Geneva, October 10 (September 27) [1905].

A new outbreak of the workers' uprising — a mass strike and street fighting in Moscow. In the capital, on January 9, the first thunderclap of the proletariat's revolutionary action resounded. The reverberations of this thunder rolled across all Russia, raising with unprecedented speed over a million proletarians for a gigantic struggle. Petersburg was followed by the borderlands, where national oppression aggravated the already unbearable political oppression. Riga, Poland, Odessa, the Caucasus became in turn the hearths of an uprising which grew in breadth and depth with every month, with every week.

Now it has reached the centre of Russia, the heart of the "truly Russian" regions that most long consoled the reactionaries by their stability. A whole series of circumstances explains this comparative stability, i.e. the backwardness of the centre of Russia: the less developed forms of large-scale industry, which embraced huge masses of workers but had less broken their ties with the land, less concentrated the proletarians in intellectual centres; — and the greater distance from abroad; — and the absence of national discord.

The working-class movement, which manifested itself with such mighty force in this region as early as 1885-86, seemed to have died down for a long time, and the efforts of the social democrats were shattered dozens and hundreds of times by the resistance of particularly difficult local conditions of work.

But at last the centre too stirred. The Ivanovo-Voznesensk strike showed an unexpectedly high political maturity of the workers. Ferment throughout the central industrial district had been continuously intensifying and expanding after this strike. Now this ferment began to pour out, to turn into an uprising. Undoubtedly the outbreak was further sharpened by the revolutionary Moscow student body, which had just adopted a resolution completely analogous to that of Petersburg, stigmatising the State Duma, calling for a struggle for the republic, for the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government. The "liberal professors, who had just elected the most liberal rector, the notorious Mr. Trubetskoy, closed the university under pressure from police threats: they feared, in their words, a repetition of the Tiflis massacre within the university walls. They only hastened the shedding of blood on the streets, outside the university.

As far as we can judge from the brief telegraphic reports of foreign newspapers, the course of events in Moscow followed the "usual" path, which has become, so to speak, the norm after January 9. It began with a typesetters' strike, which rapidly grew. On Saturday, October 7 (September 24), the printing shops, the electric streetcars, and the tobacco factories were already not working. Newspapers did not appear. A general strike of factory and railway workers was expected. In the evening large demonstrations took place, in which besides the typesetters there also participated workers of other trades, students, etc. Cossacks and gendarmes repeatedly dispersed the demonstrators, but they gathered again. Many policemen were wounded. The demonstrators threw stones and fired revolvers. The officer commanding the gendarmes was seriously wounded. One Cossack officer, one gendarme, etc., were killed.

On Saturday the bakers joined the strike.

On Sunday, October 8 (September 25), events at once took a menacing turn. From 11 o'clock in the morning accumulations of workers began in the streets — especially on the Strastnoy Boulevard and in other places. The crowd sang the Marseillaise. Printing shops that refused to strike were wrecked. The Cossacks succeeded in dispersing the demonstrators only after most stubborn resistance.

In front of the Filippov shop, near the Governor-General's house, a crowd of about 400 people gathered, mainly baker's journeymen. The Cossacks attacked the crowd. The workers entered the houses, climbed onto the roofs and showered the Cossacks with stones from there. The Cossacks fired at the roof and, being unable to dislodge the workers, resorted to a regular siege. The house was surrounded; a police detachment and two companies of grenadiers made a flanking movement, entered the house from the rear and finally occupied the roof as well. 192 journeymen were arrested. Eight of the arrested were wounded; two workers were killed (we repeat that all this is exclusively from telegraphic reports of foreign newspapers, far from the truth, of course, and giving only an approximate idea of the scale of the battle). One solid Belgian newspaper reports that the janitors were busily engaged in cleaning the streets of traces of blood; this little detail, it says, testifies to the seriousness of the struggle more than long accounts.

About the massacre on the Tverskaya, it apparently was permitted to write in the Petersburg newspapers. But already on the following day the censorship feared publicity. From Monday, October 9 (September 26), official dispatches reported that there were no serious disturbances in Moscow. But other news reached the editorial offices of Petersburg newspapers by telephone. The crowd, it turned out, again gathered near the Governor-General's house. The skirmishes were hot. The Cossacks fired more than once. When they dismounted to fire, their horses trampled many people. Towards evening, crowds of workers filled the boulevards with revolutionary cries, with unfurled red banners. The crowd broke into bakeries and gunsmiths' shops. In the end the crowd was dispersed by the police. Many wounded. The central telegraph station is guarded by a company of soldiers. The bakers' strike became general. Ferment among the students is further increasing; meetings are becoming even more crowded and revolutionary. The Petersburg correspondent of the Times reports on proclamations calling to struggle in Petersburg, on ferment among the bakers there, on the appointment of a demonstration for Saturday, October 14 (1), on an extremely alarming mood among the public.

Scanty as these data are, they nevertheless allow us to draw the conclusion that the outbreak of the uprising in Moscow does not, compared with others, represent a higher stage of the movement. There is neither the appearance of prepared and well-armed revolutionary detachments, nor the going over to the people's side of even known sections of the troops, nor the widespread use of "new" types of popular weapons, bombs (which in Tiflis on October 9 (September 26) threw such panic into the Cossacks and soldiers). In the absence of any of these conditions it was impossible to count either on the arming of a large number of workers or on the victory of the uprising. The significance of the Moscow events, as we have already noted, is different: they mark the baptism of fire of a major centre, the drawing of a huge industrial region into serious struggle.

