It seems strange, at first glance, to speak of an engagement when workers unarmed and peaceably went to present a petition. This was a massacre. But the government was counting precisely on an engagement and acted, undoubtedly, according to a fully deliberate plan. From a military point of view, it discussed the defense of Petersburg and the Winter Palace. It took all military measures. It removed all civilian authorities and placed the one-and-a-half-million capital entirely at the disposal of generals thirsting for the people's blood, with Grand Duke Vladimir at their head.

The government deliberately drove the proletariat to insurrection, provoked barricades through the beating of the unarmed, in order to suppress this insurrection in a sea of blood. The proletariat will learn these military lessons from the government. And the proletariat will learn the art of civil war, since it has already begun the revolution. Revolution is war. It is the only lawful, legitimate, just, and truly great war of all the wars that history knows. This war is not waged in the selfish interests of a handful of rulers and exploiters, as all and every war is, but in the interests of the masses of the people against tyrants, in the interests of millions and tens of millions of the exploited and working people against arbitrariness and violence.

All impartial observers now speak with one voice in acknowledging that this war has been declared and begun in Russia. The proletariat will rise again in ever greater masses. The remnants of childish faith in the tsar will die out now just as quickly as the Petersburg workers passed from petitions to barricades. Workers will be arming themselves everywhere. It matters not that the police will increase tenfold the severity of surveillance over armories and weapons shops. No strictures, no prohibitions will stop the urban masses, who have come to understand that without arms they can always, at any pretext, be driven by the government to slaughter. Each one individually will strain all their efforts to procure a rifle or at least a revolver, to hide weapons from the police, and to be ready to give resistance to the bloodthirsty servants of tsarism. Every beginning is difficult—as the proverb says. It was very difficult for the workers to pass over to armed struggle. The government has now forced them to do so. The first, most difficult step has been taken.

An English correspondent transmits a characteristic conversation of workers on one of the streets of Moscow. A group of workers openly discussed the lessons of the day. "Axes?" says one. "No, you can't do anything with axes against a saber. You can't reach him with an ax, and even less with a knife. No, you need revolvers, at least revolvers, or even better rifles." Such and similar conversations are now being held throughout Russia. And these conversations after the "Vladimir Day" in Petersburg will not remain mere talk.

The military plan of the tsar's uncle, Vladimir, who directed the massacre, came down to this: not to allow the suburbs, the workers' suburbs, to enter the center of the city. The soldiers were made to believe with all their might that the workers wanted to destroy the Winter Palace (with the help of icons, crosses, and petitions!) and kill the tsar. The strategic task amounted to guarding the bridges and main streets leading to Palace Square. And the main sites of "military operations" were the squares at the bridges (the Trinity, Sampsonievsky, Nikolaevsky, and Palace bridges), the streets leading from the workers' quarters to the center (at the Narva Gate, on the Schlüsselburg highway, on the Nevsky), and finally, Palace Square itself, where nonetheless, despite all the masses of troops, despite all resistance, thousands and thousands of workers penetrated. The task of military operations was, of course, terribly facilitated by the fact that everyone knew perfectly well where the workers were going, knew that there was only one gathering point and one objective. Brave generals acted "successfully" against an enemy that marched with bare hands, having announced in advance to all and sundry where and why it was going… This was the basest, coldest murder of defenseless and peaceful popular masses. Now the masses will long ponder and relive in memory and in accounts all that has occurred. The sole and inevitable conclusion of these reflections, of this absorption of the "Vladimir lesson" into the consciousness of the masses will be this conclusion: in war one must act militarily. The workers' masses, and with them the masses of rural poor, will become conscious of themselves as a belligerent party, and then… then the subsequent engagements in our civil war will already proceed not merely according to the "plans" of grand dukes and tsars alone. The call "To Arms!" that rang out in one crowd of workers on the Nevsky on January 9th cannot now pass without a trace.