ABSTRACT
In 1914 the Russian Empire found itself in the midst of a political crisis. It was most obvious in the strike wave that had escalated rapidly after the bloody repression of striking miners in the Lena goldfields of Siberia in April 1912, with 4,098 strikes (officially) recorded in 1914 (McKean 1990:193). Moreover, a growing section of educated, liberal society found itself increasingly alienated from the autocracy as the Tsar, Nicholas II, urged on by the reactionary elements dominant in the court and the country, reneged on the modest commitment to constitutionalism conceded in the October Manifesto of 1905. He sought to restrict the powers of the state Duma, the representative assembly (with real, if limited, legislative powers) created after 1905 (Pearson 1977:16–19). Some, such as the Moscow industrialists P.P.Riabushinskii and A.I.Konovalov, leaders of the liberal Progressist Party, had become so embittered that, incredibly, they were even prepared to help finance the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary activities (Thurston 1987:187). Within the peasantry, too, resentments festered. Continued dissatisfaction at not receiving all the land when they had been freed from serfdom in the Emancipation of 1861 was exacerbated by the the agrarian reforms of the recently assassinated Prime Minister, P.A.Stolypin, which, in seeking to create a wealthy, independent and loyal peasant class, threatened to destroy the village commune. These resentments became manifest in a series of agrarian disturbances, 17,000 of which were recorded in European Russia between 1910 and 1914 (Channon 1992a; 117).
