Background Information about The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 :: Russian Japan History Foreign Affairs Essays

Background Information about The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 By 1905, a revolution was immanent, Tsar’s power was to be challenged and the reasons for this are to be laid out here in this essay. Was the Tsar’s non-reformist attitude solely to blame or was the nature of Tsardom destined to destroy itself? We need to look at the foundations of the revolution in order to fully understand this and make an informed response to these questions. The foundations are laid out into five main parts, including short and long-term factors. The two main long-term factors being that the Tsar alienated many of the classes within Russia and his policy of non-reform led to repression. As these factors developed, other incidents became short-term factors. The failure in the Japanese War was a huge blow to Tsardom and undermined their ethos that Tsardom was the right regime for Russia and the political spring that came as the Tsar relaxed censorship brought an avalanche of criticism for Tsardom. Finally, the humiliation at Port Arthur triggered the protest at the Winter Palace, which developed into Bloody Sunday and was the birth of the revolution. Investigating the first of the long-term factors causing the revolution, it seemed necessary to go back to examine the structure of Tsarist Russia pre-1905 to get a fuller picture. This period posed a problem for Nicholas II. The regime itself reinforced any class divisions from the bureaucracy to the peasants and alienated them even further. As, â€Å"the truth is Nicholas was never in touch with the common people. He never knew what it was like to worry where the next meal was coming from. He never had to. † He did not understand the way that Russia worked in practise. He could not, or would not, empathise with the peasants’ hardships of the land and his ideas of Russia’s troubles were laughable. Consequently, by 1905 he had estranged his subjects, including even some of the gentry’ folk that had been so loyal to Tsardom in the past. They were a class in decline and it was partly due to the Tsar’s incompetence. Owing to Russia’s economic ba ckwardness, the landowners found it almost impossible to farm for a profit. The gentry had no market for their produce, as their target market was near penniless and thus could not afford to purchase crops from the landowners. The Tsar did little to rectify the situation and in fact took land off the gentry following the emancipation of the Serfs and issued bonds, which were effectively I.