was the product of the tsarist regime’s gross incompetence and mis-
management of its military, and its total misunderstanding of the
mood of the mass of workers and peasants. The regime survived be-
cause of Prime Minister Petr Stolypin’s ability to rally loyal troops,
and the revolutionary movement’s lack of cohesion and direction.
In 1904 the regime decided to pursue a fight with the emerging
Japanese empire: what one minister referred to as “a short, glorious
war.” But the Russo–Japanese Wardemonstrated the incompetence
of the regime and set in motion events that led to a national insurrec-
tion. The war opened with a Japanese surprise attack on the Russian
fleet at Port Arthur, China. Things went from bad to worse in
Manchuria, where the war was fought, and on the streets of Moscow
and St. Petersburg. In January 1905, a march to the Winter Palace in
St. Petersburg by workers, which was organized by Father Georgi
Gapon, an Okhranaagent, was suppressed with violence by impe-
rial troops. The reaction was massive urban and rural violence. In St.
Petersburg, workers’ soviets (councils) took control of much of the
capital. Led by the charismatic Leon Trotsky, the St. Petersburg so-
viet seemed to signal a new form of revolutionary democracy. Strikes
in many industrial areas were followed by military mutinies, includ-
ing the revolt on the battleship Potemkin.
The violence spread to industrial cities and then to the agricultural
heartland; peasants burned manors and seized land. Only the compe-
tence of Stolypin saved the regime and prevented the rural riots from
spinning totally out of control. Loyal troops reined in the violence;
more than 1,300 rebels in rural areas were sentenced to death, and
even more perished in fights with troops. After heavy fighting, urban
soviets were defeated and their leaders arrested, jailed, and exiled.
Trotsky established his reputation in his trial, in which he attacked
both the prosecution and the regime. He was sentenced to exile in
Siberia, from which he quickly escaped.
The tsarist regime learned precious little from 1905. Reform mea-
sures were doled out too little and too late. The Okhrana, which had
organized the disastrous march to the Winter Palace, did not improve
as a counterintelligenceorganization. Less than five years later, an
Okhranadouble agent would kill Stolypin, removing the one man
possibly capable of saving the regime. However, the 1905 Revolution
demonstrated to Bolshevik leader Vladimir Leninthat a Russian220 •REVOLUTION OF 190506-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 220