Moreover, to the general demand of the workers of all countries they must add their own Russian demand for the overthrow of tsarism and the establishment of a democratic republic. We detest the crowns of tyrants! We honour the chains of the martyred people! Death to bloody tsarism! Death to landlordism! Death to the tyranny of the masters in factories, mills and mines! Land for the peasants! An eight-hour day for the workers! A democratic republic for all the citizens of Russia! That is also what the Russian workers must proclaim on this day. It is lies and grovelling before Nicholas the Last when the Russian liberals assure themselves and others that tsarism has consolidated itself in Russia and is capable of satisfying the principal needs of the people. It is deception and hypocrisy when the Russian liberals sing in all keys that the revolution is dead and that we are living under a renovated system. Look around! Does long-suffering Russia resemble a renovated, well-governed country? Instead of a democratic constitution—a regime of gallows and brutal tyranny! Instead of a popular parliament—the black Duma of the black landlords! Instead of the unshakeable foundations of civil liberty, instead of the freedom of speech, assembly, press, association and strike promised by the Manifesto of October 17—the dead hand of discretion and prevention, the closing of newspapers, the deportation of editors, the suppression of unions and the breaking-up of meetings! Instead of inviolability of the person—beating up in prisons, outrages against citizens, the bloody suppression of strikers in the Lena goldfields! Instead of satisfaction of the peasants needs— the policy of still further driving the peasant masses from the land! Instead of a well-ordered administration—the thieving by quartermasters, thieving at railway Head Offices, thieving in the Forestry Department, thieving in the Naval Department! Instead of order and discipline in the governmental machine—forgery in the courts, swindling and blackmail by criminal investigation departments, murder and provocation in the secret-police departments! Instead of the international greatness of the Russian state—the ignominious failure of Russian policy in the Near and Far East and the role of butcher and despoiler in the affairs of bleeding Persia! Instead of peace of mind and security for the inhabitants—suicides in the towns and horrible starvation among 30,000,000 peasants in the rural districts! Instead of improvement and purification of morals —incredible dissoluteness in the monasteries, those citadels of official morality! And to complete the picture—the brutal shooting of hundreds of toilers in the Lena goldfields! . . . Destroyers of already won liberties, worshippers of gallows and firing-squads, inventors of discretion and prevention, thieving quartermasters, thieving engineers, robber police, murdering secret police, dissolute Rasputins—these are the renovators of Russia! And yet there are people in the world who have the effrontery to say that all is well in Russia, that the revolution is dead! No, comrades; where millions of peasants are starving and workers are shot down for going on strike the revolution will go on living until the disgrace to mankind— Russian tsarism—is swept from the face of the earth. And on this day, the First of May, we must say in one way or another, at meetings, mass gatherings or at secret assemblies—whichever is the most expedient— that we pledge ourselves to fight for the complete overthrow of the tsarist monarchy, that we welcome the coming Russian revolution, the liberator of Russia! Let us, then, extend our hands to our comrades abroad and together with them proclaim : Down With Capitalism ! Long Live Socialism ! Let us hoist the flag of the Russian revolution bearing the inscriptions : Down With the Tsarist Monarchy ! Long Live the Democratic Republic ! Comrades! Today we are celebrating the First of May ! Long Live the First of May ! Long Live International Social-Democracy ! Long Live the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party ! The Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. Published in leaflet form in April 1912 JV Stalin: Collected Works Volume II - Long Live the First of May ! - Pages 228--230
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 08:27:37 +0000
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