V. I.

Lenin

The strike that began at the Putiloy Works on January 3 is developing into one
of the most imposing manifestations of the working-class movement. Our
information so far is limited to reports in the foreign newspapers and the legal
Russian press. But even these sources leave no doubt that the strike has already
become a political event of tremendous importance.

The strike started quite spontaneously. It was one of the clashes between
labour and capital that are ever recurring. This time the impetus was the
dismissal of four workers by the factory management. The workers rose in a high
spirit of solidarity and demanded their reinstatement. The movement gained
rapidly. The legally functioning Russian Factory and Mill Workers’ Society is
taking part in it, and the strike is entering its next and higher phase.

This legal workers’ society has been an object of special attention on the part
of the Zubatovists. [2]

And now the Zubatov movement is outgrowing its bounds. Initiated by the police in the interests of the police,
in the interests of supporting the autocracy and demoralising the political
consciousness of the workers, this movement is turning against the autocracy and
is becoming an outbreak of the proletarian, class struggle.

The Social-Democrats long ago predicted that such would be the
inevitable outcome of the, Zubatov movement in our country. The legalisation of
the working-class movement, they said, would definitely benefit us Social-Democrats. It would draw certain sections of the workers into the movement,
especially the backward sections; it would help to rouse those who would not soon, perhaps ever, be roused by a socialist
agitator. And once drawn into the movement and having acquired an interest in
their own future, the workers would go further. The legal labour movement would
only be a new and broader basis for the Social-Democratic labour movement. [1]

Without a doubt, this is precisely what happened in St. Petersburg.

The movement owes its rapid expansion to two circumstances: first, the moment
was propitious for an economic struggle (the government was in pressing need of
the fulfilment of the orders placed by the War Ministry and the Admiralty);
secondly, the constitutional movement among the social strata was
expanding. Having begun the strike in defence of some dismissed comrades, the
workers took the further step of presenting broad economic demands. They
demanded an eight-hour day, a minimum wage (one ruble for men and seventy kopeks
for women), the abolition of compulsory overtime work (and double pay for
overtime), improvement of sanitary conditions and medical aid, etc. The strike
began to develop into a general strike.

The foreign papers report under date of Saturday, January 8 (21, new style),
that even according to official Russian information 174 mills, factories, and
workshops involving 96,000 workers are on strike.

We are witnessing one of the great clashes between the developing proletarian
class and its enemies, clashes that will leave their mark for many years to
come.

But things did not stop at economic demands. The movement has begun to assume a
political character. The local Social-Democrats have attempted (although, it
seems, still very feebly) to participate in it. At huge mass meetings of the
workers attended by several thousand people political demands have come to be
discussed and resolutions in favour of political freedom have been put to the
vote. The petition drawn up by the workers, it is reported, comprises
three parts. [3]

The first sets forth demands of rights for the people; the second, measures to relieve the people’s poverty; the
third, measures against the oppression of labour by capital. The first
part contains the following demands: inviolability of the person; freedom
of speech, assembly, and conscience; compulsory schooling at the expense
of the state; participation of elected representatives of the people in
the legislature; equality of all before the law; a responsible Cabinet;
abolition of the redemption payments [4] ; cheap credit;
gradual sharing out of the state lands among the people; an income-tax. (If
this report is true, it points to an extremely interesting interpretation of
the Social-Democratic programme in the minds of the masses or their not very
class-conscious leaders.) The correspondent of The Standard , an
English newspaper, reports that three meetings took place on January 5 (18)
(of which one was attended by 4,000 and an other by 2,000) and that the
following political demands were endorsed: (1) the immediate convocation of
a Constituent Assembly elected by a general vote; (2) an end to the war;
(3) full amnesty for political exiles and prisoners; (4) freedom of the
press and of conscience; (5) freedom of assembly and the right of
association. The foreign press for January 8 (21) reports that preparations
are under way for a demonstration to be held on Sunday, January 9 (22),
outside the Winter Palace, at which a petition is to be presented “to
the tsar himself”. Freedom or death, declare the workers. Moscow and
Libau are sending workers’ delegates to St. Petersburg.

Such is the limited and still unconfirmed information to have reached us to
date. Obviously the movement has not yet attained its zenith by far, and we must
await further events before we can form a definite opinion of what is
occurring. One is struck by the amazingly rapid shift of the movement from the
purely economic to the political ground, by the tremendous solidarity and
energy displayed by hundreds of thousands of proletarians—and all this,
notwithstanding the fact that conscious Social-Democratic influence is lacking
or is but slightly evident. The primitive character of the socialist views held
by some of the leaders of the movement and the tenacity with which some elements
of the working class cling to their naive faith in the tsar enhance rather than lessen the significance of the revolutionary
instinct now asserting itself among the proletariat. The political protest of
the leading oppressed class and its revolutionary energy break through all
obstacles, both external, in the form of police bans, and internal, in the form
of the ideological immaturity and backwardness of some of the leaders. The work
of the Social-Democrats during the last ten years and the lessons of the
working-class movement during this period have borne fruit; the ideas of
socialism and of the political struggle are streaming through the broadest
channels. The proletariat is proving in action that on the political scene in
Russia there are not only two forces (autocracy and bourgeois society), as some
in their faintness of heart have been ready to believe. It is showing us
manifestly superior forms of mobilisation of the revolutionary class forces;
this mobilisation, of course, is not to be classed with demonstrations of minor
importance in this or that municipal council, but with mass movements, like the
Rostov demonstration and the strikes of 1903 in the South. The mobilisation of
the revolutionary forces of the proletariat in this new and higher form is
bringing us with gigantic strides nearer to the moment when the proletariat will
even more decisively and more consciously join battle with the autocracy.

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Notes:
[1]
Cf. N. Lenin, What Is To Be Done? , pp. 86-88. (See present
edition, Vol. 5, pp. 454-56.— Ed .)— Lenin

[2]
Zubatov—colonel of the gendarmerie who tried to introduce a type
of “police socialism”. He set up pseudo-labour organisations under
the patronage of the gendarmerie and the police in order to divert the workers
from the revolutionary movement.

[3]
The petition of the St. Petersburg workers to the tsar was
printed in leaflet form and reprinted in Vperyod , No. 4, January 31
(48), 1905.

[4]
Redemption payments—payments which the peasants had to make to the landlords for the allotments which they received
under the Regulations of February 19, 1861, abolishing serfdom. The redemption
payments were considerably in excess of the actual value of the allotments. In
making them, the peasants, in actuality, were not only paying the landlords for
the land which they had been using since time immemorial, but were paying for
their emancipation as well.