Why did the Tsarist regime survive in 1905 but fall in 1917?

In 1913 the Romanov dynasty celebrated its 300th anniversary.  Less than four years later it was to collapse, and the last Tsar, Nicholas II, was to abdicate in a country station, without making a fight to retain his throne.  In February 1917 a week of bread riots, strikes and demonstrations in the capital was sufficient to bring down a regime which, twelve years earlier, had survived over a year of full-blown revolution. 

Lenin later described 1905 as 'a dress rehearsal' for 1917, and many of the same problems were to resurface, unsolved, in 1917.  1905 was a year of workers' protests.  It started with Father Gapon's march to present a petition to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg on Bloody Sunday, 9 January, the suppression of which led to widespread strikes and culminated in a general strike by October.  It saw the formation of popularly elected factory committees and Soviets.  The Soviet movement became enormously popular.  By autumn 1905, when strikes evolved into barricade fighting and uprisings, they ran whole towns or workers' districts of cities, with their own militias and bakeries, or formed local 'republics' for a few days or weeks before the army moved in.  There were many armed uprisings in December besides the one in Moscow. 

The rural uprising, which was to continue throughout 1906.  was the biggest peasant revolt since Pugachev in the eighteenth century.  Much of the violence was in the national minority areas of the Russian Empire, which rose against Russification policies as well as against the disruption of recent rapid industrialisation.  The boom years of the 1890s were followed by a slump in 1900.  and nationality, as well as class conflicts.  led to revolt.  The Caucasus, with its vital oil industry, was out of central control fur much of the year, and there were demands for autonomy or independence in many areas.  The regime faced organised opposition groups ranging from liberals to Marxists and the Socialist Revolutionary party By October 1905 it seemed that the monarchy might collapse.  After talk of a military dictatorship came to nothing, the Tsar was forced to grant concessions with the October Manifesto.  Freedom of speech.  association and religion were granted, and a parliament, or Duma.  was promised on a wide, if indirect franchise, with some limited legislative powers.  By stating that all bills to become law needed Duma consent, the monarchy had apparently limited its own powers. 

Why did the monarchy survive this crisis, and what had changed by 1917 which can explain why it was then to collapse so quickly and easily? One answer is that, with the exception of Trotsky and extreme left revolutionaries, few people in 1905 were trying to overthrow the monarchy.  They wanted reform and the transformation of the autocracy into a constitutional monarchy.  One of the striking features of the year was the inter-class unity of the opposition before October 1905.  The policy of the main liberal party, the Kadets.  of 'no enemies on the Left' ensured collaboration between liberals and socialists.  Some industrialists paid strike pay.  some landlords even encouraged peasants to revolt to put pressure on the government to grant political reform.  This was dangerous for the regime, but it also meant that once reform.  however imperfect.  was granted in October, the opposition movement split.  The regime also still had its supporters.  There were right-wing pro-monarchist parties.  and the authorities were prepared to encourage the anti-semitism of the so-called 'Black Hundreds, to deflect public opinion into pogroms against Jews.  And the Tsar could still draw on the services of able ministers like Witte and later, Stolypin. 

A large French loan at the beginning of 1906 saved the regime from bankruptcy.  and the end of the Russo-Japanese War, even on unfavourable terms, in the summer of 1905, enabled it to concentrate on suppressing the revolution.  Above all, although there were mutinies among the troops being withdrawn from the Far East, and mutinies in the navy, of which that on the battleship Potemkin in lune is the best known, the army remained loyal enough to be used by the regime to put down unrest in the countryside.  In Moscow in December 1905, one railway line remained open and was used to bring in troops from outside the area to repress the revolt.  By the spring of 1906.  the Tsar was back in control.  in March the new fundamental laws declared that the Tsar was still an autocrat, removed many of the civil rights granted in October and made the State Council a second chamber.  By Article 87.  which gave the monarchy the right to dissolve the Duma and pass extraordinary legislation while it was not sitting, the main concession of the October Manifesto was effectively removed.  The threat to the monarchy was over. 

By 1917 it was clear few lessons had been learnt.  Whereas the monarchy still had supporters in 1905, there were very few left, even among the nobility and court circles, by 1917.  The royal family.  increasingly isolated from society, was tainted by its association with Rasputin who, unlike previous royal favourites.  was causing an open scandal and influenced appointments.  In sharp contrast to 1905, there were no able ministers during the First World War, and Nicholas's decision to become Commander in Chief of the Army, and to lead the war effort from the front line, left Alexandra and Rasputin in charge of the government.  The fact that he was away from the capital in February 1917 was to be crucial.  As had also happened in 1905.  the Tsar's natural supporters, members of the Duma, and even senior figures in the army, were willing to use popular unrest to put pressure on Nicholas, either to grant real power to the Duma, or, when this time he refused concessions, to abdicate. 

The failure of the hopes for the Duma in 1906 had alienated Nicholas from those who had been willing to collaborate with reform in 1905.  His refusal to work with the new body, and the intransigence of even the right wing of the liberal movement, led to an increasing divide between the monarchy and society.  As the French writer de Tocqueville wrote of the French Revolution, the most dangerous moment for an autocratic government is when it tries to reform itself.  Even more dangerous is to grant reform and then not carry it through.  The Duma did not lead to a genuine constitutional monarchy, but after 1905 there were changes which made Nicholas's attempts to restore autocracy impossible.  The Duma debates were published, the major cities were beginning to become more westernised, with gas and electric lighting, cinema, increased literacy and western imports.  Press censorship, although reinforced, was never as rigid as before 1905.  Public opinion was moving against the monarchy, and a civil society was coming into being.  These trends increased during the war with the work of the zemstva (councils responsible for the welfare of the local population) and the Red Cross.  Although there was no real revolutionary situation in 1914, strikes were reviving and renewed Russification policies led to the regime entering the war with many national minority areas in a state of open revolt. 

Above all the impact of the First World War on Russian society was very much greater than that of the Russo-Japanese war.  The army was better supplied than many realise, but, as industrial production and the railway network were geared to the war effort, the civilian population suffered, especially in Petrograd.  Although the army at the front did not mutiny in February, the garrison troops in the capital, the only force available, refused to fire on crowds which were largely composed of women.  It is possible that Nicholas could have rallied a loyal regiment to march on Petrograd, but after over two years of war, using the army to put down possible widespread revolt was impossible.  The revolutionary parties, with their leaders abroad or in Siberia, were only marginally involved.  but were not needed.  For a successful revolution unrest needs to be concentrated in the capital, the army must be disloyal or unavailable and the old regime must have no support.  Unlike in 1905, all these conditions applied in February 1917. 

This essay by Beryl Williams, Dept. History, University of Sussex, was printed in Peter Catterall, Exam Essays in 20th Century World History (1999).