introduction
After the Third Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, under the guidance of Lenin's revolutionary line, the revolutionary tide rose rapidly. On May Day 1905, more than 200,000 workers in various places responded to the call of the Bolshevik Party and held a political strike. At the end of May, seventy thousand workers of Ivanovo-Woznexiansk staged a massive strike struggle under the leadership of the Bolsheviks. In the midst of the burning of the struggle, the first Soviets of Workers' Deputies were created by the masses of workers. In the autumn of 1905, the revolutionary movement reached a new climax, and a nationwide political general strike appeared. In late September, a citywide general strike broke out first in Moscow. At the beginning of October, the workers of the Moscow-Kazan railway responded, and the wave of strikes spread rapidly to the most distant border areas of the country, drawing the broadest masses of workers into the struggle.
No less than 1.75 million factory and railway workers took part in the strike. At the same time, thousands of agricultural workers, as well as students and intellectuals, also took part in the strike struggle, and soldiers' uprisings broke out in Kronstadt, Sevastopol and other places. The all-Russian political strike paralyzed the whole country and the Tsarist regime was partially dismantled. In the revolutionary flames of the October general strike, the working class established the Soviets of Workers' Deputies with extraordinary revolutionary initiative. Between October and December, Soviets of Workers' Deputies were established in major cities and industrial centers throughout the country, such as St. Petersburg and Moscow, and in some places Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies and Soviets of Soldiers. The Soviets of Workers' Deputies, a mass political organization of the proletariat composed of the representatives of the factories, are not only the leading organs of strike, but also play the role of a provisional revolutionary government, the germ of a new revolutionary power. It broke through the "rule of law" of the Tsarist government, promulgated decrees on its own, established a new revolutionary order, introduced an eight-hour working day, published newspapers openly, actively armed the masses, cracked down on the sabotage activities of counter-revolutionaries, and even confiscated the property of the Tsarist government for the needs of the revolution.
After the beginning of the all-Russian political strike, the Tsarist government issued a reactionary order that "the law must be brought to justice on the spot, and not to be stingy with bullets" and carried out a brutal suppression; at the same time, fearing the power of the revolution, it had to make some temporary retreats and carry out some superficial reforms. On 17 October, the Tsar issued a manifesto promising to give the people freedom of speech, assembly, association, and the press, to allow all classes to participate in elections, and to establish the State Duma with legislative powers. The October 17 manifesto was a complete hoax. At the same time as the manifesto was promulgated, nobles, landlords, and hooligans, with the support of the Tsarist government, established gangster groups such as the "Russian People's League" and slaughtered the revolutionary people in bloody ways. The preparations for the armed uprising were described as personally leading the preparations for the armed uprising after the declaration was issued. Lenin demanded that the whole Party study the military seriously, that the armed uprising should be carried out as meticulously as art, and that the revolutionary role of the Soviets of Workers' Deputies be clarified. In December, the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, stepped up the arming of the workers and actively organized an armed uprising.
On December 7, a general political strike was held in Moscow and an armed fighting squad of 2,000 workers was formed. On the 9th, the strike developed into an armed uprising. The working class in Moscow showed its soaring revolutionary enthusiasm and heroicism. The barricades are filled with the city of Moscow. The insurrectionary workers fought fiercely against the reactionary army for nine days. Under the influence of the workers' movement, the Moscow garrison also continued to erupt into a wave of soldiers. At that time, only more than thirteen hundred of the fifteen thousand garrisons were on the side of the Tsar. The Tsarist government had to mobilize large numbers of troops from St. Petersburg and other places to Moscow to suppress it. At this time, the Mensheviks acted as traitors to the revolt, trumpeting capitulationism among the workers and disintegrating the revolutionary fighting spirit of the masses. Since Trotsky and the Mensheviks controlled the leadership of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies in St. Petersburg, the Workers of St. Petersburg were not able to provide timely assistance to the Workers of Moscow.
