How far was the failure of the 1905 Revolution due to divisions?

Question by Danielle: How far was the failure of the 1905 Revolution due to divisions among the Tsar’s opponents?
Ive been given this as an essay question and to be honest i have no idea how to asnwer it.. im not sure what it means by the ‘divisions amount the Tsars opponents’.
Any Ideas?
*Like who were the Tsars opponents?

Answers and Views:

Answer by Spellbound
I think that I would argue that the Tsar, or, more specifically, Count Witte, realised that the Tsars opponents were not unified and could be split.
Witte drafted the October Manifesto, which led to the creation of the State Duma. Once the manifesto was published the middle classes, lower aristocracy (remember that the aristocracy extended down to holders of certain posts; like schools’ inspector), the intelligentsia and the upper levels of the working class – the skilled, the foremen and the artisans; wanted a return to stability. They saw the Duma as the start of Russia’s journey towards a constitutional monarchy, along Britain’s lines. The more radical opponents were, as the secret police (the Okhrana) were aware, too divided and fractious, to sustain any real threat to the monarchy without the support of the rest of Russian society.
I think the interesting social class is the peasantry. In many country the peasants had been a force for conservatism, but in Russia they had supported radical political groups and parties from before emancipation, and, their radicalism became more extreme from about 1880 onwards.
During the 1905 Revolution peasants had burnt manor houses and grain stores belonging to their landlords, they had burnt churches and government buildings in provincial towns. The peasants were the majority population until much later in Russian history, and they could have played a major role in Russia’s political life. However, their aims were often limited to local grievances – even some of the Narodniki terrorists seem to have wanted a fairer system, not necessarily to overthrow the monarchy.

How to answer your essay.
I would begin by splitting the supporters of the Revolution into the following groups:
Peasants, Workers, Middle classes
Then I would look at what each of the groups wanted from the monarchy and the revolution. Once you have established this, then you can look at whether or not Witte’s reforms addressed their issues. Then you can examine factions within each group, I would look at the Socialist Revolutionaries, the Kadets, the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks to see how each of these political parties reacted to the Revolution, and whether or not in-fighting between them was a factor in the failure of the revolution.

Here are some links to help:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUS1905.htm
http://libcom.org/history/1905-the-russian-revolution

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1905_russian_revolution.htm

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