With regard to the number of victims of the massacre in Warsaw, the information received still varies widely, to an extraordinary extent. According to a report designated as conclusive in the BH,† sixty-two persons were killed and about two hundred wounded. During the night on Wednesday, [May 3], thirty-one corpses were brought from police headquarters to the cemetery and buried; in no case did the “Christian” authorities of tsarism provide coffins for laying the murdered victims to rest.
Aroused feelings in Warsaw continue to be exceedingly strong. People are waiting for the response of the authorities against the officers who gave the order for the troops to open fire. On Wednesday, several minor clashes took place between workers and police. On Hoza Street, a police captain was severely wounded by a shot from a revolver. The newspapers, for the most part, did not appear, and the factories were at a standstill. According to the Kurier Warszawski [Warsaw Courier], the leadership of the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania [the SDKPiL], because of the bloodshed, issued a declaration calling for an immediate general strike.
Martial law is also continuing in Łódź. On Tuesday [May 2], four persons, including two Jewish women, were killed, and three persons were wounded. A [police] spy was stabbed to death by the crowd. As of May 3, the W.T.O. [Wolff’s Telegraph Office] was reporting from Łódź.
Early this morning on a public street the police station supervisor Poniatowski was fatally wounded by four shots fired at him by several persons.
Moscow, May 3. Last night a large crowd on Petrovsky Boulevard began to smash up a restaurant into which a station house supervisor had retreated after being struck in the face. He was defending himself against the crowd with cold steel.‡ The crowd bashed in the windows and tore off the doors while the customers fled from the restaurant in wild terror. Mounted gendarmes restored order.
THE ACTIVITIES OF SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
This report about the agitational activities of Polish Social Democracy was sent to us prior to May Day.
The May Day agitation this year is naturally playing a role that is quite different from all preceding years. This time the agitational literature has been extraordinarily rich. The following printed material was massively distributed by Social Democracy.*
1. A pamphlet about May Day aimed at a popular audience.
2. A large-size May Day flyer, or brochure, of eight printed pages, which analyzes and discusses the special connection between the May Day celebration this year and the revolution going on in the tsarist empire as a whole.
3. A May Day proclamation, which was printed at the party’s secret printing plant inside the country, with about 75,000 copies on white paper with red lettering, and which for the first time this year was also addressed to the agricultural proletariat.
4. An appeal to student youth to join the May Day action.
5. A leaflet with the heading “Under the Regime of the Noose and the Bullet,” which took a position against the reign of terror recently begun by the thugs of tsarism.
6. The April issue of the party’s organ Czerwony Sztandar [Red Flag] prominently featured an article about May Day by Karl Kautsky. Besides the writings in Polish [listed above], material in German was distributed to the tens of thousands of German workers living in Łódź, Zgierz, Białystok, etc.
7. A May Day leaflet.
8. An Open Letter from August Bebel to the German working men and women living in Russian-dominated Poland and Lithuania. From this interesting document, we can reproduce only a few passages here. After Bebel describes the ultimate aims, or final goal, of Social Democracy and the present condition of the exploited and enslaved proletariat, he suggests to the German workers that they must fight for the same goals in common and in unison with the other workers of the country despite all differences of nationality, language, religion, etc. After a detailed presentation as well of the political program of the SDKPiL, which strives for the conquest of political freedom together with all the workers of Russia, Bebel concludes:
German workingmen and women! These are, in brief, the most immediate demands for whose realization the Polish and Russian Social Democracy is fighting in the country as a whole, in the local region, and in the community. You too must join in this struggle and support it.
German workingmen and women! Do not hesitate, but join the ranks of your fighting brothers and sisters of Polish and Russian nationality. Only by cooperating with them in a united and determined way can you win for yourself an improvement in your situation, and an existence worthy of human beings. United you are an invincible power which no opponent can overcome.*
9. Bebel’s letter—as was reported to us—produced a wave of enthusiasm beggaring description. German workers were literally tearing the leaflets out of each other’s hands.
The May Day agitational literature this time was distributed on a scale not seen before, reaching into the remotest nests in the provinces. Among the cities covered were Warsaw, Łódź, Częstochowa, Neualexandrien [New Alexandria], Lublin, Białystok, Siedlce, Żyrardów, Włocławek, Piotrków, Pruszków, Góra Kalwaria, Kaczy Dół, Alexandrov, Dobrzelin, Jeziorna, Płock, Ostrołeka, and Grójec.
THE BLOODY EVENTS IN CZĘSTOCHOWA
The following report about the goings-on in Częstochowa has reached us in addition to what is already known.
Częstochowa, April 30: The ferment among the workers in and around Częstochowa has lasted for weeks, and new fuel has been added to the fire because the factory owners are trying to renege on the concessions they made while the workers are insisting on the demands that had been agreed to. As a result, several days before May Day a strike broke out at a weaving mill and at a sheet metal rolling mill [Walzwerk]. Two days before May Day, the workers raised a flag on the highest smokestack of the smelter at the Handtke steel mill with this wording:
Long live the revolution!
Long live the Constituent Assembly!
Long live the eight-hour day!
—Social Democratic Party of Russian Poland and Lithuania
Mass meetings also took place, with Social Democratic orators speaking, and after that the workers marched in the streets.
On the night of April 28–29, as has already been mentioned,† the police and gendarmes invaded the workers barracks at the Rakow factory (a distance of three kilometers from the city) in order to make some arrests. The military occupied the courtyards and grounds around the factory and the workers’ barracks. When the workers on the night shift found out what had happened, they rushed to the aid of their colleagues in the barracks. The factory whistle blew and the entire workplace immediately came to a standstill, while all the electric lights were extinguished. In the darkness, the workers succeeded in pushing aside the soldiers who were holding the barracks doors shut and forced their way into the barracks, where they freed those who had been arrested. Only nine of the arrestees remained in the hands of the police, and they were taken away to Częstochowa.
The workers thereupon demanded that the factory director go into the city immediately and see to it that the arrested workers were set free; if they were not freed by 8:30 a.m., all work at the factory would stop. When no answer was received by that hour, the workers downed tools, formed up in groups, and began to march toward the city to free their comrades. When news of this reached other factories in the suburbs, they also stopped work, and those strikers also joined the march.
Before reaching the city, the march encountered a squadron of cavalry, a battalion of infantry, and the police. For more than an hour and a half the workers and the military stood facing each other. Around 1 p.m. the commanding officer ordered the crowd to disperse. The workers replied that they would not leave until their comrades were released. The warning was repeated, but the workers kept pressing forward against the military.
Then the cavalry was given the order to clear the street. The troopers rode toward the crowd, but only an isolated few rode into it; most of them did not make use of their weapons or merely fired into the air. The crowd responded to this assault by throwing stones, which injured several soldiers. At that point, the horsemen turned around and went back, losing two carbines and three sabers. Now the workers broke into nearby buildings and from that position attacked the military with more throwing of stones. With this, the cavalry was driven back. Then the infantry was given the order to fire. Three salvos followed. The crowd gave way. At that point, the police rushed after the retreating workers, shooting at them blindly. The soldiers, in contrast, had mostly fired into the air.
As far as I can determine up to now, two workers were killed, two persons were badly wounded, and a thirteen-year-old boy and a woman of about twenty were less seriously wounded. Two children were also killed by stray bullets at a great distance from the scene of the fighting. Most of the wounded were hit by revolver shots and thus were victims of the police, who were in a raging frenzy like so many mad dogs.
The workers are now extremely embittered.