Date: 1910
Source: ru:PSS/v20

The current issue had already been laid out when we received the St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers dated November 12. Though the information provided by the legal press is far from exhaustive, it nonetheless leaves no doubt that in a number of cities student gatherings, demonstrations, and street processions took place—protests against the death penalty, accompanied by speeches critical of the government. According to even the “Russian News,” which maintained a thoroughly Octobrist stance, the St. Petersburg demonstration on November 11 drew no fewer than 10,000 people onto Nevsky Prospekt. The same newspaper reported that on the Petrograd side, “near the People’s House, many workers joined the procession. At Tuchkov Bridge, the procession came to a halt. The police detachment was utterly unable to disperse the crowd, and the throng moved forward, singing and waving flags, toward the Great Prospect of Vasilyevsky Island. It was only near the University that the police managed to break up the crowd.”

Naturally, the police and the military behaved in a thoroughly “typically Russian” manner.

While we defer our assessment of this unmistakable democratic upsurge until the next issue, we cannot help but say a few words here about the various parties’ attitudes toward the demonstration. The “Russian News,” which had falsely reported on the 11th that the demonstration had been canceled, announced on the 12th that the Social Democrats had adopted no formal resolution—and that individual Social Democratic deputies had even voiced their outright opposition—while only the Laborists{3} deemed it impossible, in the resolution they passed, to obstruct the demonstration. We have no doubt that this report, which casts a shameful light on our Social Democratic deputies, is false; it was likely concocted with equal malice by the “Russian News,” just as yesterday’s report of the demonstration’s cancellation had been. The “Voice of Moscow”{4} reported on the 12th that, “with the exception of the Social Democrats, deputies of all parties viewed the students’ street protest with disfavor.”

It is clear that the Kadet and Octobrist organs were utterly “shirking the truth,” intimidated by the utterly absurd, laughably baseless cries of the right-wing that “the springs priming the demonstration are being pressed from within the Tauride Palace.”

And that the Kadets{5} behaved in a deeply unworthy manner is a fact. On the 11th—the very day of the demonstration—“Speech”{6} published an appeal from the Kadet deputies, urging the public not to stage a demonstration. The reasoning behind both this appeal and the editorial in “Speech” was truly despicable: “Let us not darken these days of sorrow!” To “stage manifestos, to link them with the commemoration of Tolstoy”—that meant revealing “a lack of sincere reverence for the sacred memory”!! and so forth, in a thoroughly Octobrist spirit (compare the editorial of the 11th in “Voice of Moscow” with phrases that are almost literally identical).

Fortunately, the vile trap set for democracy by the Kadets did not succeed. The demonstration went ahead after all. And while the police-run “Russia”{7} continues to blame the Kadets for everything, even managing to see “incitement” in their very appeal, in the Duma{8}, according to “Voice of Moscow,” both the Octobrists{9} and the far-right (Shulgin) acknowledged the Kadets’ contribution, recognizing them as “opponents of the demonstration.”

Anyone whom the entire course of the Russian Revolution has not taught that the cause of the liberation movement in Russia is hopeless as long as it is led by the Kadets—and as long as it fails to protect itself from the betrayals of the Kadets—should learn again and again from the facts of contemporary politics, from the history of the demonstration on November 11. For the very first stirrings of a democratic upsurge are invariably marked by Kadet villainy.

Let us also note the report from “Voice of Moscow” that workers allegedly proposed to the students that they organize a grand demonstration on the 14th. There is probably some truth to this claim, since today (November 15 [28]) Parisian newspapers report the arrest in St. Petersburg of thirteen members of the trade union bureau for attempting to organize a workers’ demonstration.

“Social Democrat,” No. 18, November 16 (29), 1910

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Social Democrat.”