V. I.

Lenin

Thefirst wave of the revolutionary storm is receding. We are on the eve of an
inescapable, inevitable second wave. The proletarian movement is spreading wider
and has now reached the remotest outlying regions of the country. Unrest and
discontent have seized the most diverse sections of society, even the most
backward. Commerce and industry are paralysed, schools are closed, and the
Zemstvo employees, following the example of the workers, have gone on
strike. In the lulls between the mass actions, individual terrorist acts are, as
usual, becoming more frequent: the attempt on the life of the Odessa Chief of
Police, the assassination in the Caucasus, the assassination of the Senate
Procurator in Helsingfors. The government is veering from the policy of the
bloody knout to a policy of promises. It tries to fool at least part of the
workers with the tsar’s farcical reception of a delegation. [1]

It tries to divert public attention with war news, and it orders Kuropatkin to start an offensive
on the Hunho. On January 9 the massacre in St. Petersburg took place; the 12th
saw the launching of the offensive, from the military point of view absolutely
senseless, which ended in another serious defeat of the tsar’s generals. The
Russians were repulsed with casualties, which even according to the Novoye Vremya correspondent amounted to 13,000 men, or about twice as many as the
Japanese. There is the same corruption and demoralisation in the handling of
military affairs in Manchuria that there is in St. Petersburg. In the foreign
press, dispatches confirming and denying Kuropatkin’s quarrel with Grippenberg
alternate with dispatches confirming and denying the news that the Grand Ducal party is
alive to the danger which the war is creating for the autocracy and wants peace
as quickly as possible.

Smallwonder that under such circumstances even the most sober bourgeois papers
of Europe never stop talking of a revolution in Russia. The revolution is
growing and maturing with a rapidity unknown, before January 9. Whether the next
wave will surge up tomorrow, the day after, or months hence, depends on quite a
number of unpredictable circumstances. All the more urgent, therefore, is the
task of summing up the revolutionary events and drawing from them the lessons
that may stand us in good stead much sooner than some are inclined to expect.

Toevaluate correctly the revolutionary events we should have to make a general
survey of the most recent history of our working-class movement. Nearly twenty
years ago, in 1885, the first big workers’ strikes took place in the central
manufacturing district, at the Morozov Mills and else where. At that time Katkov
wrote that the labour question had emerged in Russia. With what astonishing
speed the proletariat has developed, passing from economic struggles to
political demonstrations, from demonstrations to the revolutionary onset! Let us
recall the chief mile stones along the road traversed. 1885—widespread
strikes, in which an insignificant number of socialists participated, acting
entirely individually, not united in any organisations. Public sentiment over
the strikes compelled Katkov, that faithful watchdog of the autocracy, to speak,
in reference to the trial, about a “one-hundred-and-one gun salute in
honour of the labour question which has emerged in Russia”. The government
made economic concessions. 1891—participation of the St. Petersburg
workers in the demonstration, at Shelgunov’s funeral [6] ; political speeches at the St. Petersburg May Day rally. We had here a
Social-Democratic demonstration of the advanced workers in the absence of a
mass movement. 1896—the St. Petersburg strike involving
scores of thousands of workers. A mass movement and the beginnings of street
agitation, this time with the participation of an en tire Social-Democratic
organisation. Small as this almost exclusively student organisation may have
been in comparison with our present-day party, its class-conscious, systematic,
Social-Democratic intervention and leadership gave this movement
tremendous scope and significance, as compared with the Morozov
strike. Again the government made economic concessions. A firm basis was
achieved for a strike movement throughout Russia. The revolutionary
intelligentsia turned Social-Democrat en masse. The Social-Democratic Party was founded. 1901—the workers came to the aid of the
students. A demonstration movement set in. The proletariat carried its
rallying call, “Down with the Autocracy!”, into the streets. The
radical intelligentsia definitely broke up into three parts—liberal,
revolutionary-bourgeois, and Social-Democratic. The participation of revolutionary Social-Democratic organisations in the demonstrations became
more and more widespread, active, and direct. 1902—the huge Rostov
strike developed into an impressive demonstration. The political movement
of the proletariat was no longer an adjunct of the movement of
the intellectuals, of the students, but grew directly out of the
strike. The participation of organised revolutionary Social-Democrats became still more
active. The proletariat won for it self and for the revolutionary
Social-Democrats of its committee the right to hold mass meetings
in the streets. For the first time the proletariat stood as a class against
all other classes and against the tsarist government. 1903—again
strikes merged with political demonstrations, but now on a still broader
basis. The strikes involved an entire district and more than a hundred
thousand workers; in a number of cities political mass meetings were
repeatedly held in the course of the strikes. There was a feeling of being
on the eve of barricades (the opinion which the local Social-Democrats
expressed on the movement in Kiev in 1903 [7] ).

