The workers flag is deepest red;
It shrouded oft our Martyred Dead,
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their hearts’ blood dyed its ev’ry fold.
-Jim Connell, 1889
Hellraisers Journal, Thursday April 26, 1917
From the International Socialist Review: “The Russian Revolution”
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
“And let us not fear that we may go too fast. If, at certain hours, we seem to be running at a headlong and dangerous pace, this is to counter-balance the unjustifiable delays and to make up for time lost during centuries of inactivity.”
AS WE go to press, cablegrams bring the good news from Russia that “the national colors, with their eagles, have given place to plain red flags. The red flag of the Revolution is flying from almost every building in Petrograd, even over the famous winter palace of the Czar; tiny red ribbons have been distributed among the people and they are being proudly worn.”
While it is still too early to predict the results of the three day revolt, it is safe to say that the bloody absolutism of centuries is doomed and that the Russian people are on the way to a liberal democracy that will leave Germany the only remaining powerful autocracy on earth.
Hundreds of bread riots and strikes in many large cities culminated in mass action in Petrograd where 13,000 Cossacks were promptly dispatched to quell the “open and violent revolution of the people.” Several thousand imperial police were stationed about the city, provided with machine guns, with orders to mok [mow?] down the hungry crowds clamoring for bread.
But the Cossacks joined the revolutionists, as well as the troops who were hurriedly rushed to the capital.
At their first charge the police, always loyal to their paymaster, the government, killed 300 people and wounded hundreds more. The revolutionists retaliated by killing 4,000 police. The winter palace was invaded and the Czar forced to abdicate.
Meanwhile, the Duma was holding an excited session and trying to control the situation, while the people fought the police and those soldiers who would not join them. Little by little the whole city fell into the hands of the revolutionaries, the chief resistance coming from police on housetops with machine guns.
Fresh troops were hurrying into the city, and there was some hard fighting here and there, but for the most part the soldiers soon joined the people. By night the whole length of the magnificent Nevsky Prospect was in the hands of the revolutionaries and the fighting pushed more and more to the outskirts.
The last of the nests of police on the roofs with machine guns were cleaned out when the soldiers dashed here and there in motor trucks with their own quickfirers and killed them off.
By Tuesday night almost the entire city was in the hands of the revolutionists, and there was only sporadic firing, and by noon Wednesday the last of the police who resisted had been killed.
For years past, the revolutionary parties, many of them formed or crystallized in the Duma, have been robbed of their importance. None of them had any hope that the Czar would allow the Duma to accomplish anything and they finally succeeded in their great common object, which was to teach the people that nothing would be gained from the Government that was not taken by superior force.
As Comrade William English Walling observed of the third Duma, in his splendid book “Russia’s Message”—
It is not a question of reform in Russia, but of revolution. The reader does not need to be reminded how large a part of the Russian people are of this opinion. Tens of thousands have died for it, hundreds of thousands gone to prison or exile, millions suffered persecution, fines and arrest. Tens of millions of Russians who do not happen to have been individually persecuted share their view. In the election an overwhelming majority of the people voted for representatives of the revolutionary factions. It was only a most unequal suffrage and unheard of arbitrariness of the officials that gave the moderately oppositional parties a bare majority. It will be remembered that this election law, tho by no means distorted enough to give a Government majority and now replaced by one infinitely less democratic, nevertheless gave the noble landlord the same number of votes as a hundred peasants. And it will be recalled that voters and electors were publicly disqualified by the hundred thousand at all stages of the election for nothing more subversive than unfriendliness to the Government. But it is not generally realized that nevertheless an overwhelming majority of the votes cast were votes for revolution.
* * * *
The railway men and the labor movement at large have not lost their heads. In October, 1905, they showed the world the first great example of a successful general strike on a national scale. At the first stroke they secured the Manifesto—the first promise of freedom ever wrung from the Czar. The next stroke is to be for nothing less than the final sovereignty of the people, in place of the sovereignty of the Czar, who, if he is kept at all, will reain [retain?] little more than his name. The workmen are as one man in their demand for a constitution, and they know they will have to force it by revolution.
