1905 in Poland: Documenting the Revolution

That is why — we greet you, 22 January, as a day of remembrance of the great past — and a day of hope for the great future!

SDKPiL, 1907

To commemorate the 120th anniversary of the outbreak of the 1905 revolution we publish here some translations of contemporary flyers released by the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) during the course of that revolution. They are a historical document of the events as they happened.

The revolution began after a mass procession of workers in St Petersburg was violently attacked by Tsarist troops on 22 January, in the following days and months unleashing a wave of strikes and demonstrations across the whole of the Russian Empire, including Congress Poland. For our analysis of the revolution, we refer readers to our articles on the subject.(1) But the following statements — published in the form of flyers for mass distribution in January 1906, January 1907 and January 1908 respectively — sum up the experience of each year of the revolution and the rise and fall of the class movement. The 1906 statement was signed as the SDKPiL, but the 1907 and 1908 statements also bore the name of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) at the top — the SDKPiL had became a section of the RSDLP at its fourth congress held in Stockholm in April-May 1906.

The 1905 revolution was a trial by fire for workers’ political organisations — they had to learn not only how to advance with the movement, but also how to retreat alongside it without abandoning their revolutionary orientation. From an organisation of just a few hundred active militants in 1903, the SDKPiL grew to more than 30,000 members by 1906, only to shrink again following the repressions of 1907. There were political repercussions as well. In Russia, the revolution highlighted the growing political gulf between the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the RSDLP, with sections of the SDKPiL becoming increasingly close to the latter. In Poland, the main opponent of the internationalist SDKPiL within the socialist camp, the social-patriotic Polish Socialist Party (PPS), split in 1906 under the weight of events, with the left faction over time approaching SDKPiL positions.(2)

The 1905 revolution seemed to prove possible what once seemed impossible. And although the Tsar remained in power, and thousands of workers and militants were imprisoned, deported or killed, the movement awakened the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, and gave birth to the idea of the mass strike and soviet power.(3) In doing so it prefigured the struggles to come. If in 1905 revolutionary social democracy still saw its task as helping to bring about the conditions in which a direct struggle for socialism would become possible, the intensifying contradictions of a now global capitalist system were to soon open a new era of imperialist war and socialist revolution. 1917 was the next chapter.(4)

Today we live in the aftermath of the failure of all previous workers’ movements. The mass parties and trade unions which were supposed to lead the struggle for a new world have instead helped to integrate the working class into capitalism. Small revolutionary groups abound around the world but are divided over how to respond to a century of counter-revolution. We are not talking here of the Stalinists or Trotskyists, who embrace that counter-revolution and are welcome to it. But amongst those who can recognise the defeat of the revolutionary wave that brought to end the first imperialist war in 1917-18 there is not even a meaningful dialogue. Some think that they alone are the only hope for humanity, others that they will be part of some nebulous spontaneous struggle that will arise from nowhere. Others think it is just enough to salute every strike as if the revolution was just around the corner. But strikes, where they happen today, tend to limit themselves only to bread and butter issues rather than take on wider political questions. As the planet burns in the fires of imperialist war and environmental catastrophe, a united working class response is notably lacking. In this sense, the need for a real movement which could awaken the revolutionary consciousness of workers and help revolutionaries regroup politically, a new 1905 if you will, is greater than ever.

Dyjbas
Communist Workers’ Organisation
January 2025

Notes to the Introduction:

(1) “A Majestic Prologue” - The Russian Revolution of 1905

(2) In 1918 the SDKPiL and the PPS-Left would unite to form the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland (KPRP). See: A Brief History of the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland

(3) See: Leon Trotsky’s 1905 and Rosa Luxemburg’s The Mass Strike.

(4) Russia: Revolution and Counter-Revolution, 1905-1924 - A View from the Communist Left

sdkpil-1905.jpg

A Year of Revolution (1906)

I

The day of 22 January closes the first year of the Revolution within the Tsardom; it represents the same kind of breakthrough in the history of mankind as the Great French Revolution did a hundred years ago.

