The Onset of Revolution

The onset of the Russo-Japanese War in January 1904 found the students deeply divided. Many participated in patriotic demonstrations, while others passed anti-war resolutions.^[116] In Saint Petersburg University a 28 January skhodka adopted a patriotic statement and then broke up in a confused flurry of fistfights after the patriotic students ejected hecklers from the hall. A new right-wing student group, the Dennitsa, enjoyed a brief period of influence in the university.^[117] That same day a

[115] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 151, d. 639, 1. 125.

[116] A survey of how the outbreak of war affected the universities can be found in "Kazënnyi patriotizm i russkaia molodëzh'," Osvobozhdenie, no. 18 (1904); also A. E. Ivanov, "Rossiiskie universitety i russko-iaponskaia voina," in Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Institut Istorii, Problemy otechestvennoi istorii (Moscow, 1973), pp. 268–282.

[117] Vladimir Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii (Berlin, 1923), p. 10; Engel' and Gorokhov, Iz istorii, p. 100.

few hundred students marched across the river to the Winter Palace, where they sang the national anthem and cheered N. V. Kleigels, the chief of police. But elsewhere in the city, the picture was different. At the Mining Institute a skhodka condemned the war, and the women at the higher courses rejected the patriotic message that their professors, along with every other faculty council in the country, sent to the tsar. The same lack of unanimity marked the students' reaction in other university towns. Probably most students were mildly patriotic at the very beginning of the war, but this mood soon gave way to growing anti-government feeling.^[118]

Apart from serious disruptions at the Saint Petersburg Mining Institute and the Kharkov Technological Institute (for reasons that, as will be shown below, had little to do with the war), the second semester passed relatively quietly. Spring came; the students took their exams and went home. Russia had been at war five months. What serious student unrest there was followed traditional patterns—protest against government assaults on student prerogatives. The war did lead to the formation of some coalition councils, modeled on the 1903 Odessa recommendations, but they were singularly unsuccessful in mobilizing the student movement.^[119] For many observers this continued passivity of the studenchestvo only reinforced the growing suspicion that at long last the universities had ceased to be the "barometers of Russian society." The rapidly growing opposition movement in the country, however, once again began to focus the attention of various groups and parties on the political potential of the universities.

The summer of 1904 dashed hopes of a quick victory over the Japanese and began Russia's slide into political crisis. After Plehve's assassination on 15 July, the tsar signaled a more liberal policy by appointing Prince Sviatopolk-Mirskii as his successor. But it was a case of too little too late. On 30 September, representatives of various liberal and revolutionary organizations met in Paris to draft a common tactical program. The Parts meeting, which included Struve's Union of Liberation as well as the Social Revolutionaries, agreed to collaborate in fighting the tsarist regime. Liberals like Miliukov and Struve, who had by

[118] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, p. 10.

[119] Engel', "1905g. i studencheskoe dvizhenie," p. 99. Two pamphlets that discuss the state of the student movement after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War can be found in BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova. These are "Nashe znamia," no. 1238, and "Ob organizatsii," no. 883. The author of "Nashe znamia" reveals his Social Democratic sympathies but dismisses the November 1903 Odessa conference as "useless" in providing direction for the student movement.

now abandoned his earlier support of the war, were now prepared to look to the left for allies.

A good way of crafting an effective anti-government coalition, Struve claimed, was to abandon traditional liberal scruples about student unrest and recognize the political value of the student movement. In September Osvobozhdenie published a lead article on "The Student Movement and the Tasks of Opposition." Like it or not, Osvobozhdenie told Russian liberals, the student movement was a fact of life. "Even now, even with the growth of the revolutionary parties, the labor movement, peasant unrest, and the growing oppositional stance of wide segments of the educated public, the student movement is of great political significance." Contrary to a widely held belief, furthermore, the student movement was a phenomenon distinct from the revolutionary left. "It differs from the revolutionary movement," the article explained, "in that it is spontaneous [rather than directed] and because it embraces the wide masses of the student population."^[120] The revolutionary parties were not prepared to lead the student movement and indeed failed to understand it. They wanted to recruit individual students, not encourage or lead a student movement that in their view deflected energies from more valuable goals. Instead of encouraging the "revolutionary minority" to lead the student movement on the basis of common concerns and aims that all students could share, the left-wing parties wanted to exploit it for their own purposes.

