10. Crowds celebrating the proclamation of the Manifesto of October 17, 1905.
if I did not voice the impression, perhaps an entirely groundless one, that at the time public figures were frightened of the bombs and the Brownings which were in common use against those in power, and that this was one of the inner motives which whispered to each, in the depths of his soul: “As far as possible from danger.”
131
Witte behaved like a Western Prime Minister not only in selecting his cabinet but in requiring the governors and the military authorities, who in Russia carried administrative responsibilities, to submit daily reports to him. He also established a press bureau to promote favorable news coverage for himself.132 These practices were not appreciated at the Court, which suspected him of using the crisis to accumulate personal power and make himself into a “Grand Vizier.” How insecure Witte’s position was may be judged from the fact that in a letter to his mother Nicholas referred to his Prime Minister, who had to deal with Jewish bankers abroad to secure loans for Russia, as a “chameleon” trusted only by “foreign Yids.”133
The October Manifesto, and the political amnesty act that followed, succeeded in good measure in calming strikes and other forms of radical unrest in the cities. At the same time it unleashed even more violent disorders by right-wing elements against those whom they held responsible for forcing the Tsar to concede something as un-Russian as a constitution, as well as by peasants against landed proprietors. It would be futile to seek any logic in these excesses which would rage for the next two years. They were outbursts of pent-up resentments set off by the breakdown of authority: irrational and even anti-rational, without a program, they represented the Russian bunt which Witte feared and hoped to prevent.
The day after the proclamation of the October Manifesto, anti-Jewish pogroms broke out throughout the Empire, accompanied by attacks on students and intellectuals. Panic spread among Jews in the Pale of Settlement and in cities like Moscow where many of them resided on temporary permits: Jews had not experienced such fear since the Middle Ages. There were beatings and killings, accompanied by the looting and burning of Jewish properties. Odessa, which had a record of extreme violence, witnessed the most savage pogrom, in which around five hundred Jews perished. It was common for thirty, forty, or more Jews to lose their lives in a medium-sized city.134
Although subjecting Jews to severe discriminations, the Russian Government had in the past not encouraged pogroms; it had even repressed them, from fear that anti-Jewish violence would get out of control and victimize Russian landlords and officials. Indeed, the two kinds of violence had a common psychological basis: for although radical intellectuals considered anti-Jewish pogroms “reactionary” and assaults on landlords “progressive,” their perpetrators made no such distinction. The spectacle of policemen and Cossacks standing by while mobs beat and robbed Jews the peasants interpreted to mean that the authorities condoned assaults on all non-communal properties and their owners. In 1905–6, in many localities, peasants attacked landed estates of Christian owners under the impression that the Tsar who tolerated anti-Jewish pogroms would not object to pogroms of landlords.* So that, in preventing anti-Jewish violence, the establishment acted in its own best interests.
11. After an anti-Jewish pogrom in Rostov on Don—the burnt out shells of a prayer house and private residence: October 1905.
But in their frustration with the course of events, the monarchists now lost sight of these realities: they not only tolerated anti-Jewish excesses but actively promoted them. After assuming the premiership Witte learned that the Department of Police, using equipment which it had seized from the revolutionaries, secretly printed and distributed appeals for anti-Jewish pogroms—a practice which he stopped but not before it had claimed many lives.135 Unable to explain what had happened to their idealized Russia in any other way than by blaming alleged villains, among whom Jews occupied the place of honor, the monarchists vented their fury in a manner that encouraged generalized violence. Nicholas shared in this self-destructive delusion when he wrote his mother on October 27 that “nine-tenths of the revolutionaries are Yids [zhidy].” This explained and presumably justified popular wrath against them and the other “bad people,” among whom he included “Russian agitators, engineers, lawyers.”136* In December 1905, Nicholas accepted the insignia of the Union of Russian People (Soiuz Russkogo Naroda), a newly formed monarchist organization which wanted the restoration of autocracy and persecution of Jews.
