A strike of students has been proclaimed at Petersburg University. A whole series of other institutions of higher learning has joined it. The movement has already spread to Moscow and Kharkov. Judging by all the data available in foreign and Russian newspapers, as well as in private letters from Russia, we are witnessing a fairly broad academic movement{101}.

Back to the old days! Back to pre-revolutionary Russia – this is what these events testify to above all. As before, governmental reaction is tightening its grip on the universities. The eternal struggle in autocratic Russia against student organizations has taken the form of a campaign by the reactionary minister Shvarts – acting in complete accord with "Premier" Stolypin – against the autonomy that was promised to students in the autumn of 1905 (what did not the autocracy "promise" then to Russian citizens under the pressure of the revolutionary working class!), – against that autonomy which students enjoyed while the autocracy "had no time for students," and which the autocracy could not fail to begin taking away while remaining an autocracy.

As before, the liberal press grieves and whines – this time together with certain Octobrists – the professors grieve and whimper, begging the government not to embark on the path of reaction, to use the splendid occasion to "ensure peace and order through reforms" in the country "exhausted by upheavals," – begging the student body not to resort to illegal methods of action, capable only of playing into the hands of reaction, and so on, and so on, and so on. How old, how very old and worn-out are all these motifs, and how vividly do they revive before us what was about twenty years ago, in the late 1880s of the last century! The resemblance of that period to the present will appear particularly striking if we take the contemporary moment in isolation, outside the connection with the three years of revolution that have been lived through. For the Duma (at first glance) expresses only slightly differently the very same pre-revolutionary correlation of forces: the dominance of wild landowners, preferring court connections and influence through their brothers the officials to any representation whatsoever; – the support of the same official by the merchants (Octobrists), who do not dare break with their fathers-benefactors; – the "opposition" of bourgeois intellectuals, most concerned with proving their loyalty and calling the admonition of the authorities the political activity of liberalism. The worker deputies of the Duma are far, far too weak a reminder of the role that the proletariat recently played through its open mass struggle.

The question arises: can we, under such conditions, attach significance to the old forms of primitive academic struggle of the student body? If the liberals have descended to the "politics" (only mockingly, of course, can one speak of politics here) of the 1880s, will it not be a diminution of the tasks of social democracy if it deems it necessary to support in some way or other the academic struggle?

Such a question apparently is being posed in certain quarters by student social democrats. At any rate, our newspaper's editorial office has received a letter from a group of student social democrats in which, among other things, it is stated:

"On the 13th of September, an assembly of students at Petersburg University resolved to call upon students for an all-Russian student strike, motivating their call by Shvarts's aggressive tactics; the platform of the strike is academic, and the assembly even welcomes the 'first steps' of the Moscow and Petersburg councils of professors in the struggle for autonomy. We are perplexed before the academic platform put forward by the Petersburg assembly, and consider it inadmissible under the given conditions and incapable of uniting the student body for active, broad struggle. We conceive of student action only as coordinated with the general political action and in no way separately. There are no such elements present as would be capable of uniting the student body. In view of this, we declare ourselves against academic action."

The error that the authors of the letter are making has far greater political significance than might be thought at first glance, for the reasoning of the authors touches essentially upon a theme incomparably broader and more important than the question of participation in this particular strike.

"We conceive of student action only as coordinated with the general political action. In view of this, we declare ourselves against academic action."

Such reasoning is fundamentally wrong. The revolutionary slogan – one must strive toward coordinated political action of students with the proletariat, and so on – is transformed here from a living guide for ever broader, all-sided, militant agitation into a dead dogma, which is mechanically fitted to the various stages of various forms of movement. One cannot suffice with merely proclaiming coordinated political action, merely repeating the "final word" of the lessons of revolution. One must know how to agitate for political action, using for this agitation all possibilities, all conditions, and above all, most of all, any mass conflicts of one or another advanced element with the autocracy. The matter is not, of course, that we should in advance divide every student movement into mandatory "stages" and necessarily watch over the neat passage through each stage, fearing "untimely" transitions to politics, and so on. Such a view would be the most harmful pedantry and would lead only to opportunistic politics. But equally harmful is the opposite error, when one refuses to reckon with the actual situation that has arisen and the conditions of a given mass movement for the sake of a falsely understood, rigid slogan: such an application of the slogan inevitably degenerates into revolutionary phrase-mongering.

There are possible conditions under which academic movement degrades the political or fragments it or diverts from it, and – then social democratic groups of students would of course be obliged to concentrate their agitation against such a movement. Everyone sees, however, that the objective political conditions of the present moment are different: the academic movement expresses the beginning of a movement of a new "generation" of young students, who are more or less accustomed already to narrow autonomy, and this movement begins in an atmosphere of the absence of other forms of mass struggle at the present moment, in an atmosphere of calm, when the broad masses continue to digest the experience of three years of revolution still in silence, concentrated, slowly.

