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Title: The Fall of Czarisms Author: Anna Mahé Date: July 6th 1905 Language: en Topics: Russian revolution, monarchy Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/the-fall-of-czarisms-anna-mahe/ Notes: Published in l’anarchie, n°13, July 6th 1905
In his palace, hearing the news which reach him each day, the czar
shivers in fear. Every hour brings its revolt, quite often childish,
sometimes terrible… And from every corner of the vast empire hatreds
arise, angers flare up.
Petersburg, Lodz, Warsaw, Kronstadt, Loben, Odessa, Riga, Kiel,
Nijni-Novgord, Kischineff, Hapsal, etc., etc., the former doleful
resignation is shaken; a wind of terror is blowing, disturbing the
emperor, the nobility and the state employees in their blissful
digestion.
Fatalistic peasants, workers made obedient by the knout have at last
some quivers of anger. They are to be sent to Mandchuria. Thus, since
they’re going to die anyway, they might as well get killed by shaking
the tyranny which crushes them in gestures of madness.
Revolts, up until now, have been rather naive. A credulous people, grown
children, walked with their hands up in supplication to get massacred
willingly. An unconscious people who understood revolt in the same way
as the old Tolstoy, an idiotic people of martyrs, who had so often bent
their backs under the blows of the nagaikas that the only desire they
can have is to get killed…
And they were killed, again and again… Corpses piled up, in Petersburg,
Warsaw, Odessa, everywhere… The cosaques worked hard to restore calm for
the “little father gone mad” with terror.
But after Platonicist and sterile insurrections, the rebels learned no
longer to be martyrs. Everywhere effective revolts are flaring up.
Something even more terrible, o emperor of all Russias, your soldiers,
your officers even, are leaving you, and join the rebels. And you shiver
in your apartments where fear is keeping you prisoner, fear that your
courtesans themselves kill, with you and your offspring, what you
symbolise.
The crew of the Kniaz-Potemkin rebelled and you do not dare to go after
them with the crews of the other warships. Their example has been
followed: despite the banal ending to this epic tale — are the news
accurate? — the fight is not over; it is only beginning…
Of course we don’t believe that people over there will only take
reasoned and reasonable action. The inferior mentality of the Russian
sheep does not allowus to believe that they will get rid of the idea of
Czarism when they throw down the Czar. Their brains are way too used to
obedience for them to be able to act as free men. Aren’t the
revolutionary committees making proclamations demanding the respect of
private property under fear of death. And the clergy and the army which
are taking side with the rebels are elements of atrophy in the work
started amid so much blood, so many tears.
Whatever! That the result does not answer our desires, that the Russian
revolution remain unfinished, it will still be a step forward.
It will surely produce, without any doubt, an elite of men who won’t be
satisfied by the acquired result, who will want to venture further, who
will want to see the Russian people free not only of this Czarism, but
of all Czarisms.
We can deplore that this task comes at such a price; but we can be but
happy that it is being done.