December Uprising of 1905. December armed uprising: causes and consequences

Armed uprising of Moscow workers. On December 7, 1905, a general strike began in Moscow, which quickly turned into an armed uprising. At the hour predetermined by the Bolsheviks, factories, factories and railways stopped, electricity went out. Newspapers stopped publishing. The workers began to arm themselves, fighting squads grew. The police and troops dispersed meetings of workers, shot at houses where combatants gathered. Workers on Bronnaya, Tverskaya (now Gorky Street), at railway stations, at the Gouzhon factory (now the Hammer and Sickle) began to build barricades. Soon, many streets of Moscow were covered with barricades of carts, tram cars, barrels, boxes, street lamps. All this was dumped in the middle of the street, wrapped around with telegraph and tram wires. The royal cavalry and mounted police could not move through these barriers. At many barricades, the fighting squads of workers, armed with revolvers, fired at the troops. On the streets of Moscow, several dienes were incessantly firefighted. Soy squads from other places hurried to help Moscow. A brave Bolshevik came from Ivanovo-Voznesensk with his fighting team of workers M. V. Frunze.

Peasants brought bread and potatoes to Moscow for workers, sometimes they joined the ranks of fighters at the barricades. The center of the struggle was Presnya(working area of ​​Moscow). The Bolsheviks were at the head of the combatants. Under their leadership, Presnya held out against the tsarist troops for 10 days. It was a proletarian fortress, where the power belonged to the insurgent workers. Presnensky workers heroically defended their area. The workers were assisted by their wives. They bandaged the wounded, fed them. The youth had great courage. She went to reconnaissance, helped build barricades and ambushes, and fight the troops.

Workers fight at the barricades and Moscow in December 1905.

The workers on the Kazan railway also fought stubbornly with the tsarist troops.

There were not enough troops in Moscow against the insurgent people. The Tsar sent two regiments of soldiers to Moscow. Only with the help of cannons and machine guns was it possible to defeat the rebels. General Dubasov smashed Moscow. On December 18, the fighting squads had to leave the barricades and hide the weapons in secret warehouses. More than a thousand people were killed in Moscow. The city was on fire for several days, caused by artillery shells. The streets were littered with the bodies of dead workers, women and children. Many fighters of the revolution were shot and hanged by the tsarist troops.

This is how the tsarist executioners dealt with the insurgent Moscow.

During the armed uprising, Lenin was in St. Petersburg. The Central Committee of the Bolsheviks took every measure to rouse the workers to an uprising in St. Petersburg. According to the Mensheviks, led by Trotsky, who sat in the Petersburg Soviet, opposed the support of an armed uprising in Moscow. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries thwarted the revolution of the workers. They supported the bourgeoisie, which conspired with the tsarist government to suppress the revolution. The strike that began in St. Petersburg in December ended without causing an armed uprising.

The struggle of the peasants with the landowners. During the revolution, under the influence of the working-class movement and the calls of the Bolshevik Party, the peasants rose up against their oppressors, the landowners, in almost all of Russia. Almost all the provinces of Russia were covered by the peasant movement. Over 7,000 peasant revolutionary uprisings took place during the three years of the revolutionary struggle. The peasants seized land from the landlords and monasteries, cut down the landowners' and monastic forests, everywhere attacked the landowners' estates and burned them. In one Saratov province in the autumn and winter of 1905, the peasants destroyed up to 300 landowners' estates. The peasants expelled the police, volost foremen and village elders and established their own elective power. The most advanced peasants united in peasant unions. The Bolsheviks helped them in this. The tsar and the landlords sent punitive detachments and suppressed the uprisings of the peasants.

Armed uprisings of the oppressed peoples of Russia. In Transcaucasia, under the leadership of Comrade Stalin, the workers and peasants fought bravely against the tsarist troops. All Georgia was in revolt. A mass of tsarist troops was thrown into Georgia. Georgian workers and peasants fought with them more than once.

In December 1905, many cities and villages of Georgia burned like bonfires lit by the tsarist troops.

On the Ukraine the first outbreaks of an armed uprising began during the October general strike. The largest uprising in December 1905 took place in the Donbass: in Gorlovka and Lugansk. Factory workers and miners fought the tsarist troops for several days. The workers in Luhansk were then led by a locksmith Klim Voroshilov.

AT Finland workers created their own armed Red Guard. The Red Guard disarmed the tsarist police. Gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials left their service in Finland and fled to Russia.

The Finnish people have elected their own government. The Finnish bourgeoisie, frightened by the strengthening of the revolutionary movement of the workers, made an agreement with the tsar and betrayed the workers. The labor movement was soon brutally suppressed. The Red Guard was destroyed, the government dispersed.

The oppressed peoples fought everywhere against the hated tsarist government. But the bourgeoisie of these peoples, like the Russians, fought the revolution in alliance with the tsarist government.

The workers and peasants had to retreat this time. The tsar, the landowners and the bourgeoisie proved to be stronger than them. The blood shed in the revolution by the workers and peasants of all the peoples of Russia has brought the working people together and united them in a close great alliance for a new struggle.

The revolution of 1905 resonated throughout the world. It was the most powerful struggle of the proletariat since the Paris Commune of 1871.

