The December Revolution (Moscow, 1905)
Sources: webpage and Lunapic
1. PARTY ORGANIZATION AND PARTY LITERATURE.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, "a cog and screw" of one single great Social-Democratic gear set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organized, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
"All comparisons are lame," says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will even be hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison which degrades, deadens, "bureaucratizes" the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature is least of all subject to mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy, form and content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides.1
This, however, does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party organizations, and their writers must by all means become members of these organizations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments must all be under party control. The organized socialist proletariat must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the reading.2
2. OUR TASKS AND THE SOVIET OF WORKERS' DEPUTIES.
The Soviet of Workers' Deputies came into being through the general strike of October 1905. Who led the strike and brought it to a victorious close? The whole proletariat including non-Social-Democrats, fortunately a minority.1
3. SOCIALISM AND RELIGION.
Present-day society is wholly based upon the exploitation of vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the population, the class of landowners and capitalists. It is a slave society since "free" workers who all their life work for the capitalists are "entitled" only to subsistence wages, essential for the preservation of capitalist slavery.
The economic oppression of workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of political oppression and social humiliation, a coarsening and darkening of the spiritual and moral life of the masses. Workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for economic emancipation, but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment and oppression until the power of capital is vanquished.
Religion is one form of spiritual oppression that everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses overtaxed by their perpetual labour for others, overtaxed by want and isolation. The impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after death, just as the impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to his belief in gods, devils, miracles and the like.
To those who toil and live in want all their lives religion teaches submission, patience here on earth and the comforting hope of a heavenly reward. Those who live off the labour of others are instructed by religion to practise charity, thereby justifying their entire existence as exploiters while selling them moderately priced tickets to a future well-being in heaven.
Religion is an opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze with which Capital's slaves smother their demand for a life more or less worthy of man. But a slave who has become conscious of his slavery and has stood up to fight for his emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious worker, reared by large-scale industry and enlightened by urban life, casts aside religious prejudices contemptuously, leaves heaven to the priests and bourgeois bigots and tries to earn a better life for himself here on earth. Today's proletariat takes the side of a socialism that enrols science in the battle against the fog of religion and frees workers from belief in a life after death, welding them together to fight for a present better life on earth.1
Religion must be declared a private affair. Socialists usually express their attitude toward religion in such words. But the meaning of these words should be defined accurately to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned.
Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or none whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should be unquestionably eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become absolutely free associations of like-minded citizens, associations independent of the state.
Only the complete fulfilment of these demands can put an end to the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting men for their belief or disbelief, violating men's consciences, and linking cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of this or that dope by the established church.
Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.
The Russian revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of political freedom. In this respect the Russian revolution is in a particularly favourable position since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the clergy.
However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the "servants of God."
We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair.2 Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the Inquisition, in which case you evidently still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.
So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to the lack of class-consciousness, to the ignorance or obscurantism manifest in religious beliefs. We demand complete dis-establishment of the Church to enable combating the religious fog with purely and solely ideological weapons by means of our press and word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party?
The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by bourgeois democrats and Social-Democrats.
Our Programme is based entirely upon a scientific and moreover materialist world view. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog. Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. The publication of appropriate scientific literature which the autocratic feudal government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted must be a field our Party works on now. We shall probably have to follow now the advice Engels gave to the German Socialists: translate and disseminate widely the literature of the 18th century French Enlighteners and atheists.
But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion—as an "intellectual" question unconnected with the class struggle—as is not infrequently done by bourgeois radical-democrats. It would be stupid to think that religious prejudices could be dispelled by propaganda alone in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs down upon mankind is a mere product and reflection of the economic yoke in society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this truly revolutionary campaign of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than the unity of proletarian opinion on a paradise in heaven.
That is the reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme; that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We shall always preach the scientific world outlook and it is essential for us to combat the inconsistency of various "Christians." But that does not in the least mean that the religious question ought to be advanced to first place where it does not belong at all, nor does it mean that we should allow the forces of the truly revolutionary economic and political campaign to split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas that lose rapidly all political importance, are rapidly swept out as rubbish, by the very course of economic progress.
The reactionary bourgeoisie has everywhere concerned itself, and is now beginning to do so in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife in order to divert the attention of the masses from the truly important and fundamental economic and political issues now being resolved by the all-Russian proletariat fused in a revolutionary drive. This reactionary policy of splitting the proletarian forces manifests itself today mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms and may tomorrow conceive some subtler forms. We at any rate shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching proletarian solidarity and the scientific world view, a preaching alien to the stirring up of secondary differences.
The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair as far as the state is concerned. And in that political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.
4. THE DECEMBER REVOLUTION.
Sevastopol: Two battleships loyal to the Czar sustained an intense exchange of fire with rebel ships and rebel forts of the city. Sevastopol is almost destroyed. The revolutionaries have downed many telegraph lines.
St. Petersburg: The local press insists that Pope Gapon has returned from abroad. The police are searching for him.
London: Japan tallies 218,429 men killed during the Russo-Japanese War and 221,136 wounded.
Vladivostok: On November 27 a freed Russian prisoner of war refused to salute a Russian officer and insulted him instead. The officer slew the offender with a stroke of his sword. Enraged fellow soldiers tried to set the officers' canteen on fire. Three officers were killed and a fourth seriously injured. The Cossacks arrested forty-seven soldiers.
St. Petersburg: Mail delivery has been suspended. The managers of thirty factories employing a total of seventy-five thousand workers will begin a lockout tomorrow.
St. Petersburg: Workers believe that a political general strike will start "the day after tomorrow" (i.e., December 4 the date of publication). An "infinite number" of railway freight cars remains unloaded.
Moscow: The telegraph employees strike covers most communication centers. Many factories remain closed. The Abrikosov Factory, recently assaulted by workers, has shortened the working day by one and a half hours and agreed to raise salaries.1 Many Muscovites have abandoned the city.
Stepan Palkin (1737–1812) the founder of the future chocolate empire was a serf. Having asked his mistress for permission to go to Moscow to pay quitrent, he and his sons organized a small handicraft production and trade in jam and sweets. After Stepan Palkin's death, his son Ivan (1790≈1792–1848) took over the business and officially received the surname Abrikosov (lit. Apricot; the nickname that fellow villagers put on his father for his skill at making sweets). In 1841 Ivan Abrikosov went bankrupt, and his son Alexei (1824–1904) had to build a confectionery empire from scratch.
In 1865 Alexei Abrikosov acquired a spacious stone mansion with a one-story outbuilding. Here he set up a line of production, built workshops and housing for a hundred and twenty workers.
In 1873 he had a 12-horsepower steam engine installed; this sped up a number of chores and significantly increased productivity.
Convinced of the importance of technological upgrades for the success of the enterprise, he built a new factory building in the Sokolniki District of Moscow in 1879. This new production line boasted modern Swedish and English machinery, electricity, gas and a dedicated railway siding.
Paradoxically the Sokolniki factory became a revolutionary center of Moscow notwithstanding the fact that Abrikosov workers lived much better than their brothers in the shop. They earned high salaries, bonuses, gifts, had comfortable dormitories, free canteen, hospital, kindergarten and even a cinema.
By 1884 Abrikosov was the largest confectionary in the country with retail shops in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Odessa, Kiev, Irkutsk and Rostov-on-Don. The shops were among Russia's best in the categories of location (St. Petersburg, 1901), flashy décor (Moscow), customer service and in-house training of clerks and salesmen. The firm's productivity and confection quality were outstanding.
By the beginning of the 20th century the Abrikosov partnership sold four hundred tons of confections yearly and employed two thousand workers, female and male. The firm's annual turnover surpassed 2.5 million rubles, its product quality merited awards at All-Russian Trade and Industrial Exhibitions in 1882, 1896 and 1899. At this last one the "Factory Trade Partnership of A.I. Abrikosov and Sons" acquired the status of Purveyor to His Imperial Majesty's Court.
Abrikosov sweets were legendary.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks nationalized the Moscow factory in 1918. In 1922 the Abrikosov confectionery factory was renamed "Babayev" after the Bolshevik chairman of the Sokolniki District of Moscow. That's the name still in use today.
Russian sources: Commercial Director Magazine's article of July 10, 2015; Pro-Quality's webpage on the firm's history, and the Wikipedia webpage, Apricots. All photograph colorizations courtesy of Lunapic.
Kiev: Mutinied engineers and a Navy regiment battled each other; fifty dead, a hundred wounded.
Grodno [city in western Belarus]: Peasant unrest continues.
Moscow: Savage confrontations between troops and workers. The situation is completely out of control.1
Copenhaguen: All telegraph links to Russia are down.
New York: The funds collected to aid Russian Jews amount to 1.5 million U.S. Dollars.
