Wiosna roku 1905 (Spring of 1905) by Stanisław Masłowski, 1906 – Orenburg Cossacks patrol at Ujazdowskie Avenue in Warsaw

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1. Context:

   The 1905-1907 Russian Revolution was at the time the largest wave of strikes and widest emancipatory movement Poland had ever seen, and it would remain so until the 1970s and 1980s. In 1905, 93.2% of Congress Poland’s industrial workers went on strike. The first phase of the revolution consisted primarily of mass strikes, rallies, demonstrations – later this evolved into street skirmishes with the police and army as well as bomb assassinations and robberies of transports carrying money to tsarist financial institutions.

   One of the major events of that period was the insurrection in Łódź in June 1905, but unrest happened in many other areas too. Warsaw was also an active centre of resistance, particularly in terms of strikes, whereas further south the Republika Ostrowiecka and Republika Zagłębiowska were proclaimed (tsarist control was later restored in these areas when martial law was introduced). Until November 1905, Poland was at the vanguard of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire despite the vast military numbers thrown against it; even when the upheaval began its downfall, larger strikes happened more often in Poland than they did in other parts of the Empire in the years 1906–1907.

   Due to its reach, violence, radicalism, and effects, some Polish historians even consider the events of the 1905 revolution in Poland a fourth Polish uprising against the Russian Empire. Rosa Luxemburg described Poland as “one of the most explosive centres of the revolutionary movement” which “in 1905 marched at the head of the Russian Revolution”.