V. I.

Lenin

Geneva, Wednesday, January 25 (12)

Eventsof the greatest historical importance are developing in Russia. The
proletariat has risen against tsarism. The proletariat was driven to revolt by
the government. There can hardly be any doubt now that the government
deliberately allowed the strike movement to develop and a wide demonstration to
be started more or less without hindrance in order to bring matters to a point
where military force could be used. Its manoeuvre was successful. Thousands of
killed and wounded—such is the toll of Bloody Sunday, January 9, in
St. Petersburg. The army defeated unarmed workers, women, and children. The army
vanquished the enemy by shooting prostrate workers. “We have taught them
a good lesson!” the tsar’s henchmen and their European flunkeys from
among the conservative bourgeoisie say with consummate cynicism.

Yes,it was a great lesson, one which the Russian proletariat will not
forget. The most uneducated, backward sections of the working class, who naïvely
trusted the tsar and sincerely wished to put peacefully before “the tsar
himself” the petition of a tormented people, were all taught a lesson by
the troops led by the tsar or his uncle, the Grand Duke Vladimir.

Theworking class has received a momentous lesson in civil war; the
revolutionary education of the proletariat made more progress in one day than it
could have made in months and years of drab, humdrum, wretched existence. The
slogan of the heroic St. Petersburg proletariat, “Death or freedom!” is
reverberating throughout Russia. Events are developing with astonishing rapidity. The general strike in St. Petersburg
is spreading. All industrial, public, and political activities are
paralysed. On Monday, January 10, still more violent clashes occurred
between the workers and the military. Contrary to the mendacious
government reports, blood is flowing in many parts of the capital. The
workers of Kolpino are rising. The proletariat is arming itself and the
people. The workers are said to have seized the Sestroretsk Arsenal. They
are providing themselves with revolvers, forging their tools into weapons,
and procuring bombs for a desperate bid for freedom. The general strike is
spreading to the provinces. Ten thousand have already ceased work in
Moscow, and a general strike has been called there for tomorrow (Thursday,
January 13). An uprising has broken out in Riga. The workers are demonstrating in Lodz, an uprising is being prepared in Warsaw,
proletarian demonstrations are taking place in Helsingfors. Unrest is
growing among the workers and the strike is spreading in Baku, Odessa,
Kiev, Kharkov, Koyno, and Vilna. In Sevastopol, the naval stores and
arsenals are ablaze, and the troops refuse to shoot at the
mutineers. Strikes in Revel and in Saratov. Workers and reservists clash
with the troops in Radom.

Therevolution is spreading. The government is beginning to lose its head. From
the policy of bloody repression it is attempting to change over to economic
concessions and to save itself by throwing a sop to the workers or promising the
nine-hour day. But the lesson of Bloody Sunday cannot be forgotten. The demand
of the insurgent St. Petersburg workers—the immediate convocation of a
Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, direct, and equal suffrage by
secret ballot—must become the demand of all the striking
workers. Immediate overthrow of the government— this was the slogan with
which even the St. Petersburg workers who had believed in the tsar answered the
massacre of January 9; they answered through their leader, the priest Georgi
Gapon, who declared after that bloody day: “We no longer have a tsar. A
river of blood divides the tsar from the people. Long live the fight for
freedom!”

Longlive the revolutionary proletariat! say we. The general strike is rousing
and rallying increasing masses of the working class and the urban poor. The arming of the people is becoming an
immediate task of the revolutionary moment.

Onlyan armed people can be the real bulwark of popular liberty. The sooner the
proletariat succeeds in arming, and the longer it holds its fighting positions
as striker and revolutionary, the sooner will the army begin to waver; more and
more soldiers will at last begin to realise what they are doing and they will
join sides with the people against the fiends, against the tyrant, against the
murderers of defenceless workers and of their wives and children. No matter
what the outcome of the present uprising in St. Petersburg may be, it will, in
any case, be the first step to a wider, more conscious, better organised
uprising. The government may possibly succeed in putting off the day of
reckoning, but the postponement will only make the next step of the
revolutionary onset more stupendous. This will only mean that the
Social-Democrats will take advantage of this postponement to rally the
organised fighters and spread the news about the start made by the
St. Petersburg workers. The proletariat will join in the struggle, it will quit
mill and factory and will prepare arms for itself. The slogans of the struggle
for freedom will be carried more and more widely into the midst of the urban
poor and of the millions of peasants. Revolutionary committees will be set up
at every factory, in every city district, in every large village. The people
in revolt will overthrow all the government institutions of the tsarist autocracy
and proclaim the immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly.

Theimmediate arming of the workers and of all citizens in general, the
preparation and organisation of the revolutionary forces for overthrowing the
government authorities and institutions—this is the practical basis on
which revolutionaries of every variety can and must unite to strike the common
blow. The proletariat must always pursue its own independent path, never
weakening its connection with the Social-Democratic Party, always bearing in
mind its great, ultimate objective, which is to rid mankind of all
exploitation. But this independence of the Social Democratic proletarian party
will never cause us to forget the importance of a common revolutionary onset at
the

moment of actual revolution. We Social-Democrats can and must act
independently of the bourgeois-democratic revolutionaries and guard the
class independence of the proletariat. But we must go hand in hand with
them during the up rising, when direct blows are being struck at tsarism, when resistance is offered
the troops, when the bastilles of the accursed enemy of the entire Russian
people are stormed.

Theproletariat of the whole world is now looking eagerly towards the
proletariat of Russia. The overthrow of tsarism in Russia, so valiantly begun
by our working class, will be the turning-point in the history of all countries;
it will facilitate the task of the workers of all nations, in all states, in all
parts of the globe. Let, therefore, every Social-Democrat, every
class-conscious worker bear in mind the immense tasks of the broad popular
struggle that now rest upon his shoulders. Let him not forget that he represents
also the needs and interests of the whole peasantry, of all who toil, of all
who are exploited, of the whole people against their enemy. The proletarian
heroes of St. Petersburg now stand as an example to all.

Longlive the revolution!

Longlive the insurgent proletariat!

---
Notes: