THE KREUZ-ZEITUNG’S IDEALS FULFILLED
A new strike law is expected in the next few days.
It is said that the new strike law will permit economic but not political strikes, and fixes penalties for the initiators, alongside incentives for those willing to work who don’t join the strike. Strike participation by state civil servants is “absolutely prohibited.”
Tsarism still doesn’t get it. Name me one single person who cares about what it permits and what it forbids!
PATCHING UP ABSOLUTISM
Petersburg, December 14 (reported via Chernyshevskoye by the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). Today the Council of Ministers will conclude their negotiations regarding the workers’ associations’ law. According to the law passed by the Council of Ministers, dissolution or closure of these associations can now only be ordered as a result of court cases, and not as previously through administrative procedure, through the Ministry of the Interior, the province governors, or the police, etc. As yet, the law has a temporary character, advancing slowly to publication in the next few weeks simultaneous with an overall law concerning rights of association.
Petersburg, December 13 (via Chernyshevskoye). The Government Herald reports that the newly finished voting law will shortly be presented to the tsar.
MILITARY REVOLTS
Moscow papers report insurrections in the city among the Sapper Reserves Battalion, in the artillerymen’s barracks, in the Kursk Garrison, and among reservists in Siberia. Troops in Irkutsk refused sentry duty. The Moscow paper Nasha Zhizn [Our Life] reports: the insurrection among the troops in Kiev continues. Soldiers are fraternizing with students and workers on the streets and are asking the people to be forgiven for firing on them during the disturbances. Accompanied by the sounds of military music, two regiments paraded alongside workers together through the streets.
Warsaw, December 14. Police officers from the first municipal district have gone on strike.
REVOLUTIONARY TACTICS
Representatives of the Councils [Soviets] of Worker’s Deputies gathered in Moscow have decided together with the radical parties to prevent all partial strikes, because they compromise the general strike that the workers are arming themselves for.
WHAT THE GERMAN PETTY BOURGEOIS COULD LEARN
Chosen from many similar reader’s epistles, the paper Rus’ has published the following letter:
Honorable Editor!
My janitor tells me that some of the latest letters I received were delivered to my house by an officer, while others were delivered by a lady. I would like to inform the post office that I do not want to receive any letters brought to me by such government lackeys, and then these people are nothing other than strikebreakers. I want to receive my letters from the striking postal civil servants themselves, but not before their victory. The post service has no right to send me these intruders. In the future, I will refuse them.
With most sincere regards
N.N.
Would German “citizens” behave in such a manner if our state’s slaves from the imperial post and telegraph service were involved in a political conflict of this nature?
We have received the following letter from the striking post and telegraph civil servants in Odessa:
We have read the following in Nachalo [The Beginning], a St. Petersburg paper, in issue No. 9 from November 24/December 7: The international bank received a registered parcel from Berlin on November 22/December 5, addressed to the office of the Russian Association of the Post and Telegraph Civil Servants. Due to not knowing the address of the office, the bank director returned the packet to the head of post and telegraph information, Mr. Sevastianov, who is keeping the parcel to one side.
If a parcel such as this really does need to be sent to the address given above, we would like to strongly request the dispatcher to make the same enquiries as to where the parcel has got to, and, in case of confirmation, to send the newspaper article printed above, along with the respective registered delivery directly to the offices or to the editors of any libertarian newspaper.
With comradely greetings,
The Odessa office of the Pan-Russian Association
of Post and Telegraph Civil Servants
Buchheim, Senior Engineer
Trusov, Engineer
Didrichson, Senior Mechanic
M. Gofman, Mechanic
Knyazev, Civil Servant
Malinovsky, Civil Servant
B. Popovsky, Civil Servant
Odessa, November 28, December 10, 1905
The real issue here is obviously the embezzlement of financial aid coming from abroad for the strikers by thieving fingers in the tsarist government. The warning issued by our brave comrades in Russia certainly will not vanish without effect. The donors will now be vigilant about giving their church dimes to anyone other than safe persons.