St. Petersburg: Former War Minister Sakharov has been assassinated.
Kharkov: Five thousand Post and Telegraph employees are on strike; the people sympathize with the strikers.
St. Petersburg: Revolutionary leaders approved a death sentence on Pope Gapon for having sold out to Czarism; he fled to Germany.
Kiev: Continued unrest has occasioned the death of a thousand people.
St. Petersburg: Normalcy is being re-established across the Empire gradually.
St. Petersburg: Witte announced he would rather resign than use force to quell the unrest.
Warsaw: The police went on strike.
Riga: Military personnel do not venture to go out in uniform.
Moscow: The Russian government has uncovered a formidable military sedition whose leading center is located in Moscow.
Moscow: Extensive military contingency plans have been enacted on fears of a formidable uprising.
London: The peasant unions of the Baltic provinces have proclaimed a republic.
St. Petersburg: The Czar delivered a speech at an anti-reformist "Russian League" convention; his audience left the event disappointed. Butchers have gone on strike. An artillery brigade protects Tsarskoye Selo Palace; their situation is precarious. The bourgeoisie abandons the capital. Military governors across the Empire were granted authority to declare the state of siege in their respective territories.
St. Petersburg: The local press published a Workingmen's Manifesto.
Moscow: The grenadiers have joined the people.
Lodz [Poland]: The Black Hundreds launched several pogroms. Homes and stores were looted and destroyed, especially on Lickoua Street. Cossacks opened fire on the rioters, thirty of whom were wounded. Christians were also harassed.
St. Petersburg: The Czar has ordained the delivery of better food to the troops and awarded a pay hike.
Moscow: A general strike will be declared today (i.e. "yesterday" the 20th). Sixty-three businesses telegraphed Witte warning that if the ongoing Post and Telegraph strike continues unchecked the stoppage will bankrupt hundreds of businesses in the industrial and commercial sector. The signees label the situation "extremely serious."
Tiflis: Armenians control the city.
Batum [Georgia]: The city is burning.
St. Petersburg: The Czar has refused to concede universal voting rights, disappointing the majority of Ministers. The general strike spreads throughout the Empire, health centers excluded.
Tomsk [Russia]: Cossacks have set the Siberian Army barracks on fire.
Vladivostok: Fighting between loyal and rebel troops intensifies.
Elizavet: Revolutionaries set the town ablaze.1
St. Petersburg: Witte has opted to repress the seditions and ordered troops to spare no ammunition. The revolutionaries sent the Czar a message advising him to leave Russia. The Baltic provinces are lost; the revolutionaries have 1,500 officers and soldiers in custody.
St. Petersburg: Two thousand arrests were made on political grounds. Five hundred revolutionaries met at a school near the St. Nicholas Railway Station and concocted a plan for seizing the capital and dethroning the Czar.
Moscow: The use of artillery cleared the barricades erected by the revolutionaries. Many buildings were destroyed. Hospitals are full of the wounded, military and civilian. Intense combats downtown.
Moscow: The situation has worsened considerably. Bloody confrontations daily leave a multitude of dead and wounded. The revolutionaries use grenades. Admiral Dubasov has implemented terrible repression. Plague is spreading over vast areas of Russia. The number of affected people is incalculable. On December 26 the reported number of dead was 5,000 and the number of wounded 14,000. Barricades are defended to the bitter end. The reported tally of the dead rose to 10,000 on December 27.
St. Petersburg: The Council of the Union of Workers' Deputies [i.e., the St. Petersburg Soviet] resolved to prolong the strike. The office of the soviet has been dispersed twice. Troops and police surrounded a building where they suspected the Executive Committee was holding a session; nearly all tenants were taken to the police station and dispensed ill treatment.
Odessa: Post and Telegraph employees have ended their strike, but strikes persist in other trades.
Moscow: The situation is very critical; numerous blazes have been kindled. Mutineers looted two big armories on Sadovaia Street; they built barricades using downed telegraph poles, cables and planks. Heavy gunfire everywhere. Machine gunners spray Sadovaia Street.
