We live under accursed conditions, when such a thing is possible: a major party worker, the pride of the party, a comrade who gave his entire life selflessly to the workers' cause, disappears without a trace. And his closest people—his wife and mother, his closest comrades—go for years not knowing what became of him: whether he is languishing somewhere on a penal labor convict, perished in some prison, or died a heroic death in a clash with the enemy. This was the case with Ivan Vasilievich, shot by Rennenkampf. We learned of his death only very recently.

The name of Ivan Vasilievich is close and dear to more than one social-democrat. All who knew him loved and respected him for his energy, his freedom from empty phrases, his deep steadfast revolutionariness, and his ardent devotion to the cause. A Petersburg worker, in 1895 he, together with a group of other conscious comrades, energetically carries on work beyond the Neva Barrier among the workers of the Semyannikov, Aleksandrov, and Glass factories, establishes circles, sets up libraries, and himself constantly studies with passion.

All his thoughts are directed toward how to expand the work. He takes an active part in compiling the first agitational leaflet issued in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1894, a leaflet addressed to the Semyannikov workers, and personally distributes it. When the "Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class"[43] is formed in St. Petersburg, Ivan Vasilievich becomes one of its most active members and works in it until his arrest. The idea of creating a political newspaper abroad, which would serve the cause of uniting and strengthening the social-democratic party, was discussed together with him by his old comrades from Petersburg work—the founders of *Iskra*[44]—and met with his warmest support. While Ivan Vasilievich remains at large, *Iskra* does not lack purely working-class correspondences. Look through the first 20 issues of *Iskra*, all these correspondences from Shui, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Orekovo-Zuevo and other places in central Russia: almost all of them passed through the hands of Ivan Vasilievich, who strove to establish the closest ties between *Iskra* and the workers. Ivan Vasilievich was *Iskra*'s most diligent correspondent and its ardent supporter. From the central region Babushkin moves to the south, to Ekaterinoslav, where he is arrested and imprisoned in the Aleksandrovsk jail. From Aleksandrovsk he escapes together with another comrade, having sawed through a window grating. Knowing no foreign language, he makes his way to London, where the *Iskra* editorial office was located at that time. Much was discussed there, many questions were considered jointly. But it was not Ivan Vasilievich's lot to attend the Second Congress of the party… prison and exile knocked him out of the ranks for a long time. The rising revolutionary wave brought forth new workers, new party figures, while Babushkin lived at that time in the distant north, in Verkhoiansk, cut off from party life. He did not waste his time; he studied, prepared for struggle, worked with the laborers, his comrades in exile, strove to make them conscious social-democrats and Bolsheviks. In 1905 an amnesty came, and Babushkin set out for Russia. But in Siberia too at that time struggle was raging, and such people as Babushkin were needed there. He joined the Irkutsk Committee and threw himself headlong into work. He had to speak at meetings, conduct social-democratic agitation, and organize an uprising. When Babushkin and five other comrades—whose names have not come down to us—were transporting a large cargo of weapons to Chita[7] in a separate railway car, the train was overtaken by Rennenkampf's[8] punitive expedition, and all six, without any trial, were immediately shot on the edge of a hastily dug common grave. They died like heroes. Their death was recounted by soldier-witnesses and railroad workers who were on that same train. Babushkin fell victim to the bestial brutality of a tsarist oprichnina, but as he died, he knew that the cause to which he had given his entire life would not die, that it would be carried on by dozens, hundreds of thousands, millions of other hands, that other worker comrades would die for this cause, that they would struggle until they conquered…

There are people who have concocted and spread the fable that the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party is a party of "intellectuals," that workers are separated from it, that workers in Russia are social-democrats without social-democracy, that this was especially true before the revolution and to a considerable extent during the revolution. The liberals spread this falsehood out of hatred for the revolutionary struggle of the masses, which the RSDWP led in 1905, and some socialists take up this lying theory out of foolishness or thoughtlessness. The biography of Ivan Vasilievich Babushkin, the ten-year social-democratic work of this worker-Iskrist, serves as a vivid refutation of liberal falsehood. I. V. Babushkin is one of those advanced workers who, ten years before the revolution, began to create a workers' social-democratic party. Without the tireless, heroically-persistent work of such advanced workers in the proletarian masses, the RSDWP would not have existed not only for ten years but for ten months. Only thanks to the activity of such advanced workers, only thanks to their support, did the RSDWP grow by 1905 into a party that became inseparably merged with the proletariat in the great October and December days, a party that preserved this connection through worker deputies not only in the Second but also in the Third, Black Hundred Duma.

The liberals (Cadets) wish to convert into a people's hero the recently deceased chairman of the First Duma, S. A. Muromtsev. We social-democrats must not pass up the opportunity to express contempt and hatred toward the tsarist government, which persecuted even such moderate and harmless officials as Muromtsev. Muromtsev was only a liberal official. He was not even a democrat. He feared the revolutionary struggle of the masses. He awaited freedom for Russia not from such a struggle but from the good will of tsarist autocracy, from agreement with this worst and merciless enemy of the Russian people. It is ridiculous to see people's heroes of the Russian revolution in such people.

But such people's heroes do exist. These are people like Babushkin. These are people who devoted themselves for not one or two years, but for whole ten years before the revolution entirely to the struggle for the liberation of the working class. These are people who did not squander themselves on useless terrorist undertakings of individuals, but acted persistently, unswerving among the proletarian masses, helping to develop their consciousness, their organization, their revolutionary self-activity. These are people who stood at the head of armed mass struggle against tsarist autocracy when the crisis came, when the revolution broke out, when millions and millions came into motion. All that was wrested from tsarist autocracy was wrested exclusively through the struggle of the masses, led by such people as Babushkin.

Without such people the Russian people would have remained forever a people of slaves, a people of bondsmen. With such people the Russian people will win itself complete liberation from all exploitation.

The fifth anniversary of the December uprising of 1905 has passed. Let us celebrate this anniversary, remembering the advanced workers who fell in the struggle with the enemy. We make a request of worker comrades to collect and send us recollections of the struggle of that time and additional information about Babushkin, as well as about other social-democratic workers who fell in the uprising of 1905. We intend to publish a pamphlet with biographies of such workers. Such a pamphlet will be the best answer to all the faint-hearted and those who belittle the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. Such a pamphlet will be the best reading for young workers, who will learn from it how every conscious worker ought to live and act.

*Rabochaya Gazeta*, No. 2, December 18 (31), 1910

Printed from the text of *Rabochaya Gazeta*