The main cause of the unrest now, however, was not Jews and intellectuals but peasants. The peasantry completely misunderstood the October Manifesto, interpreting it in its own manner as giving the communes license to take over the countryside. Some rural disorders occurred in the spring of 1905, more in the summer, but they exploded only after October 17.137 Hearing of strikes and pogroms in the cities going unpunished, the peasants drew their own conclusions. Beginning on October 23, when large-scale disorders broke out in Chernigov province, the wave of rural disorders kept on swelling until the onset of winter, reemerging in the spring of 1906 on an even vaster scale. It would fully subside only in 1908 following the adoption of savage repressive measures by Prime Minister Stolypin.
The agrarian revolt of 1905–6 involved surprisingly little personal violence; there is only one authenticated instance of a landlord being killed, although there are reports of the murder of fifty non-communal peasants who were particularly detested.138 In some localities attacks on estates were accompanied by anti-Jewish pogroms. The principal aim of the jacquerie was neither inflicting physical harm nor even appropriating land, but depriving landlords and other non-peasant landowners of the opportunity to earn a livelihood in the countryside—“smoking them out,” as the saying went. In the words of one observer: “The [peasant] movement was directed almost exclusively against landed properties and not against the landlords: the peasants had no use whatever for landlords but they did need the land.”139 The notion was simple: force the landlords to abandon the countryside and to sell their land at bargain prices. To this end, the peasants cut down the landlord’s forests, sent cattle to graze on his pasture, smashed his machinery, and refused to pay rent. In some places, manors were set on fire. The violence was greatest in the central Russian provinces and the Baltic areas; it was least in the western and southwestern regions, once part of Poland. The most prone to engage in it were village youths and soldiers returning from the Far East; everywhere, the city acted as a stimulant. In their assaults on landlord properties, the peasants did not discriminate between “good” and “bad” landlords—the estates of liberal and revolutionary intellectuals were not spared. Conservative owners who defended themselves suffered less than liberals with a guilty conscience.140 As we shall see, the peasants had considerable success with their campaign to evict non-peasant landowners from the countryside.
In an effort to stem the agrarian unrest, the government in early November reduced the due installments of the redemption payments (payments for the land given the emancipated serfs in 1861) and promised to abolish them altogether in January 1907, but these measures did little to calm the rural districts.
In 1905 and 1906 peasants by and large refrained from seizing the land they coveted from fear they would not be allowed to keep it. They still expected a grand national repartition of all the non-communal land, but whereas previously they had looked to the Tsar to order it, they now pinned their hopes on the Duma. The quicker they drove the landlords out, they reasoned, the sooner the repartition would take place.
To Nicholas’s great disappointment, the October Manifesto failed to pacify Russia. He was impatient with Witte: on November 10 he complained that Witte had promised he would tolerate no violence after the Manifesto had been issued but in fact the disorders had gotten even worse.141
The government faced one more trial of strength, this time with the radical left. In this conflict, there was no room for compromises, for the socialists would be satisfied with nothi
ng less than a political and social revolution.
The authorities tolerated the St. Petersburg Soviet, which continued to sit in session although it no longer had a clear purpose. On November 26, they ordered the arrest of Nosar, its chairman. A three-man Presidium (one of whose members was Leon Trotsky) which replaced Nosar resolved to respond with an armed uprising. The first act, which it was hoped would bring about a financial collapse, was an appeal to the people (the so-called Financial Manifesto), issued on December 2, urging them to withhold payments to the Treasury, to withdraw money from savings accounts, and to accept only bullion or foreign currency. The next day, Durnovo arrested the Soviet, putting some 260 deputies (about one-half of its membership) behind bars.142 Following these arrests a surrogate Soviet assembled under the chairmanship of Alexander Helphand (Parvus), the theoretician of “permanent revolution.”143 On December 6, the St. Petersburg Soviet issued a call for a general strike to begin two days later. The call went unheeded, even though the Union of Unions gave it its blessing.144
The socialists were more successful in Moscow. The Moscow Soviet, formed only on November 21 by intellectuals of the three principal socialist parties, decided to press the revolution beyond its “bourgeois” phase. Their followers consisted of semi-skilled workers, many of them employed in the textile industry, professionally and culturally less mature than their counterparts in the capital. The principal force behind this effort was the Moscow Bolshevik Committee.145 The Moscow rising was the first occasion in the 1905 Revolution when the socialists took the lead. On December 6, the Moscow Soviet voted to begin the following day an armed insurrection for the purpose of overthrowing the tsarist government, convoking a Constituent Assembly, and proclaiming a democratic republic*
12. Members of St. Petersburg Soviet en route to Siberian exile: 1905. On the left in front, wearing dark coat, Leon Trotsky.
