Stenographic Report of the Meeting Dedicated to the Opening of the Museum of Revolution
January 11, 1920
Nikolaevsky Hall, Winter Palace
Present: Over 6,000 people
(According to: Museum of the Revolution. Collection. Petrograd. 1923. P. 69.)
Comrade Zinoviev (applause): Comrades, on the second year of the proletarian revolution, the Petrograd Soviet – the Soviet of the city where the banner of the socialist revolution was first raised – opens the first museum of the revolution in Russia. I think, comrades, we need not so much to explain why we are opening the museum of the revolution, but rather to explain why we are opening it so late. However, the majority of those gathered here can easily answer the latter question for themselves.
We are opening the museum of the revolution only two years after the great day of October 25th, because the working class and peasantry of Russia have been straining every muscle to fight off a pack of rabid wolves in the form of tsarist generals who threatened our country, our freedom, and our revolution. We are opening the museum of the revolution on a significant day, and this coincidence is not accidental. We are opening the first pantheon of the revolution at a time when the working class, when the working masses of all Russia have finally managed, after a long and bloody struggle, to win decisive victories over the supporters of the old regime, over the agents of French and English capital. We are opening the museum of the revolution in Petrograd at the very moment when the glorious troops of our Soviet Republic have liberated Rostov and raised the red banner in that city (applause).
Comrades, Petrograd is a historical city, everyone knows that. Petrograd is now the embodiment of history. In Petrograd it is now difficult to find a square, a street, that would not be a definite historical place. Petrograd has seen the abomination and desolation of the old regime more clearly and more closely than anyone else. Petrograd has drunk the cup to the bottom. Petrograd had to observe, just three years ago, the power of such people as Rasputin. Petrograd had to see in all its glory, in all its nakedness, in all its abomination, the representatives of the old regime. I read in a New Year’s poem published in a White Guard newspaper in Helsingfors a verse in which present-day Petrograd is called a city of lepers. This is now, when the working class is in power in Petrograd, when the palaces have been opened to the people, when we have driven out the evil memory of the Rasputins and Romanovs, when with inhuman exertion we are opening dozens of new schools, when in an epoch of devastation, hunger and cold we have done everything possible to give bread to our tortured, illiterate country, this is now, when Petrograd, like a beacon, shines not only for the whole of Soviet Russia, but, without any exaggeration, we can say, when it shines for the workers of the whole world, this is now our city is called a city of lepers, and a few years ago, when Petrograd was the city of Rasputin, when Nevsky Prospekt was full of parasites, when power was in the hands of deliberate extinguishers of light, then it was as if Petrograd was a beacon! Petrograd has seen the ulcers of the old regime more closely than anyone else. Petrograd has experienced on its own back what the power of autocracy and the power of the bourgeoisie means. For the eight months that passed from the time of the February semi-revolution to the October great workers’ revolution, these eight months were enough for all of Petrograd and for all of Russia to see that the power of the bourgeoisie does not mean the emancipation of the people, does not mean the full power of tens of millions of the people’s masses.
“Petrograd also saw the first heralds of the revolution. In Petrograd, as in a living book, one can read the history of our revolution. We linked the opening of our museum of the revolution with the commemoration of the Decembrists, about whom you will hear a number of speeches from subsequent comrades. Petrograd was the place where, for the first time, 95 years ago, an attempt was made to raise the banner of the republic. Then, from among the military intelligentsia, came the first great martyrs, the Decembrists, and Petrograd had to stand at the cradle of freedom. In Petrograd, the first heralds of freedom were crucified in the squares, such people as Chernyshevsky, to whom we were able to erect a very modest monument last year, were put on a pillory for the amusement of the landowners. , who were the teachers of socialism in our country, who were the founders of international socialism, in Petrograd they took the great leaders of the “People’s Will”, Zhelyabov and Perovskaya and others to execution. And Petrograd at that time, even Petrograd, was still so dark , backward, that behind the chariot, which we called shameful, in which the best people of Russia at that time were taken to execution, dark people walked, who threw stones at this chariot, who shouted abuse at the people who were going to execution for the cause of workers and peasants , taught by the tsarist press, supporters of the old regime. In Petrograd we have a whole series of prisons, where the best people of Russia suffered for decades, where even now in the deaf walls of the cells one can hear the sighs of those who died for the cause of the Russian revolution. Our museum must perpetuate each of such ravelins, as the Peter and Paul Fortress, Shlisselburg, etc., where whole generations of the best people perished; the doors of these prisons opened only for a few respected and revered fighters by us, some of whom had the happiness to live to see the great popular revolution and are among us today (prolonged applause). In Petrograd there are still prisons in which thousands and tens of thousands of the best workers have been, who, relatively recently, in the 90s and 900s, said about themselves that Kresty and Predvarilka are the best universities. Many of the current builders of Soviet Russia spent many years in these prisons, they often entered them illiterate and left mature people, having read whole libraries, having learned to think.
