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(4) The cessation of the war by the will of the people.

_III. Measures against oppression of labor by capital_:

(1) Protection of labor by legislation;

(2) Freedom of consumers' and producers' leagues and
trades-unions;

(3) An eight-hour workday and a regulation of overtime;

(4) Freedom of struggle against capital (freedom of labor
strikes);

(5) Participation of labor representatives in the framing of a
bill concerning state insurance of working-men;

(6) Normal wages.

Those are, Sire, the principal wants with which we have come to
you. Let your decree be known, swear that you will satisfy them,
and you will make Russia happy and glorious, and your name will be
branded in our hearts and in the hearts of our posterity for ever
and ever. If, however, you will not reply to our prayer, we shall
die here, on the place before your palace. We have no other refuge
and no other means. We have two roads before us, one to freedom
and happiness, the other to the grave. Tell us, Sire, which, and
we will follow obediently, and if it be the road of death, let our
lives be a sacrifice for suffering-wearied Russia. We do not
regret the sacrifice; we bring it willingly.

Led on by the strange, hypnotic power of the mystical Father Gapon, who was
clad in the robes of his office, tens of thousands of working-people
marched that day to the Winter Palace, confident that the Czar would see
them, receive their petitions, and harken to their prayers. It was not a
revolutionary demonstration in the accepted sense of that term; the
marchers did not carry red flags nor sing Socialist songs of revolt.
Instead, they bore pictures of the Czar and other members of the royal
family and sang "God Save the Czar" and other well-known religious hymns.
No attempt was made to prevent the procession from reaching the square in
front of the Winter Palace. Suddenly, without a word of warning, troops
appeared from the courtyards, where they were hidden, and fired into the
crowded mass of human beings, killing more than five hundred and wounding
nearly three thousand. All who were able to do so turned and fled, among
them Father Gapon.

Bloody Sunday, as the day is known in Russian annals, is generally regarded
as the beginning of the First Revolution. Immediately people began to talk
of armed resistance. On the evening of the day of the tragedy there was a
meeting of more than seven hundred Intellectuals at which the means for
carrying on revolution was the topic discussed. This was the first of many
similar gatherings which took place all over Russia. Soon the Intellectuals
began to organize unions, ostensibly for the protection of their
professional interests, but in reality for political purposes. There were
unions of doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, professors, editors, and so
on. Quietly, and almost without design, there was being effected another
and more important union, namely, the union of all classes against
autocracy and despotism.

The Czar gave from his private purse fifty thousand rubles for the relief
of the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. On the 19th of January he
received a deputation of carefully selected "loyal" working-men and
delivered to them a characteristic homily, which infuriated the masses by
its stupid perversion of the facts connected with the wanton massacre of
Bloody Sunday. Then, at the end of the month, he proclaimed the appointment
of a commission to "investigate the causes of labor unrest in St.
Petersburg and its suburbs and to find means of avoiding them in the
future." This commission was to consist of representatives of capital and
labor. The working-men thereupon made the following demands:

(1) That labor be given an equal number of members in the commission with
capital;

(2) That the working-men be permitted to freely elect their own
representatives;

(3) That the sessions of the commission be open to the public;

(4) That there be complete freedom of speech for the representatives of
labor in the commission;

(5) That all the working-people arrested on January 9th be released.

These demands of the working-men's organizations were rejected by the
government, whereupon the workers agreed to boycott the commission and
refuse to have anything to do with it. At last it became evident to the
government that, in the circumstances, the commission could not accomplish
any good, and it was therefore abandoned. The Czar and his advisers were
desperate and vacillating. One day they would adopt a conciliatory attitude
toward the workers, and the next day follow it up with fresh measures of
repression and punishment.

Little heeding the stupid charge by the Holy Synod that the revolutionary
leaders were in the pay of the Japanese, the workers went on organizing and
striking. All over Russia there were strikes, the movement had spread far
beyond the bounds of St. Petersburg. General strikes took place in many of
the large cities, such as Riga, Vilna, Libau, Warsaw, Lodz, Batum, Minsk,
Tiflis, and many others. Conflicts between strikers and soldiers and police
were common. Russia was aflame with revolution. The movement spread to the
peasants in a most surprising manner. Numerous extensive and serious
revolts of peasants occurred in different parts of Russia, the peasants
looting the mansions of the landowners, and indulging in savage outbreaks
of rioting.

