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LEAFLETS during Russian Revolution
A collection of Leaflets 1905 - 1917
partly from “The Voice of the Great Revolution” (in Russian) the book consists of leaflets published by the Bolshevik Party from
February 1917 to November 1920
‘For a general strike against autocracy’
March 12 1917
Proletarians of all countries, unite!
Comrade workers! They are shooting us down! Workers’ blood has been spilled on the streets of Petrograd! Hungry people rose to struggle, but the tsar made them eat lead. Just as on January 9, 1905, when the servants of the autocracy shot down workers who went to the tsar for justice and mercy, on February 25-26 they shot down hungry workers who went onto the streets to protest hunger and the reigning arbitrariness.
Comrades! They have committed a terrible, senseless, monstrous crime. During these days of the people’s rage and also of merciless retribution against them, we were helpless against the policemen and handfuls of soldiers who were loyal to the tsar. We could not fight back against their blows or take a life for a life. We were unarmed. Our fists were clenched in impotent rage. They beat us with their swords, their horses trampled us, and the defenseless people fled with hatred in their hearts toward the enemy.
Comrades! During these difficult days, the working class saw more clearly than ever before that without strong, powerful, proletarian organizations, fighting detachments, and without the army’s support for the people, we won’t break the enemy and destroy autocracy. Likewise, we learned during these days that our brothers the soldiers do not always obey orders to carry out fratricide. We hail the Cossacks who chased the mounted police from Znamenskaya Square. We hail and give fraternal thanks to the soldiers of the Pavlovsky Regiment who shot at a detachment of mounted police near the Cathedral of Resurrection.
Soldiers are beginning to see the light. They understand that their enemy is not the starving, oppressed people, but the tsarist autocracy. During these difficult days for workers, only part of the soldiers, students, and citizens supported us. The State Duma, which is not truly representative of the people, is criminally silent. While the stones cry out for vengeance, the State Duma is deaf and blind to the people’s woe.
Comrades! Not only do they shoot us down, but they also cast us onto the streets to suffer hunger and destitution. Putilov and Trubochnyi factories have been shut down. Fifty thousand workers have been deprived of a morsel of bread!
Comrades! Whoever still has a conscience and is neither a slave nor a pitiful traitor to the workers’ cause will hear our appeal and will join us to unanimously protest merciless international war.
Comrades! Bring activity in the city to a standstill. Let all the factories, mills, workshops, and printing presses come to a halt. Let the electricity go out. We summon you to a general strike of protest, to strike a blow against the despotic autocracy. We, the Social Democratic Bolsheviks and Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, summon the proletariat of Petersburg and of all Russia to organize and feverishly mobilize our forces.
Comrades! Organize underground strike committees in the mills and factories and link districts to one another. Collect funds for underground printing presses and for weapons. Get ready, comrades! The hour of decisive struggle approaches. We will not fear General [S.S.] Khabalov [Commander of the Petrograd
Military District], who dares to call us traitors. It is not we workers who betray the people, but those traitors and murderers the [V.A.] Sukhomlinovs [War Minister] and the Khabalovs. The State Duma and the liberals betray the people.
Comrades! Khabalov orders us to go back to work on the 28th, but we summon you to struggle and to a general strike!
Be brave! All for one and one for all!
Long live the general political strike of protest!
Always remember our fallen brothers!
Down with war!
Down with autocracy!
Long live revolution!
Long live the Provisional Revolutionary Government!
Long live the Constituent Assembly!
Long live a democratic republic!
Long live the international solidarity of the proletariat!
Petersburg Interdistrict Committee of the RSDRP
Published in A.G. Shlyapnikov, Semnadtsatyi god, volume 1, 1923, pp. 337-338. On Shlyapnikov’s role in the 1917 events,