Marx-Engels | Lenin | Stalin | Home Page
Anniversary of the Lena Massacre
A source: Stalin I.V. Works. - T. 2. - M.: OGIZ; State Publishing House of Political Literature, 1946, pp. 373–376.
Notes 150–151: Ibid. S. 406.
Comrades!
A year has passed since the execution of 500 of our comrades on the Lena. For a peaceful economic strike on April 4, 1912, at the Lena mines, on the orders of the Russian Tsar, to please a handful of millionaires, 500 of our brothers were shot.
Captain Treshchenko, who perpetrated this robbery in the royal name, having received high awards from the government and a generous bribe from gold miners, is now walking around aristocratic taverns, waiting for the post of head of the security department. In a hot moment, they promised to provide for the families of the dead, it turns out - they blatantly lied. They promised to introduce state insurance for workers on the Lena, it turns out - they deceived. They promised to “investigate” the case, but in reality they even hid the investigation that was carried out by their own messenger, Senator Manukhin.
“So it was, so it will be,” the minister-executioner Makarov threw from the Duma rostrum. And he turned out to be right: the tsar and his rulers were and will be liars, perjurers, blood-letters and [c.373] a camarilla doing the will of a handful of wild landowners and millionaires.
On January 9, 1905, faith in the old, pre-revolutionary autocracy was shot at the Winter Palace Square in St. Petersburg.
On April 4, 1912, on the distant Lena, faith in the current “renewed” post-revolutionary autocracy was shot.
Everyone who believed that we now have a constitutional system, everyone who thought that the old atrocities were no longer possible, was convinced that this was not so, that the tsar’s gang still dominated the great Russian people, that the monarchy of Nikolai Romanov was still demands on its altar hundreds and thousands of corpses of Russian workers and peasants, that whips are still whistling all over Russia and bullets of tsarist mercenaries are buzzing - Treshenok, exercising over unarmed Russian citizens.
The execution on the Lena opened a new page in our history. The cup of patience overflowed. The dam of popular indignation broke. The river of popular anger started. The words of the tsar's lackey Makarov, "so it was, so it will be" added fuel to the fire. They had the same effect as in the fifth year the order of another royal dog Trepov: “Do not spare cartridges!” The working sea began to seethe and foam. And the Russian workers responded to the Lena massacre with a united, almost half a million strong protest strike. And they raised high our old red banner, on which the working class again inscribed the three main demands of the Russian revolution:
8-hour working day - for workers.
Confiscation of all landlord and royal lands - for the peasants.
Democratic Republic - for all the people!
A year of struggle lies behind us. And, looking back, we can say with satisfaction: the beginning is done, the year was not in vain.
The Lena strike merged with the May Day strike. The glorious May Day in 1912 wrote a golden page in the history of our working-class movement. Since that time, the struggle has not ceased for a minute. The political strike is expanding and growing. To the execution of 16 Sevastopol sailors, 150,000 workers respond with a revolutionary strike, proclaiming an alliance between the revolutionary proletariat and the revolutionary army. The St. Petersburg proletariat is protesting by a strike against the forgery of the workers' elections to the Duma. On the opening day of the Fourth Duma151 , on the day the s.-d. As part of the Insurance Inquiry faction, the St. Petersburg workers organize one-day strikes and demonstrations. And, finally, on January 9, 1913, up to 200,000 Russian workers go on strike, honoring the memory of the fallen fighters and calling all of democratic Russia to a new struggle.
This is the main result of 1912.
Comrades! The first anniversary of the Lena massacre is approaching. We must, we must respond in one way or another on this day. We must show that we honor the memory of our slain comrades. We must show that we have not forgotten the bloody day of April 4, just as we have not forgotten the bloody Sunday of January 9.
Rallies, demonstrations, deductions, etc. it is necessary to celebrate the day of the Lena anniversary everywhere and everywhere. [c.375]
And let the whole of workers' Russia merge on this day in a common cry:
Down with the Romanov monarchy!
Long live the new revolution!
Long live the democratic republic!
Glory to the fallen soldiers!
Central Committee of the RSDLP
Reprint and distribute!
Get ready for May 1st!
Written in January-February 1913
Printed on hectographed
the text of the proclamation
NOTES
150 The proclamation “Anniversary of the Lena Massacre” was written by I.V. Stalin in Krakow in January-February 1913. Transcribed by N.K. Krupskaya, it was reproduced on a hectograph and sent to Russia; distributed in St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Mogilev, Tiflis and other cities. - 373 . [c.406]
Return to text
151 Sessions of the IV State Duma opened on November 15, 1912. -375.