When a year ago the telegraph circulated the news that, in the Tsar’s capital on the Neva river, 200,000 workers had left work and marched to the Winter Palace to plead for political freedom and the eight-hour workday, this news hit the minds and hearts of people across the whole world like thunder. Humanity faced a magical event, a miracle, it gazed at the sight with bated breath; this huge endless proletarian procession, a mighty pilgrimage of working people, walking with slow, heavy steps, determined to face everything, the masses, marching to come face-to-face with the omnipotent Tsar, and proclaim: freedom or death!

An inconceivable miracle! For hundreds of years the Tsardom was a huge cemetery, in which millions of people were born, lived and descended to their graves in bondage, in chains, but — all in sombre silence. Grave silence ruled in this immeasurable prison of millions, in which the cracking of whips and the groaning of an exhausted people was only interrupted by the sound of worker and peasant misery. Individual outbursts of rebellion, even the most heroic outbursts of “Narodnaya Volya”,(5) seemed to burn briefly with a bright sacrificial flame only to be extinguished, making the darkness of hopeless slavery even more terrible.

And so in this silent grave, in which millions endured the iron fetters and heavy yoke of despotism with humility, a sea of people’s heads has rocked at once, the whole mass of the people has risen with an oath to gain freedom or death, and continues unwaveringly, stumbling over its own corpses and slowly making its way to the trenches, overthrowing the old fortress of despotism, conquering stronghold after stronghold and soon on the highest peak it will raise — the red banner of freedom.

An inconceivable miracle happened on that 22 January last year — for people who had eyes but could not see, who had ears but could not hear. Yet in that Petersburg Procession of 22 January the word has become flesh, the red word of Social Democracy, which rang upon the grave of the Tsardom for many years now, and like an early lark it heralded spring. On 22 January the prediction of a certain poet came true, who once proclaimed:

And from the west a wind will warm this land.
Will the cascade of tyranny then stand?(6)

The wind from the west — that was the great gale of the proletarian idea, of workers’ struggle for emancipation, of socialism, which having flown all over the world and having woken up millions of exploited workers everywhere to a new life, arrived from the West to the great frosty cemetery of Tsardom, and began to blow and blow, until it ignited a spark of light in the heads of the exploited working masses and the flame of revolt in their hearts, until they rose up and began to break up the eternal ice cascade of tyranny.

On 22 January, that huge procession of workers showed at once where freedom for Russia will come from. Previously the Russian peasant desperately rebelled and — was silenced by the iron fist of the Tsarist regime. The Russian nobility, fed up with the economy of the chinovniks, thieves and Cossacks, began to stir, and — was silenced when in December 1904 the chinovniks, thieves and cossacks threateningly forbade protests, when they forbade zemstvo assemblies and banquets and ordered silence.(7)

In that very moment when everything went silent, when the whip reigned supreme, that is when the working people, defenceless and meek, stepped forward and asked for freedom. But such is the strength of the mass of the workers throughout the world today, such is its power, that its plea for freedom rang the funeral bell for the Tsarist government, so it deployed murderous cannons against the pilgrimage of defenceless proletarians and blood was shed like the sea.

With 22 January a new era of history has opened for the Tsardom, a new era of history for all modern nations. The first revolution in modern history led by the conscious working class under the banner of Social Democracy has begun. And today the proletariat of the Tsardom, the oldest fortress of barbarism, leads the way. Today sparks of the revolution in Russia and Poland land on the thatched roofs of capitalist countries in the West, and already little flames are lashing their crimson tongues. Already in Vienna and Prague, already in Leipzig and Dresden, the working masses are taking to the streets to demand new political rights, and already blood has been spilled on German pavements. Already in Hamburg barricades have been erected.(8) Thunder still growls timidly in Europe here and there and lightning flashes silently in the sky. But the storm is coming slowly, blown by the wind from the east. 22 January, having awoken the proletariat of the whole of Russia, is now awakening the proletariat of the whole world, to a new faith in their emancipation, to a new willingness to fight.

