The present article examines a number of the issues relating to the activities of the military-police councils established under Moscow Governor- General F.V. Dubasov during the December armed uprising — the causes and process of formation of this body, its structure and composition, meeting agendas, decisions and their implementation. The purpose of research is to evaluate the efficiency of this institution and to establish its role in suppressing the “insurrection”, and this is important to study the relationship between civil and military authorities during the first Russian Revolution. These issues have not received treatment in historiography: those authors who deal with the history of the Moscow uprising either have completely ignored the military-police councils, or mentioned them only in passing. In the first days of the uprising, the interaction between civilian and military authorities was fraught with significant difficulties (inconsistency in police and military operations, the massive shelling of civilians’ homes by the military forces without causing damage to the rebels, the practice of sending expeditions by the commander of the Moscow military district to destroy barricades, inability to bring the outskirts of the city under their control). This prompted Governor-General F.V. Dubasov to take measures to provide supervision over the forces of the Moscow Military District, including establishment of the military-police councils under his chairmanship. The meetings of this body were held almost daily and attended by a wide range of civilian and military high-rank officials of the city. They discussed the plans and results of the most important military operations against the “rebels” (for example, punitive expeditions to Presnya and along the Moscow–Ryazan’ Railway). The governor-general eventually managed to persuade the military to adopt his tactics, i. e. the step-by-step occupation and “cleansing” of the regions that remained in the hands of the revolutionaries. However, the work of this body was handicapped by a number of shortcomings: late timing, loose attendance, haste in organizing operations, and the lack of real control over the military actions. The interplay of these factors led to numerous “failures” during the operation to capture the last stronghold of the rebels — Presnya.

The article examines Nicholas II’s participation in Russian government during suppression of the Moscow armed uprising in 1905 and his contribution to this process. In historiography, this topic, despite the eff orts of a number of scholars, has not been comprehensively studied. For the first time, on the basis of clerical documents (staff reports) and personal sources (diaries, memoirs, letters), the author attempts at determining the degree of the emperor’s awareness of the events in Moscow and the factors on which it depended. Nicholas II’s major contribution to the defeat of the uprising was the decision to send reinforcements to Moscow on 13 (26) December 1905. The author concludes that the information regarding the progress of the armed uprising, which the emperor received, was of a specific nature. While being well informed about the main events of the “revolt”, the emperor had an exaggerated idea of the number of police officers and soldiers in the first capital and the number of revolutionaries opposing them. This was due to the crisis of administrative and military power in Moscow, which often resulted in getting unreliable information by the city’s government. It was also determined by the desire of this government to present the situation in Moscow to St. Petersburg authorities in a favorable light for themselves and by the relocation of the armed forces (the sending of combatready soldiers to the Far East due to the lack of trained reserves, etc.). Perhaps court intrigues also played a role. The decision making was also affected by such a feature of Nicholas II’s administrative style, as entrusting specific tasks to those in charge and retaining the overall control of the process for himself. As a result, the emperor did not send the troops to Moscow during the insurrection in the Rostov regiment on 2–4 (15–17) December, which might prevent the uprising, and decided to employ the Semenovsky regiment when its peak had passed and many Muscovites had been dead.