The ‘dawns’ of 1901 were succeeded in 1902 and 1903 by the reflected glow of blazing estates and factories. The country was seething with unrest before the outbreak of the disastrous war with Japan in January 1904. The shock of repeated defeats in the Far East led first to demands for constitutional reform, which reached their culmination in the autumnal ‘spring’ of 1904. After Bloody Sunday, 9 January 1905, the groundswell of public opinion in favour of moderate reform was overtaken by the swirling rush of social revolution which, since the turn of the century, had been building up behind it. Throughout 1905, almost every day brought fresh news of assassinations, revolts, mutinies and strikes. The granting of a Constitution in the 1905 October Manifesto and the elections which followed did much to placate moderate opinion and to break the momentum of the country's united opposition to the autocracy, but passions were running high and there were barricades on the Moscow streets and bitter fighting before the social revolution was stamped out. Russia continued in a state of extreme unease until 1908, when the combination of coherent economic policies and energetic suppression of subversives by summary military courts instituted by Stolypin restored a semblance of order – until the next war, the next revolution.