By 1905, the work­ing class [in Rus­sia] had begun envi­sion­ing a bet­ter life. And these visions began with books. “When I came in from work, I did not lie down to sleep imme­di­ate­ly,” recalled a weaver named Feodor Samilov. “Instead, I picked up a book, lit a can­dle that I had bought with my own sav­ings, and read until I could no longer keep my eye­lids from closing.”

He wasn’t alone. The speed with which fac­to­ry work­ers learned to read “was a lit­tle short of aston­ish­ing,” not­ed one his­to­ri­an. By 1905, six out of every ten labor­ers in Moscow were literate—an increase of twen­ty per­cent in less than ten years. And in St. Peters­burg the num­ber of work­ing men and women who could read was three times greater than in the rest of Rus­sia. Now the fac­to­ry work­er in St. Peters­burg who could not read was the excep­tion. The oppo­site was still true back in his peas­ant village. 

These read­ers had almost no access to polit­i­cal writ­ings. Cen­sor­ship laws made such lit­er­a­ture ille­gal, and news­pa­pers faced stiff fines and forced clos­ings if they includ­ed mate­r­i­al con­sid­ered offen­sive by the gov­ern­ment. The result was that they steered clear of such writ­ing. As for books, only those deemed appro­pri­ate by the tsar’s cen­sors were allowed on library shelves. “I read Jules Verne…and James [Fen­i­more] Coop­er, and was cap­ti­vat­ed by their descrip­tions of jour­neys and dis­cov­er­ies,” said weaver Samilov. “Over a peri­od of five to six years, I read through the most diverse assort­ment of books imaginable…but I nev­er encoun­tered one that could have awak­ened my class con­scious­ness.” Even so, he added, “Books taught me how to think.” 

These lit­er­ate work­ers were now able to pic­ture a gov­ern­ment more respon­si­ble to their needs; they had “caught sight of a new life,” recalled fac­to­ry work­er Semën Bal­ashov, “one very dif­fer­ent from our life of servi­tude.” In Jan­u­ary 1905, he joined ten thou­sand oth­er men, women, and chil­dren who had aban­doned their jobs. Tak­ing to the streets, they refused to return to work until their demands were met. What did they want? A liv­ing wage, an eight-hour work­day, afford­able hous­ing, and pub­lic education.

From The Fam­i­ly Romanov: Mur­der, Rebel­lion & The Fall of Impe­r­i­al Rus­sia by Can­dace Flem­ing, pages 61–62.