The revolution was characterized by mass political and social unrest including worker strikes, peasant revolts, and military mutinies directed against Tsar Nicholas II and the autocracy, who were forced to establish the State Duma legislative assembly and grant certain rights, though both were later undermined.

In response, the tsar issued the "October Manifesto", a pledge to create a legislative assembly, halt censorship and violations of freedom of association, and expand the franchise.

Soldiers returning from a bloody and disgraceful defeat with Japan found inadequate factory pay, shortages, and general disarray, and organized in protest.

[5] Any residual popular loyalty to Tsar Nicholas II was lost on 22 January 1905, when his soldiers fired upon a crowd of protesting workers, led by Georgy Gapon, who were marching to present a petition at the Winter Palace.

The government hoped to develop the peasants as a politically conservative, land-holding class by enacting laws to enable them to buy land from nobility by paying small installments over many decades.

[8] "In the provinces of Kharkov and Poltava in 1902, thousands of them, ignoring restraints and authority, burst out in a rebellious fury that led to extensive destruction of property and looting of noble homes before troops could be brought to subdue and punish them.

[9] "There was general agreement at the turn of the century that Russia faced a grave and intensifying agrarian crisis due mainly to rural overpopulation with an annual excess of fifteen to eighteen live births over deaths per 1,000 inhabitants.

"Besides dangerously concentrating a proletariat, a professional and a rebellious student body in centers of political power, industrialization infuriated both these new forces and the traditional rural classes.

The "peasant worker" saw his labor in the factory as the means to consolidate his family's economic position in the village and played a role in determining the social consciousness of the urban proletariat.

At the start of the 20th century, Russian industrial workers worked on average 11-hours per day (10 hours on Saturday), factory conditions were perceived as grueling and often unsafe, and attempts at independent unions were often not accepted.

Sensing that neither the university administrations nor the government possessed the will or authority to enforce regulations, radicals simply went ahead with their plans to turn the schools into centres of political activity for students and non-students alike.

"[attribution needed][30] They took up problems that were unrelated to their "proper employment", and displayed defiance and radicalism by boycotting examinations, rioting, arranging marches in sympathy with strikers and political prisoners, circulating petitions, and writing anti-government propaganda.

As an example, Trotsky who would assume a central role in the 1905 revolution,[32][33] would write several proclamations urging for improved economic conditions, political rights and the use of strike action against the Tsarist regime on behalf of workers.

[citation needed] Emperor Nicholas II made a move to meet many of these demands, appointing liberal Pyotr Dmitrievich Sviatopolk-Mirsky as Minister of the Interior after the July 1904 assassination of Vyacheslav von Plehve.

12 December] 1904, the Emperor issued a manifesto promising the broadening of the zemstvo system and more authority for local municipal councils, insurance for industrial workers, the emancipation of Inorodtsy and the abolition of censorship.

[citation needed] Another contributing factor behind the revolution was the Bloody Sunday massacre of protesters that took place in January 1905 in St. Petersburg sparked a spate of civil unrest in the Russian Empire.

[41] In doing so, he adopted SR slogans regarding "armed insurrection", "mass terror", and "the expropriation of gentry land", resulting in Menshevik accusations that he had deviated from orthodox Marxism.

This prompted the setting up of the short-lived Saint Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Delegates, an admixture of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks headed by Khrustalev-Nossar and despite the Iskra split would see the likes of Julius Martov and Georgi Plekhanov spar with Lenin.

[52] The number of prisoners throughout the Russian Empire, which had peaked at 116,376 in 1893, fell by over a third to a record low of 75,009 in January 1905, chiefly because of several mass amnesties granted by the Tsar;[53] the historian S G Wheatcroft has wondered what role these released criminals played in the 1905–06 social unrest.

[53] On 12 January 1905, the Tsar appointed Dmitri Feodorovich Trepov as governor in St Petersburg and dismissed the Minister of the Interior, Pyotr Sviatopolk-Mirsky, on 18 February [O.S.

18 February] 1905 he published the Bulygin Rescript, which promised the formation of a consultative assembly, religious tolerance, freedom of speech (in the form of language rights for the Polish minority) and a reduction in the peasants' redemption payments.

Responding to speeches by Prince Sergei Nikolaevich Trubetskoy and Mr Fyodrov, the Tsar confirmed his promise to convene an assembly of people's representatives.

The Saint Petersburg Soviet was formed and called for a general strike in October, refusal to pay taxes, and the en masse withdrawal of bank deposits.

It closely followed the demands of the Zemstvo Congress in September, granting basic civil rights, allowing the formation of political parties, extending the franchise towards universal suffrage, and establishing the Duma as the central legislative body.

The trap seemed perfectly set for the unsuspecting Duma: by the time the assembly convened in 27 April, it quickly found itself unable to do much without violating the Fundamental Laws.

Consequences were now in full force: with a pretext in their hands, the government spent the month of December 1905 regaining the level of authority once lost to Bloody Sunday.

[77] Peter Kropotkin, an anarchist, noted that official statistics excluded executions conducted during punitive expeditions, especially in Siberia, Caucasus and the Baltic provinces.

[47] The first phase of the revolution consisted primarily of mass strikes, rallies, demonstrations—later this evolved into street skirmishes with the police and army as well as bomb assassinations and robberies of transports carrying money to tsarist financial institutions.

During the general strike, the Red Declaration, written by Finnish politician and journalist Yrjö Mäkelin, was published in Tampere, demanding dissolution of the Senate of Finland, universal suffrage, political freedoms, and abolition of censorship.

The Finnish Red Guards supported the Sveaborg Rebellion with a general strike, but the mutiny was quelled within 60 hours by loyal troops and ships of the Baltic Fleet.