For many decades, since 1848, the thunder of revolution was not heard in Europe. The bourgeoisie has given up the struggle, having won power for itself, while the proletariat could not yet step up. After the bloody repression of the Paris Commune workers’ uprising of 1871,(9) revolutionary struggles subsided, and a blissful “peace” for the masters of this world prevailed. The ruling classes, governments and blind and small-minded people have even begun to think that the revolutionary era is over, that the kingdom of capital will reign forever.

Until the January thunderbolt awoke them from their daze. As a harbinger of a series of future socialist revolutions of the proletariat all over the world, 22 January entered the Tsar’s northern capital last year.

II

The spontaneous working class uprising in Petersburg was the trigger for an eruption across the whole country. Let’s have a look at the course of the revolution over the past year.

On the 22nd the massacre took place in the capital, and already on the 25-26th hundreds of thousands of workers in all the main cities of Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Livonia and the Caucasus left their jobs in solidarity with their murdered brothers in Petersburg. Suddenly, a powerful new tool of this first workers’ revolution was invented — the general strike. For the first time in the history of Tsarism and in the history of the proletariat of all countries, such enormous masses of workers in such a vastly dispersed area, at a single command, stood up to fight for a single goal. And this command was given not by any great leader, not by any new Napoleon, but by the very spirit of brotherhood and solidarity living in every worker, the very class instinct of the exploited and oppressed was their infallible and all-powerful leader. The proletariat of our country was at the forefront — the masses in Warsaw, Łódź, Częstochowa, Dąbrowa, Białystok, Vilnius were stirred to action. The strike spread over the whole territory of the Tsardom and showed the Tsarist government that its enemies would not be slaughtered by a Petersburg massacre, because they were not thousands, but millions. In this first general strike, the entire working class of Tsardom was born into action and struggled as one army, led by one spirit, striving for one goal. Political freedom and the eight-hour workday became, a few days after the Petersburg Procession, the slogan of the workers of the whole country.

Along with the workers, the youth rallied to the cause. Alongside the factories, schools and universities are coming to a standstill; the school strike — an unprecedented phenomenon — is sweeping the whole country. Tsarist education is dying out.

The first general workers’ strike ended. But the revolution immediately took on a new form. In place of one general strike, a myriad of strikes broke out in all branches of production. Each section of the workers began to fight separately against their exploiters. The workers began to passionately demand redress for their thousands of grievances, previously endured with humility. A general struggle for material improvement of living, for the eight-hour workday, spreads over all industrial areas. In springtime this struggle continues, in which individual areas develop unprecedented heroism: Dąbrowa fights despite hunger and the strike continues for 6 weeks without a break.

Then we come to May Day, the first workers’ holiday of the revolutionary era. The Polish proletariat once again takes the lead. Warsaw amazes everyone with a march under the banner of Social Democracy. The May Day march ends with the slaughter of the defenceless in Jerusalem Avenue, and gives the slogan of revenge, for a new struggle throughout the country. In June, Łódź responds to Warsaw’s May Day festivities and overtakes Warsaw in heroism. The general strike turns into street fights. The first barricades of the revolution are erected on the streets of Łódź, and brave fighters of the proletariat fall on them by the dozens. After Łódź, Białystok and Częstochowa provide examples of workers’ heroism. Riga shines with courage, Kiev and Odessa appear as capitals of heroic struggle.

