IN A SENSE RUSSIAN INDUSTRIALISTS WERE MUCH CLOSER TO THE vital centre of the Revolution of 1905 than any of the intelligentsia opposition; their workers, after all, were out on strike; and it was their private interests which were most directly and most seriously touched by the disturbances. Traditionally passive on political issues, Russian businessmen were catapulted into the ranks of the liberal opposition by the strike movement which rocked Russian industrial centies in 1905. The labour crisis goaded business men into examining government policy towards labour and capital; business groups then broadened their perspective and considered Russian society and the economy as a whole; finally, they injected political terms into the issues and echoed the pleas for constitutional reform and the extension of civil liberties so long championed by the libecal intelligentsia.