Bloody Sunday and the 1905 revolution The revolution started with the events that unfolded in early January. On Sunday 9th of January 1905, 150,000 workers demonstrated outside the Tsar’s winter palace. The day started with a series of coordinated demonstrations, led by Father Gapon, a Russian Orthodox priest, who happened to also be a double agent for the Okhrana. The demonstrations were peaceful and the workers wanted to present a petition for the Tsar, asking for reforms. The reforms, mostly specifically consisted off: an end to the Russo- Japanese war, expanded suffrage, an 8-hour working day, higher pay and the ending of forced overtime in the factories. The police feared trouble from the growing crowds of workers, even though the Tsar wasn’t …show more content…
Bloody Sunday also severely damaged the Tsar’s image of being a ‘caring father’, which meant that the people would be more willing to turn against the Tsar in the 1917 revolution. Admittedly then, the massacre of bloody Sunday, started the downfall of people’s opinions of the Tsar himself. The 1905 revolution was spontaneous in planning however, it had both long-term causes and immediate short- term causes, which had been years in the making. The Russian population had been expanding at a rapid pace, from 98 million in 1885 to 125 million by 1905. The increase in population caused a much larger demand for food, and as well as this, the size of individual pieces of land being owned of rented by peasants, decreased in attempts to ensure that all peasant families had land to plot. Peasants in the Tsar’s view seemed to accept poverty as they were able to survive as long as the harvests were good. However, there were severe harvest failures in the years: 1892,1898 and 1901, which caused widespread famine. This worsened the conditions of peasants terribly and many starved, which they reacted with violence against the Tsarist regime. The peasants attacked