On December 7, Moscow was paralyzed: the strike was enforced by Soviet agents who threatened with violence anyone who refused to cooperate. Two days later, government forces launched an attack on the insurgents; the latter responded with urban guerrilla tactics. The arrival of the Semenovskii Regiment, which used artillery to disperse the rioters, settled the issue. On December 18 the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet capitulated. Over 1,000 people lost their lives in the uprising and whole areas of the ancient capital were gutted.
There followed an orgy of reprisals in which the police singled out students for beatings. An unknown number of persons involved or suspected of involvement in the insurrection were summarily executed. Punitive expeditions were sent to the provinces.
In mid-April 1906, Witte resigned, mainly because he felt that the Tsar no longer showed confidence in him. Before leaving, he managed to obtain for Russia an international loan of 844 million rubles—the largest ever contracted up to that time by any country—which had the effect of stabilizing Russia’s finances, damaged by the war and revolution. It further freed the Crown for some time from dependence on the Duma, which was due to open shortly.146 He was replaced by Ivan Goremykin, a bureaucrat beloved by the Court for his slavish devotion. Appointed to the State Council, the upper house of the new parliament, Witte spent his remaining years (he died in 1915) dictating memoirs and hating Goremykin’s successor, Peter Stolypin.
The year 1905 marked the apogee of Russian liberalism—the triumph of its program, its strategy, its tactics. It was the Union of Liberation and its affiliates, the zemstvo movement and the Union of Unions, that had compelled the monarchy to concede a constitutional and parliamentary regime. Although they would later claim credit, the socialists in general and the Bolsheviks in particular played in this campaign only an auxiliary role: their one independent effort, the Moscow uprising, ended in disaster.
The liberals’ triumph, nevertheless, was far from secure. As events would soon show, they were a minority caught in a cross fire of conservative and radical extremism. Concerned like the conservatives to prevent revolution, they were nevertheless beholden to the radicals, since the threat of revolution was the only lever they had to prod the Crown into making still more concessions. Ultimately, this contradiction would cause their demise.
The 1905 Revolution substantially altered Russia’s political institutions, but it left political attitudes untouched. The monarchy continued to ignore the implications of the October Manifesto and to insist that nothing had really changed. Its supporters on the right and the mobs they inspired longed to punish those who had humiliated the Tsar. The socialist intelligentsia, for its part, was more determined than ever to exploit the demonstrated weakness of the government and press on with the next, socialist phase of the revolution. The experiences of 1905 had left it more, not less, radical. The terrible weakness of the bonds holding Russia together was revealed to all: but to the government it meant the need for firmer authority, whereas to the radicals it signaled opportunities to destroy the existing order. Not surprisingly, the government and the opposition alike viewed the Duma, not as a vehicle for reaching compromises, but as an arena of combat, and sensible voices, pleading for cooperation, were vilified by both sides.
It is fair to say, therefore, that the 1905 Revolution not only failed to resolve Russia’s outstanding problem—estrangement between rulers and ruled—but aggravated it. And to the extent that attitudes rather than institutions or “objective” economic and social realities determine the course of politics, only unbounded optimists could look to the future with any confidence. In fact, Russia had gained only a breathing spell.
