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Causes

Many factors contributed to unrest across the Russian Empire of 1905. Newly emancipated peasants earned too little and were not allowed to sell or mortgage their allotted land. Ethnic and national minorities resented the policy of "Russification " of the Empire: this represented discrimination and repression against national minorities, such as banning them from voting, serving in the Imperial Guard or Navy, and limiting their attendance in schools. A nascent industrial working class resented the government for doing too little to protect them, as it banned strikes and organizing into labor unions. University students developed a new consciousness after discipline was relaxed in the institutions, and as increasingly radical ideas gained attention.

Significantly, this was a period of disaffection in the Russian military. Soldiers returning from a bloody and disgraceful defeat with Japan found inadequate factory pay, shortages, and general disarray, and organized in protest.

Because the Russian economy was tied to European finances, the contraction of Western money markets in 1899–1900 plunged Russian industry into a deep and prolonged crisis; it outlasted the dip in European industrial production. This setback aggravated social unrest during the five years preceding the Revolution of 1905.

The Tsarist government did recognise some of these problems, albeit shortsightedly. The Minister of the Interior Vyacheslav von Plehve had said in 1903 that, after the agrarian problem, the most serious issues plaguing the country were those of the Jews, the schools, and the workers, in that order.

Any residual popular loyalty to Tsar Nicholas II was lost on 22 January 1905, when his soldiers fired upon a crowd of protesting workers, led by Georgy Gapon, who were marching to present a petition at the Winter Palace.