To What Extent did Nicholas II Uphold his Pledge to ‘Maintain the Principle of Autocracy’ in the Years 1894-1914?

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1901, there was a large student rebellion, where a squadron of mounted Cossacks charged into a crowd of students in St Petersburg, killing 13 and imprisoning 1500. During 1902-07, there were widespread disturbances in towns and the countryside. The disruption was so widespread that the time was given the nickname `the years of the red cockerel', referring to leaping flames like the feathers of a roasters comb. Peasants were known to set fire to their landlord's barns, destroying grain or seizing pasture and woodland. In few cases, landlord's and officials were reportedly attacked. A demonstration the Tsar saw that raised his concern about the rise of the peasantry was with the assassination of the interior minister, Plehve. Not only did it demonstrate that the peasantry was becoming militant and capable of assassinating high-ranking officials, but during Plehve's funeral, crowds turned out to celebrate, demonstrating that the populist revolutionaries had the support of a ...

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compared to 90,000 strikes ten years later. By October 1905, it seemed as if Russia was nearing collapse. The Tsar, in attempt to prevent a revolution, the Tsar passed new legislation making room for full civic freedom, the establishment of a state Duma (parliament) and to give this new Duma the ability to approve laws. However, the Tsar had no intention of becoming a `constitutional monarch', as highlighted by the more radical reformists. A radical worker's bulletin read: "We have been granted a constitution and yet autocracy remains. We have been granted everything, and yet we have been granted nothing". Counter revolution continued into 1906, with Trepov, one of the Tsar's closest ...

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