Here the role of the liberal professionals becomes all-important. Their movement, first represented by the Union of Liberation, was transformed into that organization’s militant successor, the ‘Kadet’ or Constitutional Democratic Party (which also absorbed the organization of zemstvo constitutionalists). If the defiance of professionals and liberal zemstvo men in late 1904 had emboldened the labour movement, the militancy of workers and peasants later gave wavering liberals the courage to defy the government and form their own party. Although the movements of workers, peasants, and professionals remained distinct, in the autumn of 1905 they came close to walking hand in hand, however briefly, a cooperation already anticipated earlier in May by the creation of the ‘Union of Unions’, a coalition of organizations headed by Miliukov. That Union was more an association of professionals than of blue-collar workers, but it had a broad range of member organizations, and its inclusion of railwaymen gave the coalition not only symbolic but real material power.
Faced with these adverse circumstances, coupled with a resounding military defeat (though the peace with Japan signed in Portsmouth in August proved less humiliating than expected) and the painfully slow return from the front of reliable troops (some of whom were in a mutinous mood), the tsar now pledged the biggest concessions to society he had ever made. Earlier, even as recently as August, reform proposals by his government had consistently lagged behind society’s leftward-moving curve. Various configurations of advisory and consultative bodies had been discussed (most notably the so-called Bulygin Duma in August), but none granted genuine legislative independence, let alone election by anything resembling a democratic franchise.
On 17 October, however, Nicholas issued a manifesto containing a vague promise to grant an elected legislative body (elected not directly or equally, however, but at least on the basis of near universal male suffrage) as well as civil and religious liberties and—for the first time in Russian history—the right to organize unions and political parties. When the detailed electoral law was issued in December, it clearly favoured Russia’s already privileged classes, but was surprisingly generous to peasants, at least in comparison to workers.
Here at last was a document, the ‘October Manifesto’, with enough substance to divide the opposition. Because it fell far short of the fully-fledged Constituent Assembly (in effect the end of the autocratic system) demanded by most of the left, including Kadets, the Manifesto failed to put an immediate end to the revolution. But because it went as far as it did, it proved satisfactory to the regime’s more moderate critics, including many zemstvo constitutionalists who, having now grown wary of the destructive force unleashed by the popular classes in Russia’s city streets and villages, organized a political party called the Union of 17 October; its members (‘Octobrists’) vowed to co-operate with the government as long as it held to the Manifesto’s promises.
Although the government still faced a bloody struggle, it soon was able to recoup its forces sufficiently to arrest the Petersburg soviet and to suppress the December uprising of workers and revolutionaries in Moscow. Thanks in part to continuing upheaval among ethnic minorities and peasants, calm would not be fully restored for another year and a half, and then only with the aid of field courts martial and other draconian measures. But the back of the revolution had been broken, especially in the capital cities, and the army, despite some flashes of rebelliousness, was now obeying orders.
National Minorities
