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125 Years Ago in Northeastern Asia

Tsar Alexander III of Russia, 1881-1894, regarded both revolutionaries and reformers as threats to his absolute power. He believed that concessions indicated weakness or softness and that any perceived softness would encourage the opposition to make even greater demands. Repression was the order of the day. Nicholas II, 1894-1917, attempted to continue his father's heavy-handed policies but he was much less effective. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Imperial Russia was teeming with anti-tsarist political movements, such as: The Cadets (liberal Constitutional Democrats advocating a constitutional monarchy); the Social Revolutionaries; the Marxist Social Democrats; and the more radical communist Bolsheviks (including Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky).

Anti-tsarist and anti-Russian feeling in 1905 erupts into the first Russian Revolution. The economically advanced Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania lead the revolt following the disastrous Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 (see China and Japan). The Russian supply and transport system broke down because of the war, food prices soared, and discontent spread. On Bloody Sunday in January 1905, tsarist troops fired on peaceful demonstrators petitioning Nicholas II for help, sparking revolutionary outbreaks throughout the country. Nicholas' autocracy survived the Revolution of 1905 only by making concessions, such as the creation of a national parliament, the Duma.

Yakub Beg (1820-1877) leads a successful Uighur revolt in East Turkestan against the Manchu Chinese empire in 1864. The expansion of the new Uighur state is stopped by the Russian push into the Ili region in 1871. Fear of this Russian expansion leads Great Britain to put pressure on the Manchu court to re-annex East Turkestan. British banks provide the impoverished Chinese government with huge loans. Large forces under the overall command of General Zho Zhung Tang, attacked East Turkestan in 1876. Yakub Beg is poisoned and dies the next year, and by 1878, the Uighurs are once again under Chinese rule. After this invasion the region was given the name Xinjiang which means "new territory".

In site of all of its problems--maybe because of them--Russia still produced some of the most talented writers, artists and musicians of the era, such as the composer Tchaikovsky, the writer Dostoyevski, and the painter Kandinsky, one of the first "abstract" artists.

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