The growth of the uprising in Russia is not proceeding and cannot, of course, proceed in an even and regular ascent. In Petersburg on January 9 the predominant feature was the rapid unanimous movement of gigantic masses, unarmed and not going into battle, but receiving a great lesson in struggle. In Poland and the Caucasus the movement is distinguished by enormous tenacity, by the comparatively more frequent use of arms and bombs by the population. In Odessa the distinctive feature was the going over of part of the troops to the insurgents. In every case and always the movement was in its essence proletarian, inseparably fused with the mass strike. In Moscow... *) the movement proceeded within the same bounds as in a whole series of other, less important industrial centres.

The question naturally confronts us now: will the revolutionary movement stop at this already attained, become "usual" and familiar stage of development, or will it rise to a higher level? If only one may venture into the field of assessment of events so complex and vast as the events of the Russian revolution, we inevitably come to an immeasurably greater probability of the second answer to the question. True, even this form of struggle that has already been learned, if one may put it so—guerrilla war, continuous strikes, wearing down the enemy by attacks with street fighting now in one, now in another part of the country—this form of struggle has yielded and is yielding the most serious results. No state can hold out à la longue against this stubborn struggle,

*) A few crossed-out words are illegible. Ed.

stopping industrial life, introducing complete demoralisation into the bureaucracy and the army, sowing discontent with the state of affairs in all circles of the people. Still less capable of enduring such a struggle is the Russian autocratic government. We can be fully confident that the stubborn continuation of the struggle, even in those forms which have already been created by the workers’ movement, will inevitably lead to the collapse of tsarism.

But a halt to the revolutionary movement in contemporary Russia at the stage it has already reached is extremely improbable. On the contrary, all data rather speak for the fact that this is only one of the initial stages of the struggle. All the consequences of the shameful and ruinous war have by no means yet fully manifested themselves upon the people. The economic crisis in the cities and the famine in the villages are terribly intensifying the bitterness. The Manchurian army, according to all reports, is in an extremely revolutionary mood, and the government is afraid to bring it back—yet it cannot fail to bring back this army, under threat of new and even more serious uprisings. Political agitation among the workers and the peasantry has never in Russia been so widespread, so systematic and so deep as now. The comedy of the State Duma inevitably brings with it new defeats for the government, new bitterness among the population. The insurrection has grown immensely before our eyes within a mere ten months, and it is not fantasy, not a pious wish, but a direct and necessary conclusion from the facts of mass struggle that leads to the conclusion that the uprising is about to ascend to a new, higher stage, when battle detachments of revolutionaries or rebellious units of the army will come to the aid of the crowd, when they will help the masses to obtain weapons, when they will introduce the strongest wavering into the ranks of the “tsarist” (still tsarist, but already far from entirely tsarist) army, when the insurrection will lead to a serious victory from which tsarism will be unable to recover.

The tsarist troops have won a victory over the workers in Moscow. But this victory has not weakened the vanquished; it has only united them more strongly, planted hatred deeper, and brought them closer to the practical tasks of serious struggle. This victory is one of those which cannot but introduce wavering into the ranks of the victors.

The army is only now beginning to learn—and to learn not only from reference to the laws but from its own experience—that it is being mobilised now wholly and exclusively for struggle against the “internal enemy.” The war with Japan is over. But mobilisation continues, mobilisation against the revolution. We are not afraid of such mobilisation; we shall not hesitate to greet it, for the greater the number of soldiers called up for systematic struggle against the people, the faster will go the political and revolutionary education of these soldiers. By mobilising ever new military units for war against the revolution, tsarism is postponing the denouement, but this postponement is most advantageous to us, for in this protracted, guerrilla war the proletarians learn to fight, and the troops are inevitably drawn into political life, and the cry of this life, the battle call of young Russia, penetrates even the tightly sealed barracks, awakening the most ignorant, the most backward and the most downtrodden.

The flash of insurrection has been suppressed once again. Once again: long live the insurrection!

POLITICAL STRIKE AND STREET FIGHTING IN MOSCOW.

[October 12, 1905]

||Type||
of the present
stage of
the struggle
in the Russian
revolution.

Beginning –
continuation. –
– Connection with the university]
– liberal
and
revolutionary
movement.

1. “Usual” course of events in M[oscow]...
Beginning economic – strike –
insurrection.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Professional movement (the Zubatovites began) – rapid
| concerning
transition. Atrocities. | growth.
Political
and
revolutionary
movement. General strike.
Closure of the university and
opening of the street.
Talk about
reopening the university.
“Between the hammer and the anvil” – the gentlemen liberals and the
gentlemen Trepovs.
Abwiegler: 2)
confer in the State
Duma.

POLITICAL STRIKE AND STREET FIGHTING IN MOSCOW
– General growth of the 6. Comparative
movement. growth of the all-Russian
movement: SP[eters]b[urg] 9 I – P[oland] + C[aucasus] – M[oscow].
Quid est?
7. What is happening
in Moscow?
General rehearsal,
or the beginning
of the end?
– end of old or
beginning of new
forms?
“A different spirit has begun to blow”
! the faint-hearted and...
Parliamentarism 8. The shabbiness of quasi-parliamentarism
and revolution. in the light of
the open revolutionary
configration.
Proletariat + revolutionary
democracy
contra
government
liberals.
1) À la longue – given the protracted character.
2) Abwiegler – reviewer.