Under the influence of the Russian Revolution, a mass strike movement began in Western Europe. In Turkey the working people overthrew their sultan, in Iran their shah, in China their emperor. A republic was established in China.

In November 1905, the results of the confrontation throughout Russia were not yet clear. The government was weakened to the maximum. Witte's "flexible" policy led to a worsening of the situation. He tried to take control of the situation through political juggling. Witte simultaneously tried to appease the moderate opposition by weakening the radicals, and to appease the tsar, at the same time keeping him in fear in order to have real power in his hands. At the same time, the authorities intensified repression.

However, it quickly became clear that the elements that raged in the empire could not be calmed by sophisticated political intrigues. Witte tried to reach a compromise with the liberals in the process of creating their most powerful party - the Party of Constitutional Democrats (Kadets). He invited some members of the party to enter the government, but for this they had to break the alliance with the radicals. He called this "cutting off the revolutionary tail by the liberals." The constitutional democrats did not accept this proposal: they did not want to, and perhaps they could no longer, the revolutionary element dictated its conditions. And Witte's appeal to the workers with a call to moderate their aggressiveness ("Brothers Workers"), caused only ridicule. The complete failure of the policy of the head of government led to the fact that the main emphasis was placed on repression. In his later memoirs, Witte blamed the repressions on Interior Minister Durnovo and Tsar Nicholas II. However, the facts show that Witte was involved in the planning of repressions, in organizing punitive expeditions and in legislative acts restricting freedoms that were granted by the October Manifesto.

The Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets, and many nationalists in the non-Russian periphery regarded the general strike and the October Manifesto only as a prelude to "real" freedom, which had yet to be wrested from the regime. What was to be done next was less clear. The Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries saw the future in a revolution leading to the creation of a republic and to large-scale social reforms. Liberals, as usual, argued and doubted. Some were satisfied with what had already been achieved and wanted to bring down the heat of the revolution and gradually create a working parliament. Others demanded broad social reforms and a new parliament elected on the basis of "one man, one vote". The national movements of the outskirts followed the path of the socialists or liberals, and also had their own special goals - they demanded autonomy or complete independence of their regions.

So the situation remained difficult. Political strikes followed one after another. In December 1905 they reached the highest monthly figures in Russia. There was a call for a refusal to pay taxes, as well as for defiance of the army in response to government repression. Agrarian riots continued, the peasants burned the estates. Most of the population of Latvia and Georgia refused to obey the authorities, they were supported by the Polish provinces. Siberia was on fire. The rebellious soldiers and rebellious workers even temporarily blocked the Trans-Siberian Railway and captured Irkutsk, that is, they paralyzed communications between the central part of Russia and the Far East. The Chita garrison, including officers and the commander, called for reforms and opposed the "political use of the army" by the government. True, there were still decisive generals in the army, and pretty soon they released the Trans-Siberian. The punitive expeditions were led by Generals A.N. Meller-Zakomelsky and P.K. Rennenkampf.

In December 1905 - January 1906. the revolution still continued to rage, but the government forces were already gaining the upper hand. The last major outbreak was the uprising in Moscow. On December 7 (20) there was a call for another political strike. It failed in the capital, weakened by arrests, but was supported in Moscow.

The situation in the old capital was tense. In Moscow, the leaders of the Postal and Telegraph Union and the Postal and Telegraph Strike, members of the Union of Control Employees of the Moscow-Brest Railway were arrested, many newspapers were closed. At the same time, among the majority of the Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, and anarchists in Moscow, the opinion was firmly established that it was necessary to raise an armed uprising in the near future.

Calls for armed action were published in the Vperyod newspaper, heard at rallies in the Aquarium Theater, in the Hermitage Garden, at the Land Survey Institute and the Technical School, at factories and plants. Rumors about the upcoming speech caused a massive (up to half of the composition of the enterprises) flight of workers from Moscow. In early December, unrest began in the troops of the Moscow garrison. On December 2, the 2nd Rostov Grenadier Regiment set out. The soldiers demanded the dismissal of spares, an increase in the daily allowance, better nutrition, they refused to carry out police service, to salute officers. Strong fermentation also took place in other parts of the garrison (in the grenadier 3rd Pernovsky, 4th Nesvizh, 7th Samogitsky, 221st Trinity-Sergius infantry regiments, in sapper battalions), among firefighters, prison guards and policemen. However, the authorities were able to calm the soldiers in a timely manner. By the beginning of the uprising, thanks to the partial satisfaction of the demands of the soldiers, the unrest in the garrison subsided.

At noon on December 7, the whistle of the Brest railway workshops announced the start of the strike. The Federal Committee (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), the Federal Council (Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries), the Information Bureau (Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, the Peasant and Railway Unions), the Coalition Council of Fighting Squads (Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries), the Combat organization of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. Organizers of the uprising Volsky (A.V. Sokolov), N.A. Rozhkov, V.L. Shantser (“Marat”), M.F. Vladimirsky, M.I. Vasiliev-Yuzhin, E.M. Yaroslavsky and others. Most of the enterprises of Moscow stopped, about 100 thousand workers stopped working. Many enterprises were "removed" from work: groups of workers from striking factories and plants stopped work at other enterprises, sometimes by prior agreement, and often against the wishes of the workers. The most common were the following requirements: 8-10-hour. working day, 15-40% salary increase; polite treatment; the introduction of the "Regulations on the Deputy Corps - a ban on the dismissal of deputies of Moscow and district Soviets of Workers' Deputies, their participation in the hiring and dismissal of workers, etc.; allowing outsiders free access to factory bedrooms; removal from police enterprises, etc.

