Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

168V. I. LENINWitte’s antechamber. The proletariat marched onward.Placing itself at the head of the people it mobilised themasses for independent historic action in such millionsthat a few weeks of real freedom once and for all drew an indelibleline between the old Russia and the new. The proletariatraised the movement to the highest possible form ofstruggle—the armed uprising in December 1905. It suffereddefeat in this struggle but was not routed. Its uprising wascrushed but it succeeded in uniting in battle all the revolutionaryforces of the people, it did not allow itself to bedemoralised by retreat but showed the masses—for the firsttime in the recent history of Russia—that the strugglecould and must be fought to the finish. The proletariat wasrepulsed but it did not relinquish the great banner of revolutionand at a time when the Cadet majority in the First andSecond Dumas were repudiating the revolution, trying toextinguish it and assuring the Trepovs and Stolypins thatthey were ready and able to extinguish it, the proletariatraised the banner on high and continued to call to action,educating, uniting, and organising forces for the struggle.Soviets of Workers’ Deputies in all the big industrial centres,a number of economic gains wrested from capital, Sovietsof Soldiers’ Deputies in the army, peasant committees inGuria and other places; finally, transient “republics” in severalcities in Russia—all this was the beginning of the conquestof political power by the proletariat relying on therevolutionary petty bourgeoisie, particularly the peasantry.The December movement of 1905 was a great movementbecause it converted for the first time “a pitiful nation, anation of slaves” (as N. G. Chernyshevsky said at the beginningof the sixties 87 ) into a nation capable under proletarianleadership of carrying the fight against the loathsomeautocracy to a conclusion and drawing the masses into thisstruggle. It was a great movement because the proletariatgave a practical demonstration of the possibility of the conquestof power by the democratic masses, the possibility ofa republic in Russia, showed “how it is done”, showed inpractice how the masses set about accomplishing this task.The December struggle of the proletariat left the people alegacy that can serve as an ideological and political beaconfor the work of several generations.