While this was going on the army was being completely demoralized. The
terrible defeat of the Russian forces by the Japanese--the foe that had
been so lightly regarded--at Mukden was a crushing blow which greatly
impaired the morale of the troops, both those at home and those at the
front. Disaster followed upon disaster. May saw the destruction of the
great Russian fleet. In June rebellion broke out in the navy, and the crew
of the battle-ship _Potyamkin_, which was on the Black Sea, mutinied and
hoisted the red flag. After making prisoners of their officers, the sailors
hastened to lend armed assistance to striking working-men at Odessa who
were in conflict with soldiers and police.


VII

It was a time of turbulent unrest and apparent utter confusion. It was not
easy to discern the underlying significance and purpose of some of the most
important events. On every hand there were strikes and uprisings, many of
them without any sort of leadership or plan. Strikes which began over
questions of wages and hours became political demonstrations in favor of a
Constituent Assembly. On the other hand, political demonstrations became
transformed, without any conscious effort on the part of anybody, into
strikes for immediate economic betterment. There was an intense class
conflict going on in Russia, as the large number of strikes for increased
wages and shorter hours proved, yet the larger political struggle dwarfed
and obscured the class struggle. For the awakened proletariat of the
cities the struggle in which they were engaged was economic as well as
political. They wisely regarded the political struggle as part of the class
struggle, as Plechanov and his friends declared it to be. Yet the fact
remained that the capitalist class against which the proletariat was
fighting on the economic field was, for the most part, fighting against
autocracy, for the overthrow of Czarism and the establishment of political
democracy, as earnestly, if less violently, than the proletariat was. The
reason for this was the recognition by the leading capitalists of Russia of
the fact that industrial progress was retarded by the old regime, and that
capitalist development requires popular education, a relatively high
standard of living, political freedom, and stability and order in
government. It was perfectly natural, therefore, for the great associations
of manufacturers and merchants to unite in urging the government to grant
extensive political reforms so long as the class conflict was merely
incidental.

What had begun mainly as a class war had become the war of all classes
against autocracy. Of course, in such a merging of classes there
necessarily appeared many shadings and degrees of interest. Not all the
social groups and classes were as radical in their demands as the organized
peasants and city workers, who were the soul of the revolutionary movement.
There were, broadly speaking, two great divisions of social life with which
the Revolution was concerned--the political and the economic. With regard
to the first there was practical unanimity; he would be a blind slave to
theoretical formulae who sought to maintain the thesis that class interests
divided masses and classes here. All classes, with the exception of the
bureaucracy, wanted the abolition of Czarism and Absolutism and the
establishment of a constitutional government, elected by the people on a
basis of universal suffrage, and directly responsible to the electorate.

Upon the economic issue there was less agreement, though all parties and
classes recognized the need of extensive change. It was universally
recognized that some solution of the land question must be found. There can
never be social peace or political stability in Russia until that problem
is settled. Now, it was easy for the Socialist groups, on the one hand, and
the moderate groups, upon the other, to unite in demanding that the large
estates be divided among the peasants. But while the Socialist
groups--those of the peasants as well as those of city workers--demanded
that the land be taken without compensation, the bourgeois elements,
especially the leaders of the zemstvos, insisted that the state should pay
compensation for the land taken. Judgment upon this vital question has long
been embittered by the experience of the peasants with the "redemption
payments" which were established when serfdom was abolished. During the
period of greatest intensity, the summer of 1905, a federation of the
various revolutionary peasants' organizations was formed and based its
policy upon the middle ground of favoring the payment of compensation _in
some cases_.

