THE YEARS BETWEEN 1905 and 1907 saw the most sustained outbreak of social and political violence in the tsarist empire since the Pugachev rebellion in the late eighteenth century. As in Austria in 1848, the government eventually regained power but its authority was severely shaken. It was forced on 17 October 1905 to grant a constitution which introduced a parliament, the Duma, with restricted powers, and also greatly increased the freedom of the press, recognizing a situation which had come into being during the months before the October Manifesto. The revolution saw unprecedented political mobilization throughout the empire. Political groupings, both in the Russian heartland and in the non- Russian periphery, now emerged from underground and became mass movements. At the same time, in order to retain power the government had recourse to unprecedented violence, both in the form of arrests and executions of revolutionaries and through the encouragement of pro-government vigilante groups of a proto-fascist character.

As a result of what was in effect a counter-revolutionary coup, on 3 June 1907 the government was able significantly to reduce the power of the Duma, but was unable to return to a fully autocratic system.