of oppression the people are forced to suffer. Those who will understand this will, on leaving military service, take a Hannibal's vow[150] to fight with the vanguard of the people for the emancipation of the entire people from despotism.
The humiliating character of this new punishment is no less outrageous than its cruelty. In declaring the students who protested against lawlessness to be mere rowdies -- even as it declared the exiled striking workers to be persons of depraved demeanour -- the government has thrown down a challenge to all who still possess a sense of decency. Read the government communication. It bristles with such words as disorder, brawling, outrage, shamelessness, licence. On the one hand, it speaks of criminal political aims and the desire for political protest; and on the other, it slanders the students as mere rowdies who must be disciplined. This is a slap in the face of Russian public opinion, whose sympathy for the students is very well known to the government. The only appropriate reply the students can make is to carry out the threat of the Kiev students, to organise a determined general student strike in all higher educational
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institutions in support of the demand for the repeal of the Provisional Regulations of July 29, 1899.
But it is not the students alone who must reply to the government. Through the government's own conduct the incident has become something much greater than a mere student affair. The government turns to public opinion as though to boast of the severity of the punishment it inflicts, as though to mock at all aspirations towards liberty. All conscious elements among all strata of the people must take up this challenge, if they do not desire to fall to the level of dumb slaves bearing their insults in silence. At the head of these conscious elements stand the advanced workers and the Social-Democratic organisations inseparably linked with them. The working class constantly suffers immeasurably greater injuries and insults from the police lawlessness with which the students have now come into such sharp conflict. The working class has already begun the struggle for its emancipation. It must remember that this great struggle imposes great obligations upon it, that it cannot emancipate itself without emancipating the whole people from despotism, that it is its duty first and foremost to respond to every political protest and render every support to that protest. The best representatives of our educated classes have proved -- and sealed the proof with the blood of thousands of revolutionaries tortured to death by the government -- their ability and readiness to shake from their feet the dust of bourgeois society and join the ranks of the socialists. The worker who can look on indifferently while the government sends troops against the student youth is unworthy of the name of socialist. The students came to the assistance of the workers -- the workers must come to the aid of the students. The government wishes to deceive the people when it declares that an attempt at political protest is mere brawling. The workers must publicly declare and explain to the broad masses that this is a lie; that the real hotbed of violence, outrage, and licence is the autocratic Russian Government, the tyranny of the police and the officials.
The manner in which this protest is to be organised must be decided by the local Social-Democratic organisations and workers' groups. The most practical forms of protest
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are the distribution, scattering, and posting up of leaflets, and the organisation of meetings to which as far as possible all classes of society should be invited. It would be desirable, however, where strong and well-established organisations exist, to attempt a broader and more open protest by means of a public demonstration. The demonstration organised last December 1, outside the premises of the newspaper Yuzhny Krai [151] in Kharkov, may serve as a good example of such a protest. The jubilee of that filthy sheet, which baits everything that aspires to light and freedom and glorifies every bestiality of our government, was being celebrated at the time. The large crowd assembled in front of Yuzhny Krai, solemnly tore up copies of the paper, tied them to the tails of horses, wrapped them round dogs, threw stones and stink-bombs containing sulphuretted hydrogen at the windows, and shouted: "Down with the corrupt press!" Such celebrations are well deserved, not only by the corrupt newspapers, but by all our government offices. If they but rarely celebrate anniversaries of official benevolence, they constantly deserve the celebration of the people's retribution. Every manifestation of governmental tyranny and violence is a legitimate motive for such a demonstration. The people must not let the government's announcement of its punishment of the students go unanswered!
NOTES
[147] "White linings
" -- the name given in tsarist Russia to monarchist-minded students from aristocratic and bourgeois circles who conducted a struggle against the democratic section of the students, supporters of the revolutionary movement. The name derived from white silk linings of their uniforms.
[p. 415]
[148] The words of Colonel Skalozub, a character in A. S. Griboyedov's comedy
Wit Works Woe.
[p. 416]
[149] "Green Street
" -- a form of corporal punishment employed in the army of feudal Russia. The condemned man was tied to a rifle and made to run the gauntlet between two ranks of soldiers who beat him with sticks or green switches. This form of punishment was particularly widespread under Tsar Nicholas I (1825-55).
[p. 416]
[150] Hannibal's vow -- unwavering determination to fight to the end. The Carthagenian general, Hannibal, made a vow not to cease the struggle against Rome until his dying day.
[p. 417]
[151] Yuzhny Krai (Southern Region
) -- a daily newspaper dealing with social, literary, and political problems founded in Kharkov in 1880. The paper, published and edited by A. A. Yuzefovich, an extreme reactionary, upheld conservative, royalist views.
[p. 419]