The Moscow uprising was isolated. At the same time, due to the destruction of the Bolshevik Moscow Committee on the eve of the uprising, the uprising lacked a unified leadership. On the night of the 18th, the Workers' Soviet decided to stop the uprising. The insurrectionary workers, under the leadership of the Soviets, buried their weapons and withdrew systematically from the war zone. At the same time as the Moscow uprising, armed uprisings broke out in many Russian cities, such as Rostov and Nizhny Novgorod, as well as in Siberia, the Caucasus, Latvia and other regions. In some places, the insurrectionary workers overthrew the local tsarist regime and established the local revolutionary regime. But these uprisings were also suppressed. After the failure of the uprising, the Mensheviks Plekhanov and others, in an aristocratic and old-fashioned manner, denounced the revolution, cursed the uprising as a "man-made dangerous trick", and accused the workers that "there was no need to take up arms in the first place". Lenin pointed out tit-for-tat: "On the contrary, the Russian scene is: "The freedom of the dead, the imprisonment of the living". The bourgeois and liberal landlords, on the other hand, used their hands to accept this "gift" from the frightened Tsar. They toasted the October 17 declaration, chanting "Thank God, Russia has a constitution" and "Long live order when the revolution is over."
The bourgeoisie, believing that the Tsar's manifesto had fulfilled their desire to join the regime, established various bourgeois parties. Among the most important were the Royalist "October Party" (17 October League), which represented the interests of the big bourgeoisie and the bourgeois big landlords, and the Cadets, which represented the interests of the middle bourgeoisie and liberal landlords. The former was headed by the great industrialist Guchkov and the large landowner Rogentkov, while the latter was headed by Milyukov (1859-1943) and Stuhluve. Although the October Party and the Cadets have different colors (the former is openly hostile to the revolution, the latter often uses the slogan of democracy and freedom to deceive the masses), and sometimes even engages in fierce "quarrels", they are only two wings of the bourgeoisie, doing everything possible to lead the masses to the road of constitutional reform, in a vain attempt to preserve the tsarist autocracy in the form of a constitutional monarchy and to suspend the revolution.
The Mensheviks also sang praises for the October 17 Manifesto, shouting that henceforth "the shackles of the autocracy have been broken on their own" and that the legislative Duma can be used to peacefully realize the revolutionary demands of the people. They used their stolen authority to try to bring the strike to a halt. The Bolshevik Party promptly exposed the conspiracies of the Tsarist government and the demagogic lies of the bourgeoisie and the Mensheviks, pointing out that the purpose of the Tsar's manifesto was to stop the tide of popular uprisings and to force the revolutionary classes to stop their struggle. Lenin pointed out: "The Tsar is far from surrendering. Authoritarianism simply does not cease to exist. It had only retreated in an unusually fierce battle, but it was far from being defeated, and it was still gathering its strength. Only armed struggle can determine the fate of the revolution and the only guarantee of its victory. In November 1905, just as the revolution was at a critical juncture, Lenin returned to Russia and cried out that it was necessary to replace the revolution with a "constitution." In April 1906, the first State Duma was inaugurated. The main issue discussed was the land issue that was most urgently needed at the time.
The Cadets and others deceived the workers and peasants in the vain attempt to convince the people that the State Duma could meet the demands of land and freedom without revolution, and advocated buying a part of the landlord's land at a "fair price" and then renting this part of the land to the peasants for long-term use. This was essentially a reproduction of the reform of serfdom of 1861, a new attempt to plunder and deceive the Russian peasantry. The labor faction, composed of peasant representatives, advocated confiscating the landlords' land, nationalizing the land, and distributing the land equally among the peasants. The fierce speeches of the peasant deputies in the Duma spread throughout the country and aroused strong repercussions among the broad masses of peasants. The peasants' struggle for land is on the rise again, and peasant revolts spread throughout more than fifty percent of the counties of the country.