Nevertheless, the student movement would not go away, and the liberal opposition had to consider whether the leadership vacuum in the universities did not in fact offer tempting political opportunities:

The students are a natural part of the liberation movement. One might shrink from accepting moral responsibility for their sacrifices. One might be shocked at the idea of collaborating with politically immature students. But there is an answer to this objection. . . . No matter what we think, the students will not refrain from political action. The value of their sacrifices and the maturity of their political outlook will depend on our own attitude toward the students.^[121]

In an editorial comment that appeared alongside the article, Struve reiterated the demand that the liberal opposition organize both the students and the professoriate for political action.^[122] (Time would show

[120] "Studencheskoe dvizhenie i zadachi oppozitsii," Osvobozhdenie, no. 56 (1904).

[121] Ibid.

[122] P. B. Struve, "Chto zhe teper'?" Osvobozhdenie, no. 56 (1904).

that the professoriate would respond, albeit with deep reservations; the student movement would keep its distance from both the liberals and the revolutionary parties.)

The 1904–1905 academic year, which ended abruptly after Bloody Sunday, underscored Struve's assessment that the student movement was not really controlled by anyone. In the fall of 1904 there was a clear tension between those attempting to use the student movement to serve wider political ends and the students' tendency to protest on their own terms and over their own issues. During this period the Social Democrats saw that they needed the students to make the street demonstrations that were necessary to remind the Russian public that Social Democracy had not accepted liberal leadership of the opposition movement. Many students were indeed willing to demonstrate, but resented being told when and how.

The fall of 1904 also saw the final "surrender" of student Radicalism to the recommendations of the Odessa conference for coalition councils based on party groups. The dynamics of student protest still buttressed the Radicals' claim of an independent student movement, but the wider political context—a losing war and the radicalization of Russian society—made it hard for them to cling to the definition of the student movement as a political catalyst. The year 1904 was not 1902. But because the students in fact continued to act independently, and often spontaneously, a gap developed between the coalition councils and the actions of the student masses.

Student protest in various cities showed the same characteristics and moved in the same general direction, but there was little coordination or direction, no structurally unified student movement. In the summer of 1904, Engel' and the Saint Petersburg student Social Democrats tried to call another national student congress to "finish off the remnants of student Radicalism" and coordinate the student movement. But not enough prospective delegates promised to come, and Engel' called off the meeting.^[123]

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the failure to assemble a student congress indicated political apathy in the universities in 1904. Vladimir Voitinskii, a student at Saint Petersburg University and later a leading member of the Menshevik party, recalled that that fall most students in the university saw themselves as being politically opposed to the autocracy but nonetheless resisting affiliation with any par-

[123] Engel' and Gorokhov, Iz istorii, p. 104.

ticular political party.^[124] The average student, Voitinskii recalled, had little interest in overt demonstrations but welcomed Japanese victories because they embarrassed the government. Indifferent to the political student organizations, most students still showed great interest in left-wing literature. Meanwhile, conservative groups like the Dennitsa had quickly lost the temporary popularity they had gained in the first heady days of the war.

According to Voitinskii, the widespread interest in Marxism was academic rather than actively political. Students read Struve as much as they did Lenin, and such comparatively moderate teachers as E. V. Tarle, L. I. Petrazhitskii, and M. K. Pokrovskii were radical enough for the majority of students. To be sure, some student organizations and even zemliachestva had become politicized; V. V. Sviatlovskii's economic study group was especially popular among Marxist students. But on the whole, the political differentiation claimed by the Odessa conference did not seem far advanced in Saint Petersburg University, much less elsewhere.^[125]

The major Radical organization in the university, the Partizany Bor'by, after concluding that the student movement had little future as a catalyst, decided to join the Social Democrats and Social Revolutionaries in a coalition council.^[126] Within the council, the Partizany Bor'by accepted a certain division of labor. While the student Social Democrats would find out what the adult revolutionary organizations had in mind, the Partizany would form a Central University Organ to work with the majority of the student body, who were opposed to the regime but unwilling to join a specific political group.^[127]

The major task of the Central University Organ was to persuade the Saint Petersburg students not to demonstrate or protest until the coalition council gave the signal. There had not yet been any large-scale labor or peasant unrest, especially in the capitals and the central Russian cities, and the council did not want the students to act alone or waste their energies on student issues.

