The Revolution of 1905 and the October Manifesto

It began on 9 (22) January 1905: in St Petersburg a peaceful procession of workers to the Tsar was shot down, and the country, already losing its war with Japan, rose—strikes, peasant revolts, the mutiny on the battleship Potemkin, and in October a general strike that stopped the railways and the telegraph. On 17 (30) October Nicholas II signed a manifesto: freedom of speech, assembly and association, a legislative Duma. By our count that is already 5666. The Duma met in the spring of 1906 and was dissolved after seventy-two days; the autocracy stood, but ceased to be unlimited.

The manifesto was answered with pogroms: in the very first days after it a wave passed over Odessa, Kiev, Ekaterinoslav and hundreds of other places such as even 1881 had not seen—in Odessa alone hundreds killed—and with it the "Union of the Russian People" was born. In Jewish history these are the years of the Second Aliyah, the self-defence units and the Bund; the Kishinev pogrom two years earlier has its own entry.