isaac-deutscher-the-prophet-armed-trotsky-1879-1921

TROTSKY IN 1905 129
the unreality of this people's victory and excited by the unfailing
response of the crowd and his own unsuspected mastery over it,
concluded: ·
' ... citizens! Our strength is in ourselves. With sword in hand
we must defend freedom. The Tsar's Manifesto, however, ...
see! it is only a scrap of paper.'
With a theatrical gesture he flourished the Manifesto in front
of the crowd and angrily crumpled it in his fist:
'Today it has been given us and tomorrow it will be taken
away and torn into pieces as I am now tearing it into pieces,
this paper-liberty, before your very eyes.''
Thus the capital of Russia first heard the orator of the revolution.
In this speech Trotsky pointed to all the fatal weaknesses
which were to frustrate the revolution. The Tsar's self-confidence,
but not his massive machine of power, had been shaken.
There was a ferment in the armed forces, especially in the navy.
But the Cossacks, the Guards, and the endless ranks of the
muzhik infantry were gripped by the age-old habit of blind
obedience. Behind the army lay rural Russia, its whole
immensity steeped in apathy and despair. The revolution was
still a purely urban affair. And even in the towns its triumph
was mixed with fear. The middle classes and their Liberal
spokesmen, wistfully believing in the Tsar's promise of freedom
and uneasy at the thought that they owed that promise to the
workers' general strike, were anxious to stop the revolution.
They were haunted by the spectre of plebeian 'anarchy', and
by the fear that, ifthe revolution went on, the Tsar would listen
to those of his advisers who counselled suppression not concession.
'If you do not call off the struggle', so the Liberals
argued with the Socialists, 'our newly-won freedom will prove
illusory.' 'But it is illusory', the Socialists retorted. To the
working class the October Manifesto gave a sense not so much
of victory as of strength and an impatience to use that strength
for further assaults. Each class intended different aims for the
movement. The middle classes hoped to gain most from a
constitutional monarchy. The workers were republicans. The
former desired nothing but political freedom. The latter raised
1
L. Trotsky, DU Russischl Revolution 1905, pp. 93-g6.