The Russian Bloody Sunday Massacre of 1905: a discursive account of nonviolent transformation

A mass nonviolent protest against the Tsarist autocracy in 1905 led to the Russian Bloody Sunday Massacre where Tsarist forces killed hundreds of civilians. This paper presents a new theoretical perspective of this incident and suggests that the effect of the massacre was of greater importance to both the First Russian Revolution and eventual downfall of the Tsarist Empire than has previously been considered by historians and theorists of nonviolence. The massacre dislocated the Tsarist state to a never before seen extent, enabling political movements to compete in a time of state crisis which arose after the Tsar was stripped of his title of “the Father of the People” and divine monarch. A political process model linked to discourse theoretic explanatory concepts is presented to explain how the Tsar's contradictory ordering of the killing of his greatest supporters, the devout Orthodox peasantry, and workers was fatal for the existence of Tsarism as a political discourse. The model also captures a viral media effect that garnered large-scale domestic and international public sympathy for the St Petersburg social movement. This sheds light on how discursive forces having to do with identity and power play a role in transformative events brought about by nonviolent protest.