The grandiose May strike of the all-Russian proletariat and the street demonstrations, revolutionary proclamations and revolutionary speeches before crowds of workers connected with it have clearly shown that Russia has entered a period of revolutionary upsurge.

This upsurge did not come out of the blue. No, it was prepared by all the conditions of Russian life long ago, and mass strikes in connection with the Lena shootings and May 1st merely finally determined its advent. The temporary triumph of counterrevolution was indissolubly linked with the decline of mass struggle by workers. The number of strikers provides, though approximate, yet absolutely objective and precise representation of the scale of this struggle.

In the ten years before the revolution, in 1895–1904, the average number of strikers was 43,000 per year (rounded). In 1905 – 2¾ million, in 1906 – 1 million, in 1907 – ¾ million. The three-year period of revolution is distinguished by an upsurge of strike struggle by the proletariat unprecedented anywhere in the world. The decline of it, which began in 1906 and 1907, was finally determined in 1908: 175,000 strikers. The coup d'état of June 3, 1907, which restored the autocracy of the tsar in alliance with the Duma of the Black-Hundred landowners and the commercial-industrial magnates, was the inevitable result of the decline of the revolutionary energy of the masses.

The three-year period of 1908–1910 was an epoch of the raging of Black-Hundred counterrevolution, liberal-bourgeois renegadism, and proletarian despondency and disintegration. The number of strikers continues to fall, reaching 60,000 in 1909 and 50,000 in 1910.

But from the end of 1910 a noticeable turn begins. Demonstrations in connection with the death of the liberal Muromtsev and Leo Tolstoy, as well as the student movement, clearly indicate that the wind has shifted, that a certain turn has come in the mood of the democratic masses. 1911 gives us a slow transition to the offensive on the part of the working masses: the number of strikers reaches 100,000. From various sides come indications that the fatigue, numbness engendered by the triumph of counterrevolution, is passing, that the pull back toward revolution is beginning again. The All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP in January 1912, summing up its assessment of the moment, established that "in wide circles of democracy and primarily among the proletariat, there is noticeable the beginning of political revival. Worker strikes of 1910–1911, the beginning of demonstrations and proletarian meetings, the beginning of movement among the urban bourgeois democracy (student strikes), and so forth – all this is a manifestation of growing revolutionary sentiment of the masses against the regime of June 3rd" (see the "Announcement" of the conference, p. 18){35}.

Already by the second quarter of the current year this sentiment had grown to such an extent that it manifested itself in the action of the masses and created a revolutionary upsurge. The course of events over the last year and a half shows with evidence that there is nothing accidental in this upsurge, that its advent is completely lawful and is inevitably conditioned by all the prior development of Russia.

The Lena shooting was the occasion for the transition of revolutionary sentiment of the masses into revolutionary upsurge of the masses. Nothing is more mendacious than the liberal fabrication, repeated after the liquidators by Trotsky in the Viennese *Pravda*, that "the struggle for freedom of coalitions is the basis both of the Lena tragedy and its mighty echo throughout the country." In the Lena strike there was altogether neither a specific nor a principal demand for freedom of coalitions. The Lena shooting revealed not the absence of freedom precisely of coalitions, but the absence of freedom… from provocation, from general lack of rights, from arbitrary rule.

The Lena shooting, as we have already clarified in no. 26 of *Sotsial-Demokrat*, was the most precise reflection of the entire regime of the June 3rd monarchy. It is not the struggle for one of the rights, even the most cardinal, the most important for the proletariat, that is characteristic of the Lena events. What is characteristic of them is the complete absence of the most elementary legality in all respects. What is characteristic is the entry of a provocateur, a spy, an agent of the Okhrana, a servant of the tsar, onto the path of mass shootings without any political pretext. It is precisely this general lack of rights of Russian life, it is precisely the hopelessness and impossibility of struggle for individual rights, it is precisely the incorrigibility of the tsarist monarchy and all its regime that emerged from the Lena events so starkly that they inflamed the masses with revolutionary fire.

If liberals contorted themselves and contort themselves, trying to give the Lena events and May strikes the character of a professional movement and struggle for "rights," then for anyone not blinded by liberal (and liquidationist) disputes, something else is clear. Clear is the revolutionary character of the mass strike, especially underlined by the St. Petersburg pre-May proclamation of various groups of Social-Democrats (and even one worker Socialist-Revolutionary group!), which we reprint in full in the Chronicle section{121} and which repeats the slogans launched by the All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP in January 1912.