The students, however, once again confounded the calculations of their political leaders by protesting against the "wrong" issue at the

[124] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, pp. 10–30.

[125] A good source on student life in Saint Petersburg University in 1904 is Sergei Kamenskii, Vek minuvshii (Paris, 1967), p. 34.

[126] N. V. Doroshenko, "Vozniknovenie bol'shevistskoi organizatsii v Peterburgskom Universitete i pervye gody eë sushchestvovaniia," Krasnaia Letopis', no. 2 (1931): 83–85. In 1905 Doroshenko, a leader of the coalition council, also became a member of the Petersburg Committee of the RSDRP. He soon left the party. After the revolution, he worked in Gosplan.

[127] Engel' and Gorokhov, Iz istorii, p. 106.

"wrong" time. No sooner had the academic year begun than many students wanted to fight new restrictions on the operation of the student dining hall.^[128] With much effort, the coalition council managed to head off a protest skhodka scheduled for 2 October. This move led to a great deal of bitterness against the council, which many students accused of trying to destroy student traditions.^[129] On 11 October, the Central University Organ answered these critics in a pamphlet arguing that corporate protests were out of date: "We are asked, 'If you are against student disorders, what do you propose replacing them with?' We answer, 'Get rid of the idea that the essence of the student movement lies in disorders [bezporiadki ]. Forget the old memories, get to work, study Russian reality.'"^[130]

The tension between student traditions and the political agendas of the coalition council surfaced again after the 8 October suicide of Ivan Malyshev, a jailed student. In the past such incidents (for example, the 1897 Vetrova affair) had aroused strong feelings of student solidarity, and Malyshev's death proved no exception. On 14 October, more than seven hundred students gathered in front of the Kresty prison to escort his body and then planned a public memorial to take place in front of Kazan Cathedral three days later. The Malyshev incident embarrassed the coalition council. Although at first they agreed to the proposed 17 October public funeral, they quickly changed their minds after the city committee of the Social Democratic party suggested keeping the students off the streets until the "workers were ready" for a massive demonstration of their own.^[131]

The coalition council's problem was to control student unrest, not to convince the students to oppose the government. In the fall of 1904 the general oppositional drift of Russian society was reflected in student resolutions. Student skhodki in October and November passed resolutions that staked out ground to the left of the liberal opposition. Various VUZy demanded a constituent assembly and an immediate end to the war.^[132]

At the time these resolutions did not cause the government great con-

[128] An excellent official account of all student disorders in Ministry of Education VUZy for the first semester of the 1904–1905 academic year is A. Georgievskii, "Bezporiadki v vysshikh uchebnykh zavedeniiakh v 1904–05gg.," in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 196.

[129] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 176, 1. 3.

[130] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 176, 1. 16.

[131] A detailed report on the impact of the Malyshev affair on the students is available in POA, index no. 13c(2), folder 6C.

[132] Police reports on the skhodki and their resolutions can be found in POA, index no. 13c(2), folder 6C; and TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 176, 1. 42.

cern, but they assume a certain significance when considered in the political context of the autumn of 1904 and especially in light of the relationship between the liberal and the revolutionary movements. The Union of Liberation had already adopted a policy of "no enemies on the left," and Struve had already angered some moderate liberals by questioning the idea that politics had no place in the universities.^[133] The revolutionary left, however, was divided on the question of cooperating with the liberals, an issue that became even more pressing after the November zemstvo congress. Although the congress elected the moderate Dmitri Shipov as its president, it adopted a platform that brought the zemstvo movement closer to the views of liberal militants such as Struve and Miliukov. The platform included a popularly elected legislative organ as well as guaranteed freedom of the press, speech, religion, association, and assembly.

The growing militancy of the liberals confronted the Social Democrats with the possibility that the Union of Liberation would effectively contest the leadership they had hoped to exercise among the peasantry and the workers. The Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks faced a tactical dilemma. To cooperate with the radical liberals was to risk a loss of political initiative and independence, which was one reason why they refused to join the Social Revolutionaries in the Paris bloc. But noncooperation carried the risk of political isolation, especially after the zemstvo congress turned its back on the moderates' pleas to settle for a consultative rather than a legislative assembly.