Rear Admiral, Moscow Governor-General Fyodor Dubasov introduced the Regulations of Emergency Guard in Moscow. On the evening of December 7, members of the Federal Council, 6 delegates of the railway conference were arrested, the trade union of printers was crushed. On December 8, the strike became general, involving over 150,000 people. Factories, factories, printing houses, transport, government agencies, shops did not work in the city. The lights went out because the power supply stopped, the trams stopped. Only a few small shops traded. Only one newspaper was published - Izvestia of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies. The newspaper published an appeal "To all workers, soldiers and citizens!" with a call for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the autocracy. The strike continued to expand, and it was joined by: professional and political unions of medical workers, pharmacists, sworn attorneys, court employees, middle and lower city employees, the Moscow Union of High School Workers, the Union of Unions, the Union of Women's Equal Rights, as well as the Moscow Department of the Central Bureau Constitutional Democratic Party. Only the Nikolaev railway did not go on strike. The Nikolaevsky railway station was occupied by troops.

Members of the fighting squads began to attack the police. On the afternoon of December 9, there was episodic shooting in different parts of the city. In the evening, the police surrounded the rally in the Aquarium Garden, all the participants were searched, 37 people were arrested. However, the guards managed to escape. At the same time, the first serious armed clash took place: the troops fired on the school of I. I. Fidler, where the Socialist-Revolutionary militants gathered and trained. The police arrested 113 people, and ammunition was seized.

I must say that the militants had enough revolvers and rifles. Weapons were purchased in Sweden, secretly manufactured at the Prokhorovskaya factory in Presnya, at the Tsindel factory in Bolshoy Cherkassky Lane, near Sioux on Petersburg Highway and Bromley in Zamoskvorechye. Work was in full swing at the enterprises of Winter, Dilya, Ryabov. Weapons were seized in the devastated police stations. Some entrepreneurs sponsored the combat detachments, the workers, many representatives of the intelligentsia collected money for weapons. The administration of the factories of E. Tsindel, Mamontov, Prokhorov, the printing houses of I. D. Sytin, the Kushnerev Partnership, the jeweler Y. N. Kreines, the family of the manufacturer N. P. Shmit, Prince G. I. Makaev, Prince S I. Shakhovskaya and others.

On the night of December 10, the construction of barricades began, which continued throughout the next day. At the same time, the decision to build barricades was made by the restored Federal Council, supported by the Social Revolutionaries. Barricades surrounded Moscow in three lines, separating the center from the outskirts. By the beginning of the uprising, there were 2,000 armed combatants in Moscow, 4,000 armed themselves during the struggle. The troops pulled into the center of the city were cut off from the barracks. In remote areas, fenced off from the center by lines of barricades, fighting squads seized power into their own hands. For example, the “Simonovskaya Republic” arose in Simonovskaya Sloboda. The actions of the rebels on Presnya were led by the headquarters of the combat squads, headed by the Bolshevik Z. Ya. Litvin-Sedym. In this area, all police posts were removed and almost all police stations were liquidated. The maintenance of order was monitored by the district council and the headquarters of the combat squads.

On December 10 (23), separate clashes escalated into fierce battles. The consolidated detachment under the command of General S. E. Debesh could not restore order in the huge city. The vast majority of the soldiers of the Moscow garrison turned out to be "unreliable". The soldiers were disarmed and locked up in the barracks. In the first days of the uprising, out of 15,000 soldiers of the Moscow garrison, Dubasov was able to move only about 5,000 people (1,350 infantry, 7 cavalry squadrons, 16 guns, 12 machine guns), as well as gendarmes and police units onto the streets. Dubasov realized that he could not cope with the uprising and asked to send a brigade from St. Petersburg. The commander of the troops of the Petersburg Military District, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich, did not want to send troops, but Emperor Nicholas II ordered the Semyonovsky regiment to be sent to Moscow. Then other parts were sent to Moscow.

The troops were concentrated at the Manege and on Theater Square. From the center of the city, the troops tried to advance through the streets, shooting at the barricades. Artillery was used both to destroy barricades and to fight individual groups of combatants. Small groups of militants used terrorist tactics: they fired at the troops from the houses, the angry soldiers fired back, and the revolutionaries went into hiding. Innocent people were targeted. As a result, there were many more dead and wounded civilians than militants, soldiers, and policemen.

On December 11-13, the troops destroyed the barricades (and the revolutionaries built them again), shelled the houses from where the fire was fired, there was a shootout between soldiers and vigilantes. The shelling of Presnya began. A fierce battle unfolded on Kalanchevskaya Square, where the militants repeatedly attacked the Nikolaevsky railway station, trying to cut the Moscow-Petersburg railway. On December 12, reinforcements from the workers of the Lyubertsy and Kolomna plants, led by the engineer, a former non-commissioned officer, the Socialist-Revolutionary A.V., arrived at the square by special trains. Ukhtomsky. The fighting continued for several days.

