The 1905 Russian Revolution is an empire-wide struggle of violence, both anti-government and undirected, that sweeps through vast areas of the Russian Empire.

It is not controlled or managed, and it has no single cause or aim, but instead is the culmination of decades of unrest and dissatisfaction stemming from the autocratic rule of the Romanov dynasty and the slow pace of reform in Russian society as well as calls for national liberation by non-Russians within the Empire.

The direct cause is the abject failure of the Tsar's military forces in the initially popular Russo-Japanese War, which sets off a series of revolutionary activities, sometimes by mutinous soldiers and at other times by revolutionary societies.Although it is put down with a blend of accommodation and savagery, the Revolution does increase the pace of reform in Russia, but not enough to prevent the second revolution which is to overturn the Romanovs in 1917.

The Revolution of 1905 would be often looked back on by the Bolsheviks as an initial popular antecedent to their own revolution.