Sixteen years in Siberia: Some experiences of a Russian revolutionistDeich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich)
History
Sixteen years in Siberia: Some experiences of a Russian revolutionist
Deich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich)
Deich, L. G. (Lev Grigor'evich), 1855-1941; Exiles -- Russia (Federation) -- Siberia -- Biography
A new monarch and a new century have altered little the essential
features of the situation, so far as relations between government and
governed are concerned. Every day we have examples of the time-honoured
policy, in the dragooning of Russia proper; the attempted Russification
of Finland; and the deliberate fostering by the Government of
anti-Semitism, with the covert design of counteracting the revolutionary
activity of Jewish Socialists, discrediting their labour movement in the
eyes of the Russian proletariat, and also distracting the latter from
organisation on their own account.
But a significant change is at work to-day among the people. The
peasants and working-classes in town and country, formerly the despair
of those who strove to arouse in them political consciousness, are being
awakened by the inevitable development of industry to a sense of their
duties and their rights. A genuine labour movement has arisen, which, in
face of the intolerance of the authorities, has naturally taken on a
political character, and affiliated itself to the successors of the
older revolutionary societies.
The words “anarchist” and “nihilist,” so commonly associated with the
Russian revolutionists, are complete misnomers to-day (as, indeed, they
always have been, except in the case of a few isolated individuals). The
movement is now carried on chiefly by two organisations: the
“Revolutionary Socialists,” and the party to which our author belongs,
and helped to found, the “Social Democratic” Labour Party; associated
with the latter being the powerfully organised social-democratic
“General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia,” usually
known as the “Bund.” Of these the Revolutionary Socialists alone still
adhere to the practice of terrorism in a modified form, and even they
have always proclaimed their intention of abandoning it directly
“constitutional” methods are allowed to them. The aim of the
revolutionists is to replace the present autocratic government by a
social republic, under which the various races now grouped within the
empire shall each have scope to develop its national individuality.
Groups are actively at work in widely distant localities, even Siberia
furnishing her contingent, while Poland and Finland have various
revolutionary organisations of their own.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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