This article focuses on the phenomena of violence and activism in the Baltic Provinces during 1905. The level of violence was substantially greater in the Latvian areas than in the Estonians ones for the following reasons: more advanced economic development, especially in the metropolis of Riga; a much stronger social democratic movement; and greater social and ethnic tensions in the relations between Latvians and Baltic Germans. On the other hand, various manifestations of activism in the form of political and social mobilization, e.g., petition campaigns, the holding of national congresses, and the strike and trade union movements, were essentially comparable in the two cases. The one major contrast in political mobilization was the much more sweeping reorganization of rural government in the Latvian areas.