How to suppress the December uprising in Moscow. H. 2
In November 1905, the results of the confrontation throughout Russia were not yet clear. The government was as weak as possible. The "flexible" policy of Witte led to a worsening of the situation. He tried to bring the situation under control by political juggling. Witte simultaneously tried to pacify the moderate opposition, having achieved the weakening of the radicals, and to appease the king, while holding him at the same time in fear in order to have real power in his hands. At the same time, the authorities stepped up the repression.
However, it quickly became clear that the elements that were raging 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 (Cadets). He invited some party members to enter the government, but for this they had to break an alliance with the radicals. He called it the "cutting off by the liberals of the revolutionary tail." The constitutional democrats did not accept this proposal: they didn’t want, and perhaps could not, the revolutionary element dictated its own conditions. And Witte’s appeal to the workers with a call to moderate their aggressiveness (“Brothers of Workers”) caused only ridicule. The complete failure of the policy of the head of the government led to the fact that the main focus was on repression. In his memoirs of a later period, Witte laid the blame for the repression 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 the freedoms that the October Manifesto granted.
Social democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Cadets and many nationalists on the non-Russian periphery referred to the general strike and the October manifesto only as a prelude to "real" freedom, which must also be snatched from the regime. What should be done further was less clear. 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 argued and doubted as usual. The part was 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 the “one person - one vote” principle. The national movements of the suburbs followed the path of the socialists or the liberals, and also had their own particular goals - they demanded autonomy or the complete independence of their regions.
Therefore, the situation remained difficult. Political strikes followed one after another. In December 1905, they reached the highest monthly rates in Russia. There was a call to refuse to pay taxes, as well as to disobey the army in response to government repression. Agrarian unrest continued, the peasants burned the manor. The majority of the population of Latvia and Georgia refused to submit to the authorities, they were supported by the Polish provinces. Siberia was on fire. Rebel soldiers and insurgent workers even temporarily blocked the Trans-Siberian Railway, and seized Irkutsk, that is, paralyzed communications in central Russia with the Far East. The Chita garrison, including officers and the commander, called for reform and spoke out against the government’s "political use of the army". True, there were still resolute generals in the army, and pretty soon they unblocked the Trans-Siberian Railway. The punitive expeditions were led by generals A. N. Meller-Zakomelsky and P. K. Rennenkampf.
December 1905 - January 1906 the revolution still continued to rage, but government forces were already winning upwards. The last major outbreak was the uprising in Moscow. 7 (20) December sounded for another political strike. She 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 Post and Telegraph Strike, members of the Union of Control Officers of the Moscow-Brest Railway were arrested, many newspapers were closed. At the same time, among the majority of Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and anarchists of Moscow, the opinion was established that it was necessary to raise an armed uprising in the near future.
Calls for an armed uprising were published in the newspaper Vpered, sounded at rallies at the Aquarium Theater, in the Hermitage Garden, at the Boundary Institute and the Technical School, at factories and mills. Rumors about the upcoming speech caused a massive (up to half of the enterprises) the flight of workers from Moscow. In early December, unrest began in the troops of the Moscow garrison. December 2 made 2-th Rostov Grenadier Regiment. The soldiers demanded the dismissal of spare, increase the daily content, improve nutrition, refused to bear the police service, to pay tribute to the officers. Strong fermentation took place in other parts of the garrison (in the Grenadier 3-m Pernovsky, 4-m Nesvizhsky, 7-m Samogitsky, 221-m Trinity-Sergievsky infantry regiments, in the sapper battalion), among firefighters, prison guards, and police. However, the authorities were able to calm the soldiers in time. By the beginning of the uprising, due to the partial satisfaction of the soldiers' demands, the unrest in the garrison had subsided.