The phase of uninterrupted strikes momentarily subsides in the midst of summer. The revolutionary storm seems to hold its breath. And suddenly a new unexpected explosion — in the south, on the Black Sea, the battleship Potemkin floats like a ghost from a fairy tale, the ship of the mutinous crew with the flag of the Revolution on its mast.(10) It is a harbinger of new explosions — in the navy, in the Tsar’s army. Barely has the Potemkin rebellion been suppressed, when the first harbingers of a peasant uprising arrive. Outside the city, the countryside joins the fight. The revolution spreads, grows like an avalanche. And workers’ blood flows in streams. Kasprzak’s martyrdom ends in the death of a hero of the struggle for freedom and socialism, a death that shakes the whole world and fans the flame of revolution further.(11)

The Tsar with his criminal gang plans to deceive and paralyse the revolution by trickery. They put forward Bulygin’s fraudulent project(12) — shameful electoral lawlessness for the comedy of the Tsarist Duma. Tsardom thought that it was still possible to fool the working people, but underestimated their political maturity. The response to Bulygin’s project was a new outbreak of struggle and a general strike of railway workers under the slogans of Moscow, followed by a general workers’ strike. Bulygin’s projects lie in ruins. The dying Tsardom issues the 30 October Manifesto, promising freedom.(13) Before the Tsar allows it, freedom bursts like a crashing wave into the state, the workers take it by storm, public meetings, a free press, unions spring up as if by a miracle from the underground. Tsarism responds with a general massacre, pogroms against Jews, the crimes of the Black Hundreds.(14) But the revolution also makes new lion’s leaps in response: like an echo of Potemkin, naval uprisings resound in Kronstadt, in Vladivostok, in Sevastopol. After the navy, the army rebels in Petersburg, in Moscow, in Kiev, in Odessa. In response to martial law in Poland, to the massacre in the Caucasus, a brotherly echo — a general strike in Petersburg.

The peasant war engulfs Central and Southern Russia like a fire. The whole of Livonia stands in the flames of revolution.

Tsarism attempts new violence, arrests, prohibitions. The answer is a new outbreak of a previously unknown revolutionary struggle — a general strike of the post office and telegraph. Following it, another general strike of workers and the first great armed uprising in Moscow.(15)

So the new 22 January enters upon a terrible sea of ​​red blood, upon a vast battlefield of heroic victims, upon poverty, hunger, and the immeasurable efforts of the proletariat. But at the same time it rises — upon the ruins of Tsarism.

It was a year of revolution, the likes of which history has never known — without pause, without respite. Not a day passed without a struggle, without victims. But during that year the revolution marched from victory to victory. Because every apparent defeat brought a moment later an even more powerful outbreak. The revolution marched tirelessly forward, multiplying its weapons, expanding its field of action, growing in courage and spirit. Absolutism marched only from crime to crime, from shame to shame, from bankruptcy to bankruptcy. Today we are facing the last phase of the revolution — the phase of armed struggle. The revolution is breathing in again, to explode all the more powerfully, to run wild and knock the enemy to the ground once and for all.

III

Petersburg began the year of revolution with a procession of supplicants, workers armed with the Passion of Christ and led by a priest. Moscow ended the year with an armed uprising of the organised proletariat under the slogans and under the leadership of Social Democracy. This is the content and the achievement of the revolution of the past year. The last 22 January already indicated that the working class is the decisive force that will overthrow absolutism. The whole of last year confirmed this lesson. The army of fighters expanded and multiplied, the countryside arrived, the Russian intelligentsia arrived, the officials arrived, the navy arrived, the military is arriving, but the center, the nucleus and the leader of this whole army remained the industrial proletariat. And with the expansion of the struggle and its leadership, the proletariat grew continuously in political maturity, in consciousness and organisation. The struggle not only expanded but also deepened. What started as a spontaneous, chaotic outburst of protest and a plea for freedom, is today a disciplined concentration of ranks, ready for any sacrifice, clearly understanding their goals, led by their own class party. From a sect Social Democracy in the entire country has become a huge people’s movement over just one year. The political and economic organisation of the proletariat has matured and expanded powerfully.

And in this political maturity, in this fighting energy, in the unwavering revolutionary will of the proletariat lies the guarantee of further victories of the revolution and its final victory.

At present moment, when the proletariat is preparing with full concentration and iron willpower for the final phase, armed clashes with Tsarism, looking with contempt at its efforts around the comedy of elections to the lawless Duma, the bourgeoisie is again starting to think the revolution will fall silent, that the bayonet and the rifle will be masters, that the struggling, fatigued masses will drop the weapon from their hands.

