**Date:** 1908
**Source:** Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 26
**Pages:** 71-74

PROCLAMATION OF 1908: "MAY FIRST"¹

**RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC WORKERS' PARTY**

*Proletarians of all countries, unite!*

## MAY FIRST

Comrade workers! The day of the great holiday of workers throughout the world is approaching. On May First they celebrate their awakening to light and knowledge, their unification into one fraternal union for the struggle against all oppression, against all arbitrary rule, against all exploitation, for the socialist organization of society. All who toil, who feed the rich and the noble with their labor, who spend their lives in backbreaking work for meager wages, who never enjoy the fruits of their own labor, who live like pack animals amid the luxury and splendor of our civilization — all of them extend their hands for the struggle for the liberation and happiness of workers. Down with enmity between workers of different nationalities or different religions! Such enmity is profitable only to robbers and tyrants, who live by the darkness and disunity of the proletariat. Jew and Christian, Armenian and Tatar, Pole and Russian, Finn and Swede, Latvian and German — all, all march together under one common banner of socialism. All workers are brothers, and in their strong union lies the sole guarantee for the welfare and happiness of all toiling and oppressed humanity. On May First this union of workers of all countries, international social-democracy, reviews its forces and rallies for new, unceasing, unwavering struggle for freedom, equality, and brotherhood.

Comrades! We now stand in Russia on the eve of great events. We have entered into the final, desperate battle with the autocratic tsarist government, and we must bring this battle to a victorious conclusion. Look at the misfortunes to which the Russian people have been brought by this government of monsters and tyrants, this government of corrupt courtiers and hangers-on of capital! The tsarist government has plunged the Russian people into a senseless war against Japan. Hundreds of thousands of young lives have been torn from the people and destroyed in the Far East. There are no words to describe all the calamities that this war brings with it. And what is it being waged for? For Manchuria, seized from China by our plundering tsarist government! For foreign land Russian blood is being shed and our country is being ruined. Life becomes ever harder for the worker and peasant, the noose tightens ever more around them by capitalists and officials — yet the tsarist government sends the people to rob foreign lands. Incompetent tsarist generals with corrupt officials have destroyed the Russian fleet, squandered hundreds and thousands of millions of the people's wealth, lost entire armies — yet the war continues and brings new victims. The people are ruined, industry and commerce come to a standstill, famine and cholera loom ahead, yet the tsarist autocratic government in wild blindness continues on the old path; it is ready to destroy Russia merely to save a handful of monsters and tyrants. Beyond the war with Japan, it begins a second war — war against the entire Russian people.

Never before has Russia experienced such an awakening from slumber, degradation, and bondage as now. All classes of society have stirred — from workers and peasants to landowners and capitalists. Voices of indignation have been raised everywhere — in Petersburg and the Caucasus, in Poland and Siberia. The people everywhere demand an end to the war; the people demand the establishment of free popular rule, the convocation of deputies from all citizens without exception to a Constituent Assembly, for the appointment of a popular government, for the people's deliverance from the abyss toward which tsarist autocracy is pushing it. Petersburg workers, numbering up to two hundred thousand, went to the tsar with the priest Georgy Gapon on Sunday, January 9th, to present these popular demands. The tsar received the workers as enemies; the tsar shot thousands of unarmed workers in the streets of Petersburg. Struggle is now raging throughout Russia; workers strike, demanding freedom and a better life; blood flows in Riga and in Poland, on the Volga and in the south; peasants are rising everywhere. The struggle for freedom is becoming a struggle of the entire people.

The tsarist government has gone mad. It wants to borrow money to continue the war, but no one will lend it anything. It promises to convoke popular representatives, but in reality everything remains the same — the same persecutions continue, the same arbitrary rule of officials, no free public meetings, no free popular newspapers, the prisons are not opened where those who fought for the workers' cause languish. The tsarist government tries to incite one people against another; it organized a massacre in Baku by slandering the Tatars against the Armenians; now it is preparing a new massacre against the Jews, kindling hatred for them among the ignorant people.

Comrade workers! We will not allow the Russian people to be outraged any longer. We shall stand in defense of freedom, we shall repel all who seek to divert the people's anger from our true enemy. We shall raise an insurrection with arms in hand to overthrow the tsarist government and win freedom for all the people. To arms, workers and peasants! Organize secret meetings, form armed squads, arm yourselves with whatever weapons you can obtain, send trusted men to confer with the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party! Let May First of this year be for us a holiday of popular insurrection — let us prepare for it, let us await the signal for decisive assault on the tyrant. Down with the tsarist government! We shall overthrow it and appoint a temporary revolutionary government to convoke a popular Constituent Assembly. Let people's deputies be elected by universal, direct, equal, and secret ballot. Let all fighters for freedom come out of the prisons and return from exile. Let public meetings be held openly and popular newspapers be printed without the supervision of accursed officials. Let the entire people be armed, let every worker be given a rifle, so that the people themselves, not a handful of robbers, may decide their own fate. Let free peasant committees be organized in the villages to overthrow the feudal landlord power, to free the people from bureaucratic outrages, to return to the peasants the lands that have been taken from them.

This is what social-democrats want, this is what they call people to fight for with arms in hand: for complete freedom, for a democratic republic, for an eight-hour working day, for peasant committees. Prepare, then, for the great battle, comrade workers; stop the factories and plants on May 1st, or take up arms in accordance with the advice of the committees of the Social-Democratic Workers' Party. The hour of insurrection has not yet struck, but it is no longer far off. Workers throughout the world now watch with bated breath the heroic Russian proletariat, which has made immeasurable sacrifices for the cause of freedom. On the memorable day of January 9th, Petersburg workers already proclaimed: freedom or death! Workers of all Russia, we shall repeat this great battle cry; we shall not shrink from any sacrifices; we shall pass through insurrection to freedom, through freedom to socialism!

Long live May First! Long live international revolutionary social-democracy!

Long live the freedom of the workers and peasants! Long live the democratic republic! Down with tsarist autocracy!

1905

*Bureau of the Majority Committees*
*Editorial Board of "Vperyod"*

¹ The proclamation "May First" was written by Lenin in Geneva before the opening of the Third Congress, i.e., before April 25 (12), 1905. Concerning the proclamation, A. A. Bogdanov wrote to Lenin in Geneva from London on a postcard: "... In your draft of the May First leaflet, I would suggest replacing the expression 'And why are we fighting' in the paragraph devoted to the war with some other phrase in which the word 'we' would be avoided, as it seems to link us with the authors of the war"... In the text of the leaflet the phrase "And why are we fighting" was replaced with the words: "And for what is it being waged?" The document (archive IMEL no. 298), published on pp. 69-70 of Lenin Coll. Works Vol. XVI, appears to be the plan for this present leaflet. The proclamation is printed in the Collection according to the text of the printed edition. The second part of the proclamation, from the words "Down with the tsarist government!" to the end, including the signatures, was published by the Baku Committee as an independent leaflet under the heading "What do we want?"