Legal aspects of the fight against terror in Russia in 1905

The article is devoted to the study of the legal basis of fighting against terrorism in Russia in 1905. The article focuses on the procedure of changing the terrorist ideology in the country, as well as on the organizational design of anarchism, an independent revolutionary movement of terrorist nature new for the Russian state. The article notes that in 1905, as part of the transition from theoretical thinking about terror to action, the Russian society desacralized the power by repudiating the “divinity” of the royal person and the authority of the monarchic power as a whole. At the same time, the efficiency and effectiveness of terror gradually changed the consciousness of the Russian society, and the ideas of compulsion and expediency of the use of terror faded into the background. Attention is drawn to the fact that it was after the events of January 9, 1905, that all terrorist groups existing in Russia intensified their activities. Almost immediately, the problem of revolutionary groups' turn from individual to mass terror became very important. Since January 1905, the number of terrorist acts increased more than tenfold, and terror itself became non-systemic and decentralized. In such difficult conditions, the bodies of political investigation continued to carry out systemic work to suppress the terrorist activities of revolutionary groups in Russia. By the middle of 1905, the Russian bodies of political investigation faced with a new problem in their work: the rapid development of anti-government activities, expressed in the emergence of a large number of revolutionary cells and political parties which functioned independently from each other in accordance with their individual programs. It is noted that the country saw a consistent strengthening of the state response to terrorist acts. In particular, the introduction of special administrative and legal regimes, regulated by the Provision on Security of August 14, 1881, increased significantly after 1905. The article concludes that the terrorism of the beginning of the 20th century had a serious impact on the formation of the political course of the Russian government: it is the systemic terror of the SRs and some other revolutionary organizations that led to the adoption of several important normative legal acts, for example, the Manifesto of October 17, 1905; with their adoption, the Russian autocratic power not only made some concessions to revolutionary organizations, but also secured the most important principles of further state building in Russia at the legislative level.

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