ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century imperial Russia was still dominated by tsarist autocracy. Successive tsars believed that they inherited the divine right to rule Russia without challenge or opposition. It was a country in which opportunities for social reform by constitutional means appeared small and in which hopes of change were repeatedly disappointed. In the light of the assassination of the Tsar, however, the newspapers, while referring obliquely to the programme, censored all discussion of its controversial contents. It was therefore taken to the people of Russia by their ‘representatives’, who read it out in public. Nevertheless, attempts towards the end of the nineteenth century to restrict the revolutionary activities of groups in Russia were only partially successful. The mood and events of 1905 in Russia – a combination of war-weariness after the humiliating defeat by the Japanese, peasant uprisings and proletarian unrest in the cities — produced revolutionary strains which would force the tsarist regime to make concessions.