In many places, peasants held congresses and elected representatives to go to St. Petersburg to present "instructions" calling for a solution to the land problem. Fearing that the discussion of the land question would lead to a more fierce struggle among the peasants, the Tsarist government sent troops to surround the Duma conference building and forcibly announce the dissolution of the first Duma, on the grounds that the peasants had "taken the property of others by means of blatant plunder and disobeyed the law and legal power". At the same time, the government was reorganized and Stolypin (1862-1911) was appointed Chancellor.com. Although the Tsarist government dissolved the First Duma, it was forced by the revolutionary situation to convene the First State Duma in March 1907. At that time, since the revolution had clearly reached a low ebb and there were no objective conditions for boycotting the Duma, the Bolshevik Party decided to change its boycott tactics and participate in the Duma elections in order to use the Duma as a forum to fight against the Tsarist government and the Cadets and win over the broad masses.
The Bolshevik representatives, working under the direct guidance of Lenin, put forward a thoroughly revolutionary agrarian programme and advocated the confiscation of all the land of the landlords without compensation through the revolution and distribution to the poor peasants for use. Seeing that the Second State Duma was even less tame than the first, the Tsarist Government fabricated the false accusation that the Social Democratic Party had planned a "treasonous coup" in the Duma, illegally arrested Social Democrats 588, who should have taken up arms more resolutely, boldly and proactively, and should have explained to the masses that peaceful strikes alone could not be done, but that heroic and relentless armed struggles must be waged. "The October and December struggles of 1905 were the great proletarian movements after the Paris Commune,...... The examples of these struggles should be a beacon in our work to educate a new generation of fighters." The December Uprising in Moscow was the culmination of the revolution's development in 1905, and after the failure of the uprising, the revolution went from a period of upsurge to a period of gradual retreat.
The historical significance of the revolution
The Revolution of 1905 failed because of the betrayal and sabotage of the Mensheviks, because of the lack of centralized and unified leadership of the proletariat in the struggle and a consolidated alliance of workers and peasants, and because of the support of the international bourgeoisie for the Tsarist government. However, its historical significance is significant. The revolution of 1905 was a bourgeois-democratic revolution led by the proletariat in the epoch of imperialism, and it had fundamentally different characteristics from any bourgeois revolution in history. This revolution "is, in terms of its social content, a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but a proletarian revolution according to its means of struggle." The proletariat played a leading and vanguard role in the revolution, using powerful means of struggle such as mass political strikes and armed uprisings to create the prototype of proletarian power, the Soviets of Human Deputies.
The Revolution of 1905 was the general exercise of the October Revolution of 1917. In just three short years, the revolution enabled the Bolshevik Party and the proletariat to undergo tempering and education that had not been available for decades and gained rich experience in struggle; the revolution exposed the true features of the bourgeoisie and the Mensheviks, and enabled the broad masses of the peasantry to advance day by day from their influence and to advance with the proletariat. Lenin pointed out: "Before the armed uprising of December 1905, the Russian people were not yet capable of carrying out a mass armed struggle against the exploiters. But after December, the people were different. The people have changed dramatically. They were baptized in battle. They were tempered in the uprising. They trained a large number of warriors, who won the victory in 1917". The revolution of 1905 had great international significance for the historical course of the world revolution - revolutionaries; gallows, prisons and penal colonies were all over the country.
Between 1907 and 1910, thousands of revolutionaries died under the butcher's knife of the counter-revolution. At that time, people called the noose "Stolypin's tie". In a pool of blood of the revolutionary people, the Tsarist government ostensibly stabilized reactionary rule for the time being. But after the revolutionary storm of 1905, it was impossible for the Tsarist government to rule as usual. In order to broaden the social basis of reactionary rule, to further form counter-revolutionary alliances with the urban and rural bourgeoisie, to preserve the already shaken rule and to prevent the resurgence of the revolution, the Tsarist government had to implement a number of reforms. The convening of the Third Duma and the implementation of the land policy for the development of the kulak economy in the countryside were the two main measures of Stolypin's reforms. The Third State Duma, elected in June 1907, consisted mainly of representatives of landlords and capitalists, who accounted for forty-six per cent of the total number of delegates. The reactionary October Party played a decisive role in the Duma.
