The Russian Revolution of 1905 was the final loss of innocence for the Russian people, the confirmation of what all must have dreaded: the myth and cult of the Good Tzar was exactly that, a myth. When his troops fired on his people in their peaceful demonstrations in St. Petersburg two irreconcilable worlds clashed, and the path to destruction for one of them was begun. Meanwhile, in the Black Sea, the events of 1905 were played out in microcosm.
It all started when the ship's doctor on the Potemkin declared a piece of maggoty meat fit to eat. The crew were understandably irked and complained to the ship's captain, who had their spokesman shot. The crew rebelled, killed eight officers and took control of the ship. They hoisted the red flag and sailed to Odessa for June 15th. When they arrived, they placed the body of their martyred revolutionary friend on the steps of the harbour and people brought food and wreaths of flowers for the sailors. The city had been a virtual warzone between revolutionaries and the Tzarist authorities for two weeks, and the latter sent in troops to quell the uprising on the harbour steps.
As they did all across the Russian Empire, the troops fired indiscriminantly into the crowds of citizens. 2,000 people died in the hail of bullets overnight, and a further 3,000 were wounded. The Potemkin upped anchor and left Odessa, but the revolutionary spirit had failed to lift the rest of the fleet. Eventually they were forced to exchange the ship for safe refuge.
The mutiny on a single battleship was never a massive problem for the Russian Empire, but it highlighted the problem of trying to conduct a foreign war with insurgency at home. Most of the armed forces were of peasant stock (and even the elite Cossacks were not free from dissent) and they sympathised massively with the revolutionaries. The Army especially resented being used to put down peasant uprisings and its discipline broke down accordingly in 1905. The atrocious management of the war in Manchuria only added to the seditious thoughts of the armed forces, and the naval defeat at Tsushima in May 1905 was a great humiliation. As in all other spheres of the Empire's life, the Tzar was losing loyalty and respect. The mutiny of the Potemkin was a sign to other nations that the armed forces of Russia were faltering, which was surely a sign of weakness no nation can afford to display.
The event was later immortalized in a silent film that has been hailed as revolutionary, The Battleship Potemkin by Sergei Eisenstein in 1925. He was asked to produce a piece of propaganda to commemerate the failed Revolution of 1905, and this is what he came out with. It was hailed as a visual masterpiece and was well-received by Soviet audiences and around the world. It was banned in many countries in Western Europe because the effect it might have was feared. Eisenstein was a member of the Kuleshov school of Russian film-making which sought to create a series of visual barrages rather than focusing on main protagonists (such as the famous scene on the Odessa steps).