The title, "The Year 1905", recalls the start of the first Russian Revolution of 1905, which was partially fired by the events on 9 January (9 January by the Julian calendar still in use in Russia at the time, modern date of 22 January 1905) of that year. Some Western critics characterized the symphony as overblown "film music" – in other words, as an agitprop broadsheet lacking both substance and depth.