*Unless otherwise stated, dates for the period preceding February 1918 are given according to the Julian calendar in use until then (“Old Style,” or OS), which in the nineteenth century was 12 days behind the Western calendar, and in the twentieth, 13 days. From February 1, 1918, dates are given New Style (NS)—that is, according to the Western calendar, which the Soviet Government adopted at that time.
*Witte (Vospominaniia, II, Moscow, 1960, 218–19) says that in July 1903 Zubatov confided to him that Russia was in a revolutionary situation which could not be resolved by police measures. Zubatov also predicted Plehve’s assassination. This was betrayed to Plehve, who fired Zubatov and exiled him to the provinces. In March 1917, on learning of the Tsar’s abdication, he committed suicide.
*Witte’s dismissal resulted from the Tsar’s dislike of him and Plehve’s intrigues. It occurred, however, as a result of a sudden illumination. Nicholas told Plehve that during a church service he heard the Lord instructing him “not to delay that which I was already persuaded to do”: V. I. Gurko, Features and Figures of the Past (Stanford, Calif., 1939), 225.
†On Azef, see Boris Nikolajewsky [Nikolaevskii], Azeff the Spy (New York, 1934). After Plehve’s murder, Azef’s reputation among revolutionaries grew immensely, and he managed to continue his double role until exposed by the director of the Police Department, A. A. Lopukhin, in December 1908, following which he fled to Germany and went into business. He died in 1918.
*Shmuel Galai, The Liberation Movement in Russia, 1900–1905 (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 214–19; Richard Pipes, Struve: Liberal on the Left (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 363–66. The Social-Democrats, who wanted to lead the revolution on their own, stayed away, but Azef was present.
*George Gapon, The Story of My Life (New York, 1906), 144. The “intellectual Liberals” whom Gapon consulted are known to have been Ekaterina Kuskova, her common-law husband S. N. Prokopovich, and V. Ia. Bogucharskii (Iakovlev).
* KL, No. 2/3 (1922), 56, cited in Galai, Liberation Movement; 239. The official figure was 130 dead and 299 wounded: A. N. Pankratova et al, Revoliutsiia 1905–1907 gg. v Rossii: Dokumenty i materialy, IV, Pt. 1 (Moscow, 1961), 103, 811, note 12.
*Gapon fled abroad. He returned to Russia after the amnesty that followed the October Manifesto, and was killed by an SR on the orders of Azef. After January 9, all his unions were closed, despite worker protests.
*In pre-1905 Russia, there was no cabinet with a Prime Minister: the ministers
reported to the Tsar separately and received from him personal instructions. On the reasons for this practice, see Chapter 2.
†“Black Repartition” was a peasant and Socialist-Revolutionary slogan that called for the abolition of the right of property to land and the distribution (“repartition”) of all privately held land among peasant communes. See Chapter 3.
*The first to call attention to this important source was F.-X. Coquin in F.-X. Coquin and C. Gervais-Francelle, eds., 1905: La Première Révolution Russe (Paris, 1986), 181–200. The invitation for the population to submit petitions was officially withdrawn on August 6, 1905, following the publication of the so-called Bulygin Constitution.
*Russia’s defeat at the hands of the Japanese was to have grave consequences for the whole of Europe by lowering the esteem in which whites had been held by non-Western peoples: for it was the first time in modern history that an Asiatic nation defeated a great Western power. One observer noted in 1909 that the war had “radically reshaped” the mood of the Orient: “There is no Asiatic country, from China to Persia, which has not felt the reaction of the Russo-Japanese war, and in which it has failed to wake new ambitions. These usually find expression in a desire to assert independence, to claim equality with the white races, and have had the general result of causing Western prestige to decline in the East” (Thomas F. Millard, America and the Far Eastern Question, New York, 1909, 1–2). In a sense, the war marked the beginning of the process of colonial resistance and decolonization that would be completed half a century later.
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