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

320IS THIS THE TURN OF THE TIDE?The present issue was already set up when we receivedthe St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers of November 12.However inadequate the information supplied by the legalpress, it is evident beyond doubt that in a number of citiesthere have been students’ meetings, demonstrations andstreet processions with protests against capital punishmentand with speeches against the government. The St. Petersburgdemonstration of November 11, even according to theinformation of the quite Octobrist-minded Russkiye Vedomosti,125 drew a gathering of not less than 10,000 peopleon the Nevsky. The same newspaper reports that on the St.Petersburg side “large numbers of workers joined the processionas it passed the People’s House. At Tuchkov Bridgethe procession came to a halt. The police were quite powerlessto stop the procession and the crowd proceeded withsongs and flags to the Bolshoi Prospekt on VasilyevskyOstrov. Only at the university did the police manage to dispersethe crowd.”The police and the troops, of course, behaved in the trueblueRussian way.While we shall postpone to the next issue our appraisalof this unmistakably democratic upsurge, we cannot abstainfrom saying a few words about the attitude of the variousparties to the demonstration. Russkiye Vedomosti, which onthe 11th published a false report that the demonstrationhad been called off, reported on the 12th that the Social-Democrats had adopted no decision, while some of theirdeputies had even expressed their disapproval, and only theTrudoviks in the resolution they adopted considered itimpossible to hinder the demonstration. We have no doubtthat this report which is so discreditable to our Social-