But the eve proved rather protracted, teaching us, as it were, that it takes powerful
classes sometimes months and years to gather strength; putting, as it were,
the sceptical intellectual adherents of Social-Democracy to the test. And
sure enough, the intellectualist wing of our Party, the new-Iskrists or,
what amounts to the same thing, the new-Rabocheye Dyelo -ists, have
already begun to seek “higher types” of demonstrations, in the
form of agreements between the workers and the Zemstvo people not to create
panic fear.

With the lack of principle characteristic of all opportunists, the new-Iskrists
have now talked themselves into the preposterous, incredibly preposterous,
thesis that in the political arena there are two (!) forces: the bureaucracy
and the bourgeoisie (see the Iskra editors’ second letter in
connection with the Zemstvo campaign). The opportunists of the new
Iskra , these believers in carpe diem , have forgotten that the
proletariat constitutes an independent force! Came the year 1905, and January 9
once again showed up all such backsliding types of the intelligentsia brood. The
proletarian movement at once rose to a higher plane. The general strike rallied
at least a million workers all over Russia. The political demands of the
Social-Democrats found their way even to the sections of the working class that
still believed in the tsar. The proletariat broke down the framework of the
police-sponsored Zubatov movement, and virtually the entire membership of the
legal workers’ society founded for the purpose of combating the revolution took
the path of revolution together with Gapon. Strikes and demonstrations began to
develop into an uprising before our very eyes. The participation of
organised revolutionary Social-Democracy was incomparably more in evidence than
in the previous stages of the movement; yet it was still weak, weak in
comparison with the overwhelming demand of the active proletarian masses for
Social-Democratic leadership.

Altogether,the two movements, strikes and demonstrations, combining in various
forms and on various occasions, grew in breadth and in depth, became more and
more revolutionary, came ever more closer in practice to the general armed
uprising of the people, of which revolutionary Social-Democracy had long
spoken. We drew this conclusion from the events of January 9 in

Nos. 4 [2] and 5 of Vperyod. The St. Petersburg workers drew this conclusion
for themselves, forthwith and directly. On January 10 they forced their way
into a legal printing office, set up the following leaflet sent to us by
the St. Petersburg comrades, printed it in over 10,000 copies, and
distributed it throughout St. Petersburg. The text of this remarkable
leaflet

follows. [3]

Thisappeal needs no comment. The initiative of the revolutionary proletariat
found full expression here. The call of the St. Petersburg workers was not
answered as quickly as they wished; it will have to be repeated time and
again; the attempts to carry it out will more than once result in
failure. But the tremendous significance of the fact that the task has
been set by the workers themselves is in disputable. The gain made by the
revolutionary movement, which has brought about a realisation of the
practical urgency of this task and made it an essential issue of every
popular movement, is a gain that nothing can now take away from the
proletariat.

Itis worth dwelling on the history of the idea of insurrection. The new
Iskra has given us so many nebulous platitudes on this question,
beginning with the famous leader in issue No. 62, it has presented us with so
many muddled opportunist ideas, entirely worthy of our old acquaintance
Martynov, that the precise reproduction of the old formulation of the question
is of particular importance. In any case,it is impossible to keep track of all
the platitudes and muddled ideas of the new Iskra. It is much wiser to
have the old Iskra more often in mind and enlarge more concretely upon
its old constructive slogans.

Atthe end of Lenin’s pamphlet What Is To Be Done? , on

p. 136, [4]

the slogan of a general armed uprising of the people was advanced. The
following was said on this subject at the very beginning of 1902, that is, three
years ago: “Picture to yourselves a popular uprising. Probably everyone
will now agree that we must think of this uprising and prepare for it....” [5]

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 134-35 of this volume— Ed .

[2]
See pp. 98-100 of this volume— Ed .

[3]
See p. 154 of this volume.— Ed .

[4]
See present edition, Vol. 5, p. 515.— Ed .

[5]
Here the manuscript breaks off— Ed .

[6]
Sheigunov, N. V. (4824-91)—democratic writer and publicist; contributed to the periodical Sovremennik (The Contemporary). His progressive activity was well known to the advanced
workers of St. Petersburg. His funeral on April 15 (27), 1891, turned into
an anti-government demonstration.

[7]
The reference is to the mass political strike which occurred
in Kiev in July 1903. A lengthy report dealing with this strike was published
in Iskra , No. 47, September 1, 1903, under the headline
“The General Strike in Kiev”.