The post and telegraph civil servants strike continues! This, despite the fact that the tsarist government is doing all it can to trick observers abroad into thinking that the strike is “dying down,” such as in distributing the following telegram:
The government’s decisive attitude and the Association of Post and Telegraph Civil Servants joining the Council [Soviet] of Workers’ Deputies, which has caused a split among the striking post and telegraph civil servants, appear to be directing the strike toward its end. The Council of Ministers, who met yesterday, also reflects this position by sticking to their decision not to authorize the Association of Post and Telegraph Civil Servants. The local director of the post service ordered 200 postal civil servants to be evicted from flats situated in post office buildings, along with the sackings of 332 civil servants who work in post offices, and 800 delivery postmen. The postmen will be re-employed again immediately, as will the civil servants on supplicating to the authorities, in as far as the extent of their individual strike participation allows this.
Yesterday, on December 6, one group of civil servants went back to work. The Finnish post and telegraph civil servants have telegrammed to reject joining the Russian workers.
News like this about the strike “dying down” has been coming out of Russia since the very first days of the strike movement. The Berliner Tageblatt has published the following private telegram from Petersburg: Despite post services operating in the city, their whole work seems more like a game that, as long as the provinces continue to strike, can only have purely local relevance. The telegraph service resumed work in individual municipalities yesterday. However, most business people and banks aren’t making use of postal services, but are sending their post via couriers either toward the border, or to the municipalities of the interior. The business situation has become extremely critical. The four percent pensions listed on Wednesday’s stock market at seventy-four were actually being bought at sixty, although this rate will not be registered. We can assume that the strike will stretch out for a number of days yet.
The delegates of the Council of Workers returned yesterday from various Russian municipalities. The conclusion of their journeys being that an all-Russian strike on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday is now certain. On this day, all organizations will be brought to a standstill for weeks and the last battle between the proletariat and the government will commence.
Vossische newspaper reports from Warsaw: The troops from the Grochov regiment stationed in the city were ordered to report without weapons to the barracks’ courtyard. Here Cossacks surrounded them. They were searched one by one. On many was apparently found the revolutionary Soldatsky Listok [Soldier’s Newspaper]. All of these men have been imprisoned. The postal strike has now expanded to include the Railroad Mail Service. The post railcars are no longer being connected to the trains, because there are no civil servants present to sort the letters. They are being taken across the border by a trainee motivated by friendliness.
A report by Laffan’s News Agency states: Petersburg, December 6. At the session yesterday of the Socialist Revolutionary Party emissaries returning from the south reported that troops there are prepared to rise up against the tsar and are just waiting for a sign from Petersburg. According to telegrams received here, the city of Novorossiysk is now in the hands of mutinying troops, as is the city of Yekatertinador in the Caucuses, where soldiers are occupying the arsenal and 16,000 guns have been distributed among the workers from that city and from Novorossiysk. A similar movement has broken out anew in Sevastopol.
Tokyo, December 7 (Laffan’s News Agency). A report in the Asahi newspaper confirms that the city of Harbin was in flames on November 30. The supply lines for the Russian troops were cut and the city plundered by the Chinese.
Warsaw, December 8. Reports have reached us from Łódź that the revolutionary movement among the troops is making significant gains. Numerous breaches of discipline are taking place every day.
We have, in addition, received the following reports:
Petersburg, December 8. The resignation of the minister of justice will be officially announced within the next few days. This will not weaken the cabinet’s position (a fine statement from a “cabinet” no longer sitting!). The minister of justice’s successor has not yet been declared.
Warsaw, December 8. According to telegrams from Petersburg, numerous private banks have informed the finance minister that they will be forced to close their businesses if the postal civil servants’ strike were to continue even longer.
A HOAX, PROBABLY
Petersburg, December 9. The leaders of the revolutionary movement have reportedly already sentenced Priest Gapon to death, through accusing him of having been won over to tsarism.* Priest Gapon’s so-called “trip abroad” was nothing less than a veritable flight from his erstwhile colleagues. Gapon has apparently already crossed the German border, with the intention of heading to France.
A HUMOROUS REPORT
A semi-official telegram from Petersburg reads as follows: Petersburg, December 8. Everything quiet here. All rumors circulating abroad are unfounded. The workforce is tired of striking and is returning to work everywhere for the same old conditions. And in the military discipline is returning too.
WITTE: AT HIS WIT’S END
The Frankfurter Zug [Frankfurt Train] newspaper reports: Witte, whose response to the zemstvo delegation’s petition is being withheld from the government’s program, has turned toward joining the reactionary camp. His reception of the zemstvo delegation demonstrated his definitive break with the liberals. However, at this moment in time, the reactionaries find other personalities within the reactionary tendency more pleasant and easier to deal with than Witte, who they don’t necessarily trust. At present, it is Durnovo who has the best chances, declaring that the only men and parties with whom the government could join forces are the infamous reactionary Count Dobrinsky (Tule) and the Agrarian Association, whose congress is in Moscow right now. It is as if a large revolutionary outbreak should be engendered, only for it to be mercilessly crushed by cannons and canister shot.
This would be a foreseeable end to this skating on thin ice, which the darling of German liberalism performs with such virtuosity.
HANNIBAL ANTE PORTAS!*
Nicholas cannot even get peace from the general strike inside his own palace. As our Russian correspondent reports: A strike has broken out among the servants, cooks, and other employees in the tsar’s palace in Tsarskoye Selo. They are demanding a pay-rise. The court minister has accepted all the strikers’ demands.
Both of the party newspapers in Petersburg have to fight legal actions at present.
On December 21 in Petersburg the well-known Russian author [Nikolai Maximovich] Minsky, the editor of Novaya Zhyn [New Life], will be tried for the “distribution of revolutionary propaganda.” This propaganda consists of the fact that the Russian Social Democratic program was inserted into the first issue of our partner newspaper. Minsky will be defended by Grusenberg, a well-known attorney. The trial is open to the public. It is the first time in Russia that a political trial will take place in the public eye.
In January 1906, a similar process will start against the editor of another Social Democratic newspaper Nachalo [The Beginning].
AN EXAMPLE WORTH EMULATING
The municipal councilors in Poznań passed a resolution at their last meeting requesting the magistrate to issue an order, through which 2,000 marks for victims of the Russian disturbances would be allocated.