THE RUSSIAN POSTAL-SLAVE’S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION
One of the most striking impressions thrown up by the current revolution in Russia is the incomparable and admirable general strike of the post and telegraph civil servants. Here, too, the basis of the strike is a desire for economic emancipation, a protest against the terrible exploitation of the lower civil servants. But it is precisely that which grants the political wrestling which has sprouted out of the revolt against the exploitative system such strength of purchase, such insuperable revolutionary force. The Russian postal slaves’ fight for freedom of association is in terms of its character just one aspect of the general proletarian class struggle.
The following letter gives a closer picture of this from the capital of the tsar’s empire: Petersburg, December 15 (our own comment). To understand the spring that is released by the current general revolt of the post and telegraph civil servants, it is above all necessary to emphasize the purely fiscal character that has dominated the Russian postal service since time immemorial. The postal service, this large cultural factor behind intellectual and economic progress, is simply regarded as a pumping plant instructed with filling the insatiable imperial purse. A few examples of this: While in the United States of America the post and telegraph service has only brought financial losses for the Union in recent years, e.g., to the sum of 17.6 million dollars in 1894 and 11.4 million dollars in 1897, the postal service in Russia (whose inhabitants only send one-twentieth of the mail consignments that the Americans send) produced an income of 4.4 million roubles already in 1884, which continued to rise, reaching an income of 19.1 million roubles by 1903. Total Russian income from the post and telegraph service in 1903 stood at 58.2 million roubles. Meaning that the postal administration, with operational costs of 39.1 million roubles, made a “pure profit” of 19.1 million roubles, i.e., around 50 percent of capital!!
This usurious pure profit made from the postal service is only made possible by the unimaginable exploitation of the post and telegraph civil servants, particularly the lower civil servants. While the United States has, for example, 71,000 post offices, Russia, with a population of three times the size, has only 8,861 post offices, including all the train stations and district offices that take in and deliver simple correspondence. While there is one post office for every 887 inhabitants in the United States, one post office in Russia has to cover 10,000 inhabitants! The result is that the relatively small quantity of post and telegraph civil servants are burdened with excessive work in comparison to their capacities. The length of the civil servants’ working day is not fixed, and they sometimes have to work twelve-hour shifts or longer, depending on the workload. The situation is even worse for the 19,300 delivery and auxiliary staff, who have now become the strike movement’s backbone. A mailman’s working day lasts from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., almost without a break. A postal worker sorts the incoming post four or five times a day, and delivers that post four or five times a day. The mailman’s bag, a sack with letters, newspapers, and magazines carried on their back—all that weighs more than a pood in total sometimes, i.e., more than forty pounds.
While the real workers in the post and telegraph service get a few paltry dimes as salary and collapse under an unbearable workload—particularly on public holidays like Christmas, Easter, and New Year when they have ten times their normal work—the higher and top-level civil servants, who have almost nothing to do, are catered for in the finest fashion. A department head gets, for example, 2,800 roubles (6,000 marks) annually, with a bonus at Easter, two bonuses annually for “cures,” ongoing bonuses for their children’s education, etc.—endless bonuses, in other words.
Determining the size of the pension, the level of pay raise with a transfer to Siberia, etc.—all of this is in the hands of the higher levels of the bureaucracy, completely at their discretion, and it is here that the biggest abuse of power occurs. There is no one with whom the lower civil servants can seek protection.
These pariahs of the bureaucracy, these lowest level post and telegraph civil servants, patiently accepted their fate for a long time. But at last the hour of emancipation struck for them, too. They, too, were caught up in the revolutionary movement of the whole proletariat. Following the example of the Social Democratic workforce, they immediately grabbed hold of the first and indispensable tool of liberation—of organization. The postal civil servants understood that an alliance of the exploited was the first precondition for improving their situation. An All-Russian Association of Post and Telegraph Civil Servants was formed. The slaves of the state who had been stepped on for so long joined the association with flames of enthusiasm. The government on their part understood just as quickly that the organized postal civil servants had wrested themselves free of their despotism, and issued thereupon a fight to the death against the association. The postal civil servants threw off their gloves and now the fight about freedom of association has been raging for weeks, a right that the state’s slaves, now awakened to their human dignity, will no longer have wrested from them.