All through this trying period the Czar and his advisers were temporizing
and attempting to obtain peace by means of petty concessions. A greater
degree of religious liberty was granted, and a new representative body, the
Imperial Duma, was provided for. This body was not to be a parliament in
any real sense, but a debating society. It could _discuss_ proposed
legislation, but it had no powers to _enact_ legislation of any kind.
Absolutism was dying hard, clinging to its powers with remarkable tenacity.
Of course, the concessions did not satisfy the revolutionists, not even
the most moderate sections, and the net result was to intensify rather than
to diminish the flame.

On the 2d of August--10th, according to the old Russian calendar--the war
with Japan came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth.
Russia had experienced humiliating and disastrous defeat at the hands of a
nation far inferior in population and wealth, but infinitely superior in
military capacity and morale. The news of the conditions of peace
intensified the ardor and determination of the revolting Russian people
and, on the other hand, added to the already great weakness of the
government. September witnessed a great revival of revolutionary agitation,
and by the end of the month a fresh epidemic of strikes had broken out in
various parts of the country. By the middle of October the whole life of
Russia, civil, industrial, and commercial, was a chaos. In some of the
cities the greater part of the population had placed themselves in a state
of siege, under revolutionary leadership.

On the 17th of October--Russian style--the Czar issued the famous Manifesto
which acknowledged the victory of the people and the death of Absolutism.
After the usual amount of pietistic verbiage by way of introduction the
Manifesto said:

We make it the duty of the government to execute our firm will:

(1) To grant the people the unshakable foundations of civic
freedom on the basis of real personal inviolability, freedom of
conscience, of speech, of assemblage of unions.

(2) To admit now to participation in the Imperial Duma, without
stopping the pending elections and in so far as it is feasible in
the short time remaining before the convening of the Duma, all the
classes of the population, _leaving the farther development of the
principle of universal suffrage to the new legislative order._

(3) _To establish as an unshakable rule that no law can become
binding without the consent of the Imperial Duma, and that the
representatives of the people must be guaranteed a real
participation in the control over the lawfulness of the
authorities appointed by us_.

We call upon all faithful sons of Russia to remember their duty to
their fatherland, to aid in putting an end to the unprecedented
disturbances, and to exert with us all their power to restore
quiet and peace in our native land.


VIII

The Czar's Manifesto rang through the civilized world. In all lands it was
hailed as the end of despotism and the triumph of democracy and freedom.
The joy of the Russian people was unbounded. At last, after fourscore years
of heroic struggle and sacrifice by countless heroes, named and nameless,
the goal of freedom was attained. Men, women, and children sang in the
streets to express their joy. Red flags were displayed everywhere and
solemnly saluted by the officers and men of the Czar's army. But the
rejoicing was premature, as the events of a few hours clearly proved. With
that fatal vacillation which characterized his whole life, Nicholas II had
no sooner issued his Manifesto than he surrendered once more to the evil
forces by which he was surrounded and harked back to the old ways. The day
following the issuance of the Manifesto, while the people were still
rejoicing, there began a series of terrible pogroms. The cry went forth,
"Kill the Intellectuals and the Jews!"

There had been organized in support of the government, and by its agents,
bodies of so-called "patriots." These were, in the main, recruited from the
underworld, a very large number of them being criminals who were released
from the prison for the purpose. Officially known as the Association of
the Russian People and the Association to Combat the Revolution, these
organizations were popularly nicknamed the Black Hundreds. Most of the
members were paid directly by the government for their services, while
others were rewarded with petty official positions. The Czar himself
accepted membership in these infamous organizations of hired assassins.
Within three weeks after the issuance of the Manifesto more than a hundred
organized pogroms took place, the number of killed amounting to nearly four
thousand; the wounded to more than ten thousand, according to the most
competent authorities. In Odessa alone more than one thousand persons were
killed and many thousands wounded in a four-days' massacre. In all the
bloody pages of the history of the Romanovs there is nothing comparable to
the frightful terror of this period.