Massive street demonstrations, especially in the major cities, were one way the Social Democrats could remind the liberals and the government of their independent presence.^[134] In this context, the student movement assumed an immediate importance for the radical left—if the students would follow orders. The student Social Democrats in Saint Petersburg formed a United Social Democratic Organization of Saint Petersburg Students and reported to the city party committee that the October skhodki showed that enough students were in a fighting mood to make large demonstrations possible.^[135] The problem, as has been seen, was to keep the students at the beck and call of a city Social Demo-

[133] Many years later, in exile, V. A. Maklakov, a prominent member of the "moderate" wing of the Kadet party, bitterly denounced Osvobozhdenie's line on the student movement (Vlast'i obshchestvennost'na zakate staroi Rossii [Paris, 1936], pp. 182–187).

[134] I follow here the interpretation of John L. H. Keep, The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia (Oxford, 1963).

[135] "Otchët ob" edinennoi sotsial-demokraticheskoi organizatsii studentov SanktaPeterburga," Tretii s"ezd RSDRP Aprel'-Mai 1905: Protokoly (Moscow, 1959), p. 561.

cratic organization to which they felt no particular allegiance. But the latter, having made little impact upon the capital's working class, kept putting back the date of the proposed demonstrations.

By the middle of November the student Social Democrats, afraid that their constant appeals for restraint were wearing thin, called a demonstration on their own initiative. The demonstration was scheduled for 18 November, called off, then rescheduled. A key question was whether workers would attend. The student Social Democrats were divided on this issue. After all, it was precisely against the idea of purely student-based demonstrations and actions that the coalition council and the student Social Democrats had been lobbying since September. At any rate, the police had ample warning. By the day of the demonstration, furthermore, the continual changes in plan had left everyone thoroughly confused.^[136]

No workers attended the 28 November demonstration, which ended in complete failure. At 12:30 P.M. about a hundred and fifty students unfurled a red flag in Kazan Square and began singing revolutionary songs. Almost immediately, mounted police rushed out of the adjoining city Duma building and began beating the students. The police quickly arrested most of the demonstrators and scattered the rest.^[137]

The next day more than two thousand students gathered at a skhodka in the university to protest the beatings. But this spontaneous expression of collective anger only served as another reminder of the innate tension between the student movement and the attempts of the coalition council to harness its energy for particular ends. After all, the decision of the Radicals at the beginning of the academic year to join the coalition council meant that practical control of the student movement had passed into the hands of the student Social Democrats. But they too had little to show for their efforts and had certainly discovered how difficult it was to implement the decisions of the Odessa conference. Early in the fall they had barely succeeded in keeping the student body from engaging in independent protests against the government, and they soon found that they risked losing control of the student movement unless they agreed to some action. The student Social Democrats got little help from the city party organization, and the failure of the November dem-

[136] Ibid. For a Menshevik view, see N. Cherevanin (pseud. of F. A. Lipkin), "Dvizhenie intelligentsii," in L. Martov, ed., Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii (Saint Petersburg, 1910), vol. 2, part 2, p. 162. Cherevanin emphasizes the independence of the student movement in the autumn of 1904. See also "Na zare 1905ovo goda," Krasnaia Letopis', no. 2 (1925).

[137] Voitinskii, Gody pobed i porazhenii, pp. 28–30.

onstration led to the collapse of the United Social Democratic Student Organization in Saint Petersburg. As a result, the organization would play little part in the hectic development of the student movement that followed Bloody Sunday.^[138]

As in Saint Petersburg, the political crisis in other parts of Russia confronted a student movement searching for answers to the dilemmas of student Radicalism. Student Radicals had found the Odessa conference recommendations unsatisfactory. But, as in Saint Petersburg, the fact that the studenchestvo no longer enjoyed its former near-monopoly on visible urban protest caused psychological and practical problems for the Radicals. Therefore, in most cases the student Radicals did not contest the rise of the coalition councils. The party groups had not found directing these councils to be an easy task. In any case, the majority of students maintained their attitude of mostly passive opposition to the regime without taking any steps toward explicit affiliation with a political party. As the Social Revolutionary student group at Odessa University noted in a pamphlet of November 1904:

As a result of last year's [Odessa conference] a new organization, the coalition council composed of Social Democrats, Social Revolutionaries, and Radicals, replaced the old United Council which had been based on the zemliachestva . As a result the zemliachestva members who were not members of the political groups felt excluded [from the coalition council] and had little chance to influence student affairs. The lack of any organization for Radical students who were not members of the party groups left a strong imprint on last year's student movement in our university. The majority of students did not know what was happening . . . or what goal to strive for. The proclamations of the coalition committee did not satisfy the majority of Radical students. . . . They did not like the role of silent spectators; they demonstrated a perfectly justifiable wish to discuss what was going on. They wanted to direct matters themselves. But there was no satisfactory framework for the Radical students. At present this problem is especially acute.. . [Nonparty students] have nowhere to turn. And all the while there is a pressing need for solidarity, for common action. . . . We feel paralyzed.^[139]

[138] The student Social Democrats, in their report to the third congress of the RSDRP, stated that "internal arguments made it impossible for the organizations to exercise a cohesive influence on the student movement of January and February [1905]. In each institution of higher education, the Social Democratic student group acted by itself" ("Otchët ob"edinennoi," p. 561). Gusiatnikov, however, maintains that the student Social Democrats directed and controlled the student response to Bloody Sunday, all the while following the orders of the city Social Democratic Committee (Revoliutsionnoe studencheskoe, pp. 140–141). This assertion seems erroneous.

[139] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 196, l. 296.

Some students, convinced that the student movement could never overcome its inherent limitations, decided to abandon it in favor of an exclusive commitment to the regular revolutionary parties. One of these students was Mark Vishniak, who began the 1904–1905 academic year as a course representative on Moscow University's United Council. A few months later he decided to leave the student movement. "My experience convinced me," he recalled, "that the student movement was going in the right direction, but it was too amorphous, too undefined. It included too many different elements. In order to wage an effective struggle against the autocracy a large degree of unity was needed, as well as more agreement on the tactics and goals of struggle. [As opposed to the student movement] the political parties offered this. Many [other] students reached the same conclusion."^[140]

Of course, only a small minority followed Vishniak on the road to open revolutionary commitment. The very spontaneity and amorphousness of the student movement, which Vishniak labeled its major weakness, struck such observers as Struve as a source of its strength. Difficult to direct and control, the student movement was by the same token hard to destroy.

The pattern of student protest elsewhere in the fall of 1904 showed striking parallels to Saint Petersburg. In Moscow the first major outbreak of student unrest occurred on 15 October 1904, when students seeing off classmates to the front were suddenly assaulted at the Iaroslavl' station by railway porters and troops who seemed to associate student uniforms with lack of patriotism. The next day, after Professor Kliuchevskii finished his always popular history lectures, many students stayed in the hall and held a skhodka to discuss the incident. They soon left the university and marched up Nikitskaia Street singing the "Marseillaise" and yelling anti-war and anti-government slogans. Some students tried to march to nearby factories and rally workers to their cause, but they were headed off by police. After some beatings and a few arrests the demonstration broke up, but it made a marked impression on the Moscow student body. According to Osvobozbdenie, the "demonstration was completely unplanned yet was a total success despite its lack of organization."^[141]

The student party groups, both the Social Democrats and the Social

[140] Vishniak, Dan' proshlomu, p. 98.

[141] "Studencheskaia manifestatsiia v Moskve," Osvobozhdenie, no. 59 (1904); see also TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 8.

Revolutionaries, expressed their opposition to the unplanned demonstration and asked the Moscow students to refrain from further protests until they gave the signal.^[142] At this time a United Council based on the zemliachestva was still the major student organization in Moscow University; as yet there was no coalition council. The United Council called a skhodka for 20 October to discuss the Iaroslavl' station incident, but the idea met with strong opposition from the Social Revolutionary and Social Democrat student groups.^[143] Unwilling to contest with the political groups any longer for the leadership of the student movement, on 23 October the United Council called for the establishment of a coalition council and issued a proclamation challenging the party groups to prove that they could in fact give the student movement leadership and direction. The abdication of the student Radicals from the leadership of the student movement was occurring in Moscow, as it had elsewhere.