Rifles! They are to crush the revolution, which has become a historical necessity, a verdict of history! The blind parasites of the revolution forget that if the rifles which, before 22 January 1905, ruled supreme, were not able to prevent the initial outbreak of the revolution, today, shattered in parts, they will not be able to crush the powerful and raging revolution.

Fatigue! Let these gentlemen, in their safe hiding places, who dare to discuss the fatigue of the worker in struggle, look with their eyes into the abyss of great misery, humiliation and hopelessness in which the working people lived and vegetated, into that hell from which they emerged on 22 January to fight, and they will understand that these people today cannot abandon themselves and return to the yoke, just as a stream falling from the crevices of a mountain glacier, falling down into the valley, cannot return to its source.

The working people who took to the streets on 22 January 1905 and started a revolution, were fatigued not by revolution but by misery and disgrace, by the yoke of exploitation and oppression. On that day the proletarians of Petersburg, tired of centuries of oppression, cried out: we will not return to the yoke. Better death than slavery!

And today, after a year of heroic struggle, the proletariat of Poland and Russia, of the whole country, renews its oath and resolution to continue the struggle unwaveringly until the end, until victory! Before 22 January rises for the third time, the fortress of despotism will drown in that sea of ​​blood, in which a year ago, on the first day of the Revolution, freedom and the struggling people it tried to drown.

SDKPiL
January 1906

Hallowed Be, Hallowed Be Our Day of Blood and Glory! (1907)

Workers! The most difficult year of the revolution has passed and we stand once again before the day of 22 January — the day on which for the first time the workers’ breast boldly struck the fortress of Tsardom in a mighty wave — on which the first streams of proletarian blood abundantly watered the streets of the Tsarist capital, on which the first bloody seed of the great revolution was sown.

That which had been hidden for many years in the depths of life, that which was being created underground, now suddenly emerged onto the surface of the earth. And before the eyes of the astonished world an unprecedented historical tragedy unfolded, an unprecedented battle of new forces with the legions of a dying order.

The Petersburg salvos, the groans of murdered proletarians in the streets of the Tsar’s city, resounded with a mighty echo across the vast areas of the Russian state — and everywhere, in every corner where their sound reached, crowds of slaves, proletarians poured out into the streets to break their chains.

And a struggle broke out, such as the world had never seen. Enormous waves of a strike movement flowed, drawing on hunger and misery, from centuries of slavery, now enveloped in the dazzling light of class consciousness, inexhaustible resources of revolutionary energy.

The storm of history roars ever more powerfully. The great October strike of 1905 tears the constitutional manifesto from the Tsar’s stiff paw. But the struggle goes on, it must go on as long as the monster bites, as long as we have not yet pulled out its poisonous fangs. The dying monster gathers black forces, organises the remnants of its troops — the bourgeoisie rushes to its aid, terrified by the sweep of the revolution, terrified by the power of action developed by the proletariat. The Moscow uprising, stifled in streams of blood, ties the bourgeoisie even more to the Tsar, and isolates the proletariat even more. From the beginning of the enormous struggle against Tsarism — all this sea of ​​blood, all this great martyrdom — hunger and cold — gallows and bullets — prisons and Siberian taigas — all this has been fed by the blood of the proletariat — all is drawn from its noblest part, those enduring the hunger and cold, Siberia, the martyr’s stake and the gallows, for the sacred work of emancipating the working people.

The bourgeoisie was at first only a modest spectator of this grim drama — a spectator rubbing their hands at the thought of the power and profits that will later be drawn from this suffering, from this struggle of the working people, after the victory. But as soon as it understood where the proletariat was heading — as soon as it noticed that the conscious class force demolishing the old edifice of despotism would want to build on the ruins of this edifice the mighty framework of popular rule — as soon as it noticed that the working people wanted to buy with the price of their blood not freedom for the bourgeoisie only, but freedom and bread for themselves — from that moment the bourgeoisie ceased to be a spectator, and became an active ally of Tsarism.