The Third Duma was essentially a political alliance between the landlord aristocracy headed by the Tsar and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, and this counter-revolutionary joint dictatorship, with the landlord class as the mainstay, was the class essence of the so-called June 3rd political system. In June 1910, the Third Duma passed the Stolypin Land Law, based on the November 1906 Decree, which stipulated that peasants must withdraw from the village community, and that their share should be privately owned by the peasants and freely bought and sold. This decree accelerated the class differentiation in the countryside and the development of capitalism in the countryside. The kulaks seized the best land when the village communities were broken up, and relied on government loans to plunder the land of the vast number of poor peasants, employ bankrupt peasants, and carry out brutal exploitation.
During the ten years of the land law, sixty percent of the more than three million peasant households who had withdrawn from the village community sold their land, and most of this land fell into the hands of the kulaks. Thus, in addition to the landlords, the Tsarist government cultivated in the countryside a rural bourgeoisie, the kulaks, as its new class pillar for maintaining reactionary rule. The agrarian policy of the Third Duma and Stolypin was the second bourgeois reform carried out by the serf owners, which had a profound impact on the tsarist autocracy after the reform of serfdom in 1861. The Revolution of 1905 was the first large-scale revolution in the history of the international workers' movement since the Paris Commune, and it ended the period of relatively peaceful development of capitalism since 1872.
The revolution of 1905 "evoked a movement throughout Asia." After the Russian Revolution of 1905, anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary movements broke out in Iran, India, Turkey, and China. The revolution of 1905 shattered the preaching of "social peace" advocated by the Social-Democratic Party of Western Europe and the fallacy that "armed uprisings and street battles are obsolete", showing the proletariat that "only a harsh struggle, that is, a civil war, can liberate mankind from the oppression of capital". The Revolution of 1905 greatly promoted the revolutionization of the workers of Europe and america, calling them into the barricades. Under the influence of the 1905 revolution, the workers' movement in Germany, France, Britain, the United States and other capitalist countries entered a new stage. The prelude to the revolutionary storm of the imperialist era has begun.
The expansion of Tsarist Russia's foreign aggression at the beginning of the twentieth century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the struggle of imperialism for world hegemony and the re-division of the colonies intensified unprecedentedly, and the struggle of the people of the world against imperialism and colonialism rose rapidly. During this period, Tsarist Russia fully exposed the brutality and aggression of military feudal imperialism. Not only did it frantically expand its sphere of influence, but it also further acted as an international gendarme to bloodily suppress the Asian national liberation movements. At this time, Tsarist Russia intensified its participation in the criminal activity of slaughtering this piece of fat meat of China. In 1900, under the reactionary clamor of "eliminating the Yellow Scourge", it joined the Eight-Power Alliance, invaded the Beijing-Tianjin region, bloodily suppressed the Boxer Rebellion, and extended its magic claws into the heart of China.
In July, under the pretext of "protecting" the Middle East Railway, which was under construction, it dispatched 170,000 troops to invade the three northeastern provinces of China in five ways, and occupied the entire three northeastern provinces in early October. In order to further dismember China's territory and occupy the three northeastern provinces forever, Tsarist Russia also plotted the so-called "Yellow Russia" plan in a vain attempt to "make Manchuria the second in Bukhara." In the course of armed occupation of the northeast, Tsarist Russia carried out the most barbaric massacre and plunder of our people. On the eve of the large-scale invasion, Tsarist Russia invaded and occupied the sixty-four tuns in Jiangdong, which belonged to Chinese jurisdiction on the north bank of the Heilongjiang River, and carried out bloody massacres of Chinese residents, even driving them into the river and drowning them alive, almost all of the 6,000 men, women, and children were killed. During the capture of Yaohun, the Russian invading army burned down the ancient city. Tsarist Russia also committed a series of bloody atrocities in Hailar, Hunchun, San surname, Mohe and other places, and according to incomplete statistics, tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese people were slaughtered.
When the plague god arrived, it was a disaster. At that time, Lenin made a righteous and stern denunciation of the old Tsar's heinous crimes, pointing out that Russia "mobilized a number of military regions, spent hundreds of millions of rubles, and sent tens of thousands of soldiers to China,...... These victories were not so much victories over the enemy's regular army as victory over the Chinese insurgents, but rather victory over the unarmed Chinese. Drowned and massacred them, not to mention looting the royal palace, houses and shops. Lenin further pointed out that the murderous aggressor of Tsarist Russia pounced on China like a beast, "killing and setting fire to people, burning villages, driving ordinary people into the Heilongjiang River and drowning alive, shooting and stabbing unarmed residents and their wives and children." Due to the heroic resistance of the Chinese people and the contradiction between imperialism for China, Tsarist Russia's ambition to monopolize northeast China did not succeed. In 1904, in order to compete for northeast China and Korea, Tsarist Russia and Japan fought the Russo-Japanese War.
The fire of the two robbers has caused another great disaster for the people of northeast China. After the Russo-Japanese War, Tsarist Russia further sacrificed the rights and interests of China and Korea and divided the scope of hegemony in East Asia with Japan. In terms of southward expansion, in 1907, Russia colluded with Britain to sign a secret treaty dividing Iran, Afghanistan and China's Tibet sphere of influence, which classified northern Iran as the Tsarist Russia's sphere of influence. After the Russo-Japanese War, Tsarist Russia pointed the spearhead of aggression at the Balkans and the Middle East. At this time, due to the loss of the Eastern Naval Base Lushun, Tsarist Russia was more anxious to seize the Black Sea Strait. The Russian Foreign Minister shouted: "Russia must now pass from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.". To this end, Tsarist Russia carried out intrigue and trickery, advocating the establishment of a Balkan alliance under its control to counter the expansion of the new rival Germany and Austria in the Balkans, and at the same time engaging in a behind-the-scenes booty-sharing deal with austria-Hungary, trying to exchange support for the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by austria-hungary in exchange for the right of the Russian fleet to freely enter and leave the Black Sea strait. After the conspiracy failed, Tsarist Russia once again played the old trick, played the banner of liberating the Balkan countries from Turkish rule and under German and Austrian control, and took advantage of the internal contradictions between the Balkan countries to support puppets and vigorously intervene in the Balkan wars, in a vain attempt to fish in muddy waters and expand its power in the Balkans.
History proves that Tsarist Russia has always "used the constantly changing ends of competing powers as a means to achieve its never-changing and never-ignored ends —Russia's world hegemony." Through a long and vicious period of foreign aggression and territorial expansion, by 1914 Tsarist Russia had 17.4 million square kilometers of colonies, the second largest in the world after Britain, and more than the colonies of France, Germany, the United States, and Japan combined. So Lenin pointed out that Tsarist Russia was a "crown-wearing bandit" who committed murder and robbery everywhere. At the beginning of the twentieth century, "the Tsar was not only a gendarme of Europe, but also of Asia, who sought to suppress all freedom movements in Turkey, Persia and China with intrigue, money and the most barbaric violence." After the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China, the old Tsar joined forces with Yuan Shikai, a new lackey of imperialism to support and support imperialism, to steal the victorious achievements of the Xinhai Revolution and stifle china's bourgeois-democratic revolution.
epilogue
Between 1905 and 1911, Tsarist Russia repeatedly intervened in Iran's anti-imperialist and anti-feudal bourgeois revolutions, and in 1911, in collusion with the British, joint troops were sent to suppress this revolution. After the outbreak of the Turkish bourgeois revolution in 1908, Tsarist Russia supported the Turkish reactionary forces in their rampant counterattack against the revolutionary forces. With the intensification of the political and economic crisis and the intensification of the imperialist struggle for world hegemony, Tsarist Russia, like other imperialists, is anxious to weaken the enemy through war, destroy the enemy's hegemony, and expand its sphere of influence. To this end, the Tsarist government did not hesitate to beg for loans from France and Britain, frantically expanded its armaments, ambitiously formulated a "big" military plan, and vigorously rebuilt the fleet that had been annihilated in the Russo-Japanese War. By the eve of the First World War, Tsarist Russia had 1.3 million active military personnel, ranking first in the world. In 1914, aggressive Tsarist Russia finally provoked world war with other imperialist bandits.
Reference: Modern World History