On December 14, almost the entire center of Moscow was cleared of barricades. On December 15-16, the Life Guards 1st Yekaterinoslav, grenadiers 5th Kyiv, 6th Tauride, 12th Astrakhan, as well as the Life Guards Semenovsky, 16th Infantry Ladoga and 5 Cossack regiments arrived in the city, which ensured Dubasov complete superiority over the rebels. A special role in the suppression of the uprising belonged to the decisive commander of the Semyonovsky Life Guards Regiment Georgy Min. Ming sent the third battalion of the regiment under the command of Colonel Riemann to workers' settlements, factories and factories along the Moscow-Kazan railway line, to eliminate the uprising there. He himself, with the remaining three battalions and a semi-battery of the Life Guards of the 1st Artillery Brigade, who arrived with the regiment, immediately proceeded to hostilities in the Presnya region, where he liquidated the center of the uprising. The divisions of the Life Guards of the Semyonovsky Regiment captured the headquarters of the revolutionaries - the Schmitt factory. Ming issued an order to his subordinates: "Do not have those arrested, do not give mercy." More than 150 people were shot without trial. Of the executed, Ukhtomsky is the most famous. Mina was killed in 1906.

At the same time, one should not accuse the army of excessive cruelty. The troops only responded with cruelty to cruelty. Yes, and there are no other methods in the suppression of rebellions and uprisings. Blood in such a case stops more blood in the future. The militants and revolutionaries acted no less ferociously. Many innocent people died at their hands.

On December 15, banks, a stock exchange, commercial and industrial offices, shops opened in the city center, and some factories and plants began to work. On December 16-19, work began at most enterprises (some factories went on strike until December 20). On December 16, the townspeople began to dismantle the remaining barricades. The city quickly returned to normal life. At the same time, the Moscow Soviet, the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP and the Council of Combat Squads decided on December 18 to stop the uprising and the strike. The Moscow Soviet issued a leaflet calling for an organized end to the uprising.

Most of all they resisted on Presnya. The most combat-ready squads of about 700 people were concentrated here. The Semyonovites stormed Presnya from the side of the Gorbaty Bridge and captured the bridge. As a result of the shelling, the Schmitt factory, the barricades near the Zoo were destroyed, and a number of houses were set on fire. On the morning of December 18, the headquarters of the fighting squads of Presnya ordered the combatants to stop the fight, many of them left on the ice across the Moscow River. On the morning of December 19, an offensive began on the Prokhorovka Manufactory and the neighboring Danilovsky Sugar Factory, after shelling, the soldiers captured both enterprises.

During the uprising, 680 people were injured (including military and policemen - 108, combatants - 43, the rest - "random persons"), 424 people were killed (military and policemen - 34, combatants - 84). In Moscow, 260 people were arrested, in the Moscow province - 240, hundreds of workers in Moscow and the Moscow province were fired. In November - December 1906, a trial of 68 participants in the defense of Presnya took place in the Moscow Court of Justice: 9 people were sentenced to various terms of hard labor, 10 people - to imprisonment, 8 - to exile.

Years. Emboldened radicals, on the contrary, were convinced that the government was weak, and decided to topple it completely. Since the end of October, bloody clashes have been boiling throughout the country. The Kingdom of Poland and Finland were shaken by nationalist demonstrations and strikes. In Kronstadt (October 25, 1905), Vladivostok (October 30) and Sevastopol(mid-November) rebellions of violent soldiers took place. Petersburg, the self-proclaimed Soviet of Workers' Deputies, led by Leon Trotsky and Khrustalev-Nosar.

Already tired of revolutionary violence, the people tended to calm down, but the extreme parties did not want it. On December 2, 1905, the St. Petersburg Soviet printed a Manifesto in the printing houses it seized, calling on the people not to pay taxes, to demand payment in all transactions only in gold and silver, to take only gold and silver deposits from cash desks (in order to disperse the state gold reserve and devalue the paper ruble) . On December 3, 1905, the authorities, who finally began to act more decisively, arrested the entire membership of the Soviet.

Feeling that the paralysis of power was ending, the revolutionary terrorists decided to fight a general battle: another general strike, turning into an armed uprising. The rebels counted on the rebellious soldiers joining them. Moscow was chosen as the arena of the uprising, where the bewildered Governor-General P.P. Durnovo was in complete inactivity. In the troops of the Moscow garrison (especially in the Rostov regiment), fermentation of the lower ranks against the chiefs began, on which the organizers of the uprising were counting heavily.

On December 5, 1905, a new Governor-General, Admiral FV Dubasov, arrived in Moscow, immediately declaring that he would not hesitate to use extreme measures against the seditious. The radicals realized that the ground was slipping from under their feet. On December 6, they announced the start of a general strike, and two days later they announced: the strike would continue until "all local authorities surrender their powers to the temporary revolutionary administration elected from the local population" (an appeal signed by the Socialist-Revolutionary parties, social democrats Petersburg and Moscow councils).