Under such conditions, social democracy would commit a grave error if it declared itself "against academic action." No, groups of students belonging to our party must direct all efforts toward supporting, utilizing, and expanding the given movement. Like any support of primitive forms of movement by social democracy, this support should consist primarily and mainly in ideological and organizational influence on the broader strata, stirred up by the conflict and experiencing, time and again, in this form of conflict their first political conflict. For the young students who have entered the universities in the course of the last two years lived almost entirely a life cut off from politics, and were educated in the spirit of narrow academic autonomism, educated not only by state professors and the governmental press, but also by liberal professors and the entire Constitutional Democratic party. For such young people, a broad strike (if this young people proves capable of creating a broad strike! we must do everything to help it in this, but of course it is not for us socialists to vouch for the success of one or another bourgeois movement) is the beginning of political conflict, regardless of whether those struggling are conscious of it or not. Our task is to explain to the mass of "academic" protesters the objective significance of this conflict, to attempt to make it consciously political, to multiply tenfold the agitational activity of social democratic groups of students, and to direct all this activity toward ensuring that the revolutionary conclusions from the history of three years are assimilated, that the inevitability of new revolutionary struggle is understood, that our old – and fully contemporary – slogans of the overthrow of the autocracy and the convocation of a constituent assembly again become the subject of discussion and the test of the political concentration of fresh generations of democracy.

From such work, social democratic students have no right to refuse under any circumstances, – and however difficult this work may be at the present moment, whatever failures may befall one or another agitator in one or another university, student association, assembly, and so on, we shall say: knock and it shall be opened unto you! The work of political agitation never goes to waste. Its success is measured not only by whether we have managed to achieve a majority or agreement for coordinated political action right now and immediately. It is possible that we shall not achieve this immediately: that is precisely why we are an organized proletarian party – so as not to be disconcerted by temporary setbacks, but to conduct our work persistently, steadily, with restraint, even under the most difficult conditions.

The appeal printed below by the St. Petersburg coalition student council shows that even the most active elements of the student body stubbornly cling to pure academicism and are still singing a Constitutional Democratic-Octobrist tune. And this at a time when the Constitutional Democratic-Octobrist press is conducting itself toward the strike in the most vile manner, proving in the very midst of struggle that it is harmful, criminal, and so on. We cannot but welcome the rebuff that the Petersburg Committee of our party deemed it necessary to give to the coalition council (see "From the Party"{102}).

Evidently, present-day students still lack, for their transformation from "academics" into "politicians," the scourges of Shvarts – they need yet more scorpions of new and new reactionary martinets for the complete revolutionary education of new cadres. Over these cadres, educated by all of Stolypin's policy, educated by each step of counter-revolution, we social democrats must work ceaselessly as well, we who see clearly the objective inevitability of new bourgeois-democratic conflicts on a national scale with the autocracy, which has consolidated itself with the reactionary-Octobrist Duma.

Yes, on a national scale, for reactionary counter-revolution, turning Russia backward, not only tempers new fighters in the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat, but will inevitably call forth a new movement of non-proletarian, that is to say, bourgeois democracy (understanding by this, of course, not the participation in struggle of the entire opposition, but the broad participation of genuinely democratic, that is, capable of struggle elements of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie). The beginning of mass student struggle in Russia in 1908 is a political symptom, a symptom of the entire contemporary situation created by counter-revolution. Thousands and millions of threads bind the young students to the middle and lower bourgeoisie, petty officialdom, certain groups of the peasantry, clergy, and so on. If in the spring of 1908 attempts were made to revive the "Union of Liberation,"[41] more radical than the old Constitutional Democratic, semi-landowner union represented by Pyotr Struve, – if in autumn a mass of young people begins to be stirred, most closely connected to bourgeois democracy in Russia, – if once again there has been a renewed howling, tenfold in malice, by venal scribblers against revolution in the schools, – if vile liberal professors and Constitutional Democratic leaders moan and weep over untimely, dangerous, ruinous strikes, displeasing to their dear Octobrists, capable of "repelling" Octobrists, the ruling Octobrists, – that means new gunpowder is accumulating in the powder magazines! that means reaction against reaction is beginning not only in the student body.

And however weak and incipient this beginning may be, the party of the working class must utilize and does utilize it. We knew how to work years and decades before the revolution, introducing our revolutionary slogans first into circles, then into the masses of workers, then into the streets, then onto the barricades. We must now know how to organize above all what is the task of the day, without which talk of coordinated political action will be empty words, – namely: a strong proletarian organization, conducting political agitation everywhere and always among the masses in the name of its revolutionary slogans. For this organization in their student milieu, for this agitation on the basis of the given movement, our university groups must take up the work.

The proletariat will not keep us waiting. It often yields to bourgeois democracy the priority in appearances at banquets, in legal unions, within the walls of universities, from the tribune of representative institutions. It has never yielded and will never yield priority in serious, great revolutionary struggle of the masses. The conditions for the outbreak of this struggle do not ripen so quickly and easily as one or another of us might wish, – but these conditions are ripening and maturing inexorably. And a small beginning of small academic conflicts is a great beginning, for behind it – not today, then tomorrow, not tomorrow, then the day after – will follow great continuations.

"Proletariy" No. 36, (16) October 3, 1908

Printed from the text of the newspaper "Proletariy"