ABSTRACT

Russia's defeat in the war with Japan, the violent 1905 uprising, and the creation of the first Russian parliament, the Duma, were powerful contributors to the great upheaval that shook the Russian monarchy to its core. The 1905 Revolution marked a deep political crisis for the Russian monarchy, manifesting itself in ideological readjustment marked by the spread of Occidentophilism. The seriousness of the international situation made the situation for the Russian autocracy even more precarious. Weighing heavily on the national psyche was Russia's defeat in the war with Japan, unprecedented in modern Russian history. Russia had suffered defeats before, but, as was the case in the Crimean War, against first-rate European powers such as England and France. The "Black Hundreds" was one of the more successful governmental attempts to create a mass monarchist movement. The Black Hundred approach to the French Revolution was a reflection of the movement's contradictory ideological stands.