Naturally, this brutal vengeance and the deception which Nicholas II and
his advisers had practised upon the people had the immediate effect of
increasing the relative strength and prestige of the Socialists in the
revolutionary movement as against the less radical elements. To meet such
brutality and force only the most extreme measures were deemed adequate.
The Council of Workmen's Deputies, which had been organized by the
proletariat of St. Petersburg a few days before the Czar issued his
Manifesto, now became a great power, the central guiding power of the
Revolution. Similar bodies were organized in other great cities. The
example set by the city workers was followed by the peasants in many places
and Councils of Peasants' Deputies were organized. In a few cases large
numbers of soldiers, making common cause with these bodies representing the
working class, formed Councils of Soldiers' Deputies. Here, then, was a new
phenomenon; betrayed by the state, weary of the struggle to democratize
and liberalize the political state, the workers had established a sort of
revolutionary self-government of a new kind, entirely independent of the
state. We shall never comprehend the later developments in Russia,
especially the phenomenon of Bolshevism, unless we have a sympathetic
understanding of these Soviets--autonomous, non-political units of
working-class self-government, composed of delegates elected directly by
the workers.

As the revolutionary resistance to the Black Hundreds increased, and the
rapidly growing Soviets of workmen's, peasants' and soldiers' delegates
asserted a constantly increasing indifference to the existing political
state, the government again tried to stem the tide by making concessions.
On November 3d--new style--in a vain attempt to appease the incessant
demand for the release of the thousands of political prisoners, and to put
an end to the forcible release of such prisoners by infuriated mobs, a
partial amnesty was declared. On the 16th a sop was thrown to the peasants
in the shape of a decree abolishing all the remaining land-redemption
payments. Had this reform come sooner it might have had the effect of
stemming the tide of revolt among the peasants, but in the circumstances it
was of no avail. Early in December the press censorship was abolished by
decree, but that was of very little importance, for the radical press had
thrown off all its restraints, simply ignoring the censorship. The
government of Nicholas II was quite as helpless as it was tyrannical,
corrupt, and inefficient. The army and navy, demoralized by the defeat
suffered at the hands of Japan, and especially by knowledge of the
corruption in high places which made that defeat inevitable, were no longer
dependable. Tens of thousands of soldiers and marines had joined with the
workmen in the cities in open rebellion. Many more indulged themselves in
purposeless rioting.

The organization of the various councils of delegates representing
factory-workers and peasants, inevitable as it seemed to be, had one
disastrous effect, the seriousness of which cannot be overstated. As we
have seen, the cruel, blundering policy of the government had united all
classes against it in a revolutionary movement of unexampled magnitude.
Given the conditions prevailing in Russia, and especially the lack of
industrial development and the corresponding numerical weakness of the
industrial proletariat, it was evident that the only chance of success in
the Revolution lay in the united effort of all classes against the old
regime. Nothing could have better served the autocracy, and therefore
injured the revolutionary cause, than the creation of a division in the
ranks of the revolutionists.

This was exactly what the separate organizations of the working class
accomplished. All the provocative agents of the Czar could not have
contrived anything so serviceable to the reaction. _Divide et impera_ has
been the guiding principle of cunning despots in all ages, and the astutest
advisers of Nicholas II must have grinned with Satanic glee when they
realized how seriously the forces they were contending against were
dividing. Stupid oppression had driven into one united force the
wage-earning and wage-paying classes. Working-men and manufacturers made
common cause against that stupid oppression. Now, however, as the
inevitable result of the organization of the Soviets, and the predominance
of these in the Revolution, purely economic issues came to the front. In
proportion as the class struggle between employers and employed was
accentuated the common struggle against autocracy was minimized and
obscured. Numerous strikes for increased wages occurred, forcing the
employers to organize resistance. Workers in one city--St. Petersburg, for
example--demanded the immediate introduction of an eight-hour workday, and
proclaimed it to be in force, quite regardless of the fact that longer
hours prevailed elsewhere and that, given the competitive system, their
employers were bound to resist a demand that would be a handicap favoring
their competitors.

