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176 The seriousness of the revolutionary aims was proved by the organisation of the council of workers' deputies which from the thirteenth of October for ﬁfty days conducted the movement in St. Petersburg. The council did not consist solely of workmen and socialists, but was an attempt at the deliberate fusion of all oppositional and revolutionary energies.

The October strike was followed on October 17th and 30th by the promulgation of the October constitution. The tsar renounced his absolutist authority; he granted to the national duma legislative and constitutionalist rights; he conceded inviolability of the person, freedom of thought and utterance, the right of public meeting, and the right of combination.

On November 21st Pobědonoscev retired on pension. The chief procurator of the holy synod had understood the signs of the time. After the promulgation of the constitution the metropolitan of Moscow instructed the popes of his diocese to preach sermons favouring reaction, but on October 29th the Moscow clergy issued a public proclamation against their spiritual chief.

All classes, all schools of political thought, were united in the struggle against absolutism.

The town operatives and those of the rural industrial centres constituted the main strength of this first mass revolution in Russia, the various sections of Marxists working hand in hand with the social revolutionaries.

After the October strike and after the promulgation of the constitution the peasants rallied to the side of the workmen, and their lead was followed by the radical intelligentsia in the zemstvos. At the close of the year the movement among the peasantry assumed a threatening character, and in the course of 1906 it took the form of innumerable local riots and acts of violence directed against landowners Hence the landowners and the nobility soon cooled towards the revolution, and joined forces with the government, which had in the meanwhile gathered strength.

The middle and higher bourgeoisie participated in the struggle for freedom; manufacturers and other employers continued to pay wages to men on strike; the salariat joined with workmen and peasants in carrying out the decrees of the revolutionary committee. Even by the moderate parties the revolution was recognised for a time as the power that had gained the victory over absolutism.