Undeterred by any fear of exclusion from the circle of culture, the workmen continued their demands for universal suffrage and a Constituent Assembly, and on October 26th the Central Strike Committee—or Council of Labour Delegates, as it was properly called—sitting in St. Petersburg, declared a general strike throughout Russia. About a million workers came out.
This was the second workmen’s blow, and it shook Tsardom from top to bottom.
Four days after the beginning of the strike, the famous Manifesto of October 30th (17th in Old Style) was issued, promising personal freedom and a constitution. The document began with the harmless necessary cant—
“The troubles and agitations in our capitals and numerous other places fill our heart with great and painful sorrow.... The sorrow of the people is the sorrow of the sovereign.... We therefore direct our Government to carry out our inflexible will in the following manner:—
“I. To grant to our people the immutable foundations of civil liberty, based on real inviolability of person, and freedom of conscience, speech, union, and association.
“II. Without deferring the elections to the State Duma already ordered, to call to participation in the Duma (as far as is possible in view of the shortness of time before the Duma assembles) those classes of the population now completely deprived of electoral rights, leaving the ultimate development of the principle of electoral right in general to the newly established legislature.
“III. To establish it as an immutable rule that no law can ever come into force without the approval of the State Duma, and that it shall be possible for the elected of the people to exercise a real participation in supervising the legality of the acts of authorities appointed by us.”
This manifesto was greeted by an outburst of joy unequalled in the melancholy annals of Russia. Righteousness and peace kissed each other upon the streets; and so did professors, students, and even working people. Red flags paraded the squares, generals saluted them, soldiers joined in the Marseillaise of labour. But the Central Strike Committee was not overcome by the general hallucination. They rightly refused to trust the Tsar without guarantees, and they continued to press their demands for a political amnesty and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. They also demanded the restoration of its old liberties to Finland, and the dismissal of Trepoff. When anti-Jewish riots broke out at Kieff, Warsaw, and especially at Odessa, they steadily and justly maintained that the “Black Hundred” or “Hooligans” of the massacre and pillage were encouraged by the police and the priests, who wished to make out that the Russian people were opposed to political liberties.
The panic of the Government continued. They could not measure the strength of this new force among the work-people, or of this new instrument, the general strike. They were uncertain, also, about the army, which, together with the police and officials, formed their sole protection from ruin. Pobiedonostzeff, the aged Procurator of the Holy Synod, and the embodiment of an obstinate and narrow tyranny in Church and State, resigned. On November 4th, an amnesty was proclaimed for political offenders, though certain qualifications and categories were added.
On the same day a manifesto restored the old liberties of Finland, abolishing the decree of February 15, 1899, by which the autocratic principle, the dictatorship, and the employment of Russian gendarmes had been imposed upon the duchy contrary to its original constitution, and repealing also the military law of July 12, 1901, which compelled recruits to serve outside their own country.