In this essay, I am going to be looking at the long –term and short – term causes and a catalyst, which resulted in the 1905 revolution.
The long-term causes have been slowly building up to a revolution. There are three main long-term causes: discontentment among the population, government policy’s and the autocratic system.
The discontentment had been building up as many sections of the population were suffering. These groups are national minorities, peasants, revolutionaries, working class, and middle class.
The national minorities is a sociological group that does not make up a politically dominant voting majority of the total population of a given society, this makes them very vulnerable. For example, in 1905 Russia, the national minorities were the Finnish, Polish, and Jewish. This group was discontented because they wanted to end the policy of Russification. In addition, they wanted more autonomy and independence.
The peasants were discontented due to many different factors. They lived in high poverty and had high taxes, so they suffered periodic famines. They wanted more land, because the increase in the peasant population it became a lot tougher and put a lot of stress on the land. In addition, they were trapped by Wittes economic policy.
The revolutionaries were discontented as they were strongly against the Tsarist regime. The Social Revolutionaries want the peasant revolution to create socialist state based around the peasants. Although the social democrats wanted the working class to create a social state and then develop it into communism.
The working class are unhappy because they had to work really long hours with low pay. This meant that they had low living standards and their working conditions are bad.
Finally, the middle class were resentful, as they would had like to have more government participation. They would had like to set up some kind of voting system.
The second cause of long-