The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies. It led to the establishment of limited constitutional monarchy, the State Duma of the Russian Empire, the multi-party system, and the Russian Constitution of 1906.

The events of 1905 were preceded by a liberal and intellectual agitation for more political democracy and a limits to Czarist absolutism; plus an increase in strikes by workers against employers for economic demands and union recognition, especially in southern Russia. As Rosa Luxemburg explained in The Mass Strike, when collective strike activity was met with repression from an autocratic state, economic and political demands grew into and reinforced each other.

At the start of the 20th century, Russian liberals formed the Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists (1903) and the Union of Liberation (1904) which called for a constitutional monarchy. Russian socialists formed two major groups: the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, following the Russian populist tradition, and the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.