The role of the proletariat becomes even more difficult, even more important. Its consciousness is the only guiding light, followed also by the masses of the revolutionised peasantry. But this consciousness, deepening the revolution, makes it at the same time more difficult to realise, increasing the barriers that the conscious revolutionary force must overcome. And the revolution, having exhausted in the preliminary battles the reserves of energy which it had brought to the surface from the enormous reservoir, returns again to its underground bed, flowing deeply and powerfully, so that later with fresh, invincible energy — like a hurricane, like a destructive current — it can flow out into the streets and squares, and fulfill its great task.

The Tsarist government and the bourgeoisie, unable to understand the complex historical process that is revolution — unable to understand that this silence is the forging of weapons in the underground — rub their hands, certain of victory. Because where are the forces that could overthrow the shaken fortress of despotism?

The proletariat decimated, deprived of its bravest sons — the peasantry trampled by punitive expeditions — everywhere gallows, stakes — everywhere the groans of the murdered — everywhere the groans of raped women, slaughtered infants, slaughtered elders. The whole vast area of ​​the Russian state has become one torture chamber, in which day and night the unbridled Tsarist mob celebrates wild orgies.

And in these conditions the Tsar summoned the Duma. He wanted to sanctify the victory with a comedy. But the Duma chosen under the sign of reaction — saturated with the groans of innocent victims — saturated with the smoke blowing from the conflagration — saturated with the injustice of millions — was not a tool in the hands of the Tsar, just as it was not a tool in the hands of the revolutionary people, who forged their swords far from it.

Tsarism dispersed the Duma.(16) Tsarism sought a way out, because it saw that its victory was illusory — because this silence momentarily seized it with fear — because it did not know what the next day would bring — because it saw that the enemy was preparing to jump, and did not know where and when the fatal blow would fall on his neck. It counted on the bourgeoisie, ready to lick its feet, it counted on its Black Hundreds — it wanted to base its existence on them. It entered into an alliance with them, called them to fight the revolution, promised in return to share the power and provide the opportunity to strangle the proletariat — it promised, having no intention of fulfilling even this promise.

Court-martials and military pogroms for the revolutionaries, reforms and a second Duma for the bourgeoisie — such is the further development of the revolution. But vain efforts, vain toil! The forces of the revolution, though temporarily hidden, are too great to be crushed by childish means — the necessity of the victory of the proletariat rests on too strong a foundation for momentary Tsarist repressions to make this necessity any weaker.

The underground is seething. The underground is forging swords; those who will not yield, cannot yield as long as they do not place their victorious foot on the breast of the fallen monster. The underground is seething. The underground is preparing for battle, those who have nothing to lose but their chains — and a world to win. And again — at the right moment — from this underground the volcano of revolution will spew fiery lava and flood the whole world with it. And once again two forces will stand face to face — and the final battle will commence.

So, although the prisons are overflowing with our fighters — so, although the enemy torments individual knights of freedom every day — although the wounds of the proletariat continue to bleed — although, like blood-hungry jackals, the capitalists want to take advantage of this moment and drink in the blood of the workers — amid the clash of the sabers of the Tsarist executioners, amid the swish of their whips, the creaking of the gallows, the roar of salvos — the trained ear of one who has long understood and felt the historical necessity — will easily distinguish the dull roar coming from the underground — will easily pick up the muffled sounds of the revolutionary storm, which will unexpectedly, like a hurricane, come to the surface and cleanse the earth of all kinds of filth.

And that is why — we greet you, 22 January — as our holiday — as the day on which the sacred blood of the proletariat flowed onto the earth and fertilised it and prepared it for the sowing of revolution! That is why — we greet you, 22 January, as a day of remembrance of the great past — and a day of hope for the great future!

By leaving work in factories and workshops, on this day we challenge the powers of reaction — by leaving work in the torture chambers of capital, we throw down the gauntlet to all those who croak a funeral song, over us who are alive and full of faith and strength next to the fresh corpses of our fallen brothers.