At noon 7 December, the dial tone of the Brest railway workshops heralded the start of the strike. The Federal Committee (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), the Federative Council (Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries), the Information Bureau (Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, Peasant and Railway Unions), the Coalition Council of military squads (Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries), Combat organization of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. The organizers of the uprising Volsky (A.V. Sokolov), N.A. Rozhkov, V.L. Shantser (Marat), M.F. Vladimirsky, M.I. Vasilyev-Uzhin, E.M. Yaroslavsky and others. Most of the enterprises in Moscow stopped, about 100 thousand workers stopped working. Many enterprises "were removed" from work: groups of workers at striking factories and plants stopped working 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. workday, 15-40% wage supplement; polite treatment; the introduction of the "Regulations on the deputies 'corps - a ban on the dismissal of deputies of Moscow and district Soviets of workers' deputies, their participation in the hiring and firing of workers, etc .; allowing free access of outsiders to factory bedrooms; removal from the police, etc.
Rear Admiral, Moscow Governor General Fedor Dubasov introduced in Moscow the position of emergency protection. In the evening of December 7, members of the Federation Council, 6 delegates to the railway conference were arrested, and the printers union was defeated. December 8 strike became universal, covering over 150 thousand people. The city did not work factories, factories, printing, transport, government agencies, shops. The lights went out because the power supply stopped, the trams stopped. Traded only some small shops. Only one newspaper was published - “News of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies”. The newspaper published an appeal "To all workers, soldiers and citizens!" Calling for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the autocracy. The strike continued to expand; it was joined by: professional-political unions of medical workers, pharmacists, attorneys, judicial officers, middle and lower city employees, Moscow Union of High School Employees, Union of Unions, Union of Equal Rights of Women Constitutional Democratic Party. Only the Nikolaev railroad did not strike. Nicholas Station was occupied by troops.
Members of the fighting squads began to attack the police. On December 9, an exchange of fire sporadically arose in different parts of the city. In the evening, the police surrounded a rally in the Aquarium garden, all participants were searched, 37 people were arrested. However, warriors managed to escape. At the same time, the first serious armed clash occurred: the troops fired upon the I.I. Fidler School, where Social Revolutionary militants gathered and trained. Police arrested 113 people were captured weapon and ammunition.
I must say that militants had enough revolvers and rifles. Weapons were purchased in Sweden, secretly manufactured at the Prokhorov factory on Presnya, at the Zindel factory in Bolshaya Cherkassky Lane, from Siou on the Petersburg Highway and Bromley in Zamoskvorechye. Work at the enterprises of Winter, Dilya, Ryabov was in full swing. Weapons seized in the defeated police stations. Some businessmen sponsored the fighting detachments; workers collected money for weapons, many representatives of the intelligentsia. The rebels were supported by the administration of the factories of E. Tsindel, Mamontov, Prokhorov, the printing houses of I. D. Sytin, the Kushner Society, the jeweler J. N. Kreines, the family of the manufacturer N. P. Shmit, Prince G. I. Makaev, Prince S I. Shakhovskoy et al.
On the night of December 10, the construction of the barricades began, which lasted all the next day. At the same time, the decision to build barricades was taken by the restored Federative Council, supported by the Social Revolutionaries. The barricades greeted Moscow with three lines, separating the center from the suburbs. By the beginning of the uprising in Moscow, there were 2 thousand armed militants, 4 thousand armed during the struggle. The troops strapped to the city center were cut off from the barracks. In remote areas, fenced off from the center by the lines of the barricades, the fighting forces intercepted the power in their hands. For example, there was "Simonovskaya republic" in Simonovskaya settlement. The actions of the rebels in Presnya were led by the headquarters of the fighting squads led by the Bolshevik Z. Ya. Lytvyn-Sedy. In this area, all police posts were removed and almost all police stations were eliminated. The maintenance of order was followed by the district council and the headquarters of the fighting squads.
10 (23) December separate clashes escalated into fierce battles. The combined detachment under the command of General S. E. Debesh could not restore order in a huge city. The overwhelming majority of the soldiers of the Moscow garrison turned out to be "unreliable." The soldier was disarmed and locked up in the barracks. In the first days of the uprising of 15, thousands of soldiers of the Moscow garrison Dubasov could only push about 5 thousand people into the streets (1350 infantry, 7 cavalry squadrons, 16 guns, 12 machine guns), as well as gendarmes and police units. Dubasov realized that he could not cope with the uprising and asked to send a brigade from St. Petersburg. The commander of the St. Petersburg military district, Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich did not want to send troops, but Emperor Nicholas II ordered the Semenov regiment to be sent to Moscow. Then other parts were sent to Moscow.
