This account of the St. Petersburg labor movement during the First Russian Revolution focuses on the sources and meaning of the extraordinary explosion of labor militancy in 1905 - a year that saw more striking workers than ever before in Russian history, almost a quarter of them in the capital. In contrast to earlier works, which have explained this militancy by stressing the political leadership of the Social Democratic party, the author offers a more complex and balanced picture that takes account of not only the moderate sectors of the opposition, but the initiative of the workers themselves. Situating the labor movement within the social and political ferment of early-twentieth-century Russia, he analyses the reshuffling of relations between workers and the intelligentsia that stood at the gateway of the entire revolutionary period. The result is an account of the revolution that takes a fresh look at the interaction of workers, the educated opposition, and the revolutionary parties, yielding a new appreciation of the role of each. The analytical narrative on 1905 is preceded by several chapters establishing the precedents for the mass strikes that erupted in that year and documenting the long- and short-term reasons for the workers' rapid turn to political protest. The study treats both the indispensable contribution of the revolutionary parties to the political education of the Petersburg labor force and their failure to reach the vast majority of workers. The great events of 1905 itself are framed and elucidated from a number of vantage points in detailed studies of strike actions and worker leaders, factory and union organizing initiatives, liberal overtures to the labor movement, and the incipient and actual breakdown of public order in the capital. The narrative culminates in the October General Strike, when workers organized the first Soviet of Workers' Deputies, a unique fusion of their own autonomous militancy with the ideas and leadership of their socialist and liberal allies.

The Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) party gained an overall majority in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly, which was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in January 1918. The SRs derived the bulk of their electoral support from the peasantry, and the gulf between the predominantly urban Bolshevik party and the rural masses was to create immense problems for the Soviet government in the 1920s, culminating in the horrors of forced collectivization. The SRs offered an alternative vision of the Russian peasant's path to socialism. They were closer to the peasantry than any other revolutionary party, and more aware of the problems involved in implementing a socialist transformation of Russian agriculture. In this study the author traces the development of SR agrarian policy in the party's formative years, from the period of disillusionment which followed the failure of the Populist 'movement to the people' of the 1870s, through the revolutionary years 1905-7, to the subsequent reaction under Stolypin.

" The Socialist Revolutionary Party played an important role in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement. The author seeks to explain why this party--which continued the tradition of the 1870s--did not ultimately prevail in an agrarian country like the Tsarist empire. Using a wealth of printed sources and, for the first time, drawing upon materials from the archive of the Central Committee of the PSR, this study provides a detailed analysis of the theoretical foundations of the party as well as its organisational structure and political practice during the first Russian Revolution. Manfred Hildermeier ist Professor am Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte der Universität Göttingen. "

"At the start of the twentieth century, the world's most powerful ruler was the Russian Tsar. By 1905, a revolution had jeopardized the whole of Tsardom and ignited events that were to shape a new epoch in the history of man."--P. [4] of cover.

2005 marks the centenary of Russia’s ‘first revolution’ - an unplanned, spontaneous rejection of Tsarist rule that was a response to the ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre of 9th January 1905. A wave of strikes, urban uprisings, peasant revolts, national revolutions and mutinies swept across the Russian Empire, and it proved a crucial turning point in the demise of the autocracy and the rise of a revolutionary socialism that would shape Russia, Europe and the international system for the rest of the twentieth century. The centenary of the Revolution has prompted scholars to review and reassess our understanding of what happened in 1905. Recent opportunities to access archives throughout the former Soviet Union are yielding new provincial perspectives, as well as fresh insights into the roles of national and religious minorities, and the parts played by individuals, social groups, political parties and institutions. This text brings together some of the best of this new research and reassessment, and includes thirteen chapters written by leading historians from around the world, together with an introduction from Abraham Ascher.