ABSTRACT
In 1905 the revolutionary storm moved with the rhythms of Russian life, strongest over the first months of the year, abating somewhat over the summer, then rising again in the fall, as the workers returned from the fields to town labor and students from their summer holiday. This chapter’s outline of the political developments in Russia in 1905 will help to contextualize the events in Russian-Jewish relations treated in the chapters that follow. That moment arrived in October 1905, when the struggle against the Autocratic government revived with a force and unity not previously seen. Throughout 1905 a gigantic increase in labor organizing and striking took place, making workers in the newer and larger industrial plants and those in non-Russian areas the chief sources of instability and disorder and the principal challengers of the autocratic regime.
