V. I.

Lenin

The Drafting of 183 Students Into the Army [1]

Thenewspapers of January 11 published the official announcement of the
Ministry of Education on the drafting into the army of 183 students of
Kiev University as a punishment for “riotous assembly.” The
Provisional Regulations of July 29, 1899—this menace to the student
world and to society—are being put into execution less than eighteen
months after their promulgation, and the government seems to hasten to
justify itself for applying a measure of unexampled severity by publishing
a ponderous indictment in which the misdeeds of the students are painted
in the blackest possible colours.

Eachmisdeed is more ghastly than the preceding one! In the summer a
general students’ congress was convened in Odessa to discuss a plan to
organise all Russian students for the purpose of giving expression to
protests against various aspects of academic, public, and political
life. As a punishment for these criminal political designs all the student
delegates were arrested and deprived of their documents. But the unrest
does not subside—it grows and persists in breaking out in
many higher educational institutions. The students desire to
discuss and conduct their common affairs freely and independently. Their
authorities—with the soulless formalism for which Russian officials
have always been noted—retaliate with petty vexations, rouse the
discontent of the students to the highest pitch, and automatically stimulate the thoughts of the youths who have not
yet become submerged in the morass of bourgeois stagnation to protest
against the whole system of police and official tyranny.

The Kiev students demand the dismissal of a professor who took the place
of a colleague that had left. The administration resists, provokes
students to “assemblies and demonstrations” and—yields. The students call a meeting to discuss what could make
possible so horrendous a case—two “white linings” [2] (according to reports) raped a young girl. The administration sentences
the “ringleaders” to solitary confinement in the students’
detention cell. These refuse to submit. They are expelled. A crowd of
students demonstratively accompany the expelled students to the railway
station. A new meeting is called; the students remain until evening and
refuse to disperse so long as the rector does not show up. The
Vice-Governor and Chief of Gendarmerie arrive on the scene at the head of
a detachment of troops, who surround the University and occupy the main
hall. The rector is called. The students demand—a constitution,
perhaps? No. They demand that the punishment of solitary confinement
should not be carried out and that the expelled students should be
reinstated. The participants at the meeting have their names taken and are
allowed to go home.

Ponderover this astonishing lack of proportion between the modesty and
innocuousness of the demands put forward by the students and the panicky
dismay of the government, which behaves as if the axe were already being
laid to the props of its power. Nothing gives our “omnipotent”
government away so much as this display of consternation. By this it
proves more convincingly than does any “criminal manifesto” to
all who have eyes to see and ears to hear that it realises the complete
instability of its position, and that it relies only on the bayonet and
the knout to save it from the indignation of the people. Decades of
experience have taught the government that it is surrounded by inflammable
material and that a mere spark, a mere protest against the students’
detention cell, may start a conflagration. This being the case, it is
clear that the punishment had to be an exemplary one: Draft hundreds of
students into the army! “Put the drill sergeant in place of

Voltaire!” [3] —the formula has not become obsolete; on the contrary, the twentieth century is
destined to see its real application.

Thisnew punitive measure, new in its attempt to revive that which has
long gone out of fashion, provokes many thoughts and comparisons. Some
three generations ago, in the reign of Nicholas I, drafting into the army
was a natural punishment entirely in keeping with the whole system of
Russian serf-owning society. Young nobles were sent to the army and
compelled to serve as private soldiers, losing the privileges of their
estate until they earned officer’s rank. Peasants were also drafted into
the army, and it meant a long term of penal servitude, where “Green

Street” [4] with its inhuman torment awaited them. It is now more than a quarter of a
century since “universal” military service was introduced,
which at the time was acclaimed as a great democratic reform. Real
universal military service that is not merely on paper is undoubtedly a
democratic reform; by abolishing the social-estate system it would make
all citizens equal. But if such were the case, could drafting into the
army be employed as a punishment? When the government converts military
service into a form of punishment, does it not thereby prove that we are
much nearer to the old recruiting system than to universal
military service? The Provisional Regulations of 1899 tear off the
pharisaical mask and expose the real Asiatic nature even of those of our
institutions which most resemble European institutions. In reality,we have
not and never had universal military service, because the privileges
enjoyed by birth and wealth create innumerable exceptions. In reality, we
have not and never had anything resembling equality of citizens in
military service. On the contrary, the barracks are completely saturated
with the spirit of most revolting absence of rights. The soldier from the
working class or the peasantry is completely defenceless; his human
dignity is trodden underfoot, he is robbed, he is beaten, beaten, and
again beaten—such is his constant fare. Those with influential
connections and money enjoy privileges and exemptions. It is not
surprising, therefore, that drafting into this school of tyranny and
violence can be a punishment, even a very severe punishment, amounting
almost to deprivation of rights.

