page_title: 1905 Russian Revolution
section_title: Latvia
hierarchical_section_title: 1905 Russian Revolution / Latvia
caption_attribution_description: Two Struggling Soldiers memorial commemorating the 1905 revolution, Riga, Latvia
context_page_description: The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire, some of which was directed at the government. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to constitutional reform, including the establishment of the State Duma, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906.
  The 1905 revolution was spurred by the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War, which ended in the same year, but also by the growing realization by a variety of sectors of society of the need for reform. Politicians such as Sergei Witte had failed to accomplish this. While the Tsar managed to keep his rule, the events foreshadowed those of the Russian revolutions in 1917, which resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy, execution of the imperial family, and creation of the Soviet Union by the Bolsheviks.
  Some historians contend that the 1905 revolution set the stage for the 1917 Russian Revolutions, and enabled Bolshevism to emerge as a distinct political movement in Russia, although it was still a minority.
context_section_description: Following the shooting of demonstrators in St. Petersburg, a wide-scale general strike began in Riga. On 26 January [O.S. 13 January], Russian army troops opened fire on demonstrators killing 73 and injuring 200 people. During the middle of 1905, the focus of revolutionary events moved to the countryside with mass meetings and demonstrations. 470 new parish administrative bodies were elected in 94% of the parishes in Latvia. The Congress of Parish Representatives was held in Riga in November. In autumn 1905, armed conflict between the Baltic German nobility and the Latvian peasants began in the rural areas of Livonia and Courland. In Courland, the peasants seized or surrounded several towns. In Livonia, the fighters controlled the Rūjiena-Pärnu railway line. Martial law was declared in Courland in August 1905, and in Livonia in late November. Special punitive expeditions were dispatched in mid-December to suppress the movement. They executed 1170 people without trial or investigation and burned 300 peasant homes. Thousands were exiled to Siberia. Many Latvian intellectuals only escaped by fleeing to Western Europe or USA. In 1906, the revolutionary movement gradually subsided.
caption: Bloody Sunday Monument in Riga on the Daugava
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