The coming Congress will discuss at length all questions-except those of importance to the welfare of the workers! Published monthly at 1113 W. Washington Blvd. Subscription price $2.00 per year. The Daily Worker Society, Publishers. Entered as Second Class Matter November 8, 1924, at the postoffice at Chicago, Illinois, under the Act of Mareh 3, 1879. VOL. V. 290 DECEMBER, 1925 No. 2 LAS 1905-The Rehearsal for 1917 By Alexander Trachtenberg AST month the revolutionary workers throughout the world celebrated the Eighth Anniversary of the victorious proletarian revolution in Russia. Once more workers everywhere gathered to review the year's achievements and to renew pledges of solidarity with the proletarian and peasant masses of the Soviet Union. This month two other Russian anniversaries will command the attention of all revolutionists. Both events, which the Russian worker will celebrate, are recorded in the annals of their revolutionary history, one as an episode, the other as an epoch. The Decembrist Revolt. The first event was the attempt to de-throne Czar Nicholas I. on December 14, 1825. The plot was engineered by some Guard officers and civilians who, influenced by the ideas of the French Revolution, sought to limit the powers of the Crown through a constitution. The movement was restricted to a few conspirators who were not anxious to establish contact with the masses. Even the soldiers whom the rebellious officers intended to use for the coup were kept in ignorance of their aims and programs, lest these peasant soldiers develop ideas inimical to the interests of the landowning classes to which the conspirators belonged. Nicholas defeated the rebels because on the day of the "uprising" they were still not agreed upon their aims and methods, and because of their failure to organize a popular movement in support of their program. Viewed from present-day standards, the events of December 14, 1825, may appear only as a revolutionary flare. At the time, the shooting down of the soldiers whom the rebellious officers brought to the Senate Square in Petersburg to demonstrate against Nicholas, the execution of the leading conspirators and the fiendish reprisals of the Czar against all suspected of harboring disloyalty, produced a marked effect. The revolutionary ideas which the "Decembrists" kept to themselves became the heritage of larger groups who came to consider the executed or imprisoned rebels as martyrs. Celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Decembrist revolt, the Russian workers will draw the proper lesson from the failure of that historic event. 1905-A Revolutionary Epoch. The second occasion for reminiscence is of much larger proportions. It was not an event of a day; it was a series нх C8 1.5 of events which are recorded in red letters throughout the calendar of that year. Until eight years ago, 1905 stood out pre-eminently as an epoch-making year in the history of revolutions. In the nineteenth century only 1848 and 1871 could compare in revolutionary significance with 1905. The revolution of 1905 was not only the rehearsal for 1917, but it had affected the political destinies of many peoples. The popular movements for wider suffrage in Austria and Belgium; the revolutions of Persia, Turkey and China, were some of the outstanding events which took place during the revolutionary era inaugurated in 1905. The Background of 1905. Nineteen hundred and five was the cumulative effect of sporadic and isolated revolutionary outbreaks of preceding years, particularly those beginning with 1900. The landless and poor peasants who were suffering on account of the transition from the feudal to the capitalist methods in agriculture and were groaning under heavy tax burdens, were rising against the landlords, setting fire to estates and expropriating agricultural products and machinery. Between 1900 and 1905, nearly seven hundred outbreaks occurred in different parts of the country, which brought punitive military expeditions to the villages and helped further to widen the breach between the peasantry and czarism. The sporadic strike movements in the cities were affecting more and more workers. Long hours (twelve to fourteen); low wages (six to eight dollars a month); intol erable conditions of employment, mistreatment by foremen, prohibition of labor unions, drove the workers to resort to strikes, which, however, were usually broken with the aid of the police and Cossacks. It is estimated that during the five years prior to 1905, over 200,000 industrial workers were affected in these strikes. The socialists, though as yet small in numbers and only beginning to gain a foothold among the masses, were utilizing the strikes and the government interference in behalf of the employers in the attempt to turn the economic outbreaks into political demonstrations against the government. The Police Unions. To cope with the growing influence of the Socialists among the workers the government decided to permit the formation of benefit organizations and even promised to intercede in their behalf with employers in order to reduce BLOODY SUNDAY, JANUARY 22, 1905. The priest Gapon leads the masses to their slaughter on the square before the Winter Palace. somewhat the working day, raise their wages a bit, and remove some of the objectionable working conditions. These organizations, in fact, were formed under the aegis of the government, and are known in Russian labor history as Police Unions. These "labor unions" were to be the Russian counterpart of the classless unions existing in other West-European countries-namely the Hirsh-Dunker unions of Germany; the Catholic unions of Austria and Belgium, and similar derevolutionized labor organizations. Instead of yellow unions, as they are known in other countries, the czarist government was going to have them altogether black. Mussolini took a leaf out of Russian history when he formed his fascist labor unions. This, however, is not the only resemblance that his regime bears to the czarist order of old Russia. Zubatov, the chief of the secret police in Moscow, became the organizer of such unions, in which he succeeded in enrolling large numbers of workers. Siding with the work ers on a few occasions in their conflict with the employers, Zubatov gained an influence and for a time proved the efficiency of unions organized under government patronage. During the celebration at the monument of Alexander II. in 1902, Zubatov was able to corral about 50,000 workers. Under Zubatov's tutelage, similar "labor unions" were organized among the workers of Odessa and Minsk, where renegade Socialists became the willing aides of the Moscow chief spy. Zubatov was particularly anxious to win the Jewish workers who started earlier in forming illegal labor unions. His endeavors among them met with little success from the very start. Large numbers of workers in Petersburg were later inveigled into joining these police unions. As in Moscow, the Socialists warned the Petersburg workers against joining these organizations, pointing out their true nature and purpose, but some of the immediate results, mostly irrelevant, which they had secured through them, and particularly the right to assemble at their factory clubs to discuss matters |