By leaving work in factories and workshops, we throw to those who groan in dungeons, those who in the distant taigas of Siberia, far from us, perhaps lonely, have lost faith in the sacred work, those who perhaps have weakened from incredible torments — to them we throw a mighty breath of fresh hope, fresh faith.

Hallowed be then, hallowed be our day, this day of glory, this day of blood and suffering — from which a new life of people’s freedom will blossom! The underground is seething. The underground is forging swords for those who will go to battle — to a new, final battle.

May this day of 22 January renew their strength, tighten their ranks!!!
Honour the memory of the victims of the revolution!

Long live the revolution!
Long live socialism!
Long live the general strike!

SDKPiL
17 January 1907

Comrade Workers! (1908)

The anniversary of 22 January 1905 is approaching for the third time.

On that day, the workers of Petersburg, in a surge of universal fervor, staged a huge demonstration: they went in a huge crowd to the Tsar’s Palace to demand freedom and bread.

Among this crowd were thousands of people who had preserved in their souls a slavish loyalty to the Tsar, a childlike faith that a mighty and gracious ruler would listen to their complaints and grievances. They were disappointed! The Tsar responded to the pleas with murder, a hail of bullets, which cut down hundreds of men, women, old people and children, a stream of martyrs’ blood flooded the pavement in front of the Tsar’s palace... And in blood this naive faith was drowned forever, and the workers of Petersburg, and with them thousands of workers of the whole state, now understood that there could be no agreement between fire and water. Therefore, from that memorable day a new era in the struggle for freedom begins in the Russian state.

A few months after that day, the memorable strike broke out throughout the country, which forced the Tsar to make concessions. And it seemed that the workers would overthrow the rotten Tsarist throne with one blow... But the historical tragedy that the working people had experienced so many times before was repeated: there was a desire for freedom, there was no awareness of the paths leading to the goal; there was passion, there was no perseverance; there was boundless heroism, there was no unwavering will, no ability to use all their strength to achieve immediate victory... So the Tsar could once again concentrate his forces, could once again rely on the rifles in the hands of the sons of the people, and took his bloody revenge.

But after all, Tsarism did not break the proletariat! The desire for freedom came to life in millions of hearts, the consciousness of the need to improve living conditions arose in millions of minds; the working people matured in the struggle, in the struggle they acquired the consciousness of their goals and means. Therefore, despite the fierce repressions, despite the torment, despite the gallows and hard labour, they are gathering strength, preparing their ranks, work for the sacred cause is seething, and when the hour strikes again, the working class will stand united, powerful and invincible in the fight for its rights.

Let us keep these great tasks in our mind on the anniversary of 22 January.

In the past two years we have celebrated this anniversary with a protest strike. This year such a strike will not serve its purpose, because the general crisis in industry, with reaction running wild, would give entrepreneurs the opportunity to deprive the most courageous workers of their earnings, to undermine the foothold of the trade unions, which, in a period of strenuous organisational activity, would not be able to put up the necessary resistance.

Therefore, comrade workers, we advise you this year to refrain from the protest strike on 22 January.(17)

But let us celebrate this day by doubling our work for our cause, for the cause of the proletariat — on 22 January let every conscious worker set themselves the goal of winning new members for the political organisation and the trade unions; let us bring on this day with redoubled energy the light of class consciousness to the ranks of our brothers; and finally, let us donate part of our earnings for this day to the organisation, to the victims of the struggle.

Let us be at work on this day, since necessity requires it, but let us be united in spirit in the great idea of ​​liberating the proletariat and all of humanity, let us be united in spirit in serving our cause.

So on 22 January concentrate our hearts and spirits in the proletarian cry:

Long live freedom!
Long live socialism!

