Why do you think there were so many strikes in Russia, 1905?

Question

Why do you think there were so many strikes in Russia, 1905?

Answer 1

The 1905 Revolution occurred at that time, led by Leon Trotsky and the St, Petersburg Soviet.  The Tsar was tearing Russia apart and the people had had enough.  Strikes are one of the most powerful weapons the working class has against oppression.

Answer 2

Since the reign of Ivan the Terrible, the Russian Tsars had followed a fairly consistent policy of drawing more political power away from the nobility and into their own hands. This was often accomplished by giving nobles greater power over their land and its occupants. Serfdom, as system was known, had reduced much of the population to a state closer to slavery than to peasantry.

In the Decembrist revolt in 1825, a group of young, reformist military officers attempted to force the adoption of a constitutional monarchy in Russia by preventing the accession of Nicholas I. They failed utterly, and Nicholas became the most reactionary leader in Europe. Nicholas' successor, Alexander II, seemed by contrast to be amenable to reform.

In 1861, he emancipated the serfs, and opened the way for industrial development. However, emancipation imposed harsh economic conditions on the peasants and did not satisfy their need for farmland. Industrialization concentrated people in urban centers, where the exploited working class was a receptive audience for radical ideas. A reactionary and often ignorant clergy kept religion static and persecuted religious dissenters. Pogroms were instituted against the Jews, which turned many radical Jews to Zionism . Non-Russian nationalities in the empire were repressed.

As Western technology was adopted by the czars, Western humanitarian ideals were acquired by a group of educated Russians. Among this growing intelligentsia, the majority of whom were abstractly humanitarian and democratic, there were also those who were politically radical and even revolutionary. The university became a seat of revolutionary activity; nihilism, anarchism, and later Marxism were espoused and propagated.

In 1894 Nicholas II acceded to the throne. He was not the most competent of political leaders, and his ministers were almost uniformly reactionaries. To make matters worse, the increasing Russian presence in the far east provoked the hostility of Japan. In January of 1905, the Japanese attacked, and Russia experienced a series of defeats that dissolved the tenuous support held by Nicholas' already unpopular government.  Things were ripe for revolution.

Paraphrased from these two sites: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Russ... and http://www.geographia.com/russia/rushis0...

Another interesting site is  http://www.therussianrevolutiontimeline.... a on the street narrative of the events written from the perspective a fictional blogger named Alexander Denisei.