The Russian Revolution by Sheila Fitzpatrick Page A

Constitutional Democrats (Cadets) formally withheld acceptance and hoped for further concessions. In practice, however, the liberals withdrew from revolutionary activity at this time, and concentrated their energies on organizing the new Octobrist and Cadet parties and preparing for the forthcoming Duma elections.
    However, the workers remained actively revolutionary until the end of the year, achieving greater visibility than before and becoming increasingly militant. In October, the workers of Petersburg organized a `soviet' or council of workers' representatives elected in the factories. The practical function of the Petersburg Soviet was to provide the city with a kind of emergency municipal government at a time when other institutions were paralysed and a general strike was in progress. But it also became a political forum for the workers, and to a lesser extent for socialists from the revolutionary parties (Trotsky, then a Menshevik, became one of the Soviet's leaders). For a few months, the Tsarist authorities handled the Soviet in a gingerly manner, and similar bodies emerged in Moscow and other cities. But early in December it was dispersed by a successful police operation. The news of the attack on the Petersburg Soviet led to an armed uprising by the Moscow Soviet, in which the Bolsheviks had gained considerable influence. This was put down by troops, but the workers fought back and there were many casualties.
    The urban revolution of 1905 stimulated the most serious peasant uprisings since the Pugachev revolt in the late eighteenth century. But the urban and rural revolutions were not simultaneous. Peasant rioting-consisting of the sacking and burning of manor houses and attacks on landowners and officials-began in the summer of 1905 and rose to a peak in the late autumn, subsided, and then resumed on a large scale in 1906. But even in late 1905 the regime was strong enough to begin using troops in a campaign of village-by-village pacification. By the middle of 1906, all the troops were back from the Far East, and discipline had been restored in the armed forces. In the winter of 1906-7, much of rural Russia was under martial law, and summary justice (including over a thousand executions) was dispensed by field courts martial.
    Russia's landowning nobility learnt a lesson from the events of 1905-6, namely that its interests lay with the autocracy (which could perhaps shield it from a vengeful peasantry) and not with the liberals.'9 But in urban terms, the 1905 Revolution did not produce such clear consciousness of class polarization: even for most socialists, this was not a Russian 1848, revealing the treacherous nature of liberalism and the essential antagonism of bourgeoisie and proletariat. The liberals-representing a professional rather than capitalist middle class-had stood aside in October, but they had not joined the regime in an onslaught on the workers' revolution. Their attitude to the workers' and socialist movements remained much more benign than that of liberals in most European countries. The workers, for their part, seem to have perceived the liberals rather as a timorous ally than a treacherous one.
    The political outcome of the 1905 Revolution was ambiguous, and in some ways unsatisfactory to all concerned. In the Fundamental Laws of 19o6-the closest Russia came to a constitutionNicholas made known his belief that Russia was still an autocracy. True, the autocrat now consulted with an elected parliament, and political parties had been legalized. But the Duma had limited powers; Ministers remained responsible solely to the autocrat; and, after the first two Dumas proved insubordinate and were arbitrarily dissolved, a new electoral system which virtually disfranchised some social groups and heavily over-represented the landed nobility was introduced. The Duma's main importance, perhaps, lay in providing a public forum for political debate and a training ground for politicians. The political reforms