ABSTRACT
For a long time afterwards, the explanation for these disorders seemed to be a quite clear and uncomplicated matter. The ‘agrarian question’ constituted one of the major topics of discussion in government circles and society and was presumed to be central to the political crisis that unfolded at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many contemporaries agreed with Pereleshin and interpreted the peasants’ riots as being the inevitable reaction to an increasing impoverishment of the village, caused by continued exploitation and the uneven distribution of resources and income, for which either recent government policies or the existing order as a whole were held to be
responsible. In consequence – and also in view of the impact and significance that peasant disorders undoubtedly had on the outcome of the 1905 Revolution4 – contemporaries and subsequent historians saw in these outbreaks of violence an essential part of a general revolutionary movement: an integral element in a universal, simultaneous upheaval of an emancipating society against the representatives of the old, anachronistic, autocratic order.
