Leon Trotsky: 1905

Leon Trotsky: 1905: CHAPTER 6 -- January Ninth
Leon Trotsky's
1905
CHAPTER 6
January Ninth
I
Headman of the Streltsy
Great Sire,
We cannot hold the peoplc back -- They burst in, crying:
"We want to bow to Tsar Boris, "We want to see the Tsar."
Boris
Fling wide the doors:
Between the Russian people and the Tsar There is no barrier.
A. Tolstoy, Tsar Boris
The Spring
* * *
Sire! We workers, our children and wives, the helpless old people who are our parents, we have come to
you, Sire, to seek justice and protection. We are in great poverty, we are oppressed and weighed down
with labors beyond our strength; we are insulted, we are not recognized as human beings, we are treated
like slaves who must suffer their lot in silence. And we have suffered it, but we are being driven ever
deeper into beggary, lawlessness, and ignorance. Despotism and arbitrary rule are strangling us, and we
are suffocating. Sire, our strength is at an end! The limit of our patience has been reached; the terrible
moment has come for us when it is better to die than to continue suffering intolerable torment.
Thus began the celebrated petition of the Petersburg workers. In these words the proletarian threat may
ring more true than the pleading of loyal subjects. The petition went on to describe all the oppressions
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