Petition Prepared for Presentation to Nicholas II
on "Bloody Sunday" (January 9, 1905)
Translated by Daniel Field
[Source = http://artsci.shu.edu/reesp/documents/bloodysunday.htm]
Sovereign!
We, workers and inhabitants of the city of St. Petersburg, members
of various sosloviia (estates of the realm), our wives, children, and
helpless old parents, have come to you, Sovereign, to seek justice and
protection. We are impoverished and oppressed, we are burdened with
work, and insulted. We are treated not like humans [but] like slaves who
must suffer a bitter fate and keep silent. And we have suffered, but we
only get pushed deeper and deeper into a gulf of misery, ignorance, and
lack of rights. Despotism and arbitrariness are suffocating us, we are
gasping for breath. Sovereign, we have no strength left. We have reached
the limit of our patience. We have come to that terrible moment when it is
better to die than to continue unbearable sufferings.
And so we left our work and declared to our employers that we
will not return to work until they meet our demands. We do not ask much;
we only want that without which life is hard labor and eternal suffering.
Our first request was that our employers discuss our needs together with
us. But they refused to do this; they denied us the right to speak about our
needs, on the grounds that the law does not provide us with such a right.
Also unlawful were our other requests: to reduce the working day to eight
hours; for them to set wages together with us and by agreement with us; to
examine our disputes with lower-level factory administrators; to increase
the wages of unskilled workers and women to one ruble per day; to
abolish overtime work; to provide medical care attentively and without
insult; to build shops so that it is possible to work there and not face death
from the awful drafts, rain and snow.
Our employers and the factory administrators considered all this to
be illegal: every one of our requests was a crime, and our desire to
improve our condition was slanderous insolence.
Sovereign, there are thousands of us here; outwardly we are human
beings, but in reality neither we nor the Russian people [narod] as a whole are
provided with any human rights, even the right to speak, to think, to
assemble, to discuss our needs, or to take measure to improve our
conditions. They have enslaved us and they did so under the protection of
your officials, with their aid and with their cooperation. They imprison
and send into exile any one of us who has the courage to speak on behalf
of the interests of the working class and of the people. They punish us for
a good heart and a responsive spirit as if for a crime. To pity a
downtrodden and tormented person with no rights is to commit a grave
crime. The entire working people and the peasants are subjected to the
arbitrariness [proizvol] of a bureaucratic administration composed of
embezzlers of public funds and thieves who not only have not concern at
all for the interests of the Russian people but who harm those interests.
The bureaucratic administration has reduced the country to complete
destitution, drawn it into a shameful war, and brings Russia ever further
towards ruin. We, the workers and the people, have no voice in the
expenditure of the enormous sums that are collected from us. We do not
even know where the money collected from the impoverished people
goes. The people is deprived of any possibility of expressing its wishes
and demands, or of participating in the establishment of taxes and in their
expenditure. Workers are deprived of the possibility of organizing into
unions to defend their interests. Sovereign! Does all this accord with the
law of God, by Whose grace you reign? And is it possible to live under
such laws? Would it not be better if we, the toiling people of all Russia,
died? Let the capitalists -- exploiters of the working class -- and the
bureaucrats -- embezzlers of public funds and the pillagers of the Russian
people -- live and enjoy themselves.
Sovereign, this is what we face and this is the reason that we have
gathered before the walls of your palace. Here we seek our last salvation.
Do not refuse to come to the aid of your people; lead it out of the grave of
poverty, ignorance, and lack of rights; grant it the opportunity to
determine its own destiny, and deliver it from them the unbearable yoke of
the bureaucrats. Tear down the wall that separates you from your people
and let it rule the country together with you. You have been placed [on
the throne] for the happiness of the people; the bureaucrats, however,
snatch this happiness out of our hands, and it never reaches us; we get
only grief and humiliation. Sovereign, examine our requests attentively
and without any anger; they incline not to evil, but to the good, both for us
and for you. Ours is not the voice of insolence but of the realization that
we must get out of a situation that is unbearable for everyone. Russia is
too big, her needs are to diverse and many, for her to be ruled only by
bureaucrats. We need popular representation; it is necessary for the
people to help itself and to administer itself. After all, only the people
knows its real needs. Do not fend off its help, accept it, and order
immediately, at once, that representatives of the Russian land from all
classes, all estates of the realm be summoned, including representatives
from the workers. Let the capitalist be there, and the worker, and the
bureaucrat, and the priest, and the doctor and the teacher -- let everyone,
whoever they are, elect their representatives. Let everyone be free and
equal in his voting rights, and to that end order that elections to the
Constituent Assembly be conducted under universal, secret and equal
suffrage.
This is our main request, everything is based on it; it is the main
and only poultice for our painful wounds, without which those wounds
must freely bleed and bring us to a quick death.
But no single measure can heal all our wounds. Other measures
are necessary, and we, representing of all of Russia's toiling class, frankly
and openly speak to you, Sovereign, as to a father, about them.
The following are necessary:
I. Measures against the ignorance of the Russian people and against its lack of rights
1. Immediate freedom and return home for all those who have suffered for
their political and religious convictions, for strike activity, and for
peasant disorders.
2. Immediate proclamation of the freedom and inviolability of the person,
of freedom of speech and of the press, of freedom of assembly, and of
freedom of conscience in matters of religion.
3. Universal and compulsory public education at state expense.
4. Accountability of government ministers to the people and a guarantee of
lawful administration.
5. Equality of all before the law without exception.
6. Separation of church and state
II. Measures against the poverty of the people
1. Abolition of indirect taxes and their replacement by a direct,
progressive income tax.
2. Abolition of redemption payments, cheap credit, and the gradual
transfer of land to the people.
3. Naval Ministry contracts should be filled in Russia, not abroad.
4. Termination of the war according to the will of the people.
III. Measures against the oppression of labor by capital
1. Abolition of the office of factory inspector.
2. Establishment in factories and plants of permanent commissions elected
by the workers, which jointly with the administration are to
investigate all complaints coming from individual workers. A worker
cannot be fired except by a resolution of this commission.
3. Freedom for producer-consumer cooperatives and workers' trade
unions -- at once.
4. An eight-hour working day and regulation of overtime work.
5. Freedom for labor to struggle with capital -- at once.
6. Wage regulation -- at once.
7. Guaranteed participation of representatives of the working classes in
drafting a law on state insurance for workers -- at once.
These, sovereign, are our main needs, about which we have come
to you; only when they are satisfied will the liberation of our Motherland
from slavery and destitution be possible, only then can she flourish, only
then can workers organize to defend their interests from insolent
exploitation by capitalists and by the bureaucratic administration that
plunders and suffocates the people. Give the order, swear to meet these
needs, and you will make Russia both happy and glorious, and your name
will be fixed in our hearts and the hearts of our posterity for all time -- but
if you do not give the order, if you do not respond to our prayer, then we
shall die here, on this square, in front of your palace. We have nowhere
else to go and no reason to. There are only two roads for us, one to
freedom and happiness, the other to the grave. Let our lives be sacrificed
for suffering Russia. We do not regret that sacrifice, we embrace it
eagerly.
Georgii Gapon, priest
Ivan Vasimov, worker.