Anna Stanley

To what extent was the Russo Japanese War the cause of the 1905 Revolution?

Russia was in an extremely delicate state before the 1905 Revolution. There were many causes behind leaving Russia’s population increasingly alienated, provoked, and feeling let down by the Tsar. .. ..The Tsars plan to use a successful war in the far East as an opportunity to divert peoples attention from the deteriorating conditions back home hopelessly backfired. There was mass humiliation in defeat and the Russo Japanese war irrevocably revealed the inefficiency, weakness and corruption of the Tsarist state. ..However, the Russo Japanese War wasn’t entirely to blame for the 1905 revolution. Nevertheless, there was a great impact caused by the Army’s embarrassing mistakes. ..The army highly underestimated the capability of the Japanese. Firstly, the Army lost the battle of Mukden, One of the largest land battles to be fought before WW1. Russian casualties amounted to nearly 90,000. The Russians had also lost most of their combat supplies as well as most of their artillery and heavy machine guns. ..The Russian Army was also defeated in the battle of Tsushima, many died. The battle was a devastating loss for Russia, which lost all of its battleships, most of its cruisers and destroyers, and effectively ended the Russo-Japanese war in Japan's favor. The impacts of these two battles lead to the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth. This meant that Japan gained Pour Arthur, which effectively offered them even more goods and recourses. This exemplified Russia’s loss, and now poverty stricken state. Even more so by the fact that Japan had just had an industrial revolution. The shift in public opinion from these events provoked the feeling of unrest, and lead to many more significant factors which are thought to have contributed towards the 1905 Revolution. . ..Arguably, another factor leading to social unrest, which undoubtedly spurred on the 1905 revolution, is what is known as ‘Bloody Sunday’. Bloody Sunday was a massacre in St. Petersburg, where unarmed, peaceful demonstrators marching to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II were gunned down by the Imperial Guard while approaching the Winter Palace. Over 100 workers were killed and some 300 wounded. This dramatically changed the common view for Nicholas II being thought of as ‘Father of the people’ as the disregard for ordinary people shown by the massacre undermined support for the state. As reports of the incident spread across the city, disorder and looting broke out. Strikes occurred throughout the country involving about 400,000 people; peasants attacked the homes of their landlords. Russia seemed to be on the point of imploding. Naturally, the effect that Bloody Sunday had on the Russian people was no surprise. ..But as if everything so far wasn’t enough to spur on the 1905 revolution, Russification also played a major part. Russification had an aim of imposing Russian ways on all the peoples within the nation. It was a severely enforced policy of restricting the influence of non Russian national minorities within the empire. There was government favouring, and open discrimination against all non Russians. 56% of those in Russia were non Russian. The nationalities that suffered most from Russification were the Baltic Germans, Poles, Finns, Americans, and the Ukrainians’. The state had interference in their education, religion and culture. In fact 600 laws were passed to alienate the Jews, of which there were about five million. If that wasn’t enough to provoke non Russians, Jews in particular, there were also Pogroms performed in public. This led to a potential support base for the Tsar feeling extremely agitated, and alienated. This indicates mass unrest towards the Tsar, therefore contributing towards the 1905 Revolution. ..Economical and social factors were also massive contributors towards the 1905 revolution. Seregei Witte’s reforms can be seen as the main cause of these factors. Witte believed modernisation could only be achieved through state capitalism. Agriculture was very behind than that of other countries, as arguably, under the Witte system nothing substantial had been done to improve it. Therefore the land was not cultivated properly, and famines occurred regularly. The peasants were free after the Emancipation of Serfs Act in 1861, but they had to make redemption payments for the land which they farmed. This, like the Russo-Japanese War, caused them to resent Nicholas II. The landowners were also suffering: they had lost free labour, and with the selling of the land to the government, many of them were in deep debt. They too were dissatisfied with the Tsar. The discontent, resulting from these economic issues, partly contributed to the event of the 1905 Revolution, as there was mass resentment towards the Tsar. ..In conclusion, the Russo Japanese war can be seen as merely provoking a land slide of disasters, all contributing towards hatred and outrage towards the tsar. This in itself made it easier for the 1905 revolution to occur.