As might have been foreseen, the employers were forced to rely upon the
government, the very government they had denounced and conspired to
overthrow. The president of the Council of Workmen's Deputies of St.
Petersburg, Chrustalev-Nosar, in his _History of the Council of Workmen's
Deputies_, quotes the order adopted by acclamation on November 11th--new
style--introducing, from November 13th, an eight-hour workday in all shops
and factories "in a revolutionary way." By way of commentary, he quotes a
further order, adopted November 25, repealing the former order and
declaring:

The government, headed by Count Witte, _in its endeavor to break
the vigor of the revolutionary proletariat, came to the support of
capital_, thus turning the question of an eight-hour workday in
St. Petersburg into a national problem. The consequence has been
that the working-men of St. Petersburg are unable now, apart from
the working-men of the entire country, to realize the decree of
the Council. The Council of Workmen's Deputies, therefore, deems
it necessary to _stop temporarily the immediate and general
establishment of an eight-hour workday by force_.

The Councils inaugurated general strike after general strike. At first
these strikes were successful from a revolutionary point of view. Soon,
however, it became apparent that the general strike is a weapon which can
only be used effectively on rare occasions. It is impossible to rekindle
frequently and at will the sacrificial passion necessary to make a
successful general strike. This the leaders of the proletariat of Russia
overlooked. They overlooked, also, the fact that the masses of the workers
were exhausted by the long series of strikes in which they had engaged and
were on the verge of starvation. The consequence was that most of the later
strikes failed to accomplish anything like the ends sought.

Naturally, the government was recovering its confidence and its courage in
proportion to the class divisions and antagonisms of the opposition. It
once more suppressed the revolutionary press and prohibited meetings. Once
more it proclaimed martial law in many cities. With all its old-time
assurance it caused the arrest of the leaders of the unions of workmen and
peasants, broke up the organizations and imprisoned their officers. It
issued a decree which made it a crime to participate in strikes. With the
full sanction of the government, as was shown by the publication of
documentary evidence of unquestioned authenticity, the Black Hundreds
renewed their brutality. The strong Council of Workmen's Deputies of St.
Petersburg, with which Witte had dealt as though it were part of the
government itself, was broken up and suppressed. Witte wanted
constitutional government on the basis of the October Manifesto, but he
wanted the orderly development of Russian capitalism. In this attitude he
was supported, of course, by the capitalist organizations. The very men who
in the summer of 1905 had demanded that the government grant the demands of
the workers and so end the strikes, and who worked in unison with the
workers to secure the much-desired political freedom, six months later were
demanding that the government suppress the strikes and exert its force to
end disorder.

Recognition of these facts need not imply any lack of sympathy with the
proletariat in their demands. The class struggle in modern industrial
society is a fact, and there is abundant justification--the justification
of necessity and of achievement--for aggressive class consciousness and
class warfare. But it is quite obvious that there are times when class
interests and class warfare must be set aside in favor of larger social
interests. It is obviously dangerous and reactionary--and therefore
wrong--to insist upon strikes or other forms of class warfare in moments of
great calamity, as, for example, during disasters like the Johnstown flood
and the Messina earthquake, or amid the ravages of a pestilential plague.
Marx, to whom we owe the formulation of the theory of class struggle which
has guided the Socialist movement, would never have questioned this
important truth; he would never have supported class separatism under
conditions such as those prevailing in Russia at the end of 1905. Only
doctrinaires, slaves to formulae, but blind to reality, could have
sanctioned such separatism. But doctrinaires always abound in times of
revolution.

By December the government was stronger than it had been at any time since
the Revolution began. The zemstvos were no longer an active part of the
revolutionary movement. Indeed, there had come over these bodies a great
change, and most of them were now dominated by relatively reactionary
landowners who, hitherto apathetic and indifferent, had been stirred to
defensive action by the aggressive class warfare of the workers.
Practically all the bourgeois moderates had been driven to the more or less
open support of the government. December witnessed a new outburst in St.
Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities. Barricades were raised in the streets
in many places. In Moscow, where the most bitter and sanguinary struggles
took place, more than a thousand persons were killed. The government was
better prepared than the workers; the army had recovered no little of its
lost morale and did not refuse to shoot down the workers as it had done on
previous occasions. The strikes and insurrections were put down in bloody
vengeance and there followed a reign of brutal repression indescribably
horrible and savage. By way of protest and retaliation, there were
individual acts of terrorism, such as the execution of the Governor of
Tambov by Marie Spiridonova, but these were of little or no avail. The
First Revolution was drowned in blood and tears.

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