AQA-Style Question 4b

How Far Was Nicholas II’s Response to the Crisis of 1905 ‘Totally Inadequate’?

This is a revised version. I posted an initial version and then thought some more about it and realised that I was perhaps being too soft on the Tsar. I said that it had been a success as he had at least bought off the liberals (although no one else). I should have gone for the glass was half empty rather than half full.

Nicholas’ response to the crisis of 1905 - the October Manifesto - was totally inadequate. Its only real success was was to seemingly promise the liberals what they had been asking for for decades. It did not solve any of the underlying problems behind the 1905 crisis and, in many ways, radicalized the existing opposition to the Tsar.

In 1905, Russia was seemingly heading for revolution. Defeat in the Russo-Japanese War had both highlighted and exacerbated longstanding problems within the country; problems that had not been resolved despite half a century of reform. Indeed, many of the reasons for the poor military performance - such as long supply lines and poor leadership - were the same as those that led to defeat in the Crimean War that prompted Alexander II’s reforms. There were also growing calls for reform from the liberal Intelligentsia, coupled with calls for revolution from the social democrats and the social revolutionaries, calls for independence from nationalist groups, and growing unrest from among the peasants and urban workers.

Nicholas’ response to the crisis - the October Manifesto, that promised much of what the liberals had been asking for for decades, such as the establishment of an elected Duma and the (re)establishment of freedom of speech and assembly was, on one level at least, a success. The Manifesto succeeded, as Witte had predicted, in splitting the liberals (who would work with the Tsar and who sought reform) from the revolutionary groups. Indeed, it could be argued, given Nicholas’ well-documented inability to make decisions, that it was the most successful move of his rule to this point. It was also a success in the short term as it was greeted by most segments of Russian society who saw it as the beginning of a shift away from autocracy.

However, the October Manifesto did not solve any of Russia’s underlying problems. The revolutionary left denounced it and called for an armed uprising - such as the one that took place in December 1905 - to overthrow the Tsar. Equally strike action continued and, indeed, grew with a second General Strike breaking out in St Petersburg in November. Unrest also continued in both the army and navy, where there were a number of mutinies, and in the countryside, where peasants took the promises contained within the Manifesto as an opportunity to seize land and murder landowners. Indeed, within months of the Manifesto, the Tsarist regime embarked on a series of repression in order to reassert its authority.

In this way, while the Tsar’s response was a relative success in gaining the support of the liberals; breaking them away from the revolutionaries by seemingly giving them what they had been asking for for decades, it did not appease many other segments of Russian society (such as the peasants and revolutionary left) and, in some ways, led them to become more aggrieved and radicalized. However, fundamentally it can be seen to be completely inadequate as it did nothing to solve the underlying problems that led to the crisis of 1905, and merely deferred them.