The Czar proposed that it would express its wishes in the form of mere advices, but not in the form of laws.
Continuing The Russian Revolution of 1905,
with a selection from Special article to Great Events by Famous Historians, volume 20 by Prince Peter Kropotkin published in 1914. This selection is presented in 5.5 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.
Previously in The Russian Revolution of 1905.
Time: 1905
Place: Russia
General stupefaction and disdain are the only words to express the impression produced by this manifesto. To begin with, it was evident to anyone who knew something of human psychology that no assembly elected to represent the people could be maintained as a merely consultative body, with no legislative powers. To impose such a limitation was to create the very conditions for producing the bitterest conflicts between the Crown and the nation. To imagine that the Duma, if it ever could come into existence in the form under which it was conceived by the advisers of Nicholas the Second, would limit itself to the functions of a merely consulting board, that it would express its wishes in the form of mere advices, but not in the form of laws, and that it would not defend these laws as such, was absurd on the very face of it. Therefore the concession was considered as a mere desire to bluff, to win time. It was received as a new proof of the insincerity of Nicholas the Second.
But in proportion as the real sense of the Boulyghin “Constitution” was discovered, it became more and more evident that such a Duma would never come together; never would the Russians be induced to perform the farce of the Duma elections under the Boulyghin system. It appeared that under this system the city of St. Petersburg, with its population of nearly 1,500,000 and its immense wealth, would have only about 7,000 electors, and that large cities having from 200,000 to 700,000 inhabitants would have an electoral body composed of but a couple of thousand, or even a few hundred electors; while the 90,000,000 peasants would be boiled down, after several successive elections, to a few thousand men electing a few deputies. As to the nearly 4,000,000 of Russian working men, they were totally excluded from any participation in the political life of the country. It was evident that only fanatics of electioneering could be induced to find interest in so senseless a waste of time as an electoral campaign under such conditions. Moreover, as the press continued to be gagged, the state of siege was maintained, and the governors of the different provinces continued to rule as absolute satraps, exiling whom they disliked, public opinion in Russia gradually came to the idea that, whatever some moderate zemst- voists might say in favor of a compromise, the Duma would never come together.
Then it was that the working men again threw the weight of their will into the contest and gave quite a new turn to the movement. A strike of bakers broke out at Moscow in October, and they were joined in their strike by the printers. This was not the work of any revolutionary organization. It was entirely a working men’s affair, but suddenly what was meant to be a simple manifestation of economical discontent grew up, invaded all trades, spread to St. Petersburg, then all over Russia, and took the character of such an imposing revolutionary manifestation that autocracy had to capitulate before it.
When the strike of the bakers began, troops were, as a matter of course, called out to suppress it. But this time the Moscow working men had had enough of massacres. They offered an armed resistance to the Cossacks. Some three hundred men barricaded themselves in a garret, and a regular fight between the besieged working men and the besieging Cossacks followed. The latter took, of course, the upper hand, and butchered the besieged, but then all the Moscow working men joined hands with the strikers. A general strike was declared. “Nonsense! A general strike is impossible!” the wiseacres said, even then. But the working men set earnestly to stop all work in the great city, and fully succeeded. In a few days the strike became general. What the working men must have suffered during these two or three weeks, when all work was suspended and provisions became extremely scarce, one can easily imagine; but they held out. Moscow had no bread, no meat coming in, no light in the streets. All traffic on the railways had been stopped, and the mountains of pro visions which, in the usual course of life, reach the great city every day were lying rotting along the railway lines. No newspapers, except the proclamation of the strike committees, appeared. Thousands upon thousands of passengers who had come to that great railway center which Moscow is could not move any farther, and were camping at the railway stations. Tons and tons of letters accumulated at the post-offices, and had to be stored in special storehouses. But the strike, far from abating, was spreading all over Russia. Once the heart of Russia, Moscow, had struck, all the other towns followed. St. Petersburg soon joined the strike, and the working men displayed the most admirable organizing capacities. Then, gradually, the enthusiasm and devotion of the poorest class of society won over the other classes. The shop assistants, the clerks, the teachers, the employees at the banks, the actors, the lawyers, the chemists, nay, even the judges, gradually joined the strikers. A whole country had struck against its Government; all but the troops; but even from the troops separate officers and soldiers came to take part in the strike meetings, and one saw uniforms in the crowds of peaceful demonstrators who managed to display a wonderful skill in avoiding all conflict with the army.
In a few days the strike had spread over all the main cities of the Empire, including Poland and Finland. Moscow had no water, Warsaw no fuel; provisions ran short everywhere; the cities, great and small, remained plunged in complete darkness. No smoking factories, no railways running, no tramways, no Stock Exchange, no banking, no theaters, no law courts, no schools. In many places the restaurants, too, were closed, the waiters having left, or else the workers compelled the owners to extinguish all lights after seven o’clock. In Finland, even the house servants were not allowed to work before seven in the morning or after seven in the evening. All life in the towns had come to a standstill. And what exasperated the rulers most was that the workers offered no opportunity for shooting at them and reestablishing “order” by massacres. A new weapon, more terrible than street warfare, had thus been tested and proved to work admirably.
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