The troops were concentrated at the Manege and the Theater Square. From the center of the city, the troops tried to move through the streets, shooting barricades. Artillery was used both to destroy the barricades and to fight against certain groups of warriors. Small militant groups used terrorist tactics: they bombarded troops from houses, angry soldiers fired back, and revolutionaries hid. Innocent people were hit. As a result, the dead and wounded civilians were much more than militants and policemen.
11 — 13 December, the troops destroyed the barricades (and the revolutionaries built them again), fired at the houses, where the fire came from, there was a firefight between soldiers and warriors. Started shelling Presnya. A fierce battle unfolded on Kalanchevskaya Square, where the militants repeatedly attacked the Nikolaevsky Station, trying to cut the Moscow-Petersburg railway. December 12 to the square by special trains arrived reinforcements from workers of the Lyubertsy and Kolomna factories, headed by a machinist, a former non-commissioned officer, a Social Revolutionary A.V. Ukhtomsky. The fighting continued for several days.
14 December almost the entire center of Moscow was cleared of barricades. 15-16 December arrived in the city of the Life Guards 1-th Ekaterynoslavsky, grenadier 5-th Kyiv, 6-th Tauride, 12-th Astrakhan, as well as the Life Guards Semenov, 16-th Infantry Ladoga and 5 Cossack regiments, which provided Dubasov full superiority over the rebels. A decisive role in the suppression of the uprising belonged to the decisive commander of the Life Guards Semenov regiment Georgy Mina. Ming sent the third battalion of the regiment under the command of Colonel Riemann to the workers' settlements, plants and factories along the Moscow-Kazan railway, to eliminate the uprising there. He himself, with the remaining three battalions and a half-battery of the Life Guards of the 1 Artillery Brigade, which had arrived with the regiment, immediately switched to military operations in the Presny area, where he liquidated the center of the uprising. The divisions of the Life Guards Semenov regiment seized the headquarters of the revolutionaries - the Schmit factory. Ming issued an order to his subordinates: “Not to have those arrested, not to give mercy.” Without trial, more than 150 people were shot. Of the people shot, Ukhtomsky is the most famous. Mina killed in 1906
In this case, you should not blame the army for excessive cruelty. The troops only responded with cruelty to cruelty. Yes, and no other methods in the suppression of insurrection and rebellion. Blood in such a case stops more blood in the future. Militants, revolutionaries have acted no less fiercely. Many innocent people died from their hands.
December 15 in the city center opened banks, stock exchange, commercial and industrial offices, shops, some factories began to work. 16 — December 19 began work on most enterprises (some factories went on strike until December December 20). 16 December, the townspeople began to dismantle the remaining barricades. The city quickly returned to normal life. At the same time, the Moscow Council, the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP and the Council of Combat Squads decided to stop the uprising and the strike from December 18. The Moscow Council issued a leaflet with the call to end the uprising in an organized manner.
Most resisted at Presnya. Here concentrated the most combat-ready squad of about 700 people. Semyonovtsy were storming Presny from the Humpback Bridge and captured the bridge. As a result of the shelling, the Schmit factory was destroyed, barricades near the Zoo, and a number of houses were set on fire. In the morning of December 18, the headquarters of the combat detachments of Presny gave the order to the combatants to stop the struggle, many of them went over the ice across the Moscow River. On the morning of December 19, an attack began on the Prokhorov manufactory and the neighboring Danilovsky sugar factory, after the shelling of the soldiers seized both companies.
During the uprising, 680 people were injured (including military and police - 108, warriors - 43, the rest - “random people”), 424 people were killed (military and police - 34, warriors - 84). 260 people were arrested in Moscow, 240 in Moscow province, hundreds of workers in Moscow and Moscow province were dismissed. In November - December 1906, the Moscow Court of Justice held a trial on 68 members of the Presny defense: 9 people were sentenced to various terms of penal servitude, 10 people to imprisonment, 8 - to exile.
Information