A New Awakening¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter "A New Awakening" charts the abrupt and decisive shift in Russian working-class consciousness following the Lena goldfield massacre of April 1912, arguing that this event shattered the five-year period of reaction that had followed the 1905 Revolution. The core narrative thrust is that a single, brutal act of state violence—troops firing on 3,000 unarmed miners, killing 270—instantly transformed a quiet industrial landscape into a revolutionary upsurge. The chapter presents the massacre not as an isolated atrocity but as the detonator of accumulated class anger. The evidence is stark: from a mere 21 strikes in January, the protest wave swelled to 140,000 strikers in St. Petersburg alone within two weeks of the shootings, and 400,000 workers struck on May Day. Crucially, the chapter insists on a qualitative leap: workers no longer appealed to the Tsar as the "Little Father," as they had in 1905, but now chanted "Down with the tsarist government!" The knot of history, it claims, was retied on a higher level.
The chapter draws heavily on the historical context of the 1905 Revolution and the subsequent Stolypin reaction, framing the Lena events as a return to the class struggle that had been forcibly suppressed. It uses the testimony of the St. Petersburg Okhrana Chief, Van Koten, to confirm the regime’s own recognition of the heightened mood. The theoretical context is Leninist: the chapter argues that the Bolsheviks’ organisational split from the Mensheviks was vindicated by events. In 1905, the Bolsheviks had been a weak faction within a weak Social Democracy; by 1912, they had become the decisive force within the working class precisely because of their militant, revolutionary stance and their ability to issue fighting slogans through the legal newspaper Zvezda. The Mensheviks are implicitly argued against: to have remained "entangled" with them would have meant "paralysis" at the very moment action was required.
The chapter’s main polemic, however, is directed against the bourgeois-liberals. It warns that the reawakening of democratic aspirations and "constitutional illusions" could have strengthened the liberals’ influence, as they appeared to be "in opposition" while making demagogic speeches "for democracy." Lenin’s "main fire" is therefore aimed at them. The chapter concludes with Lenin’s strategic relocation from Paris to Kraków to be nearer the revolution, a move that symbolises the shift from émigré wrangling to practical leadership. The tone is one of vindication and urgency: the long-awaited change had arrived, and the Bolsheviks were ready.