Social and Political Activity of Peasantry in 1905-1907

Abstract

By the beginning of 1905, a crisis was impending in all spheres of Russian society. Agrarian problems caused by objective and subjective factors prompted the peasantry to declare their principled positions on solving agrarian problems. The period of 1905-1907 is a vivid example of the struggle of the driving independent force of the revolution, the peasantry, for carrying out an agrarian revolution. Goal: To study the social and political activity of the Russian peasantry in 1905-1907. During 1905-1907, Russia was unsettled by a tide of the social and political activity of the peasantry. The protests, which began in Poltava and Kharkiv Provinces, spread throughout the state and in a short time became uncontrollable by the authorities. Scholars give different figures for the total number of peasant unrests, but despite these differences, it is not difficult to determine that during 1905-1907 peasant unrests covered up to 50% of all European Russia in different periods of peasants’ revolutionary activity. Manifestations of the social and political activity of the peasantry can be observed in early 1905 in the spontaneous seizure of landowners’ estates, later the peasants started to pillage, plunder, damage agricultural implements, go on strikes, and cut down forests without permission. The manifestations of early 1905 did not become a novelty for Russian society, but 1905 – 1907 were a test for the power structures of the state. After all, the peasantry, although they still ‘believed in the tsar’, reacted to the unsystematic actions of the power in solving agrarian problems by radical actions and the large-scale protests.

Keywords

• agrarian policy, revolution of 1905-1907, agrarian issue, social and political activity of the peasantry