Lessons from the Periphery: Saratov, January 1905

A general strike spearheaded by those controlling the railroads forced tsarist autocracy to its knees in 1905. This tactic, unprecedented in Russian history, was born in Saratov early that year. Saratov's pioneering role derived from an operative principle of solidarity across class, caste, professional, and political lines. However much the crowds filling Saratov's streets resembled those elsewhere, protesters in the middle Volga city came away from the strike after Bloody Sunday with something unique—they had wrung major concessions from local administrators. The economic victory belonged to the men and women of the Riazan'-Urals Railroad who, significantly, had acted together. Their mutually reinforcing interactions, their wedding of economic and political demands framed an effective mechanism for conducting a general strike.