Finally, in Petrograd there are those great squares that are associated with the most significant dates in the history of our liberation movement. Suffice it to recall the square of the Winter Palace, where we are now gathering, which now bears the name of one of the greatest fighters who died at the hands of a half-blind traitor, our comrade Uritsky. Suffice it to recall this square, associated with the date of January 9, 1905, the fifteenth anniversary of which we will celebrate in the coming days. Who does not remember this day, which, like a bell, sounded an alarm throughout Russia! Short-sighted people, in the years of reaction and the triumph of Stolypin, were sure that the revolution was buried. The blind did not see that this was a respite before the storm, before the real revolution, which began in 1917. We have in Petrograd the Field of Mars, where people are buried, to whose graves the people’s path will never grow, where hundreds of victims of the first February revolution are buried, many nameless victims – their names and surnames have not yet been established; for all our people, for all those who are not with the tsarist generals, who do not have a wound-up machine (zavodnaya machinka) in their chest, who know what tsarism was for Russia, for them these graves will remain forever sacred and to the mass graves of the fighters of the February revolution for two years several individual graves of the luminaries of the proletarian revolution have been added, those people whose names the workers and working women of Petrograd and all of Russia repeat and honor with reverence and love to bequeath to their children.
In Petrograd, we have the Tauride Palace, the former premises of the State Duma, now the Palace of Comrade Uritsky, the place where the first, so to speak, Parliament, the Tsarist Duma, was convened, in which the main leaders were Purishkevich, Milyukov and Co., where then the first Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies gathered, where for a moment before the eyes of the people flashed the sad memory of the Constituent Assembly, which, – now it is clear to all the people, – completely went into the service of the bourgeoisie. For those who have doubts on this score, I advise you to read the collection published the other day and compiled by members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the former chairman of the Komuch Constituent Assembly Volsky, Burev, Chernenkov, Rakitnikov and a number of other prominent representatives of the Constituent Assembly, a collection entitled “The End of the Struggle Within Democracy …….
In Petrograd, we have a whole series of streets associated with the memorable July days of 1917.
You remember these days. Part of the intelligentsia did not understand them, including its best representatives. The July days were tried to be presented as a wild movement of the rabble, which does not know what it wants, they tried to portray the Kronstadt sailors as thugs, as people who do not understand what they are doing. Now, whoever has consciously lived through these two years and thought about the events, perfectly understands that the Polish days of 1917 were the first real popular revolution, which the bourgeoisie and the landowners managed to drown, but these days were a great popular movement, a harbinger of the October days.
In Petrograd, we have dozens and hundreds of houses of great historical significance.
The task of our museum is to preserve this, perpetuate it, and pass on the memory to the people.
Anyone who has happened to be in Paris knows how the French bourgeoisie managed to perpetuate that part of the great French Revolution, the bourgeois revolution of 1789, which is to its liking (kotoraya ei po nutru, kotoraya ei po dushe). There you will find a museum where you will see the figures of Marat, Danton and other representatives of the great French Revolution, you will see their books, clothes, documents, pens, with which they wrote. You will see that the bourgeoisie has managed to preserve the memory of the great leaders of the great bourgeois French Revolution. Comrades, we need to put a hundred times more attention and love into this business. We need to pass on to the younger generation the invaluable treasures that we have from the past of the fighters of our proletarian revolution. It is necessary to perpetuate every Siberian prison, it is necessary to remember about Akatuy, where the best sons of the Russian people died for the cause; it is necessary to restore in the people’s memory the hunger strikes in prisons, the terrible tragedies that took place there, which were experienced by the best representatives of the revolutionary workers, the revolutionary intelligentsia. It will be necessary to restore before the mind’s eye the horrors of the Oryol hard labor prison, the Moscow Central, where the sighs of the best people who fought for the people’s cause can still be heard. It is necessary to convey these behests to the Red Army. The Red Army is the best thing that the genius of struggling humanity has come up with, in the hands of the Red Army, which holds a rifle, in these hands is the inheritance of all generations of revolutionaries who have fought until now (applause). Because for the first time we have an army that is fighting not for the cause of the landowners, a tiny minority of oppressors, but for the cause of liberating millions of working people, for the cause of liberating humanity. We know how much suffering our Red Army soldiers have to endure, we know what a high price our victories have been bought, and now, when it will be especially hard for them in the trenches, when they will have to go hungry and cold, walk barefoot and undressed, as unfortunately happens, when they will have to endure the most severe hardships, let them remember that there was a time when in the Shlisselburg Fortress, in the Oryol hard labor prison, in Akatuy and other numerous prisons, there were solitary revolutionaries who did not have millions of people behind them, when, on the contrary, they had a multi-million army against them, the whole world of the bourgeoisie, and yet they suffered and died, believing that victory would be on their side, and the tsarist executioners could not squeeze a single word of repentance from them.