Admiral Fyodor Vasilyevich Dubasov, hero of the fight against the December uprising of 1905 in Moscow

But the third general strike announced in Moscow immediately met with great setbacks. In Moscow itself, many railways refused to join it. In St. Petersburg, in general, only an insignificant part of the workers went on strike. It was not possible to achieve the transfer of troops to the side of the December uprising, but about 2,000 armed combatants gathered in Moscow, whose headquarters decided to wage a guerrilla war in the city.

The rebels built many barricades in Moscow, which, however, no one defended - their task was only to delay the movement of troops. Divided into small groups of one or two people, the combatants from the doorways and windows fired at the dragoons and Cossacks, immediately disappearing into the courtyards. The leaders of the December uprising calculated: the soldiers would shoot back, hitting not the hiding combatants, but the civilian population of Moscow; this will embitter him and induce him to join the rebellion.

Barricades on Malaya Bronnaya during the December Uprising of 1905 in Moscow

The authorities ordered the janitors to keep the gates of the courtyards locked, but the terrorists began to beat and kill the janitors who locked the gates. Minor "partisan" clashes exhausted the city police and the Cossacks, but they came to the aid of a voluntary militia, organized by the "right" Union of Russian people, and on December 15, 1905, the army regiment Semyonov sent by Nicholas II entered the city. The Moscow uprising was suppressed by the energy of Admiral Dubasov and General Min, on December 18, 1905, after artillery shelling, its last center fell - the working quarter of Presnya. The number of killed and wounded during the Moscow uprising was about 2 thousand.

December Uprising of 1905 in Moscow- the uprising that took place in Moscow on December 7-18 (31), 1905; the culminating episode of the 1905 revolution in Russia.

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  In October 1905, a strike began in Moscow, the purpose of which was to achieve economic concessions and political freedom. The strike swept the whole country and developed into the All-Russian October political strike. On October 18, over 2 million people went on strike in various industries.

  Comrades! The working class rose up to fight. Half of Moscow is on strike. Soon all of Russia may go on strike.<…>Come to the streets, to our meetings. Make demands for economic concessions and political freedom!

  From the leaflet "The General Strike" (1905)

  This general strike and, above all, the strike of the railway workers, forced the emperor to make concessions - on October 17, the Manifesto "On the improvement of the state order" was issued. The October 17 Manifesto granted civil liberties: inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, speech, assembly and association. The convocation of the State Duma was promised.

  No negotiations with the autocracy! The traitor is the one who extends his hand to the decaying order .... Long live the popular uprising!

  Trade unions and professional-political unions, Soviets of Workers' Deputies arose, the Social Democratic Party and the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries were strengthened, the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Union of October 17, the Union of the Russian People, and others were created.

  The October 17 Manifesto was a major victory, but the far left parties (Bolsheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries) did not support it. The Bolsheviks announced a boycott of the 1st Duma and continued the course of an armed uprising, adopted back in April 1905 at the III Congress of the RSDLP in London (the Menshevik Party, the essence of the party of Social Democrats-Reformers, did not support the idea of ​​an armed uprising, which was developed by the Social Democrats - revolutionaries, that is, the Bolsheviks, and held a parallel conference in Geneva).

  Course of events

  Training

  By November 23, the Moscow censorship committee had initiated criminal prosecutions against the editors of liberal newspapers: Vechernyaya Pochta, Golos Zhizn, Novosti dniy, and against the social-democratic newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda.

  In December, criminal prosecutions were initiated against the editors of the Bolshevik newspapers Borba and Vperyod. During the December days, the editor of the liberal newspaper Russkoye Slovo, as well as the editors of the satirical magazines Zhalo and Shrapnel, were persecuted.

  On December 2, 1905, soldiers of the 2nd Rostov Grenadier Regiment rebelled in Moscow. They elected a regimental committee, which put forward demands for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the transfer of land to the peasants, the release of political prisoners, and appealed to all the troops of the Moscow garrison to support his demands. This appeal found a response in other regiments. A Council of Soldiers' Deputies was created from representatives of the Rostov, Yekaterinoslav and some other regiments of the Moscow garrison. But the command of the garrison managed to isolate unreliable military units in the barracks. .

  “On the night of December 8, a skirmish between combatants and policemen. At 3 o'clock in the morning, combatants plundered Bitkov's weapons store on Bolshaya Lubyanka. In the afternoon, one merchant on Tverskaya, the fruit merchant Kuzmin, who did not want to obey the demand of the strikers, was immediately laid down on the spot with three revolver shots. In the restaurant "Volna", in Karetny Ryad, the strikers wounded the doorman with knives, who did not want to let them in.

  December 8th. Aquarium Garden

  The first clash, so far without bloodshed, took place on December 8 in the evening in the "Aquarium" garden (near the current Triumfalnaya Square near the Theater named after the Moscow City Council). The police tried to disperse the rally of thousands by disarming the vigilantes present at it. However, she acted very indecisively, and most of the combatants managed to escape by jumping over a low fence. Several dozen of those arrested were released the next day.

  However, on the same night, rumors of a mass execution of protesters prompted several SR militants to commit the first terrorist attack: having made their way to the building of the security department in Gnezdnikovsky lane, they threw two bombs into its windows. One person was killed and several others were wounded.

