What is the cause of the Russian Revolution of 1905?
The Russian Revolution (1905) was an empire-wide struggle of violence, both anti-government and undirected, that swept through vast areas of the Russian Empire. It was not controlled or managed, and it had no single cause or aim, but instead was the culmination of decades of unrest and dissatisfaction stemming from the autocratic rule of the Romanov dynasty and the slow pace of reform in Russian society as well as calls for national liberation by non-Russians within the Empire. The direct cause was the abject failure of the Czar’s military forces in the initially-popular Russo-Japanese War, which set off a series of revolutionary activities, sometimes by mutinous soldiers and at other times by revolutionary societies. Although put down with a blend of accommodation and savagery, the Revolution did increase the pace of reform in Russia, but not enough to prevent the second revolution which overturned the Romanovs in 1917. The Revolution of 1905 was often looked back on by the Bolsheviks