SDKPiL
January 1908

Notes:

(5) “Narodnaya Volya” (People’s Will) was a clandestine revolutionary organisation founded in 1879 when it emerged out of the earlier group “Zemlya i Volya” (Land and Liberty) It was loosely inspired by the collectivist anarchism of Bakunin and the “going to the people” populism of the Narodniks, and infamous for its acts of “propaganda of the deed” meant to spur the peasant masses into action: sabotage and murder. After the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II it underwent an internal crisis from which it never recovered. Some of its tactics were later picked up by the Socialist Revolutionary Party (SRs).

(6) Adam Mickiewicz, The Monument of Peter the Great, English translation by Marjorie Beatrice Peacock and Goerge Rapall in Slavonic and East European Review (1 January 1936).

(7) Reference to the banquets and assemblies organised by the liberal opposition in support of political reform. Chinovniks were members of the Tsarist bureaucracy. Cossack regiments were used by the Tsarist state for military and police service.

(8) Inspired by the events in Russia, in 1905-6 tens of thousands of workers in Germany and Austro-Hungary took to the streets calling for the introduction of universal suffrage and equal voting rights. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (SDAPÖ) helped organise these demonstrations. In some cities, like Dresden and Hamburg, street fights between demonstrators and the police broke out. However, a revolutionary situation did not develop and the reformist Social Democratic leadership rejected the calls for a mass strike.

(9) See: 1871-2021: Vive la Commune!

(10) The Potemkin was a battleship of the Imperial Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet. Recent defeats in the ongoing Russo-Japanese War and poor living conditions on the ship undermined morale among the crew. On 27 June 1905 a mutiny began. These events were later dramatised in the famous 1925 film Battleship Potemkin directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

(11) Marcin Kasprzak (1860-1905) was a prominent socialist militant. He passed through multiple political organisations and was pursued by arrest warrants across Germany and the Russian Empire. In 1890 he co-organised the first ever May Day demonstration in Poland and became a friend and mentor to Rosa Luxemburg. Upon his return to Warsaw in 1904 he set up an underground SDKPiL printing press. On 27 April 1904 the building was raided by the Tsarist police — Kasprzak defended himself and a shootout ensued as a result of which four policemen died. Kasprzak was tried and executed on the slopes of the Warsaw Citadel on 8 September 1905. His death became a rallying cry for the socialist movement.

(12) Alexander Bulygin was Minister of Interior from February until October 1905. He drafted the “Bulygin Constitution” which proposed the creation of a Duma as a consultative assembly of representatives of the landlords and the big bourgeoisie. The proposal did not satisfy the revolutionary movement which vowed to boycott the “Bulygin Duma”.

(13) In response to the continuation of strikes and protests, the 30 October Manifesto issued by the Tsar went a step further than the “Bulygin Constitution” and promised a Duma in the form of an elected parliament with some actual legislative powers.

(14) The Black Hundreds were groups of nationalists and monarchists who opposed the revolution, carried out anti-Semitic pogroms and sought to rein in protesting workers and subject nationalities.

(15) Following the arrest of the Petersburg Soviet on 3 December 1905, an armed workers’ uprising began in Moscow on 7 December, in which Bolsheviks played a significant role. It was violently suppressed and the revolutionary movement began to decline from that point onwards.

(16) The first Duma, established in May 1906, was dominated by liberal opposition groups. The second Duma, established in February 1907, showed an increase in support for the socialist parties. Both Dumas were dissolved by the Tsar in a matter of months. The third Duma, established in the wake of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin’s manipulations of June 1907, restricted the franchise and ensured the dominance of conservative forces. It lasted the statutory term of 5 years.

(17) The decision not to hold the now customary protest strike on 22 January was an indication of how the balance of forces had shifted by 1908. The revolution was over. The workers’ movement had been smashed by repressions and thousands of militants had been imprisoned, deported or killed. The party structures of the SDKPiL were in disarray and had to be rebuilt. This downturn contributed to the 1911 split in the SDKPiL, which showed the growing chasm between the executive in Berlin and those in Poland with their boots on the ground. In the end, it was the outbreak of the war which helped the party reunite around what mattered most: the internationalist cause.

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Revolutionary Perspectives

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