  9th December. Shelling of Fiedler's house

  On the same day, the troops bombarded the Fiedler school, where the fighting squads sat down. A bomb was thrown at the troops from the balcony. 12 cannon shots and several rifle salvos were fired, after which the revolutionaries surrendered in the number of 118 people, losing 3 killed and 15 wounded. On the part of the troops, one ensign was killed and 3 infantry lower ranks, dragoons and a gendarme were wounded. 12 bombs, a lot of weapons and a large number of cartridges were found in the school.

  From the certificate of the police department about the revolutionary movement in Moscow in December 1905.

  MOSCOW, 10 December. Today the revolutionary movement is concentrated mainly on Tverskaya Street between Strastnaya Square and the Old Triumphal Gates. Here shots of guns and machine guns are heard. The movement concentrated here at midnight today, when the troops surrounded Fiedler's house in Lobkovsky Lane and captured the entire combat squad here, and another detachment of troops the rest of the guards of the Nikolaev station.

  The plan of the revolutionaries was, as they say, to capture the Nikolayevsky railway station at dawn today and take over the communication with St. Petersburg, and then the combat squad was to leave Fidler's house to take possession of the Duma building and the state bank and declare a provisional government.<…>

  Today at 2 1/2 o'clock in the morning, two young people, driving in a reckless car along Bolshoi Gnezdnikovsky Lane, threw two bombs into the two-story building of the security department. There was a terrible explosion. In the security department, the front wall was broken, part of the alley was demolished, and everything inside was torn apart. At the same time, the police officer, who had already died in the Ekaterininsky hospital, was seriously wounded, and the policeman and the lower rank of the infantry, who happened to be here, were killed. All the windows in the neighboring houses were shattered.<…>

  The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, by special proclamations, announced an armed uprising at 6 pm, even all cab drivers were ordered to finish work by 6 o'clock. However, action began much earlier.<…>

  At 3 1/2 p.m. the barricades at the Old Triumphal Gate were knocked down. With two weapons behind them, the troops passed through the whole of Tverskaya, broke down the barricades, cleared the street, and then fired at Sadovaya with guns, where the defenders of the barricades fled.<…>

  The Executive Committee of the Council of Workers' Deputies forbade bakeries to bake white bread, since the proletariat needed only black bread, and today Moscow was without white bread.<…>

  At about 10 pm, the troops dismantled all the barricades on Bronnaya. At 11 1/2 o'clock everything was quiet. The shooting stopped, only occasionally, patrols, going around the city, fired at the streets with blank volleys to frighten the crowd.

  On the evening of December 10, the rebels plundered the gun shops of Torbek and Tarnopolsky. The first suffered significantly, as an explosion occurred in it from a fire. The rest traded only in revolvers - the only commodity for which there was a demand.

  On December 10, it became clear to the rebels that they had failed to fulfill their tactical plan: to squeeze the center into the Garden Ring, moving towards it from the outskirts. The districts of the city turned out to be divided and the control of the uprising passed into the hands of the district Soviets and representatives of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP in these areas. In the hands of the rebels were: the area of ​​​​Bronny streets, which was defended by student squads, Georgians, Presnya, Miusy, Simonovo. The city-wide uprising fragmented, turning into a series of district uprisings. The rebels urgently needed to change tactics, techniques and methods of street fighting. In this regard, on December 11, in the newspaper Izvestia Mosk. S.R.D.” No. 5, "Advice to the insurgent workers" was published:

  In the baths of Biryukov, the Presnensky revolutionaries organized a hospital. Old-timers recalled that in the intervals between battles, combatants were steaming there, defending the barricades that were built near the Gorbaty Bridge and near Kudrinskaya Square.

  MOSCOW, 12 December. Today, guerrilla warfare continues, but with less energy on the part of the revolutionaries. Whether they are tired, whether the revolutionary upsurge has fizzled out, or whether this is a new tactical maneuver - it is difficult to say, but today there is much less shooting.<…>

  In the morning, some shops and stores opened, and traded in bread, meat and other provisions, but in the afternoon everything was closed, and the streets again took on an extinct appearance with shops boarded up tightly and windows broken from shaking due to artillery cannonade. There is very little traffic on the streets.<…>

  Volunteer militia, organized by the governor-general with the assistance of the “Union of Russian People,” began to work today. The militia operates under the direction of policemen; she began today to dismantle the barricades and to perform other police functions in three police stations. Gradually, this militia will be introduced in other areas throughout the city. The revolutionaries called this militia the Black Hundreds.

  Sytin's printing house on Valovaya Street burned down at dawn today. This printing house is a huge architecturally luxurious building overlooking three streets. With her cars, she was estimated at a million rubles. Up to 600 vigilantes barricaded themselves in the printing house, mostly printing workers, armed with revolvers, bombs and a special kind of rapid-fire guns, which they call machine guns. To take armed combatants, the printing house was surrounded by all three types of weapons. They began to shoot back from the printing house and threw three bombs.

