The Russian Revolution

Witte returned to Russia in triumph, having managed to obtain far better terms than anyone had dared to hope. In the Treaty of Portsmouth, concluded on September 5 (NS), Russia surrendered the southern half of Sakhalin and consented to Japan’s acquiring the Liaotung Peninsula with Port Arthur, as well as establishing hegemony over Korea, neither of which were Russian property. There was to be no indemnity. The price was small, considering Russia’s responsibility for the war and her military humiliation.*

Witte was not deceived by appearances. Not only was the government unable to reassert authority, but Russian society was in the grip of a psychosis that had it convinced “things cannot go on like this.” He thought all of Russia was on strike.⁹¹

And, indeed, a nationwide strike was in the making.

The idea of resorting to a general strike to force the government to its knees had been placed on the agenda of the Union of Unions shortly after the Tsushima debacle. At that time, the Union’s Central Bureau took under advisement the resolutions of two of its more radical affiliates—the Union of Railroad Employees and Workers and the Union of Engineers—to organize a general political strike. A committee was formed to look into the matter,⁹²

but little was done until early October, when the center of political resistance once again shifted to the universities.

As the opening of the new academic year drew near, the government made unexpectedly generous concessions to the universities. On the advice of Trepov, rules were issued on August 27 allowing faculties to elect rectors and students to hold assemblies. To avoid confrontations with the students, Trepov ordered the police to keep out of university precincts: responsibility for maintaining discipline was given to faculty councils.⁹³ These liberalizing measures went far in meeting objections to the unpopular 1884 University Statutes. But they had the opposite of the anticipated effect: instead of mollifying the students, they provided the radical student minority with the opportunity to transform universities into arenas of worker agitation.

In August and early September 1905, the students were debating whether to resume studies. They overwhelmingly wanted the schools to reopen: a vote taken at St. Petersburg University showed that those favoring this course enjoyed a seven-to-one plurality.⁹⁴ But being young and therefore sensitive to charges of selfishness, they struck a compromise. A nationwide student conference in September representing twenty-three institutions of higher learning rejected motions calling for a boycott of classes. It did agree, however, as a concession to the radicals and proof of political awareness, to make university facilities available to non-students for political rallies.

⁹⁵

This tactic had been formulated the preceding summer by the Menshevik Theodore Dan in the pages of the Social-Democratic organ Iskra. Dan urged the students to return to school, not to study, but to make revolution:

The systematic and overt violation of all the rules of the police-university “regulations” [rasporiadok

], the expulsion of all kinds of disciplinarians, inspectors, supervisors, and spies, opening the doors of the lecture halls to all citizens who wish to enter, the transformation of universities and institutions of higher learning into places of popular gatherings and political meetings—such should be the students’ objective when they return to the lecture halls which they have abandoned. The transformation of universities and academies into the property of the revolutionary people: this is how one can succinctly formulate the task of the student body … Such a transformation, of course, will make the universities into one of the centers for the concentration and organization of the national masses.⁹⁶

Trepov’s rules inadvertently made such revolutionary tactics possible.