And indeed, the principal confirmation of the revolutionary character of the Lena and May strikes does not even lie in the slogans. The slogans formulated what the facts spoke. The fact of mass strikes spreading from district to district, – their enormous growth, – the speed of their spread, – the boldness of the workers, – the increasing frequency of meetings and revolutionary speeches, – the demand to cancel the fine for celebrating May 1st, – the combination of political and economic strike familiar to us from the first Russian revolution – all this points with evidence to the true character of the movement, consisting in the revolutionary upsurge of the masses.

Let us recall the experience of 1905. Events show us that among workers the tradition of revolutionary mass strikes is alive and that the workers at once revived, brought to life this tradition. The strike upsurge of 1905, unprecedented in the world, gave 810,000 strikers in the first quarter and 1,277,000 in the last quarter of the year, with the combination of both economic and political strikes. By approximate calculation, the Lena strikes embraced up to 300,000 workers, the May strikes up to 400,000, and the strikes continue to grow and grow. Every issue of newspapers – even liberal ones – reports on how the strike fire spreads. The second quarter of 1912 has not yet completely passed, and already now it becomes clearly apparent that the beginning of the revolutionary upsurge in 1912 is, by the scale of strike movement, no less, and rather more, than the same beginning in 1905!

The Russian revolution first developed on a wide scale this proletarian method of agitation, stirring up, rallying and drawing the masses into struggle. And now the proletariat again and with an even firmer hand applies this method. No force in the world could accomplish what the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat accomplishes by this method. An enormous country with 150-million population scattered over gigantic space, fragmented, crushed, lacking rights, dark, shut off from "pernicious influences" by a cloud of authorities, police, spies – this country is seized with ferment throughout. The most backward strata of both workers and peasants come into direct and indirect contact with strikers. Hundreds of thousands of revolutionary agitators appear on the scene at once, whose influence is infinitely strengthened by the fact that they are indissolubly linked with the masses below, remain in their ranks, struggle for the most pressing needs of every working family, combine with this immediate struggle for pressing economic needs the political protest and struggle against the monarchy. For counterrevolution has brought into millions and tens of millions acute hatred for the monarchy, the beginnings of understanding of its role, and now the slogan of the advanced capital workers – long live the democratic republic! – flows in thousands of channels, following every strike, into the backward strata, into remote provinces, into "the people," "into the depths of Russia." It is extremely characteristic how the liberal Severyanin reasons about the strike, received warmly by the *Russkie Vedomosti* and reprinted with sympathy by the *Rech*.

"Do the workers have any grounds whatsoever to mix economic or any (!) demands into the May First strike?" asks Mr. Severyanin and answers: I boldly think they do not. Every economic strike can and should be begun only after serious weighing of the chances… That is why linking such strikes to the moment of May 1st is most often unfounded… And it is strange somehow: we celebrate the day of the universal workers' holiday and on this occasion we demand an increase of 10% on calico of such-and-such sorts."

Thus reasons the liberal! And the "best" liberal newspapers, pretending to the title of democratic, receive this boundless banality, baseness and filth with sympathy!

The grossest greed of the bourgeois, the basest cowardice of the counterrevolutionary – that is what hides behind the liberal's grand phrases. He would like the safety of the employers' pockets. He would want an "orderly" and "harmless" demonstration in favor of "freedom of coalitions"! But the proletariat instead draws the masses into revolutionary strikes, indissolubly linking politics with economics, strikes that attract the most backward strata by the success of the struggle for immediate improvement of workers' life and at the same time raise the people against the tsarist monarchy.

Yes, the experience of 1905 created a deep and great tradition of mass strikes. And one must not forget where these strikes lead in Russia. Mass persistent strikes are indissolubly linked with armed uprising.

Do not distort these words. The matter concerns not at all a call for uprising. Such a call would be extremely unwise at the present moment. The matter concerns establishing the connection between strike and uprising in Russia.

How did uprising grow in 1905? First, mass strikes, demonstrations and meetings increased collisions of crowds with police and troops. Second, mass strikes raised the peasantry to a series of partial, fragmented, semi-spontaneous uprisings. Third, mass strikes very quickly spread to the army and navy, causing collisions on economic grounds ("pea revolt" and similar "mutinies"), and then uprisings. Fourth, counterrevolution itself began civil war with pogroms, beatings of democrats, and so forth.

The Revolution of 1905 ended in defeat not at all because it went "too far," because the December uprising was "artificial," as renegade liberals and such think. On the contrary, the cause of defeat was that the uprising did not go far enough, that consciousness of its necessity was not sufficiently widely spread and firmly assimilated in the revolutionary classes, that the uprising was not unanimous, decisive, organized, simultaneous, offensive.