  Artillery bombarded the building with grenades. The combatants, seeing their situation as hopeless, set fire to the building in order to take advantage of the turmoil of the fire to leave. They succeeded. Almost all of them escaped through the neighboring Monetchikovsky lane, but the building was all burned out, only the walls remained. The fire killed many people, families and children of the workers who lived in the building, as well as outsiders who lived in the area. The troops besieging the printing house suffered losses in killed and wounded.

  During the day, the artillery had to fire on a number of private houses, from which they threw bombs or fired at the troops. All of these houses had large gaps.<…>

  The defenders of the barricades kept to the old tactics: they fired a volley, scattered, fired from houses and from ambushes, and moved to another place.<…>

  By the morning of December 15, when the soldiers of the Semyonovsky regiment arrived in Moscow, the Cossacks and dragoons operating in the city, supported by artillery, pushed the rebels out of their strongholds on Bronny Street and the Arbat. Further fighting with the participation of the guards took place on Presnya around the Schmitt factory, which was then turned into an arsenal, a printing house and an infirmary for living rebels and a mortuary for the fallen.

  On December 15, the police detained 10 combatants. They had correspondence with them, from which it followed that such rich entrepreneurs as Savva Morozov (in May he was found shot dead in a hotel room in Cannes (France)) and 22-year-old Nikolai Shmit, who inherited a furniture factory, as well as part of the liberal circles of Russia, which made significant donations to the "freedom fighters" through the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper.

  Nikolai Schmit himself and his two younger sisters all the days of the uprising formed the headquarters of the factory squad, coordinating the actions of groups of its combatants with each other and with the leaders of the uprising, ensuring the operation of a home-made printing device - a hectograph. For the sake of conspiracy, the Shmits did not stay in the family mansion at the factory, but in a rented apartment on Novinsky Boulevard (on the site of the current house number 14).

  On December 16-17, Presnya became the center of the fighting, where the combatants concentrated. The Semyonovsky regiment occupied the Kazansky railway station and several nearby railway stations. A detachment with artillery and machine guns was sent to suppress the uprising at the stations of Perovo and Lyubertsy, the Kazan road.

  Also on December 16, new military units arrived in Moscow: the Horse Grenadier Regiment, part of the Guards Artillery, the Ladoga Regiment and the railway battalion.

  To suppress the rebellion outside Moscow, the commander of the Semenovsky regiment, Colonel G. A. Min, singled out six companies from his regiment under the command of 18 officers and under the command of Colonel N. K. Riman. This detachment was sent to workers' settlements, plants and factories along the line of the Moscow-Kazan railway. More than 150 people were shot without trial, of which A. Ukhtomsky is the most famous. .

  In the early morning of December 17, Nikolai Shmit was arrested. At the same time, the artillery of the Semyonovsky regiment began shelling Schmitt's factory. That day, the factory and the nearby Schmitt mansion burned down. At the same time, part of their property was managed to be taken home by local proletarians who were not employed at the barricades.

  December 17, 3:45 am The shooting in Presnya intensifies: the troops are firing, and the revolutionaries are also firing from the windows of buildings engulfed in flames. The Schmidt factory and the Prokhorovka manufactory are being bombed. Residents sit in basements and cellars. The Humpback Bridge, where a very strong barricade has been set up, is being shelled. More troops are coming.<…>

  On December 3, the Petersburg Soviet, together with other revolutionary organizations, issued the Financial Manifesto.

  The manifesto called on the population of the country to refuse to pay taxes and taxes, to demand the return of deposits from savings banks, and the payment of wages in gold. The fulfillment of this revolutionary call could cause serious damage to tsarism, which at the end of 1905 was on the verge of financial bankruptcy.

  On the same day, the entire composition of the Petersburg Soviet was arrested. A number of left-wing newspapers were closed, including the Bolshevik Novaya Zhizn.

  Thus, in the capital, where the counter-revolution felt strongest, an open challenge was thrown to the revolutionary people. In protest, the St. Petersburg Committee of the RSDLP called on the workers to a general political strike.

  By this time, Moscow had become the center of the revolutionary struggle. Under the leadership of the Bolsheviks, the Moscow Soviet was actively preparing an armed uprising. Revolutionary agitation among the soldiers had considerable success. At the end of November, one of the Moscow regiments rebelled; fermentation engulfed the entire garrison.

  

  Soldiers - participants in the revolutionary events in Chita. Photo. December 1905

  On December 5, the Moscow Soviet, at the suggestion of the Bolsheviks and with the ardent support of the workers, decided to declare a general political strike from December 7 in order to later turn it into an armed uprising. By this time, the uprising of the soldiers had already been suppressed, the revolutionary units were isolated.

  The tsarist authorities were in a hurry to seize the moment. They managed to arrest the leading core of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP - V. L. Shantser ("") and M. I. Vasiliev-Yuzhin. But the strike continued, developing into an uprising. Within three days Moscow was covered with barricades.

  The centers of the uprising were the proletarian regions - Zamoskvorechye, Rogozhskaya Zastava, Presnya. The struggle of the workers was led by I. F. Dubrovinsky, M. N. Lyadov, R. S. Zemlyachka, M. F. Vladimirsky, I. I. Skvortsov-Stepanov, Z. Ya. Litvin-Sedoy and other Bolsheviks. An armed detachment of workers headed by M.V. Frunze arrived in Moscow from Ivanovo-Voznesensk.

