Russia still had a chance to avoid major social explosions in the future – this is the continuation of P. A. Stolypin's reforms.
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