J. V. Stalin
Source : Works, Vol. 1,
November 1901 - April 1907
Publisher : Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow,
1954
Transcription/Markup : Salil Sen for MIA, 2008
Public Domain : Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You
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Citizens! The revolutionary proletarian movement is growing—and national barriers are collapsing! The proletarians of the different nationalities in Russia are uniting in a single international army, the individual streams of the proletarian movement are merging in one general revolutionary flood. The waves of this flood are rising higher and higher and dashing against the tsarist throne with increasing force—and the decrepit tsarist government is tottering. Neither prisons nor penal servitude, nor gallows—nothing can stop the proletarian movement: it is continuously growing!
And so, to bolster up its throne the tsarist government is inventing "new" methods. It is sowing enmity among the nationalities of Russia, it is inciting them against one another; it is trying to break up the general proletarian movement into petty movements and to incite them against one another; it is organising pogroms against the Jews, Armenians, etc. And the purpose of all this is to separate the nationalities of Russia from one another by means of fratricidal war and, by enfeebling them, to vanquish them one by one without difficulty!
Divide and rule — such is the policy of the tsarist government. That is what it is doing in the cities of Russia (remember the pogroms in Gomel, Kishinev and other towns), and it is doing the same in the Caucasus. What infamy! It is buttressing its despicable throne with the blood and the corpses of citizens! The groans of the dying Armenians and Tatars in Baku; the tears of wives, mothers and children; the blood, the innocent blood of honest but unenlightened citizens; the frightened faces of fugitive, defenceless people fleeing from death; wrecked homes, looted shops and the frightful, unceasing whizz of bullets—that is what the tsar—the murderer of honest citizens—is bolstering up his throne with.
Yes, citizens! It is they, the agents of the tsarist government, who incited the politically unenlightened among the Tatars against the peaceful Armenians! It is they, the flunkeys of the tsarist government, who distributed arms and ammunition among them, disguised policemen and Cossacks in Tatar clothing and hurled them against the Armenians! For two months, they—the servants of the tsar—prepared this fratricidal war—and at last they achieved their barbarous object. Curses and death on the head of the tsarist government!
Now these miserable slaves of the miserable tsar are trying to foment a fratricidal war among us, here in Tiflis! They are demanding your blood, they want to divide and rule over you! But be vigilant, you Armenians, Tatars, Georgians and Russians! Stretch out your hands to one another, unite more closely, and to the attempts of the government to divide you answer unanimously: Down with the tsarist government!
Long live the fraternity of the peoples!
Stretch out your hands to one another and, having united, rally around the proletariat, the real gravedigger of the tsarist government which is the sole culprit in the Baku massacres.
Let your cry be:
Down With National Strife!
Down With the Tsarist Government!
Long Live the Fraternity of the Peoples!
Long Live the Democratic Republic!