Status Updates From Year One of the Russian Rev...

Once more the great qualities of the Bolshevik party were displayed—its habits of collective thinking, its discipline, its strong morale, its searching exploration of differences, the unimportance of personal pride among its militants, their profound attachment to the working class and to organization.

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The revolution had substantial successes in the south, and real victories in the Caucasus. January 1906 was a month of firing-squads. Punitive expeditions restored order everywhere with a cold ferocity. In the Baltic provinces, Siberia and the Caucasus they sowed the seeds of terrible hatreds.

From all quarters of the capital the petitioners, carrying icons and singing hymns, set off marching through the snow, late on a January morning, to see their ‘little father, the Tsar’. At every cross-road armed ambushes were waiting for them. The soldiers machine-gunned them down and the Cossacks charged them. ‘Treat them like rebels’ had been the Emperor’s command.