V. I.

Lenin

Revolutionary Days

9

The Battles on the Barricades [1]

Aswe have seen, most of the correspondents’ reports refer to the barricades on
Vasilyevsky Island, and partly in Nevsky Prospekt. The official report published
on Monday, January 10 (23), reads: “The mob threw up barricades with
barbed wire entanglements and red flags on the Schlüsselburg Highway, then at
the Narvskaya Zastava, on the Troitsky Bridge, at the Alexandrovsky Gardens, and
at the public gardens in Nevsky Prospekt. Stones were thrown and shots fired at
the troops from the adjoining houses. The crowd disarmed the police. Schoff’s
armoury was looted. In the first and second areas of Vasilyevsky Island the
mob cut the telegraph-wires and knocked down the telegraph-poles. A police
station was smashed up.”

AFrench correspondent telegraphed at 2:50 p.m. on Sunday: “Shooting is
continuing. The troops, apparently, have lost their head completely. Crossing
the Neva, I saw several signal lights and heard volleys of rifle shots. On
Vasilyevsky Island the barricades are illumined with bonfires kindled by the
strikers. This was as far as I could get. A sinister bugle sound is the signal
to fire. A battalion of soldiers with bayonetted rifles atilt charged
a barricade made of piled up sleighs. A real massacre started. The
bodies of about a hundred workers were strewn over the scene of battle. Some fifty wounded
prisoners were escorted past me. The officer threatened we with his pistol and
ordered me to be off.”

Correspondentsgive very few details of the barricade fighting. This is understandable, because they tried to
keep more or less at a safe distance from the danger spots.

As for the participants in the barricade fighting, probably only very few
survived. There is even a report that the barricades were subjected to
artillery fire, but it does not seem to have been confirmed.

| Published according to the manuscript | |

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Notes:
[1]
The article “The Battles on the Barricades” , devoted to the beginning of the revolution in Russia,
was written for Vperyod , No. 4, but was not published. It first
appeared in 1934 in Lenin Miscellany XXVI .