Trotsky's role in the 1905 Revolution, including his return to Russia in February 1905, his chairmanship of the St Petersburg Soviet from October to December 1905, his arrest in December 1905, his 1906 trial, and the political lessons embodied in Results and Prospects

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to outline Trotsky's actions and influence during the 1905 Revolution and to identify the theoretical significance of the experience. Strong answers integrate the February 1905 return, the formation of the St Petersburg Soviet, Trotsky's emergence as vice-chair and then chair, the October Manifesto response, the 3 December 1905 arrest, the 1906 trial, and Results and Prospects as the programmatic distillation of the experience.

The answer

Return to Russia and the early months of 1905

Bloody Sunday (9 January 1905, Old Style) reached Trotsky in Geneva. He left immediately for Munich and arrived back in Russia in February 1905 using a false passport. He worked underground first in Kiev with the Mensheviks, then in St Petersburg, where he produced articles and pamphlets under the pen name "Yanovsky" (after the family farm).

In summer 1905 Trotsky moved to Finland with Natalia Sedova. The Finnish forests, ostensibly Russian territory, were beyond easy Okhrana reach. He read, wrote, and watched the strike movement in St Petersburg gather momentum.

Formation of the St Petersburg Soviet

The Soviet of Workers' Deputies was formed on 13 October 1905 in the printing workers' strike committee at the Technological Institute, St Petersburg. The body coordinated factory and workshop delegates of the city's striking workers; within days it had 562 deputies from 147 factories. The Soviet was a workers' parliament with no established theoretical basis (it predated Lenin's 1917 theorisation of soviets as organs of state power).

Trotsky joined the Soviet's Executive Committee on 15 October. He served as vice-chair under Georgy Khrustalev-Nosar, a lawyer-Menshevik who chaired the Soviet from 17 October. Khrustalev-Nosar was arrested on 26 November 1905 and Trotsky succeeded him as chair.

The October Manifesto and the October general strike

The October general strike (10-21 October 1905) paralysed the railways, the post, the schools, the factories, and large parts of the state administration. On 17 October 1905 Sergei Witte secured the October Manifesto from Nicholas II: a constitutional concession promising civil liberties and a legislative Duma. The Soviet's response, drafted by Trotsky, accepted the Manifesto as a victory but refused to disband: the Manifesto was "a paper guarantee" and the autocracy remained.

The 50-day Soviet

Through the 50 days of the Soviet's existence (13 October to 3 December 1905) Trotsky drafted most of its political documents. The Soviet:

• Ran the strike movement, including the second general strike of 1-7 November.
• Pressed for the eight-hour working day, unilaterally proclaiming it on 31 October.
• Coordinated negotiations with employers and the city duma.
• Established a workers' militia of some 6,000 men.
• Published Izvestia, its daily paper, with a print run of up to 60,000.

Trotsky's speech to the Soviet on 13 November 1905 described it as "an embryo of a revolutionary government." The phrase prefigured the role Lenin would later theorise for soviets in 1917.

The Financial Manifesto and the arrest

On 2 December 1905 the Soviet issued the Financial Manifesto, calling on citizens to withdraw bank deposits, refuse to pay taxes, and demand wages in gold rather than paper. The aim was to break the autocracy's credit. The next day (3 December 1905) the Free Economic Society building was surrounded and the entire Executive Committee, including Trotsky, was arrested. Trotsky's only resistance was to pause his speech, smile at the troops, and rule the meeting closed.

The 1906 trial

Trotsky and 51 codefendants were tried before the St Petersburg Judicial Chamber from 19 September to 2 November 1906 on charges of armed insurrection. Trotsky used the courtroom as a political platform. His defence speech (4 October 1906) was published almost immediately as a pamphlet and became one of his best-known early texts. The verdict was loss of civil rights and lifetime exile to Obdorsk in northern Siberia. Trotsky escaped from the transport in February 1907 and returned to Western Europe.

Results and Prospects (1906)

From the Peter and Paul Fortress and the city prison, Trotsky wrote his major theoretical essay Results and Prospects, published in mid-1906. The essay argued:

• The Russian bourgeoisie was historically incapable of leading a bourgeois-democratic revolution.
• The proletariat, though a minority, would have to lead the revolution because of the bourgeoisie's weakness and the peasantry's lack of national class consciousness.
• A proletarian revolution would not stop at bourgeois-democratic tasks but would pass over into socialist tasks, becoming a "permanent revolution."
• Survival of a socialist Russia would require revolutions in Western Europe.

The essay anticipated October 1917 and the early Soviet regime more closely than any other contemporary Marxist text.

How to read a source on this topic

The Soviet's Izvestia (40 issues, October-December 1905) is the primary documentary record of Trotsky's chairmanship and is collected in the Soviet 1905 documents series. Trotsky's 1907 book 1905 (written in Vienna and St Petersburg) is the major participant account.

Beryl Williams' The Russian Revolution 1917-1921 (1987) and Abraham Ascher's two-volume The Revolution of 1905 (1988-1992) are the standard secondary sources. Service (Trotsky, 2009) is more sceptical of Trotsky's centrality and emphasises that Khrustalev-Nosar chaired the Soviet for longer than Trotsky did.

Common exam traps

Saying Trotsky founded the Soviet. He did not; the Soviet emerged from the printing workers' strike committee. He shaped it as vice-chair and chair.

Conflating the October Manifesto and a constitution. The Manifesto was a promise. The Fundamental Laws (April 1906) hedged the promise. Trotsky was right about the paper guarantee.

Overlooking Results and Prospects. The text is the theoretical product of 1905 and is the basis of Trotsky's later disagreement with Stalin.

In one sentence

Trotsky returned to Russia in February 1905, emerged as vice-chair and from 26 November chair of the St Petersburg Soviet during its 50-day existence, drafted the major manifestos including the Financial Manifesto that triggered the 3 December arrest, was sentenced at the 1906 trial to lifetime Siberian exile, and used his prison time to write Results and Prospects, the first full statement of Permanent Revolution.