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قراءة كتاب Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917

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Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917

Our Revolution: Essays on Working-Class and International Revolution, 1904-1917

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
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disposal. Proclamations and speeches, educational circles and mass-meetings ought to carry broadcast, to propound and to explain the demand of a Constituent Assembly. There ought to be not one man in a city who should not know that his demand is: a National Constituent Assembly.

The peasants ought to be called to assemble on the day of the political strike and to pass resolutions demanding the calling of a Constituent Assembly. The suburban peasants ought to be called into the cities to participate in the street movements of the masses gathered under the banner of a Constituent Assembly. All societies and organizations, professional and learned bodies, organs of self-government and organs of the opposition press ought to be notified in advance by the workingmen that they are preparing for an all-Russian political strike, fixed for a certain date, to bring about the calling of a Constituent Assembly. The workingmen ought to demand from all societies and corporations that, on the day appointed for the mass-manifestation, they should join in the demand of a National Constituent Assembly. The workingmen ought to demand from the opposition press that it should popularize their slogan and that on the eve of the demonstration it should print an appeal to the population to join the proletarian manifestation under the banner of a National Constituent Assembly.

We ought to carry on the most intensive propaganda in the army in order that on the day of the strike each soldier, sent to curb the "rebels," should know that he is facing the people who are demanding a National Constituent Assembly.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

"The hiss of the knout" which ended the era of "cordial relations" was a statement issued by the government on December 12, 1904, declaring that "all disturbances of peace and order and all gatherings of an anti-governmental character must and will be stopped by all legal means in command of the authorities." The Zemstvo and municipal bodies were advised to keep from political utterings. As to the Socialist parties, and to labor movement in general, they were prosecuted under Svyatopolk-Mirski as severely as under Von Plehve.

"The vast apparatus of the liberal press" was the only way to reach millions. The revolutionary "underground" press, which assumed towards 1905 unusual proportions, could, after all, reach only a limited number of readers. In times of political unrest, the public became used to read between the lines of the legal press all it needed to feed its hatred of oppression.

By "legal" press, "legal" liberals are meant the open public press and those liberals who were trying to comply with the legal requirements of absolutism even in their work of condemning the absolutist order. The term "legal" is opposed by the term "revolutionary" which is applied to political actions in defiance of law.

Dragomirov was for many years Commander of the Kiev Military region and known by his epigrammatic style.


THE EVENTS IN PETERSBURG

This is an essay of triumph. Written on January 20, 1905, eleven days after the "bloody Sunday," it gave vent to the enthusiastic feelings of every true revolutionist aroused by unmistakable signs of an approaching storm. The march of tens of thousands of workingmen to the Winter Palace to submit to the "Little Father" a petition asking for "bread and freedom," was on the surface a peaceful and loyal undertaking. Yet it breathed indignation and revolt. The slaughter of peaceful marchers (of whom over 5,000 were killed or wounded) and the following wave of hatred and revolutionary determination among the masses, marked the beginning of broad revolutionary uprisings.

For Trotzky, the awakening of the masses to political activity was not only a good revolutionary omen, but also a defeat of liberal ideology and liberal tactics. Those tactics had been planned under the assumption that the Russian people were not ripe for a revolution. Trotzky, a thorough revolutionist, saw in the liberal movement a manifestation of political superstitions. To him, the only way to overthrow absolutism was the way of a violent revolution. Yet, when the liberals proudly asserted that the revolutionary masses of Russia were only a creation of the overheated phantasy of the revolutionists, while the movement of the well-to-do intelligent elements was a flagrant fact, the Social-Democrats had no material proofs to the contrary, except sporadic outbursts of unrest among the workingmen and, of course, the conviction of those revolutionists who were in touch with the masses. It is, therefore, easy to understand the triumph of a Trotzky or any other Socialist after January 9th. In Trotzky's opinion, the 9th of January had put liberalism into the archives. "We are done with it for the entire period of the revolution," he exclaims. The most remarkable part of this essay, as far as political vision is concerned, is Trotzky's prediction that the left wing of the "Osvoboshdenie" liberals (later organized as the Constitutional Democratic Party) would attempt to become leaders of the revolutionary masses and to "tame" them. The Liberals did not fail to make the attempt in 1905 and 1906, but with no success whatever. Neither did Social-Democracy, however, completely succeed in leading the masses all through the revolution, in the manner outlined by Trotzky in this essay. True, the Social-Democrats were the party that gained the greatest influence over the workingmen in the stormy year of 1905; their slogans were universally accepted by the masses; their members were everywhere among the first ranks of revolutionary forces; yet events developed too rapidly and spontaneously to make the leadership of a political organization possible.

How invincibly eloquent are facts! How utterly powerless are words!

The masses have made themselves heard! They have kindled revolutionary flames on Caucasian hill-tops; they have clashed, breast against breast, with the guards' regiments and the cossacks on that unforgettable day of January Ninth; they have filled the streets and squares of industrial cities with the noise and clatter of their fights....

The revolutionary masses are no more a theory, they are a fact. For the Social-Democratic Party there is nothing new in this fact. We had predicted it long ago. We had seen its coming at a time when the noisy liberal banquets seemed to form a striking contrast with the political silence of the people. The revolutionary masses are a fact, was our assertion. The clever liberals shrugged their shoulders in contempt. Those gentlemen think themselves sober realists solely because they are unable to grasp the consequences of great causes, because they make it their business to be humble servants of each ephemeral political fact. They think themselves sober statesmen in spite of the fact that history mocks at their wisdom, tearing to pieces their school books, making to naught their designs, and magnificently laughing at their pompous predictions.

"There are no revolutionary people in Russia as yet." "The Russian workingman is backward in culture, in self-respect, and (we refer primarily to the workingmen of Petersburg and Moscow) he is not yet prepared for organized social and political struggle."

Thus Mr. Struve wrote in his Osvoboshdenie. He wrote it on January 7th, 1905. Two days later the proletariat of Petersburg arose.

"There are no revolutionary people in Russia as yet." These words ought to have been

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