The Brittle Giant

CHAPTER 1 · 1894–1906 · The Russian Revolution, 1905–1924

Look at the charcoal: one sixth of the earth’s land, 130 million subjects, a hundred languages, ruled by a man who signed himself “Autocrat of All the Russias” and meant it literally — no constitution, no parliament, no legal opposition. Nicholas II inherited machinery built for a smaller world and refused to change a bolt of it. Beneath the surface the country was changing anyway: Count Witte’s crash industrialization had laid 35,000 miles of railway, floated the rouble on gold, and thrown up vast factories in Petersburg and the Donbas — creating, almost overnight, a working class packed into

The turn: The October Manifesto, 17/30 October 1905.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.