THE BATTLE FLAMES UP ANEW!
Imposing a state of siege over Poland—by citing the fabricated pretext of a national movement—with the purpose of injuring the elite troops of the current revolution in the tsar’s empire, the class-conscious Polish proletariat, and isolating them from the Russian proletariat by applying unequal treatment—has produced the opposite result. The struggle is breaking out in complete unanimity, and in brotherly solidarity, both in Poland and in Petersburg with renewed vehemence!
The dispatches report: Petersburg, November 15. The newspapers in the city published a motion adopted yesterday by the Petersburg Council [Soviet] of Workers’ Deputies, according to which a general political strike should start today at noon, as a sign of solidarity with the Kronstadt mutineers and with the revolutionary proletariat [of Poland]. This motion carries the revolutionary motto, “Scrap military courts, the death penalty, and martial law, in Poland and in the whole empire.”
Petersburg, November 15 (report by the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). Rebels halted transport on the Warsaw and Baltic railroads at noon because of the general strike that has broken out anew. The express train to Chernyshevskoye has not departed.
Petersburg, November 15 (B.H.). The measures taken by the government against Poland have ignited great excitement among the population. Most newspapers have published sharply critical expressions of protest, and observe that serious consequences would be the result.
Warsaw, November 14 (Private telegram to Vorwärts). Social Democracy has announced that the response to the imposition of a state of martial law is to proceed with the general strike at all costs.
Warsaw, November 15 (B.H.). Yesterday 500 bank employees held an assembly in the stock exchange, deciding to continue the strike. The management of the gasworks communicated that there would soon be a shortage of coal, and that as a result the production of lighting gas would have to be discontinued soon. Disturbances continue in the city.
Just as the admirable Potemkin revolt in Odessa influenced the navy in Kronstadt, it is now obvious that the tremendous revolt of the Kronstadt sailors has echoed in the Far East—in Vladivostok. The thunderclouds over the heads of absolutism are charged with sallow flashes of lightening from one end of the huge empire to the other, while the thunder grumbles ever-more audibly.
London, November 15. Telegrams reporting from Vladivostok via Shanghai that soldiers and sailors have risen up and set fire to the city that is now completely destroyed. Merchants and the rest of the population fled onto the ships lying at anchor in Vladivostok bay. More than fifty ships laden with provisions are anchored in the bay. Further ships await loading. They will all be prevented from sailing. Askold, the Russian cruiser, set sail on Tuesday from Shanghai and is said to be bound for Vladivostok. The other Russian warships anchored at Shanghai—the Mandyur, the Gromboi, and the Bobr—have received orders to sail with all possible speed to Vladivostok to suppress the disturbances there. As reported by the Morning Post in Shanghai, the breaches of order in Vladivostok have already ceased.
Petersburg, November 15. The rumor that circulated for two days about a mutiny of sailors and artillerymen in Vladivostok has been confirmed by a wire report to the Novoye Vremya [New Times]. The city has been looted and set alight. On the first day of the disturbances, around 300 mutineers were killed. The same paper explains that from a juridical point of view it would not be impossible to talk of a mutiny in Kronstadt, because superior officers were not present during proceedings, and these were exclusively a matter of excesses and lootings carried out in a drunken state, i.e., crimes that are not punished by the death penalty.
The well-informed reader, whose attention we particularly want to direct toward the letter from Petersburg reprinted for today’s issue, will know how to distinguish, in the aforementioned wire-reports, between the news of a mutiny of sailors and soldiers [on the one hand], and the frightening stories about murder, arson, and looting [on the other]. These crimes and atrocities are exclusively the work of the government and its organs.
THE MOOD AMONG THE OFFICERS
We have received the following from Petersburg: A number of officers from the regiments of the guards, Russia’s most gentlemanly regiments, published the following letter in the Petersburg papers:
Lieutenant Frolov, who voluntarily took on the role of executioner against a defenseless crowd, by giving the order to shoot that resulted in hundreds of people being wounded, has violated the honor of military uniform. We request Lieutenant Frolov to voluntarily present himself in front of a civil court within the space of one month. Should Frolov not fulfill our wish by the required date, he will be boycotted by all officers in the capital, as will be the whole body of officers in the mounted Regiment of the Guards who tolerate such officers. All officers of this regiment would then be expelled as members of the various associations, and none of these officers would have their salutes reciprocated.
CLOSED SCHOOLS, MUTINEERING REGIMENTS,
AND PEASANT DISTURBANCES
The semi-official Petersburg Agency, which goes to every effort to spread “sedative news” daily, is forced to present the following news bouquet about the general state of the tsar’s empire today: Petersburg, November 14 (report by the Petersburg Telegraph Agency). We have received the following reports from the interior of the empire: In Kharkiv, the university’s governing committee has decided not to restart lectures until martial law has been rescinded. In Nizhny Novgorod, complete calm prevails. In Kutaisi, the governor-general has informed a Duma delegation about the imperial steward’s order not to transport troops sent to Guria. In Vladikavkaz, the disturbances inside the Apsheronsky regiment have stopped, and the garrison has been strengthened by a regiment of Cossacks. In Chita, Krasnoyarsk and Morchansk, where anti-Semitic disturbances had been expected(!), calm prevails. In the Chernihiv Province, peasant revolts have taken place. Inhabitants from several villages looted a farm and set it alight. They then attacked two further villages, but were forced back. The military has been deployed to the localities affected. Similar occurrences have been reported from the Samara Province, and serious disturbances have erupted in Yeravan. Around 700 Armenians attacked a Tatar village, killing 400 inhabitants, setting the houses alight, and driving the cattle away. The military has also been deployed to this locality.
PETERSBURG’S SECOND SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC NEWSPAPER
Aside from Novaya Zhizn [New Life] which was founded just a few days ago by our Petersburg comrades,* a second party paper, Nachalo [The Beginning],† should also appear soon. The announcement in the bourgeois Petersburg papers stated that alongside well-known Russian party authors like Plekhanov, Zasulich, [Julius] Martov, and [Alexander] Parvus, German Social Democrats will also write for the new Russian partner publication: August Bebel, K. Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, and Comrade Victor Adler in Vienna.
Warsaw. The magazine Glos [Voice], which had been published with the subheading Organ of Social Democracy for Poland and Lithuania, has been banned.
PROTEST AGAINST THE EXECUTION OF 300 MUTINEERING SAILORS
Petersburg, November 15. The newspapers have published a series of letters from private individuals vigorously protesting the execution of 300 mutineering sailors in Kronstadt, and demanding that the mutineers be brought before a civil court for a new trial.