But they propose to make this revolution as speedy and orderly as it can be made, and for this end they propose one more great general strike. The working people, having forced the Czar to promise freedom, propose now to force him to make his promise good. It is to be a class struggle against officials, landlords, and employers. But the working class will not antagonize any other class except that of the rich and privileged. The Russian labor movement is under no delusions as to the “benevolence” of the employing class, but it does not extend its hatred to every other class outside its ranks. In the next great revolutionary crisis behind the rejected working people will be found the great mass of the intelligent city population of Russia—all those not held back by private interests, privileges, or public office, and above all, the overwhelming majority of her agricultural population of a hundred million souls.
And the great day has come. The executive committee of the Duma has issued a Manifesto saying that the monarchy has been abolished and that the Government of Russia will be handled for three months by a Committee of Twelve.
The new cabinet will base its policies upon the following principles:
1. Immediate general amnesty for all political and religious offenses.
2. Liberty of speech and of the press, freedom for alliances, unions and strikes, with the extension of these liberties to military officials.
3. Abolition of all social, religious and national restrictions. Convocation of constitutional assembly, based on universal suffrage, which will establish a government regime.
[4?, missing.]
5. Substitution of the police by a national militia, with chiefs to be elected and responsible to the government.
6. Communal elections based on universal suffrage.
7. Emancipation of the Jews and abolition of all social, religious and national restrictions.
Order is growing with incredible rapidity out of the chaos of the past week, and the new government is striving to set the organization of the country in motion so the conduct of the war will suffer as little as possible from the revolution.
The members of the new ministry already have assumed their posts. The government buildings, empty and deserted for days, are again open for official business.
Food prices have been greatly reduced.
M. Bublikoff is dealing vigorously with the transportation problem. Under his energetic direction almost normal train service has been restored, the coal and food supply replenished and factories are resuming operations. In the rooms of the police have been found large quantities of foodstuffs. Some police even kept live chickens in their quarters.
Quantities of flour are arriving hourly in the capital. It is being carted thru the streets on sledges amid cheers from pedestrians.
Grain stores everywhere have been requisitioned by the provisional government, fair prices being paid the owners. The distribution, thru a carefully organized system, of these stores of food is being arranged.
The doors of the prisons have been flung wide and thousands of prisoners, many of whom have been some of the greatest fighters for Russian freedom, have been liberated.
It is reported that all landed estates of over one hundred and twenty-five acre have been confiscated.
These are great days to live in.
[Photograph added.]
SOURCE
The International Socialist Review, Volume 17
(Chicago, Illinois)
Charles H. Kerr & Company,
July 1916-June 1917
https://books.google.com/books?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ
ISR – April 1917
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA581
“The Russian Revolution” -Unsigned
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=SVRIAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA619
IMAGE
Soldiers Demonstration, Petrograd Feb 1917
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soldiers_demonstration.February_1917.jpg
See also:
Russia’s Message,
The True World Import of the Revolution
-by William English Walling
New York, 1908
https://archive.org/stream/russiasmessaget00wallgoog#page/n10/mode/2up
https://books.google.com/books/about/Russia_s_Message.html?id=njEBAAAAMAAJ
Quote which begins: “and let us not fear”-
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=njEBAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA452
This quote is from “Our Social Duty” by Maurice Maeterlinck:
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=njEBAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA450
Photo and ad for Books by Maurice Maeterlinck
https://books.google.com/books/reader?id=91EDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&source=gbs_atb&pg=GBS.PA218-IA3
William English Walling
http://spartacus-educational.com/USAwalling.htm
For more on February (or March) Revolution:
Mar 8, 1917: “February Revolution begins in Russia”
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/february-revolution-begins-in-russia
In Russia, the February Revolution (known as such because of Russia’s use of the Julian calendar) begins on this day in 1917, when riots and strikes over the scarcity of food erupt in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
Julian Calendar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar
Russian Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution