Oh you great year! No one ever saw you [or anything like you] in our land!†
The days May 1–4 of this current year have written the name of the Polish proletariat in the pages of revolutionary history forever, in glowing letters of fame and glory.
The May 1 demonstration and the general strike of May 4 in Warsaw were undeniably the most powerful expression up until now of the maturity and political strength of the working class, not only in our country but also in the entire tsarist empire. The workers of Warsaw celebrated in worthy fashion the first May Day of this revolutionary era and showed the whole world that they are aware of the great significance of the historical moment we are living through.
Never before has Warsaw seen such a workers’ demonstration as this mass march of 20,000, a mass proceeding under the banner of Social Democracy with model order and discipline, and in the highest spirits—a mass consolidated around the seriousness of its ideas and the consciousness of its goals, hungrily absorbing every word and slogan of the Social Democratic speakers, gripped by a powerful sense of brotherhood, combined collective strength, and joyful enthusiasm.
And yet, against this peaceful march absolutism launched a criminal attack of a kind never seen before in our history. Several dozen corpses along with a hundred wounded—those were the trophies taken by the highway-robber hordes of absolutism.‡
Nevertheless, victory was on the side of the unarmed working people. The attack by the government murderers, completely unjustified, was planned on high and by all indications was for the government nothing but an attempt to frighten and intimidate the workers, to deter them from such demonstrations in the future.
Dying absolutism, guided by infallible instinct, senses perfectly well the powerful effect of such peaceful demonstrations. It is aware that in the course of the unstoppable revolution, these demonstrations will occur in our country, as well as in all of Russia, and will grow like an avalanche, gathering more and more that army of conscious proletarians around the banner of Social Democracy, which eventually will smash the fortress of despotism. That is why despotism tried to stop the march of the workers—with innocent blood spilled and with the corpses of the elderly, women, and children.
But the criminal policies will fail. The working class cannot withdraw from street demonstrations because the loud but peaceful declaration of its aspirations for liberation has today become a vital necessity for the mass of the proletariat. To renounce demonstrations, to renounce mass protests against the crimes of despotism—our proletariat cannot give those up, just as it cannot give up breathing. Going out into the streets, to seek intently a sense of strength among tens of thousands under the banner of Social Democracy, and listening to the slogans of Social Democratic speakers to get some uplift and encouragement and guidance for the future—today that is the only salvation for the broadest masses of the people, who otherwise will suffocate in the terrible atmosphere of decaying absolutism. To live in such an atmosphere is [impossible for anyone but] the souls of our servile bourgeoisie, who even in the face of such horrific crimes of the government as the mass murder on May 1 are running to the halls of that same government. The revolutionary proletariat has to go out into the street, where it finds its power, which has been broken and crushed in the service of capital and under the yoke of despotism. It has to go out into the street, where its voice and outcry resound loudly and reach the broadest masses of the people, bringing to them the word of salvation.*
The revolutionary proletariat must go out into the street, which is the mother of the toilers and oppressed, because it does not have—in the society of capitalist exploitation, and under the rule of the despotic knout—anything else but the street. The proletariat must go out into the street, because only there can it gather and muster its revolutionary ranks and that is where its final showdown with absolutism will take place.
Therefore, the battle over the street is going on now, over that terrain of the workers’ strength and future victory—and has been going on since May 1, this ongoing struggle between the revolutionary proletariat and the government. And the general strike of May 4 in Warsaw, a strike such as the labor movement has not seen before in our country, showed to the government and the public that Social Democracy will not depart from its chosen path, and that in response to mass slaughter, the immediate answer will be an even more powerful growth of the movement in Warsaw and other cities.
As of the first days of May, in the midst of manifestations of the greatest strength shown up to now by the revolutionary proletariat in our country, three months of an all-encompassing workers’ revolution in the tsarist empire had passed—a revolution that began with the mass march and mass slaughter of the Petersburg workers.
But, at the same time, an entire year has gone by, a year of turbulent revolutionary struggle by the proletariat of Warsaw and of our whole country. It was April 27 last year when the memorable attack on the print shop of the Social Democrats in the Wola district struck like thunder in Warsaw.*
Marcin Kasprzak’s accurate shots, which left four tsarist thugs lying dead, aroused working-class Warsaw like an electric shock. As though awaking suddenly after a long lethargic sleep, the mass of our proletariat shook itself and came to its feet in response to that desperate and heroic battle.
From then on, a new spirit inspired Warsaw, a new revolutionary flame began burning there. From then on, the initiatives of Social Democracy never stopped, but kept growing in size and strength.
Last year’s May Day demonstration was followed by the street battle between Social Democratic workers and the soldiers during the fire on Grzybowska Street.
Then came the memorable demonstration by victims of the economic crisis and of unemployment, crying out for “bread and jobs,” and later a demonstration against conscription, followed by the Social Democratic demonstration of many thousands against the tsarist war mobilization at the end of October [1904].†
Then there began the trial of Kasprzak and [Benedykt] Gurcman* before a military court; then the trial of Wladisław Feinstein-Leder and twenty other comrades, which has not yet ended.† This was accompanied by many Social Democratic actions against the war, including the widespread and effective agitation among soldiers and peasants in the Lublin area. Hundreds and thousands of leaflets were distributed by the Social Democrats at the risk of their lives in Warsaw, Łódź, Białystok, Częstochowa, Puławi, and elsewhere.
Finally, in January, Social Democracy issued a call for a general strike immediately after the news came from Petersburg, and since then the enormous strike movement has spread in our entire country, in every sector where labor is employed, a movement in which Social Democracy has played a most prominent role. That is a brief history of the unforgettable revolutionary year.
In the midst of the terrible sacrifices of the Polish proletariat, this year of revolution blazed a trail for itself.
In the midst of the poverty and devastation caused by tsarism’s war in the Far East, in the midst of unemployment and hunger so severe that it drove the fathers of families to suicide, mothers to prostitution, and children to beggary; in the midst of the torments suffered by countless numbers of proletarian fighters, abused in prisons or murdered by the police and soldiers, fighters who bestrewed the streets with their dead bodies. The last despotic government is departing from the scene, leaving behind only smoldering ruins, poverty, devastation, and the bloody fumes resulting from its crimes. But, above those ruins and rising from those fumes, eventually there will emerge the dawn of political freedom in spite of everything. In the midst of such pain and sacrifices, wading through streams of its own blood and tripping over the corpses of its children, the Polish proletariat has kept on striving forward unwaveringly. This past year of struggle—from May to May—was a terrible year, but one full of heroism and glory for the workers of Poland.
A working class that can live through and overcome such a year will not stop—until the moment of victory!