Essay On The 1905 Revolution

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future leader of the Soviet Union as a “dress rehearsal” for the 1917 revolution. The most important difference is that the 1905 revolution failed to destroy the autocracy in Imperial Russia. A combination of reasons can explain why this revolution failed at overthrowing the Tsar Nikolas the Second. The revolutions participants were not revolutionaries that wanted to overthrow the Tsar, it was not started by revolutionary groups. The military and military context played an important role to the revolution’s failure, and the autocracy’s reforms gave compromise to the protestors who could be satisfied with the changes. These factors show why the 1905 revolution failed to destroy the autocracy.

The beginning of the 1905 revolution was marked
The military remained loyal to the autocracy, and the Tsar even after the Russo-Japanese War, and despite the rash of mutinies, including the mutiny in May 1905 on the battleship Potemkin where 40 crew members murdered 7 of their officers including the captain before seeking asylum in Romania. The Tsar feared that when the army returned from the Russo-Japanese war, they would not remain loyal and could not be used to combat the revolution. The military had to show an incredible amount of loyalty to kill hundreds of unarmed civilians during Bloody Sunday, and keep fighting against the armed insurgents in Moscow. The military was primarily comprised of conscripted peasants, who could have joined the uprising and worker’s unions and overthrown the autocracy in the position of power but they did not, despite poor hygiene and food in the military reaching endemic proportions. The soldiers feared the Tsar and the autocracy, any kind of retribution would be met with punishment such as execution or sent to a work camp in Siberia. As long as the Tsar could control the military, he could control the
The intention of the revolution was to receive more civil liberties, and to be granted better working conditions. The revolutionaries would have to start a revolution with the intention of destroying the autocracy for it to succeed in destroying the autocracy. The military remained loyal to the Tsar out of fear, and while the Russo-Japanese war was a terrible defeat for Russia, it would take a defeat with much higher casualties and more devastating consequences, like in World War One, to cause the dissatisfaction needed for a revolution. The changes and reforms made by the Tsar gave the people what they wanted, and gave him time before another revolution

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