The government thinks it will teach the “rebels” discipline in
this school. But is it not mistaken in its calculations? Will not this
school of Russian military service become the military school of the
revolution? Not all the students, of course, possess the stamina to go
through the whole coarse of training in this school. Some will break down
under the heavy burden, fall in combat with the military authorities;
others—the feeble and flabby—will be cowed into submission by
the barracks. But there will be those whom it will harden, whose outlook
will be broadened, who will be compelled to ponder and profoundly sense
their aspirations towards liberty. They will experience the whole weight
of tyranny and oppression on their own backs when their human dignity will
be at the mercy of a drill sergeant who very frequently takes deliberate
delight in tormenting the “educated.” They will see with their own
eyes what the position of the common people is, their hearts will be rent
by the scenes of tyranny and violence they will be compelled to witness
every day, and they will understand that the injustices and petty
tyrannies from which the students suffer are mere drops in the ocean of
oppression the people are forced to suffer. Those who will understand this
will, on leaving military service, take a Hannibal’s vow [5]
to fight with the vanguard of the people for the emancipation of the
entire people from despotism.

Thehumiliating character of this new punishment is no less outrageous
than its cruelty. In declaring the students who protested against
lawlessness to be mere rowdies—even as it declared the exiled
striking workers to be persons of depraved demeanour—the government
has thrown down a challenge to all who still possess a sense of
decency. Read the government communication. It bristles with such words as
disorder, brawling, outrage, shamelessness, licence. On the one hand, it
speaks of criminal political aims and the desire for political protest;
and on the other, it slanders the students as mere rowdies who must he
disciplined. This is a slap in the face of Russian public opinion, whose
sympathy for the students is very well known to the government. The only
appropriate reply the students can make is to carry out the threat of the
Kiev students, to organise a determined general student strike in all
higher educational institutions in support of the demand for the repeal of the Provisional
Regulations of July 29, 1899.

Butit is not the students alone who must reply to the government. Through
the government’s own conduct the incident has become something much
greater than a mere student affair. The government turns to public opinion
as though to boast of the severity of the punishment it inflicts, as
though to mock at all aspirations towards liberty. All conscious elements
among all strata of the people must take up this challenge, if they do not
desire to fall to the level of dumb slaves bearing their insults in
silence. At the head of these conscious elements stand the advanced
workers and the Social-Democratic organisations inseparably linked with
them. The working class constantly suffers immeasurably greater injuries
and insults from the police lawlessness with which the students have now
come into such sharp conflict. The working class has already begun the
struggle for its emancipation. It must remember that this great struggle
imposes great obligations upon it, that it cannot emancipate itself
without emancipating the whole people from despotism, that it is its duty
first and foremost to respond to every political protest and render every
support to that protest. The best representatives of our educated classes
have proved—and sealed the proof with the blood of thousands of
revolutionaries tortured to death by the government—their ability
and readiness to shake from their feet the dust of bourgeois society and
join the ranks of the socialists. The worker who can look on indifferently
while the government sends troops against the student youth is unworthy of
the name of socialist. The students came to the assistance of the
workers—the workers must come to the aid of the students. The
government wishes to deceive the people when it declares that an attempt
at political protest is mere brawling. The workers must publicly declare
and explain to the broad masses that this is a lie; that the real hotbed
of violence, outrage, and licence is the autocratic Russian Government,
the tyranny of the police and the officials.

Themanner in which this protest is to be organised must be decided by the
local Social-Democratic organisations and workers’ groups. The most
practical forms of protest are the distribution, scattering, and posting up of leaflets, and the
organisation of meetings to which as far as possible all classes of
society should be invited. It would be desirable, however, where strong
and well-established organisations exist, to attempt a broader and more
open protest by means of a public demonstration. The demonstration
organised last December 1, outside the premises of the newspaper
Yuzhny Krai [6] in Kharkov, may serve as a good example of such a protest. The jubilee of
that filthy sheet, which baits everything that aspires to light and
freedom and glorifies every bestiality of our government, was being
celebrated at the time. The large crowd assembled in front of Yuzhny Krai , solemnly tore up copies of the paper, tied them to the tails of
horses, wrapped them round dogs, threw stones and stink-bombs containing
sulphuretted hydrogen at the windows, and shouted: “Down with the
corrupt press!” Such celebrations are well deserved, not only by
the corrupt newspapers, but by all our government offices. If they but
rarely celebrate anniversaries of official benevolence, they constantly
deserve the celebration of the people’s retribution. Every manifestation
of governmental tyranny and violence is a legitimate motive for such a
demonstration. The people must not let the government’s announcement of
its punishment of the students go unanswered!

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Notes:
[1]
We were going to press when the official announcement was published. — Lenin

[2]
“ White linings ”—the name given in tsarist Russia to monarchist-minded students from aristocratic and bourgeois circles who
conducted a struggle against the democratic section of the students,
supporters of the revolutionary movement. The name derived from the white
silk linings of their uniforms.

[3]
The words of Colonel Skalozub, a character in A. S. Griboyedov’s comedy
Wit Works Woe .

[4]
“ Green Street ”—a form of corporal punishment employed
in the army of feudal Russia. The condemned man was tied to a rifle and
made to run the gauntlet between two ranks of soldiers who beat him with
sticks or green switches. This form of punishment was particularly
widespread under Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55).

[5]
Hannibal’s vow —unwavering determination to fight to the
end. The Carthagenian general, Hannibal, made a vow not to cease the
struggle against Rome until his dying day.

[6]
Yuzhny Krai ( Southern Region )—a daily newspaper dealing with social, literary, and political problems founded in Kharkov
in 1880. The paper, published and edited by A. A. Yuzefovich, an extreme
reactionary, upheld conservative, royalist views.