The disastrous progress of the Russo-Japanese war inspired a rising tide of protest against the incompetence of the government from liberal opinion throughout 1904, and demands intensified for political freedom. It was not until the end of the year, however, that the masses were drawn into the liberation movement, with the revival of strike activity by the workers in December. The appearance of the masses on the scene provided the revolutionary parties with an opportunity to wrest from the liberals the leadership of the struggle against the autocracy, and in the course of 1905 both the SRs and the SDs sought to organise and extend their influence over the workers and peasants.

The SRs' agrarian tactics

The ‘Bloody Sunday’ events in St Petersburg on 9 January 1905, which triggered off a series of sympathetic strikes and demonstrations throughout the country, were greeted by the SRs as the beginning of the long-awaited revolution which would topple the autocracy, and the party called for a national armed uprising which would draw the countryside as well as the towns into the revolutionary movement. Indeed, peasant disturbances followed quickly on the heels of the urban unrest, starting in Kursk guberniya in February, and spreading to Chernigov, Orel and other provinces. In Kursk guberniya the movement was precipitated by the appearance in the village of Sal'noe, in Dmitrievsk uezd, of an SR proclamation entitled ‘Brother peasants!’, accompanied by rumours that in the spring, when the troops were expected to return from Manchuria, there would be a general redistribution of the land. The peasants declared that the land was now theirs, and a series of raids began on the neighbouring estates.