THE LESSONS OF THE GREAT YEAR
This essay was published in a New York Russian newspaper on January 20th, 1917, less than two months before the Second Russian Revolution. Trotzky then lived in New York. The essay shows how his contempt, even hatred, for the liberal parties in Russia had grown since 1905-6.
(January 9th, 1905—January 9th, 1917)
Revolutionary anniversaries are not only days for reminiscence, they are days for summing up revolutionary experiences, especially for us Russians. Our history has not been rich. Our so-called "national originality" consisted in being poor, ignorant, uncouth. It was the revolution of 1905 that first opened before us the great highway of political progress. On January 9th the workingman of Petersburg knocked at the gate of the Winter Palace. On January 9th the entire Russian people knocked at the gate of history.
The crowned janitor did not respond to the knock. Nine months later, however, on October 17th, he was compelled to open the heavy gate of absolutism. Notwithstanding all the efforts of bureaucracy, a little slit stayed open—forever.
The revolution was defeated. The same old forces and almost the same figures now rule Russia that ruled her twelve years ago. Yet the revolution has changed Russia beyond recognition. The kingdom of stagnation, servitude, vodka and humbleness has become a kingdom of fermentation, criticism, fight. Where once there was a shapeless dough—the impersonal, formless people, "Holy Russia,"—now social classes consciously oppose each other, political parties have sprung into existence, each with its program and methods of struggle.
January 9th opens a new Russian history. It is a line marked by the blood of the people. There is no way back from this line to Asiatic Russia, to the cursed practices of former generations. There is no way back. There will never be.