V. I.

Lenin

A fortnight ago we observed the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first
social-revolutionary demonstration in Russia, which took place on December
6, 1876, on Kazan Square in St.

Petersburg, [1] and we pointed to the enormous upswing in the number and magnitude of the
demonstrations at the beginning of the current year. We urged that the
demonstrators should advance a political slogan more clearly defined than
“Land and

Freedom” [2] (1876), and a more far-reaching demand than “Repeal the Provisional
Regulations” (1901). Such a slogan must be: political freedom; and the demand to be put forward by the entire people has to
be the demand for the convocation of the people’s representatives .

We see now that demonstrations are being revived on the most varied
grounds in Nizhni-Novgorod, in Moscow, and in Kharkov. Public unrest is
growing everywhere, and more and more imperative becomes the necessity to
unify it into one single current directed against the autocracy ,
which everywhere sows tyranny, oppression, and violence. On November 7, a
small but successful demonstration was held in Nizhni-Novgorod, which
arose out of a farewell gathering in honour of Maxim Gorky. An author of
European fame, whose only weapon was free speech (as a speaker at the
Nizhni-Novgorod demonstration aptly put it), was being banished by the
autocratic government from his home town without trial or
investigation. The bashi bazouks accuse him of exercising a harmful
influence on us, said the speaker in the name of all Russians in whom but
a spark of striving towards light and liberty is alive, but we declare
that his influence has been a good one. The myrmidons of the tsar perpetrate their outrages in secret, and we will expose their
outrages publicly and openly. In Russia, workers are assaulted for
demanding their right to a better life; students are assaulted for
protesting against tyranny. Every honest and bold utterance is suppressed!
The demonstration, in which workers took part, was concluded by a student
reciting: “Tyranny shall fall, and the people shall rise—mighty, free, and strong!”

In Moscow, hundreds of students waited at the station to greet
Gorky. Meanwhile, the police, scared out of their wits, arrested
him on the train en route and (despite the special permission
previously granted him) prohibited his entering Moscow, forcing him to
change directly from the Nizhni-Novgorod to the Kursk line. The
demonstration against Gorky’s banishment failed; but on the eighteenth of
November, without any preparation, a small demonstration of students and
“strangers” (as our Ministers put it) took place in front of
the Governor General’s house against the prohibition of a social evening
arranged for the previous day to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of
the death of N. A.

Dobrolyubov. [3]

The representative of the autocracy in Moscow was howled down by people
who, in unison with all educated and thinking people in Russia, held dear
the memory of a writer who had passionately hated tyranny and passionately
looked forward to a people’s uprising against the “Turks at
home”, i.e., against the autocratic government. The Executive
Committee of the Moscow Students’ Organisations rightly pointed out in its
bulletin of November 23 that the unprepared demonstration served as a
striking indication of the prevailing discontent and protest.

In Kharkov, a demonstration called in connection with student affairs
developed into a regular street battle, in which the students were not the
only participants. Last year’s experience taught the students a
lesson. They realised that only the support of the people, especially of
the workers, could guarantee them success, and that in order to obtain
that support, they must not restrict them selves to struggling merely for
academic (student) freedom, but for the freedom of the entire people , for political freedom. The Kharkov Joint Council of
Students’ Organisations definitely expressed this idea in its October manifesto and, judging from
their leaflets and manifestos, the students of St. Petersburg, Moscow,
Kiev, Riga, and Odessa are beginning to understand the “senselessness of the dream” of academic freedom amidst the
gloom of enslavement enshrouding the people. The infamous speech delivered
by General Vannovsky in Moscow, in which he denied the “rumours” that he had at one time promised something, the
unparalleled insolence of the St. Petersburg detective (who seized a
student in the Institute of Electrical Engineering in order to take from
him a letter he had received by messenger), the savage assault upon
Yaroslavl students by the police in the streets and in the
police-station—these and a thousand other facts sound their cry for
struggle, struggle, struggle against the whole of the autocratic
system. Patience became exhausted in the case of the Kharkov
veterinaries. The first-year students submitted a petition for the
dismissal of Professor Lagermark, on account of his bureaucratic attitude
towards their studies and his intolerable rudeness in which he went so far
as to fling copies of the syllabus in the faces of the students! Without
investigating the case, the government responded by expelling the entire
first-year student body from the Institute, and in addition slandered the
students by declaring in its report that they demanded the right to
appoint the professors. This roused the entire Kharkov student body to
action, and it was resolved to organise a strike and a demonstration. Between November 28 and December 2, Kharkov was for the
second time in the same year transformed into a field of battle between
the “Turks at home” and the people, which protested against
autocratic tyranny. On the one side, shouts of, “Down with the
autocracy!”, “Long live liberty!”— on the other, sabres,
knouts, and horses trampling upon the people. The police and Cossacks,
mercilessly assaulting all and sundry, irrespective of age and sex, gained
a victory over an unarmed crowd and are now triumphant....

Shall we allow them to triumph?

Workers! You know only too well the evil force that is tormenting the
Russian people. This evil force binds you hand and foot in your everyday
struggles against the employers for a better life and for human
dignity. This evil force snatches hundreds and thousands of your best comrades from your midst,
flings them into jail, sends them into banishment, and, as if in mockery,
declares them to be “persons of evil conduct”. This evil force
on May 7 fired on the workers of the Obukhov Works in St. Petersburg, when
they rose up with the cry, “We want liberty!”—and then staged
a farce of a trial, in order to send to penal servitude those heroes who
escaped the bullets. This evil force is assaulting students today, and
tomorrow it will fling itself with greater ferocity upon you. Lose no
time! Remember that you must support every protest and every struggle
against the bashi-bazouks of the autocratic government! Exert every effort
to come to an agreement with the demonstrating students, organise circles
for the rapid transmission of information and for the distribution of
leaflets, explain to all that you are struggling for the freedom of the
entire people.

When the flames of popular indignation and open struggle flare up, first
in one place and then in another, it is more than ever necessary to direct
upon them a powerful current of fresh air, to fan them into a great
conflagration!

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Notes:
[1]
The demonstration on December 6(18) 1876 was organised by workers and students
as a protest against the tyrannical actions of the autocracy. Plekhanov,
who took part in the demonstration, delivered a revolutionary speech. The
demonstration was broken up by the police, and many participants were
arrested and sentenced to banishment or penal servitude.

[2]
The slogan “ Land and Freedom ” was released at that time by an illegal organisation of the same name (Zemlya i Volya), founded
by the Narodniks in Russia in 1876. Among the leading members were
G. V. Plekhanov, A. D. Mikhailov, 0. V. Aptekman, A. A. Kvyatkovsky,
S. M. Kravchinsky (Stepoyak), S. L. Perovskaya, N. A. Morozov, and
V. N. Figner.

The Zemlya i Volya organisation viewed the peasantry as the chief
revolutionary force in Russia and sought to bring about an uprising of the
peasantry against tsarism. It conducted revolutionary activity in a number
of Russian gubernias—Tambov, Voronezh, and others. in 1879 a
terrorist grouping was formed in Zemlya i Volya which regarded individual
terror to be the chief means of fighting against tsarism. At a congress
held in Voronezh that year Zemlya i Volya split into two groups: Narodnaya
Volya (The People’s Will) and Chorny Peredel (General Redistribution).

[3]
N. A. Dobrolyubov (1836-1861)—Russian revolutionary
democrat, materialist philosopher and literary critic.