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

THE BEGINNINGS OF DEMONSTRATIONS357people’s revolution. When in January 1905 the number ofstrikers in this one month exceeded 400,000, this was thebeginning of the actual revolution. In all the three yearsof the revolution the number of strikers, though graduallydeclining (almost 3,000,000 in 1905, 1,000,000 in 1906, andthree-fourths of a million in 1907), was higher than had everbeen known in any other country.When the number of strikers dropped abruptly (176,000)in 1908 and was followed by an even more marked decline in1909 (64,000) this spelt the end of the first revolution or,rather, the first phase of the revolution.And now, since the summer of this year, the tide is beginningto rise again. The number of participants in economicstrikes is increasing and increasing very rapidly. The phaseof the total domination of the Black-Hundred reaction hascome to an end. The phase of a new upsurge is beginning.The proletariat, which retreated—although with considerableinterruptions between 1905 and 1909, is regaining itsstrength and is beginning to take the offensive. The revival incertain branches of industry leads at once to a revival of theproletarian struggle.The proletariat has begun. Others, the bourgeois, democraticclasses and sections of the population are continuing.The death of Muromtsev, Chairman of the First Duma, amoderate liberal, a foreigner to democracy, evokes thefirst timid beginning of demonstrations. The death of LeoTolstoy gives rise—for the first time after a long interval—to street demonstrations with the participation mainlyof students but partly also of workers. The fact that quitea number of factories and plants stopped work on the day ofTolstoy’s funeral marks the beginning, though a very modestone, of demonstrative strikes.Very recently, the atrocities of the tsarist gaolers, who inVologda and Zerentui tortured many of our imprisonedcomrades who are being persecuted for their heroic struggleduring the revolution, have deepened the ferment among thestudents. Assemblies and mass meetings are being held allover Russia, the police are raiding the universities, beatingthe students, arresting them, prosecuting newspapers forpublishing the slightest particle of truth about the disorders,but only aggravating the unrest by all these actions.