Demands for change and the gov reaction

• The years after 1894 were a time of serious unrest in Russia. Although opposition movements were nothing new. Russian society had become more politicised in the years after the Great Famine in 1891-92.
• The failure of the over-bureaucratic tsarist government to cope with the crisis, which had left the Zestva and voluntary organisations to provide the necessary relief work, had bred scorn and despair.
• As a result,there was not only greater public mistrust of the government's competence but also a firmer belief in the power of ordinary members of society to play a role in the nation's affairs. Reformist groups had consequently developed a broader support base, by 1900, than ever before.
• There were new outbursts of trouble in Russian Unis. These were met by the increased use of the Okhrana, whose activities ensured rebellious young people were expelled, exiled or drafted into the army and when necessary submitted to military force.
• The years 1902 to 1907 were marked by widespread disturbances in both towns and countryside. There were so many instances of arson in the rural communities that the nickname 'the years of the red cockerel', referring to the leaping flames which resembled a rooster's comb, was coined.
• The unrest was at its worst in the central Russian provinces, where the landlord/peasant relationship was still at its most traditional.Peasants set fire to landlords' barns, destroying grain, or vented their anger by seizing woodland and pasture or even physically attacking landlords and officials.
• The Tsar's minister, Pyotr Stolypin, dealt with the disturbances with a ferocity that aggravated the situation further. Peasants were flogged, arrested and exiled, or shot in their thousands . The gallows was in such constant use that it became referred as 'Stolypin's necktie'.
• In 1901, the Obukhov factory in St Petersburg saw violent clashes between armed police and whip-carrying Cossacks and such sights became commonplace over the ensuring place.
• In an attempt to control the proliferation of illegal unions, in 1900 the Moscow Chief of the Okhrana, Zubatov, began organising his own police-sponsored trade unions
• The idea was to provide 'official' channels through which complaints could be heard, in an attempt to prevent workers joining the radical socialists. The experiment only lasted to 1903, when Zubatov was dismissed and exiled after one of his unions became involved in a general strike in Odessa.
• However,another union on the Zubatov model , the Assembly of St Petersburg Factory Workers, was formed in 1904 by Father Georgi Gapon.
• The union was approved by Nicholas' minister for internal affairs, Plehve, and had the support of the Orthodox Church. It soon had 12 branches and 8000 members.