Let us now observe whether signs of the growth of uprising are appearing at the present time? In order not to succumb to revolutionary enthusiasm, let us take the Octobrists as witnesses. The German union of Octobrists in St. Petersburg belongs for the most part to the so-called "left" and "constitutional" Octobrists, whom the Kadets especially love and who are most capable (compared to other Octobrists and Kadets) of "objectively" observing events without setting themselves the goal of frightening the authorities with revolution.

The organ of these Octobrists, the *St.-Petersburger Zeitung*{122}, wrote in its weekly political review of May 6 (19) the following:

"May has arrived. Regardless of the weather, it is usually not very pleasant for capital residents, because it begins with the proletarian 'holiday.' This year, when workers are still under the impression of the Lena demonstrations, – May 1st was especially dangerous. In the capital's atmosphere, saturated with all sorts of rumors about strikes and demonstrations, there was the smell of fire. Our faithful police were noticeably agitated; they arranged searches, arrested individuals, prepared large detachments to prevent street demonstrations. That the police found nothing more clever than to search the offices of workers' newspapers and take their editors – this fact does not testify to particularly deep knowledge of those strings by which they moved the puppet regiments of workers. But these strings exist. The discipline of the strike speaks to this, and many other circumstances. Therefore, this May strike is so fearsome, the largest observed thus far – 100 and even 150 thousand workers from large and small workshops struck. It was merely a peaceful parade, but the cohesion of this army commands attention. And this is all the more so since alongside the recent agitation of workers went other alarming phenomena. On various ships of our fleet sailors were arrested for revolutionary propaganda. Judging by all the information that has appeared in the press, affairs are not well on our already meager military ships… Alarming thoughts are also provoked by the railwaymen. True, nowhere has it even come to attempts to arrange a strike, but arrests – especially such conspicuous ones as the arrest of the assistant commander of the Nikolaevsky line station A. A. Ushakov – show that here too there is a certain danger.

Revolutionary attempts by immature worker masses can, of course, only have a harmful effect on the outcome of Duma elections. These attempts are all the more reckless in that… the tsar appointed Manukhin, and the State Council passed worker insurance"!!

Thus reasons the German Octobrist. We, for our part, shall remark that we have received precise information from the field concerning the sailors, proving the exaggeration and inflation of the matter by the *Novoe Vremya*. The Okhrana is obviously "working" provocatively. Premature attempts at uprising would be supremely unwise. The worker vanguard must understand that the basic conditions for timely – i.e., victorious – armed uprising in Russia are the support of the working class by the democratic peasantry and active participation of the army.

Mass strikes in revolutionary epochs have their own objective logic. They throw hundreds of thousands and millions of sparks in all directions – and all around is combustible material of the most extreme exasperation, unprecedented suffering from hunger, hopeless arbitrariness, shameless and cynical outrage against the "wretch," against the "peasant," against the lower ranks. Add to this the utterly unbridled Black-Hundred anti-Jewish incitement, surreptitiously nourished and directed by the court cabal of the stupid and bloodthirsty Nicholas Romanov… "As it was – so it shall be"{123}: with these prophetic words, Minister Makarov said them upon the heads of himself and his class and his landowner tsar!

The revolutionary upsurge of the masses places great and responsible duties on every worker Social-Democrat, on every honest democrat. "Comprehensive support for the beginning movement of the masses (now one must already say: the beginning revolutionary movement of the masses) and its expansion under the banner of the fully executed slogans of the party" – thus the All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP defined these duties. The slogans of the party – democratic republic, an eight-hour working day, confiscation of all landowners' land – must become the slogans of all democracy, the slogans of the people's revolution.

In order to support and expand the movement of the masses, organization and organization is needed. Without an illegal party one cannot conduct this work and it is pointless to speak of it vainly. While supporting and expanding the pressure of the masses, one must carefully take account of the experience of 1905 and, explaining the necessity and inevitability of uprising, warn against and restrain from premature attempts of this kind. The growth of mass strikes, the attraction to the struggle of other classes, the state of organizations, the mood of the masses – all this will itself indicate the moment when all forces must unite in a unanimous, decisive, offensive, selflessly bold onslaught of revolution against the tsarist monarchy.

Without victorious revolution there will be no freedom in Russia.

Without the overthrow of the tsarist monarchy by proletarian-peasant uprising there will be no victorious revolution in Russia.

*Sotsial-Demokrat* No. 27, June 17 (4), 1912

Printed according to the text of the newspaper *Sotsial-Demokrat*