Eleanor Marx Aveling
Source: Commonweal, Vol 2 No. 15, April 1886, pages 31-2
Transcribed: by Graham Seaman, February 2022
RUSSIA. — The capitalist press is so constantly assuring us that Nihilism is "played out" (the wish is father to the assertion!), that the few facts which I take from a Russian correspondence in our fellow-organ the Paris "Socialiste," may be interesting.
A new number of the Narodnaia Wolia has just been printed — under what difficulties I need not remind my readers — and it begins with a long, a terribly long list of the martyrs of the Russian government. Next, this paper gives us details as to the absolutely rotten internal condition of the Empire, its imminent bankruptcy. "In several provinces famine and misery are chronic ... but nowhere are the peasants in so terrible a condition as in Siberia. The population is literally dying of hunger there. Moreover, the industrial situation of Russia is no better. ... In many provinces the collecting of taxes gives rise to revolts, and migrations to other portions of the Empire, where the emigrants found prosperous villages. But as soon as a village begins to thrive, and the soil is cultivated, the government drives out the inhabitants. Such, e.g., was the case in 1884, in a village of 950 houses, on the Don."
Agrarian risings are the order of the day. In the province of Woronege the peasants have burnt the goods of a rich landed proprietor; at Kiew is an association whose object is the devastation of the cultivated land of the large landlords. "This Society was composed of peasants, and the police has been powerless to deal with it." It happens not infrequently that the police sent to restore "order in a village find themselves forced to fly before the rebel peasants. In the already-mentioned province of Woronege, 325 peasants were brought up on a charge of destroying a dyke that caused them damage, whereupon all the rest of the villagers demanded that they should be accused along with their comrades. "Last year there were 192,000 prosecutions for damaging forests — for the government refuses to admit that the forests are the property of the Commune."
There are also many strikes; at Iwanswo-Woznessensk 8,000 men went out on strike last September rather than accept a reduction of wages. At Alexandororsk the workers on a railroad struck; eleven men were arrested and condemned; 200 others immediately went and demanded the same treatment as their fellows.
The working-men are beginning to organise, and only those who have carefully followed the history of the Nihilist movement can appreciate the full significance of this fact. The correspondence from which I have taken the above statements concludes with these words: "These few facts are sufficiently eloquent to characterise the frightful condition of the Russian people, to show at the same time that the people, no longer able to suffer in silence, are awaking to resistance. The sacrifices of the revolutionists have not been in vain. Russian Society is not at all indifferent or hostile to the revolutionists, as is shown by the sums subscribed 'in good society' during this year for the revolutionist propaganda. These sums amounted to £1,600."
HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. — Large meetings are being held all over Holland by the unemployed, and in several cases public meetings have been dispersed with the utmost brutality by the police, while numerous arrests have been made. In Belgium, too, there are "disturbances." At Liege a public meeting was called on the 18th of March, which ended in a fight between the gendarmerie sent to suppress the meeting, and the people. Several policemen as well as many of the crowd have been seriously wounded; some eighty or ninety people have been arrested. "Quiet was re-established by midnight," we have been informed by a Reuter telegram, but, as a matter of fact, the utmost "uneasiness still prevails." There is a large strike among the miners of Seraing and Jeneppe, growing daily more threatening, and a "descent" on Liege by the strikers is hourly expected. "If," writes a correspondent of the Cri du Peuple, "if the miners of Jeneppe try to enter Liege to make another manifestation, a collision, which if the Government do not take care will be a bloody one, is to be expected."
SPAIN. — From Spain, as from the rest of the world, comes news of struggles between unemployed and police, while meetings are constantly being dispersed with more or less brutality. At Alicante a meeting in honour of the 18th of March was forcibly suppressed; further details of this affair are not yet to hand.
FRANCE. — It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the splendid movement of the Decazeville miners. In the next number of the Commonweal there will be a full account of all that has gone on there. Meantime, only a few facts. Of these the most significant perhaps is the solidarity shown by all the workers in France to their brethren at Deoazeville. Every day different towns and villages are sending sums of money to enable the miners to carry on their heroic struggle against all the Watrins of the Company, while others are sending sacks of potatoes and other contributions in kind.
That every form of petty trickery and brutal intimidation is being attempted by the Company goes without saying. But to no use. The miners are determined to resist à outrance, and some of the mine-proprietors are beginning to confess that "Decazeville is lost to the Company." It is expected that all the mines will be closed next week. This means 600 more men out of work. The 18th of March was taken advantage of to hold — for the first time at Decazeville — a meeting in honour of the Commune.
How thoroughly scared the bourgeois really are, will be best understood from an account of the various debates in the Chamber, of which I shall speak next month. In conclusion to-day, I am sure I am speaking for all English comrades when I wish our fellow- workers of Decazeville good-speed in their splendid fight.
Eleanor Marx-Aveling.