The 1905 Revolution had its roots in the Russo-Japanese
War, which had begun in February of 1904. Advisers to the Tsar,
Nicholas II, had viewed it as an excellent way to improve Russia's
position in the Pacific and to encourage patriotic feeling at home.
Instead, Russia suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the
hands of the Japanese, a supposedly backward nation, and these
setbacks led to unrest at home. On January 22, 1905, a crowd of
peaceful demonstrators gathered before the Tsar's Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg–but the Tsar was absent, his ministers displayed
uncertainty, and soldiers sensing the tension gunned down the marchers.
Hundreds died in a massacre that came to be known as "Bloody Sunday,"
and Russia plunged into chaos. A series of strikes swept the country, closing
banks, halting trains, and paralyzing industry. Revolutionary
leaders returned from exile, and workers' councils, known as "soviets,"
sprang up in Moscow and St. Petersburg. In rural areas, peasants
burned manor houses and attacked landlords, and even political
liberals joined the clamor, urging the Tsar to move the country
toward representative government.
"The uprising has begun," Lenin wrote in early February.
"Rivers of blood are flowing, the civil war for freedom is blazing
up." The Third Social Democratic Party Congress was held in April
and May, and this time Lenin dominated, stirring an enthusiastic response
from the delegates as he leveled attack after attack on the Mensheviks.
In December, he returned to Russia for the first time in five
years, to take over the leadership of the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg.
By this point, however, the uprising's momentum was slowly dying
out, as the Tsar had begun to address the people's concerns. Nicholas
II, desperate to restore order, had made peace with Japan in September,
and then issued the "October Manifesto," promising civil rights
and the formation of a legislative assembly, called the Duma.
This concession divided the opposition. The more moderate groups,
especially the middle-class liberals, were satisfied with the promised
reforms, and their support for revolutionary violence waned. Unrest
continued among the peasantry and laboring classes, but the government
felt sufficiently secure to arrest the leadership of the St. Petersburg
Soviet, on December 16, and a subsequent uprising, in which a number
of Bolsheviks took part, was brutally crushed.
Lenin denounced the "October Manifesto" as nothing but
empty promises (which, in fact, it may have been), and although
orders were out for his arrest, he managed to avoid imprisonment
after returning to Russia. In December he went to Finland, which, although
officially under the Tsars' control, maintained its autonomy and
therefore served as a haven for dissidents. There, he attended
a conference of Russian Bolsheviks in the town of Tammerfors, and
met for the first time a young Bolshevik named Joseph Stalin, known
at the time as "Koba," after a famous Georgian bandit. As unrest
diminished in the spring of 1906, the Social Democrats met for
their Fourth Congress in Stockholm, where an attempt was made to
bridge the gap between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. The divide persisted,
despite Lenin's best efforts, but even without the Mensheviks'
support Lenin enjoyed high prestige. He returned to St. Petersburg
on May 9 and addressed a crowd three thousand strong at the house
of a sympathetic noblewoman. On July 8, the Tsar dissolved the
first Duma, prompting a new series of uprisings, and again it seemed
that revolution might be at hand. The Bolsheviks called for a
general strike and a withholding of tax-payments, but the population,
weary after the violence of 1905, did not respond, and the Tsar's
government struggled on. After dissolving a second Duma in June
of the following year, the Tsar finally allowed a Third Duma to
hold a number of sessions between 1907 and 1912. During this period,
the Tsar's government found a clever, politically shrewd leader
in Peter Stolypin, a cagey conservative who mixed tight political
control with "reforms" designed to bring the propertied classes
into an alliance with the monarchy.
With hopes of immediate revolution receding, Lenin remarked, "this
is the beginning of a reaction which is likely to last twenty years,
unless there is a war in the meantime. That is why we must needs
go abroad and work from there." The Fifth Party Congress, held
in London in spring of 1907, saw the Mensheviks gain a stronger
position, as a number of Lenin's favorite tactics were condemned,
including "expropriation" (a euphemism for grand theft), which had
been a source of Bolshevik funds for some time. (Indeed, only a
few weeks after expropriation was officially disavowed, the funds
from a huge robbery in the city of Tiflis [in Russian Georgia] were
delivered directly to Lenin.) After the Congress, Lenin returned
to Finland briefly, and from there he sailed for Western Europe
in December 1907. He would not return to Russia for ten years.