But the civil servants’ general strike is not just about freedom of association. They are taking a full part in the general revolutionary struggle for political freedom. Their immediate demand is the convocation of the Constituent Assembly on the basis of a universal, equal, director, and secret ballot; other demands include rights of assembly and of association, and calls for freedom of the press and of speech.
Their economic demands are modest in the extreme. The postal civil servants demand a minimum monthly salary, firstly for the civil servants of 50 roubles (108 marks), for lower-level workers of 30 roubles (63 marks), and 25 roubles for the auxiliary staff. Do you know who these auxiliary staff members are? They are called “pupils.” But they aren’t fifteen- or sixteen-year-old boys. The “pupils” are bearded fathers with kids, who currently get 10 roubles (20 marks) a month and have to work twelve hours a day! They remain “pupils” for many, many years. Beside these wage demands, the civil servants are also demanding pension and incapacity packages.
The sympathies and the active help of both the proletariat and of bourgeois democracy lie with these battling civil servants. At the office of the Post and Telegraph Association in Moscow, thousands of bourgeois families have registered their willingness to nourish one civil servant during the strike. Large sums of money are streaming into the strike headquarters from all sides.
However, there are also “volunteers” who apply for postal service to help the government out of this jam. But please note that these are not traitors out of the postal civil servants’ ranks. No, these are people from the “best” circles of society. In this fashion, the following gentlemen are working in Petersburg as post-assistants and mailmen: Chamberlain Kosuakov, Baron M. Velio, Baron von Rapp, Baron von Steiger, General L. Adamovich, Major General A. Hauke, the Princess Gaparin, the Baroness M. Medem, and the lady-in-waiting E. Pandeleyava, etc., etc.
These aren’t strikebreakers. These are people who have clearly recognized the opposition between their class interests and those of the battling proletariat. Their “voluntary service” is that of blatant class struggle, and that is why we’re not afraid of it. The courage in our ranks is unshaken. We shall overcome, we shall most certainly overcome.
THE “MUTINEERS” SHOULD BE GIVEN A SOAPING
Petersburg, December 19 (report from the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). A daily briefing in the military section reveals that an imperial command from December 19 has ordered better food and a wage increase for units from all tri-service troops. Furthermore, warm blankets, bed linen, and soap should be delivered to the troops.
SEMI-OFFICIAL DECEPTIONS
The following report, which has “a lie” written all over it, is being distributed by the Russian government gang: Petersburg, December 19. The investigation into Khrustalyov-Nosar, president of the workers’ committees, has discovered that Khrustalyov-Nosar had made all necessary preparations for taking Witte prisoner(!). Twenty sacked postal civil servants have registered with the revolutionary committee in order to attempt to assassinate Durnovo(!). The government’s announcement is making a favorable impressions and isn’t being seen as a reactionary act(!), but rather as proof of the government’s determination to restore order and to introduce the constitution(!).
READY TO FIGHT
Petersburg, December 19. The executive committee of the Council [Soviet] of Workers’ Deputies, which had to interrupt its meeting yesterday due to fear of arrest, has issued an appeal together with the Union of Unions, in which they declare that the current government is threatening to plunge the country into danger. They will rise to meet the battle that the government has begun. Methods of combat will depend on what the government does next. For the time being, all forces should be mobilized, to be ready for the general strike when such a strike is announced.
Riga, December 17 (report from the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). Peace is currently presiding over the city and its environs. The general strike lasted for three days, without clashes, attacks or acts of violence resulting from it. The complete lack of news did however generate anxiety among the population. Now everything is slowly getting back to normal; and rumors are of course circulating, saying that a new strike will probably break out. The rumors circulated in Petersburg and abroad about destruction and arson in Riga can probably be traced back to reports about extremely serious rioting in the provinces, where, it is said, arson, murders, and other acts of violence have occurred, and many estates, leased estates, and stately homes, have been completely destroyed.
FURTHER PROVOCATIONS
Petersburg, December 19 (report from the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). Martial law has been imposed in the Suwałki governorate covering the districts of Vladislavovo, Mariopol, Volkovyshky (sic!), and Kolvary.