Remember these heroes who went hungry for ten to fifteen days in prisons, who sat for many years in solitary confinement cells and did not lose heart for a single second. They believed that the sun would rise, and this sun has now risen (applause).
The workers, peasants and Red Army men of all Russia, for their part, will do everything in their power to accelerate the reconciliation with that part of the intelligentsia with which this reconciliation has not taken place
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The workers and peasants of all Russia will be happy at the moment when there is not a single one of the old revolutionary intellectuals, the Shlisselburgers, and the Narodniks who doubts the high qualities of our revolution. It will be the greatest happiness when the fighters of the old generation join the mighty movement that is unfolding before our eyes, it will be the greatest happiness when the representatives of the best part of the intelligentsia understand that what is happening now is not a conspiracy of individuals, not an evil will, not an accident, not someone’s slander, but that it is a great revolution, which the best representatives, revolutionaries of Russia have been waiting for for decades.
This revolution is going through a difficult path, going through a number of painful moments, it is associated with a number of atrocities; we could not destroy all the prisons of Petrograd, and we are forced to put there those who are against the workers’ and peasants’ revolution. It was not easy for us to take up arms and wage the civil war that we have been waging for two years. But, if there is truth in the world, if there is a cause for which it is worth taking up the sword and suffering, it is worth going through all the horrors and hardships that we have gone through, our party and the Red Army have gone through, this is the cause that the Red Army of Soviet Russia has been defending for two years (applause).
That is why we say: let the museum of the revolution serve as a link between the workers and peasants and that part of the intelligentsia that has so far stood aside, but which is used to honoring the graves of the old fighters of the revolution, is used to honoring the old deeds of the great revolutionaries of Russia. We are sure, comrades, that the Petersburg worker, who is hungry, cold, who has lost tens of thousands of his best sons on all fronts, this Petersburg worker, despite the fact that he is so busy, will find time to give everything he can to the cause of the museum of the revolution, in order to perpetuate in Petrograd everything that needs to be perpetuated, to collect with a loving hand all the monuments of almost a century of revolutionary struggle, as a result of which we have become a beacon for the peoples of the whole world.
You could read today a radio broadcast from London, where the bourgeois newspapers said: in England, Bolshevism interests the English people more than the English Parliament. Bolshevism is talked about more throughout England than even the entire English House. This is not accidental: about Bolshevism, that is, about the great workers’ and peasants’ revolution, about the first attempts to overthrow the yoke of capital forever, the workers and peasants and the working intelligentsia of the whole world will talk and speak in all languages.
Therefore, we, who live in the first city to raise the banner of revolution, need to collect with a loving hand all the monuments of our revolutionary past, to perpetuate what is there, to collect portraits, to erect monuments, to perpetuate those corners in which the best representatives of our revolutionary intelligentsia suffered, to erect monuments on those squares where the tsars hanged Zhelyabov, nailed or tried to nail people to the pillory, like Chernyshevsky, like Dostoevsky, shot the best representatives of the Decembrists, hanged people like Stepan Balmashev.
We need to write biographies of such workers as the carpenter Khalturin, who made an attempt to blow up the Winter Palace. We do not know where his mother is, where his relatives are, we do not have good biographies, we did not try to perpetuate the gigantic figure of the first worker leader of the revolutionaries. We need to excavate the places in Shlisselburg where the Balmashevs and the best representatives of the then Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which was then fighting for the people, were hanged. We must create such a museum over a number of years, where workers and peasants from all countries will come to bow to the memory of the first leaders of the Russian revolution.
We need to start creating our own, I would say, lives of the saints, because there are a number of revolutionaries, glorious fighters for the people’s cause, who have paved our way with their bones, and we must give the people their biographies. Now we are taking the first steps on this path. I am sure that red Petrograd, with the help of its workers and representatives of the intelligentsia and science, who are hardened in battles, who live in Petrograd and gradually come to the worker, become with him under the red banner, with the help of all thinking and fighting Petrograd, we will create a great museum. Today, opening this meeting, we, with our heads bowed before the memory of the fighters who paved the way for us with their breasts, will say eternal memory to those glorious heroes, revolutionary fighters, who managed to raise the red banner under the terrible oppression of autocracy, having against them a whole host of enemies. Let us pay tribute to the glorious fighters for freedom and continue the work they started, with one hand perpetuating the old, with the other hand building a new kingdom of labor. The moment is near when the war will end, I am sure that now it will only take a few months, or maybe weeks, for us to be able to think about moving on to peaceful construction. This moment is near. It will be the happiest moment in the history of our long-suffering country. This moment, I repeat, is near, and then the workers and peasants, armed with knowledge, will take up the improvement of our native Russia. Long live Soviet Russia! (Prolonged applause)