  The Moscow City and District Soviets acted as revolutionary power. By decree of the Moscow Council, the work of all printing houses was stopped.

  Only the Council's organ, Izvestia, was published. The Executive Committee of the Council took control of the operation of the water supply and other vital enterprises, the supply of food to workers, demanded the opening of free canteens, the provision of credit to workers in food shops, and forbade shopkeepers to raise food prices.

  The Soviet also organized communication with the peasants, who delivered food for the workers from the surrounding villages to Moscow. The Soviets were active in the workers' regions.

  

  On Presnya, a working court was chosen, which pronounced the death sentence on the bailiff and Okhrana agents. The police were disarmed. The protection of order was carried out by armed workers' squads. In the short period of its existence, the Soviets have won enormous prestige among the population.

  The tsarist government hastily gathered its armed forces to Moscow. Taking advantage of the fact that traffic on the Nikolaev railway was not stopped, the government transferred guards units from St. Petersburg to Moscow. On December 15, the Semyonovsky regiment laid siege to Presnya. There were only about 450 combatants here. They defended themselves heroically. Unable to take Presnya by direct assault, the troops opened heavy artillery fire on it.

  On December 16, the headquarters of the Presnensky fighting squads issued the last order. It said: “The whole world is watching us. Some - with a curse, others - with deep sympathy ... The enemy is afraid of Presnya. But he hates us, surrounds us, sets fire to us and wants to crush us... Blood, violence and death will follow on our heels. But this is nothing. The future belongs to the working class. Generation after generation in all countries will learn perseverance from the experience of Presnya.”

  On December 19, the working class of Moscow stopped the struggle in an organized manner. The weapon was hidden. Part of the combatants managed to leave Moscow and escape from the atrocities of the punishers.

  Armed uprisings took place in different parts of the country. Their main centers were proletarian centers - Rostov-on-Don, Bkaterinoslav, Novorossiysk, large factories with workers' settlements around them, such as Sormovo (near Nizhny Novgorod) and Motovilikha (near Perm). The uprisings also covered the strip along the Ekaterininskaya (Donbass) and Trans-Siberian railways.

  

  "Soldiers, brave children, where is your glory?" V.A. Serov. 1905

  A feature of the movement in Krasnoyarsk and Chita was the unification of the forces of the workers with the revolutionary-minded soldiers of the spare parts of the Manchurian army. Armed struggle reached great strength in the Baltic states, where urban workers acted together with farm laborers and peasants. In the Latvian city of Tukums, the uprising ended with a temporary transfer of power into the hands of the masses, led by revolutionary social democrats.

  V. I. Lenin later wrote: “Some cities of Russia experienced in those days a period of various local small “republics”, in which government power was shifted and the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies really functioned as a new state power. Unfortunately, these periods were too short, the "victories" were too weak, too isolated.

  The diversity of the uprisings, the absence of a common leading center, a unified plan, experience in armed struggle, the conciliatory tactics of the Mensheviks - all this led to the defeat of the insurgents. The main form of the movement in December was strikes and demonstrations of workers.

  Tsarism intensified military and police terror. Most of the districts were revealed to be under martial law. Punitive expeditions were dispatched to cities, railways, and places of peasant uprisings, which cruelly dealt with participants in armed uprisings.

  The big bourgeoisie took the side of the tsarist punishers. One of the leaders of the Octobrists, A. I. Guchkov, who came from a merchant milieu, publicly greeted Governor-General Dubasov, the executioner of the Moscow workers. The right wing strengthened in the Kadet Party, whose position in relation to the uprising differed little from that of the Octobrists. A significant part of the bourgeois intelligentsia went over to the side of "order".

  

  "After pacification." Caricature of V.A. Serov on Nicholas II. 1905

  Tsarism received direct support from the ruling circles of the European powers, who feared the loss of their capital investments in Russia and the transfer of the revolutionary fire to the West. Back in November, the German government pulled troops to the Russian border, and in December it was going to send its warships to the eastern part of the Baltic Sea.

  At the height of the armed uprisings, European bankers came to the aid of tsarism by giving it a hundred million advance payment against the large international loan being prepared at that time, intended for the purpose of suppressing the Russian revolution.

  The December uprising exposed the opportunism of the Mensheviks with all its depth. "We shouldn't have taken up arms" - such was Plekhanov's conclusion, testifying to disbelief in the strength of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks drew completely different conclusions from the lessons of the armed struggle.

  They proceeded from the premise that nothing could so promote the class development of the Russian proletariat and the entire people as an open battle with the enemy. “Before the armed uprising in December 1905, the people in Russia proved incapable of mass armed struggle against the exploiters.

  After December, it was no longer the same people. He was reborn. He received a baptism of fire. He was tempered in rebellion. He trained the ranks of the fighters who won in 1917 ... ”, V. I. Lenin later wrote.

  In the fire of the revolutionary battles, the Bolshevik Party grew and gained strength. V. I. Lenin called its best figures the national heroes of the Russian revolution, citing as an example the life path of the outstanding revolutionary worker I. V. Babushkin, one of the leaders of the armed uprising in Siberia, who died at the hands of punishers.