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I was inspired to write this thread by a number of different things, including the "A Force More Powerful" companion book to the PBS series of the same name, John Green's Crash Course video on Nonviolence and Peace Movements particularly his ending conclusion speech, and Erica Chenoweth's "Why Civil Resistance Works." There's always debate about history and the merits of violent vs. nonviolent revolution, but taking these works together, they suggest an interesting historical possibility. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was undeniably a major historical event and shaped the world just as much on its own as World War I. But the 1905 Revolution did force some fairly significant concessions from the nobility, even a rather limited parliament and constitution is no small concession for any absolutist monarchy to make, so it was having an effect before it got crushed. Taking Erica Chenoweth's assertion that nonviolent resistance is more likely to provoke security force defections than violent resistance, since her evidence suggests soldiers are less likely to fire on nonviolent uprisings than armed ones. This is especially interesting given that the 1905 Revolutionaries seemed to be relying on that strategy of hoping that the army troops guarding Moscow would immediately defect once the uprising there started.

So here's an interesting WI? What if the 1905 Revolution had stayed nonviolent, but had continued a civil resistance campaign until they'd actually managed to overthrow the Tsardom? And afterwords this had inspired just as many anti-authoritarian/national independence movements as the OTL Russian Revolution did and let things snowball from there. I'm not a huge expert on the final days of the Russian Empire, and much of what I do know I'm rusty on, so I'm definitely willing to look at ideas and sources of information people have for a POD that might create that "nonviolent 1905 Russian revolution that does get the security forces to defect once they march on Moscow, the monarchy collapses, and this revolution goes on to inspire others, some successful, others not so much, but it starts a trend towards fewer violent and more nonviolent revolutions."

I think the POD would have to be sometime after 1875 to avoid too many butterflies making things especially complicated. I want the timeline to run up until about 2005, because I find that the longer the timeline goes on, the harder it is to keep everything totally plausible, conceive of every scenario, and avoid the temptation to dive into completely silly things just because it's cool *Glares at Harry Turtledove.* (I mean the Lizards were notorious ASBs to begin with, but Homeward Bound was a major middle finger to hard sci-fi that, Lizard Aliens aside, Worldwar had been up until then.) I already feel a 130 year maximum will probably involve me falling to the occasional temptations to make the timeline softer than it could/should be for the sake of "but this would be so cool!" because keeping track of all the butterflies would be difficult. Besides, any POD before 1875 probably has a major risk of outright butterflying away the Russo-Japanese war and Japanese victory in said war, ergo butterflying away the 1905 Revolution to begin with (even if this probably just kicks the can for the Czardom's demise down the road to 1917 like in OTL, or else not much farther than that.)

So it's kinda a borderline pre-1900s/post-1900s type thread since the POD is gonna straddle the era, maybe even break the borderline if someone can find a plausible change that would create a nonviolent 1905 Revolution in the first 5 years of the 20th century. And most of the timeline would run in the 20th Century. So if the mods want to move this or for me to delete and repost it in post-1900s because of its unique situation, I'll understand and comply.

I'm not totally lazy and have done some preliminary research so far though. The key to getting the Radically Successful!1905 Revolution seems to involve making a strong commitment to nonviolent resistance a major part of the revolutionaries ideology. This seems to me to involve one of three options: Firstly, change the attitudes of the Revolutionary leaders like Trotsky, Lenin, and Chernov away from the Marxist dialectic necessitating violent revolution to create the workers' state and believing that civil resistance tactics could achieve the same ends. This seems very unlikely but if anyone offers a reason why it could happen, I'll gladly take a closer look to see if the scenario holds water.

The second option, and what seems most interesting to me so far even if it has some barriers to plausibility to me right now, is instead of a Marxist-spearheaded revolution, the 1905 Revolution is a Toltsoyan-spearheaded revolution. The Toltsoyans would definitely be committed to civil resistance, they were a big influence on Gandhi after all, and had no great love for the Czardom, but the big thing is getting them to 1) become just a bit more mainstream than they were OTL and 2) take more direct action to overthrow the Czardom rather than just contentedly establishing their communes and leaving the monarchy be. There's also the issues of being totally opposed to any kind of police, military, courts, and sex. So Toltsoyan!Russia would have to have a more moderate strain of the ideology develop if it wanted to last more than, at best, 30 years before totally collapsing. Which we might do, but it still seems to undermine the idea of creating a world where civil revolutionary movements are more prominent because civil resistance's supposed major success story in this timeline would be even less of a success story than the Soviet Union was (at least if we go by chronological longevity rather than refraining from committing mass murder, which sadly seems the standard for a lot of people.)

An interesting third possibility is that some of the less bloodthirsty leaders of the 1905 Revolution, or figures similarly sympathetic to the revolutionaries ideals, like Chernov or Kropotkin, discovered Toltsoy (either his writings or meeting him in person), and become influenced by his nonviolent philosophies. Said quasi-Toltsoyan becomes an advocate of civil resistance and gains enough influence in the leadup to the 1905 Revolution to take it in that direction so that the garrison in Moscow defects rather than crushes the uprising when it happens.

Like I said though, I'm not an expert on the last 50 years of the Russian Empire. If anyone would like to recommend historical sources that would be helpful in getting me up to speed on this era (and the Russo-Japanese war that sparked this revolution) I'd gladly appreciate the offer. It doesn't matter if it's books, webpages, or threads in this very forum, I'll appreciate any information. If I feel the completed timeline I write is worthy of a legit publisher, I'll also be sure to thank anyone who gives me resources to make the timeline as good as it can be in the dedication page(s.) I'll also be glad to discuss ideas for both the Successful!1905 Revolution and the resulting butterflies as the timeline develops. Thanks for reading this TL;DR madness, I hope ya'll find this idea interesting, and eagerly await feedback.
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