V. I.

Lenin

Revolutionary Days

5

“Our Father the Tsar” and the Barricades

In reviewing the events of Bloody Sunday one is struck by the combination of
naive patriarchal faith in the tsar and the fierce armed street fighting against
the tsarist rule. The first day of the Russian revolution brought the old Russia
and the new face to face with startling force and showed the death agony of the
peasants’ age-old faith in “Our Father the Tsar”, and the birth of a
revolutionary people, the urban proletariat. No wonder the European bourgeois
newspapers say that Russia of January 10 is no longer the Russia of January
8. No wonder the cited German Social—Democratic newspaper [1] recalls how
seventy years ago the working-class movement started in England, how in 1834 the
English workers held street demonstrations to protest against the banning of the
trade unions, how in 1838 they drew up the “People’s Charter” at
monster meetings near Manchester, and how Parson Stephens proclaimed
“the right, of every man that breathes God’s free air and treads upon
God’s free earth to have his home and hearth.” And the same parson called on the
assembled workers to take up arms.

Here, in Russia, too, a priest found himself at the head of the movement; one
day he appealed for a march with a peaceful petition to the tsar himself, and
the next day he issued a call for revolution. “Comrades, Russian workers!”
Father Georgi Gapon wrote, after that bloody day, in a letter read at a meeting
of liberals. “We no longer have a tsar. Today a river of blood divides him
from the Russian people. It is time for the Russian workers to begin the
struggle for the people’s freedom without him. For today I give you my blessing. Tomorrow I shall be with you. Today I am busy working for our
cause.”

This is not Father Georgi Gapon speaking. This is the voice of those thousands
upon thousands, of those millions upon millions of Russian workers and peasants
who until now could believe naively and blindly in the Tsar Father and seek
alleviation of their unbearable lot from Our Father the Tsar
“himself”, who put the blame for all the atrocities and outrages,
the tyranny and plunder, only on the officials that were deceiving the
tsar. Generation after generation of downtrodden, half-civilised, rustic
existence cut off from the world tended to strengthen this faith. Every month of
life of the new, urban, industrial, literate Russia has been undermining and
destroying this faith. The past decade of the working-class movement
has produced thousands of advanced proletarian Social-Democrats who
have consciously broken with this faith. It has educated scores of thousands of workers in whom
the class instinct, strengthened in the strike movement and fostered by
political agitation, has shattered this faith to its foundations. Behind these
scores of thousands, however, stood hundreds of thousands, millions, of toiling
and exploited people, proletarians and semi-proletarians, suffering every insult
and indignity, in whom this faith could still survive. They were not ready for
revolt, they could only beg and plead. Their feelings and their mood, their
level of knowledge and political experience were expressed by Father Georgi
Gapon; herein lies the historic significance of the role played at the beginning
of the Russian revolution by a man who, but yesterday unknown, has today become
the hero of the hour in St. Petersburg and, as a result, in the entire European
press.

It is clear now why the St. Petersburg Social-Democrats, whose letters we
quoted above, at first treated Gapon, as they could not help doing, with
distrust. A man who wore the cassock, who believed in God and acted under the
august patronage of Zubatov and the secret police, could not but arouse
suspicion. Whether he was sincere or not in rending his cassock and cursing the
fact that he belonged to that vile social-estate, the priesthood, which robs and
demoralises the people, no one could say with certainty, beyond those who knew him well personally, that is, a mere
handful. Only the course of historical events could decide this, only facts,
facts, facts. And the facts decided in Gapon’s favour.

Will Social-Democracy be able to gain the lead of this spontaneous movement? our
St. Petersburg comrades asked themselves with concern, seeing the swift
irresistible growth of the general strike, which is involving unusually broad
strata of the proletariat, seeing the magnetism of Gapon’s influence on the
“backward” masses who were so ignorant that they could be swept off
their feet even by an agent-provocateur. And the Social-Democrats not
only did not encourage any naive illusions with regard to the possibility of
peaceful petitioning but, on the contrary, opposed Gapon in argument, openly
and firmly defending all their views and their tactical line. History, which the
working-class masses were making without Social-Democracy, has confirmed the
correctness of these views and the tactical line. The logic of the proletariat’s
class position proved stronger than Gapon’s mistakes, naïvetés, and
illusions. Grand Duke Vladimir, acting on behalf of the tsar and invested with
all the power of the tsar, undertook by his executioner’s exploit to demonstrate
to the working-class masses the very thing that the Social-Democrats have
always demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate to them through the printed
and spoken word.

The masses of workers and peasants who still retained a vestige of faith in the
tsar were not ready for insurrection, we said. After January 9 we have the right
to say that now they are ready for insurrection and will rise. By his massacre
of unarmed workers “Our Father the Tsar” himself has driven them to
the barricades and given them their first lessons in barricade fighting. The
lessons of “Our Father the Tsar” will not be lost.

It remains for the Social-Democrats to see to it that the news of the bloody
days in St. Petersburg is spread as far and as wide as possible; to rally and
organise their forces still better and popularise still more energetically the
slogan they have long since advanced: general armed uprising of the people .

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Notes:
[1]
The reference is to the newspaper Vorwärts , central organ of the German Social-Democrats, mentioned in Vperyod , No. 4,
January 31 (18), 1905, in the article “On Palace Square: Letter
of an Eyewitness”.