The revolution marches on its path with impeccable logic. Each new violent trick performed by absolutism in decline becomes the starting point for a new violent outbreak of the struggle.
The state-of-occupation imposed over Poland has triggered a return to the general strike, first in Petersburg, then in Moscow and in the whole of Russia. For now, the giant, the tsar’s empire, lies chained and powerless on the ground, while the “strong arm” of the revolutionary, class-conscious proletariat rises into a clenched fist, and the state of siege in Poland metamorphoses into a state of siege that the working class imposes on tsarism.
This brilliant action, carried out by the Petersburg proletariat, is particularly remarkable for being the first solidarity initiative for which the signal came from Petersburg. In the previous periods of revolution, it was usually the other way round. The Polish working class responded to every initiative undertaken by their Russian brothers in the struggle, as they did to every plot directed against them by the ruling band of rogues, with passionate declarations of solidarity. January 22 turned into a signal for a series of general strikes in the whole of Russian Poland. There were immediate, lively responses in Poland to the Moscow railroad workers’ strike. In contrast, the grandiose May Day celebrations in Warsaw, and the bloody battles of the Polish working class in Łódź, have not generated reactions or active support in Russia proper until this day. This is certainly not due to the Russian proletariat lacking feelings of fraternity, or of the deepest sympathy and political insight. It was much rather the case that the proletarian masses in Petersburg and Moscow were not yet mobile or disciplined enough to fall into line straight away when the order was given. The movements of the masses were more of a spontaneous and elemental nature, a real systematic and purposeful leadership of Social Democracy did not yet exist in Russia, the preconditions for mass action, stemming from a free decision, had not yet been established. And what a turnaround now! Within hours of the announcement of the state of siege in Poland, the leading Petersburg workers’ organization passed a motion calling for solidarity action with the Polish proletariat, and the masses are thus mobilized within hours, trains at a standstill, the factories quiet, and the general strike executed impeccably. This current action has only been made possible by the revolution’s quick marching step, facilitating massive progress in political training, in the masses’ readiness to fight, and in the leading influence of Social Democracy since those January days. Our angst-ridden opponents of the idea of the political mass strike, who meaunder on with such smugness about the necessary discipline and training for the masses, can now demonstrate—faced with the tremendous, continuing work of the proletariat’s political training, amid the fire of battle—if they possess the political warrior’s most indispensable ability, the ability to learn.
At least the Petersburg workers, however, are able to display a high degree of political maturity, particularly in their resolution that specifically calls for a solidarity rally for the revolutionary Polish proletariat, not just for solidarity with “Poland,” which was the old, standard phrasing. The attempt by the tsarist bashi-bazouk that they, as it happens, share with our own “liberal” HKT,* is nothing but a mendacious and crude speculative attempt to graft the bogeyman of national antimonies together with “national ferment,” in order to suffocate the proletariat’s revolutionary class movement.
The tsarist government needs the state-of-emergence and the fantastical, scare-mongering pictures of the “Polish danger” for two reasons. First, to scare the living daylights into the Russian liberals [by evoking] the supposed state-endangering tendencies of “the Poles,” so that sympathies for the revolutionary movement will be cooled among people who are, at the bottom of their hearts, good “patriots”—[the latter being] people who gush about the “integrity” of the empire of the knout. Secondly, they use the pretense of a “national ferment” to violently quiet the purely political class struggle of the Polish proletariat.
In reality, there’s not a trace of a national movement today inside the Russian part of Poland, in the sense of aspiring toward the reestablishment of an independent Polish state.† The obsequious brave warriors and the capitalist moneybags of Russian Poland are way in front even of the Russian reactionaries in terms of their “loyalty” to the hegemony of the knout. Weren’t Poland’s bourgeois classes the only ones who sent deputations to the government after the butchery on January 22 in Petersburg and after the Cossack mass murder on May 1 … with expressions of gratitude for the hypocritical Ukase on Tolerance on Religious Matters? Even the moderate Russian liberals greeted this with cold disdain! Was it not a Polish agribusiness newspaper, the Dziennik Posnański [Poznań Daily] that—during the eventful days in January—gave Tsar Nicholas the advice, not intended ironically, that he should save his evidently wobbly head and the crown by making with all speed for Warsaw, the sole place of refuge in which the “parties of order” could offer him absolute security? Poland’s bourgeois classes do now stand with both feet on the solid ground of capitalist reality, which has long since transformed the old nationalist-rebel Poland into a devout factory of exclusively beautiful soul of capitalist profit.* And the effects of this capitalistic transformation process go so deep, that Poland is the only province during this whole revolutionary period of the history of the tsar’s empire in which the bourgeois classes have not shown the faintest sign of stirring for freedom. No trace here of either bourgeois or agrarian liberalism that takes the stage in Russia proper in such a pathetic form, and no trace of bourgeois democracy among urban intelligentsia circles. It has been the proletariat, entirely on its own and against all bourgeois classes and groups, which has made Poland into one of the mightiest furnaces of the Russian Revolution. It has fought under the flag of a clearly delineated class struggle, and in the spirit of class solidarity that belongs together with the Russian working class.
The one party in Poland, who until only a few years ago represented the Polish national solution for the reestablishment of Poland, and who, until recently, eked out their pitiful existence primarily in Galicia—this so-called “National Democracy,” a catch-all for the petty bourgeoisie and for anti-Semitism—officially renounced their program in 1904, concurrent to the start of the revolution in the tsar’s empire, labeling it “utopian.”† Today in Poland, they play the role of absolutism’s voluntary helper, putting all their urgency into founding “national” yellow trade unions,‡ and in battling against Polish Social Democracy.§ This was the same “national” party that only weeks ago wrote the following words under the title of “Industry of the Fatherland Ruined” in their organ Slowo Polskie [The Word of Poland], blind as they were with rage about the general strike that was choreographed by Social Democracy. From Slowo Polskie: “The time is finally ripe for us to openly announce that we hate Russian absolutism much less than Polish Social Democracy…”
The other party that previously stood for the national Polish solution, the Polish Socialist Party, made an official announcement three months ago. It has joined the ranks of those accepting that a Polish national rising is completely utopian in Poland today. The last, weak remains of the old Polish nationalist movement have disappeared in the strong waves of the general proletarian revolution in the tsar’s empire, in which all workers are united in one army, without regard for nationality and sharing a common goal—the achievement of political freedom in the whole of the tsar’s empire. “National” cant in Poland today only serves as a cover for the bloodiest reaction as wielded by both the Polish bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, as well as functioning as a smug pretense for the regime of the lash’s violent escapades. In just this way, the large “nationalist” demonstrations that were arranged recently in Warsaw by the “noblest and the best,” presented only one solution. Long live the people’s unity—against “class-agitating” Social Democracy, they say; they passionately wish that the recent lackey-like “deputations” of the Polish bourgeoisie toward Petersburg will pacify the Polish proletariat as quickly as possible. And this is to be facilitated by granting the weakest possible freedoms regarding autonomy, re-establishing the desired “peace” and “order,” and throttling revolutionary Social Democracy in the process.
But both sets of speculations—from the Polish reactionaries on the one side, and from the tsarist whip-bearers on the other—are wrong again. The bourgeoisie’s “unity demonstration” in Warsaw has fanned the flames of party and class struggle in Poland to even greater heights. And the very state of siege that was aimed at isolating the Polish proletariat from the Russian Revolution has motivated the revolutionary Russian proletariat to carry out the first purposeful and strong action of solidarity for their Polish class comrades!
Not a single day without new moral victories, and not a single hour without the revolution making new progress! It is a joy to be alive!