Originally published by the Russian Communist Workers Party (RCWP-CPSU)
In 2025, it will be 120 years since the day that forever entered the history of our country. The first Russian revolution began in the strike on St. Petersburg on January 9, 1905, when the tsarist troops shot at a peaceful demonstration of gullible workers. The workers, exhausted by want and hunger, who were going to the tsar with a petition about their needs. Later, this day came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”.
Initially, the mass workers’ movement in St. Petersburg did not have a revolutionary character. This is shown by the petition that the organizers of the movement handed over to Tsar Nicholas II:
“Sire! We, the workers and residents of the city of St. Petersburg of various classes, our wives and children, and helpless elder parents, have come to you, Sire, to seek truth and protection. We are impoverished, we are oppressed, burdened with back-breaking work, we are abused, we are not recognized as human beings, we are treated as slaves who must endure their bitter fate and remain silent… There is no more strength, Sire. The limit of patience has come. For us, that terrible moment has come when death is better than the continuation of unbearable torment.
Sire! Is this in accordance with the divine laws, by the grace of which you reign? And is it possible to live under such laws? Would it not be better for all of us, the working people of all Russia, to die? Let the capitalists, the exploiters of the working class, and the officials, the embezzlers and robbers of the Russian people, live and enjoy. This is what stands before us, Sire, and it is this that has gathered us to the walls of your palace. Here we are looking for the last salvation.
Do not refuse to help your people, lead them out of the grave of lawlessness, poverty and ignorance, give them the opportunity to decide their own fate, throw off the unbearable oppression of officials. Tear down the wall between you and your people, and let them rule the country with you.”
The petition contained such demands as the immediate declaration of freedom and inviolability of the person, freedom of speech, the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience in matters of religion. As well as equality before the law of all without exception, the responsibility of ministers to the people.
Among the social demands are general and compulsory public education at state expense, and guarantees, “measures against public poverty, an 8-hour working day and the rationing of overtime work. As well as the establishment of permanent commissions of elected workers at the factories and factories, which, together with the management, would examine all the claims of individual workers.”
The workers’ petition, which they brought to the tsar on January 9, 1905, is quite relevant on many points today.
On January 9, early in the morning, from all districts of St. Petersburg, ten-thousand-strong columns of the proletariat, including the elderly, women and children, carrying icons and royal portraits, headed for Palace Square:
“Anyone for whom the names of St. Petersburg’s squares and streets are not a simple abstract term will imagine this ring, into which the impressive but unarmed masses of workers were gathered, heading from the outskirts to the center. It is also not difficult to imagine this sea of people, often moving with women and children… Icons and banners were carried in front. And all over this living ring in different places the lights of rifle volleys flashed, and the pavement was stained with native blood…” – so wrote Vladimir Korolenko.
But the demonstration was shot by the troops. The tsarist government prepared for this crime in advance. The plan to disperse the peaceful demonstration had been approved by him the day before, at a meeting with the Minister of Internal Affairs. The troops called in reinforcement to the St. Petersburg garrison from Pskov, Tallinn, Narva, Peterhof and Tsarskoye Selo were stationed in eight combat sectors into which the capital was divided.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote about this terrible event in “Revolutionary Days”: “The government report about 96 killed and 330 wounded is obviously false, and no one believes it. According to the latest newspaper news, on January 13, journalists submitted to the Minister of the Interior a list of 4,600 killed and wounded, a list compiled by reporters.”
Not all of the dead were identified immediately. There were missing people who were searched for a long time by their loved ones. The poet Fyodor Sologub wrote a poem about this:
… In the precincts, in the hospitals (Where they were allowed, where they were not)
We inclined the uneven light to many faces
of the dim candles.
They threw piles of terrible bodies
Into the damp cellar.
The policeman did not want
to let us in.
Whether the tongue of sorrow is fiery,Money
has opened the door to us, Early
in the morning we penetrated
Into the darkness, to the prostrate bodies.
Slippery steps led
Into the damp haze,
Under the pile of bodies we found
our daughter There, on the floor…
Immediately after the shooting, dozens of barricades were built in the streets of St. Petersburg, which was the signal for the beginning of the struggle of the working class against the autocratic clique. A wave of strikes swept across Russia under the slogans “Down with the autocracy!”, while in St. Petersburg they took place one after another. The authorities tried to calm down the workers, but they did not succeed well. After a while, Nicholas read a speech from a piece of paper in front of 34 selected “workers’ representatives”, which was then reprinted in the newspapers:
“I have called you so that you may personally hear My word from Me and communicate it directly to your companions. I believe in the honest feelings of the working people and in their unshakable devotion to Me, and therefore I forgive them their guilt.”
The killer forgave his victims! But then there was another paragraph in the hectographed text:
“What will you do with your free time if you work no more than 8 hours? I, the Tsar, work myself 9 hours a day, and my work is more intense, for you work only for yourselves, and I work for all of you. If you have free time, you will be involved in politics; But I will not tolerate it. Your only goal is your work.”
Some scandalous statements of modern officials and deputies have a long tradition!
It is clear that this caused even greater indignation. A “chain reaction” took place: immediately after St. Petersburg, central Russia went on strike, where the vestiges of serfdom were especially burdensome for the peasantry. Agricultural workers began strike resistance in Latvia, Poland, and Ukraine. Active operations began in the Caucasus, as evidenced by the Guria uprising.
The revolutionary intelligentsia was not long in coming. If in January-April 1905 it was the factory and industrial workers who began the strike, then in the spring the student movement joined it, similar to the one that arises spontaneously today on the basis of dissatisfaction with the government. In addition to the students, the most advanced trade unions and political unions of doctors, teachers, technicians and others became more active, which in May united into the “Union of Unions”.
Bloody Sunday is, of course, one of the most important events of the early 20th century. It gave impetus to the development of such a class struggle as the history of Russia had not known before.
“In this awakening of the colossal masses of the people to political consciousness and to the revolutionary struggle,” wrote V. I. Lenin in his Report on the Revolution of 1905, “lies the historical significance of January 22, 1905.” All the previous revolutionaries – the Decembrists, the Petrashevists, the Tkachevites, the Tchaikovites, and so on. It was never possible to enrage the people as much as the tsarist gendarmes managed to do on January 9, 1905.
The conclusion of history is simple: the reactionary classes, at a certain stage of their existence, themselves begin to undermine their rule, committing such actions that promise their certain death. The task of the Communists is to turn against the bourgeoisie its own weapons, its own mistakes, to take advantage of any situation in order to organize the working masses for political struggle.
Yegor SHMELEV
Alexander STEPANOV