During November the new coalition council in Moscow University devoted its main efforts to making sure that student demonstrations would not take place without its prior approval. When the news reached Moscow of the brutal suppression of the 28 November demonstration in Saint Petersburg, the student Social Revolutionary group called a skhodka for 1 December and asked the Social Revolutionary town committee to give the students permission at last to organize a major street demonstration. The committee called for a demonstration on 5 December, and the student Social Democrats reluctantly went along.^[144]

As in Saint Petersburg, the workers stayed away and it was mostly students who assembled on Tverskoi Bul'var and began to march toward the home of the Moscow governor-general. Vishniak recalled, "I didn't pay much attention to the proclamation. In fact I had no idea that a Social Revolutionary committee even existed. . . . But the call for a public expression of 'professional' solidarity with my fellow students in Saint Petersburg made me respond. I decided to go to the demonstration."^[145] Before they could reach their destination, the demonstrators were surrounded by squads of police and Cossacks who pressed the trapped crowd against the locked doors of the large Filippov bakery. Ac-

[142] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 35.

[143] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 45. It is important to note that one reason why the resolutions of the Odessa conference were not popular in Moscow was the absence from the conference of any delegate from Moscow University. See "Nashe znamia," in BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, no. 1238.

[144] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 50; Gusiatnikov, Revoliutsionnoe studencheskoe, p. 135.

[145] Vishniak, Dan' proshlomu, p. 92.

cording to one eyewitness, the bakers joined the police in attacking anyone in a student uniform.^[146]

The Moscow studenchestvo reacted swiftly to a traditional issue—police brutality against students. On 7 December a large skhodka at Moscow University voted to strike until at least after the Christmas vacation. The students asked the faculty to support them. In a major break with the traditions of the Russian professoriate, the teaching staff strongly protested the police action and tried to shield the participants of the 7 December skhodka from police reprisals. (The faculty response will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 5.) The faculty council elected a commission of sixteen professors who urged a faculty boycott of the professors' disciplinary court. In accepting the committee's recommendations on how to handle the 7 December skhodka, the Moscow Faculty Council took the unprecedented step of declaring that any reform of the universities depended on general political reforms in the country.^[147]

For the first time, the younger faculty emerged as an organized independent force in the university, a fact that impressed and frightened the curator of the Moscow Educational District. On 11 December more than a hundred junior faculty members signed a statement declaring their conviction that "normal academic life is possible only if the whole political structure is reconstructed on the basis of personal inviolability, freedom of conscience, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, all guaranteed by the participation of popular representatives in the legislative process."^[148] The emergence of the junior faculty occurred in provincial universities as well.

The December events in Moscow University serve as an important reminder of the essential autonomy of the student movement in the fall of 1904 and the persistence of traditional patterns of student response despite the changing political situation in the country and recurrent attempts to integrate the student movement with party differentiation as a new organizational factor in Russian society. The basic tension between studenchestvo and party group reflected, perhaps, a more general tension in the wider society between traditional forms of social definition

[146] An excellent eyewitness account of the demonstration is found in BMGU, f. V. I. Orlova, 5 dt., no. 32. See also the report of Moscow curator P. A. Nekrasov to V. G. Glazov in TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 52.

[147] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 88.

[148] TsGIA, f. 733, op. 152, d. 173, l. 80; a very useful survey of senior and junior faculty response in Ministry of Education VUZy can be found in the Georgievskii report "Bezporiadki."

(estate, professional group) and the rise of newer forms of self-definition, epitomized by the political parties.

The 7 December skhodka was the biggest student action in the fall of 1904 and it showed that the studenchestvo responded better to traditional calls for solidarity than to party appeals. Only a small minority of students had demonstrated on the fifth, but the student body and faculty rallied to their cause after hearing of the police beatings.

Elsewhere—in Kiev, Kazan, Odessa, Tomsk—the students showed the same pattern of growing interest in politics, oppositional resolutions at skhodki, and a stubborn passivity in the face of the efforts of student party groups to organize the student movement. As was the case in the capitals, a significant development became apparent: the growing reluctance of the professoriate to cooperate with the Ministry of Education in disciplining recalcitrant students.