Moscow: On December 27 a hundred thousand insurgents moved to arrest the Governor-General or prefect. The revolutionaries established their headquarters at the People's House. The number of blazes is innumerable and fire has begun spreading to other neighbourhoods. The entire horizon exhibits the colour red. Sleigh drivers stopped working for fear the insurgents might appropriate their sleighs in order to erect barricades. Heavy guns and machine-gun nests guard the main intersections. Hospitals are overcrowded with the wounded; graveyards are overcrowded with the dead. Troops shelled the Sytine Printing Shop where six hundred revolutionaries squatted; the revolutionaries fled after setting the building on fire: the printing shop was reduced it to ashes, the tenants perished in the blaze and many neighbours were hurt. Formidable barricades block some streets off completely.
St. Petersburg: Putilov Works has gone on strike. Police made numerous arrests. On the night of December 26 forty-nine revolutionary leaders were arrested, among them Engineer Schoolmann their helmsman. Plans, documents, "infernal machines" and other weapons were seized.
Moscow: On December 29 the revolutionaries were negotiating terms of surrender. The government intends to smash the insurrection at all costs. Fighting continues, giving rise to horrible scenes. The Rostopki Grenadiers have joined the rebels. Cossacks shoot law-abiding pedestrians. Troops are powerless to enter a district of 10-kilometer radius. Many houses are ruined. Long stretches of railway tracks were torn up. Anarchy reigns.
St. Petersburg: Sellers of newspapers that publish fake news are arrested. On December 29 the revolutionaries broke into the home of the secret-police chief and executed him after letting him say good-bye to his family.
St. Petersburg: On the morning of December 29, 1905, Cossacks opened fire on an outdoor meeting of three thousand workers who shot back with revolvers; the Cossack commander and eight soldiers were killed; twenty-seven workers too died; many were wounded.
Warsaw: On December 30, 1905, the troops dispersed Socialist revolutionaries trying to set up street barricades.
Odessa: Businesses and shops reopened on December 30, 1905.
St. Petersburg: On December 30, 1905, the Council of Ministers declared that the government's first task is to re-establish law and order and to implement the Manifesto of October 17 (30); any public servant who opposes the dictates of the government will be laid off for disobedience. On December 31, 1905, the prefect of St. Petersburg said in an interview that what happened in Moscow could not have happened in the capital because the number of troops is much higher here and of unequaled zeal and because city streets and avenues are wide and straight. The Czar suffers from frequent epilepsy attacks (this report dated January 1, 1906).
Moscow: On December 30, 1905, fighting continued in the Krasnaya Presnya district until 10:00 AM. Everything points to the end of the insurrection. In the last battles seven soldiers and two hundred revolutionaries perished. On January 1, 1906, artillery barrages reduced the insurgent headquarters to rubble. The number of victims is twenty thousand.
Kiev: The general strike is over.
Vilnius: The general strike is ended.
Warsaw: The general strike has waned considerably. All downtown shops have reopened, carriages circulate, but the banks, factories and trams prolong the strike.
Urals: Unconfirmed reports on December 31, 1905, say that workers led by influential members of the Social-Democratic Party took over Zlatoust the important munitions factory.1
St. Petersburg: Soldiers returning from Manchuria caused disturbances at several stations of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Moscow: On January 1, 1906, the artillery reduced the headquarters of the insurgents to rubble; many refused to abandon the building and perished in the flames. The revolution inflicted damage worth several million rubles. Two new regiments arrived on January 1, 1906. There were still four hundred and ten revolutionaries holed up at the "Prothorov" (?) Factory on January 2, 1906.
Warsaw: Telegraph service has been fully restored.
St. Petersburg: Police discovered an important cache of explosives reserved for blowing up the Neva Bridge.
Moscow: A report published on January 3, 1906, says that six hundred and forty-eight people died in the final skirmishes. The figure includes a hundred children.
Warsaw: The revolutionaries actively seek to incite a general uprising.
Paris: Pope Gapon arrived in the city "yesterday" (January 2, 1906) at 10:00 PM. In an interview he denied meeting with any Grand Duke or with any workers' committee.
St. Petersburg: Several revolutionary committees announced the suspension of the failed insurrection (January 3, 1906) but urged the people to ready a general uprising in the first few months of this year.
Moscow: According to a French publication the revolutionaries were progressively confined to the old quarters of the city surrounded by troops who then lit the wooden houses on fire. All the revolutionaries perished either by the inhalation of smoke or were scorched to death by the flames.
Moscow: On January 4, 1906, skirmishes between people and troops left many casualties.
St. Petersburg: An Imperial ukase prescribes severe measures to ensure a normal operation of the railways.
St. Petersburg: A cache of many grenades and much dynamite was uncovered at the home of a well-known businessman.
| And Now For Something Completely Different |