In 1905, the Moscow armed uprising took place under the leadership of the Moscow Committee of the Bolsheviks. It grew out of the general strike. Barricade battles took place in all districts of Moscow, especially on Presnya. Brutally suppressed by the tsarist troops.

At the barricades of Krasnaya Presnya. December 1905.

The sky was engulfed in an ominous glow of fire. Showered with a hail of bullets and shells, Presnya burned - the last stronghold of the insurgent Moscow workers. There was a fierce battle here. Cannons roared muffledly, the crackle of rifle shots did not stop, blood stains reddened on the snow. The tsarist troops stormed house after house, quarter after quarter, without trial or investigation cracking down on those who for 9 days, with weapons in their hands, asserted their right to a better life.

The December armed uprising became the culmination of the revolution, its pinnacle. The armed struggle between the revolutionary people and the government, as Lenin emphasized, inevitably followed from the whole course of events. By the end of 1905, the strike as a means of struggle had already exhausted itself. Here, the fatigue of the proletariat (especially in St. Petersburg), and the consolidation of government forces, and the betrayal of the liberal bourgeoisie, which sought to "curl up" the revolution as soon as possible, had an effect. That is why the November strikes of 1905 were already immeasurably weaker than the October strike and did not bring the expected results. The fate of the autocracy could only be decided by a nationwide armed uprising, on the preparation of which the Bolsheviks worked hard from the very beginning of the revolution.

Shortly after the Third Congress of the RSDLP, the Combat Technical Group under the Central Committee of the Party launched its activities. Members of the group organized the manufacture of explosives and bombs, bought weapons abroad and delivered them to Russia. Under the local Bolshevik committees, combat and military organizations were also created, which formed workers' squads and carried out work in the troops.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who returned in November 1905 from Switzerland to St. Petersburg, paid great attention to the military-technical preparation of the uprising. As N. K. Krupskaya later recalled, he not only thoroughly studied at that time everything that K. Marx and F. Engels wrote about the revolution and uprising, but also read many special books on military art, comprehensively considering the issues of organizing the upcoming armed uprising against the autocracy.

The workers of Moscow were also preparing for an uprising. At the beginning of December 1905, there were about 2,000 armed and about 4,000 unarmed combatants in Moscow. And although the organizational preparations for the uprising were still far from complete, the Moscow Bolsheviks decided to start a general political strike on December 7 and then turn it into an armed uprising. This decision was explained by the fact that from the end of November the government went over to an open attack on the proletariat. The Petersburg Soviet of Workers' Deputies was arrested, and the struggle against the strike movement intensified. Under these conditions, further delay in the uprising threatened to demoralize the revolutionary forces. That is why the proletariat of Moscow, where at that time the situation was more favorable for a decisive clash with the autocracy than in St. Petersburg, was the first to start the uprising. In the appeal of the Moscow Soviet written by the Bolsheviks “To all workers, soldiers and citizens”, published on the first day of the strike, it was said: “The revolutionary proletariat can no longer endure the abuse and crimes of the tsarist government and declares a decisive and merciless war on it! .. Everything is at stake! the future of Russia: life or death, freedom or slavery!.. Feel free to fight, comrade workers, soldiers and citizens!”

On December 10, the streets of Moscow were covered with barricades. The strike developed into an armed uprising, the main focus of which was Presnya.

During the days of the uprising, Presnya, where the Prokhorov Textile Manufactory (the famous Trekhgorka), the Shmit furniture factory, the sugar factory, which now bears the name of the worker Fyodor Mantulin, who died in December 1905, and other enterprises, was located, became a real revolutionary fortress. The strongest barricades were erected near the Zoological Garden, at Presnenskaya Zastava and in the Prokhorovka area. Some streets were even mined.

There were thousands who wanted to fight, but the revolutionaries did not have enough weapons. Therefore, the combatants were on duty in shifts. Mostly they had revolvers, much less often - guns and rifles. In addition, many were armed with various edged weapons.

Of course, all this could seem like a toy in comparison with the cannons and machine guns of government troops. And yet the mood among the combatants, especially in the first days of the uprising, was joyful and cheerful.

History has preserved for us relatively few names of the heroes of the Presnensky barricades. Among them are F. Mantulin, N. Afanasiev and I. Volkov from the sugar factory, M. Nikolaev and I. Karasev from the Shmit factory, who were shot by the tsarist punishers. But all eyewitnesses of the events unanimously noted that in December 1905 the Moscow workers showed real mass heroism. And they were invariably led by the Bolsheviks, who proved by deed that they were the real leaders of the revolutionary people.

Z. Ya. Litvin-Sedoy.

The head of the staff of the Presnensky workers was the Bolshevik Z. Ya. A member of the Moscow Committee of the Party, VL Shantser (Marat), who was arrested on December 7, did much to prepare the uprising.

M. S. Nikolaev - head of the combat squad of the Schmitt factory.

Women workers and teenagers actively participated in the struggle. On December 10, an episode took place on Presnya, about which Lenin later wrote with admiration. Hundreds of Cossacks rushed towards the demonstration of thousands of workers. And then two working girls who carried a red banner rushed across the Cossacks and shouted: “Kill us! We will not give up the banner alive!” The Cossacks were confused, their ranks trembled, and to the jubilant exclamations of the demonstrators, they turned back.

A real workers' republic was created on Presnya, headed by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. It had its own commandant's office, where the combatants brought suspicious persons they detained, a food committee that organized meals for the workers, a financial committee that helped the families of the strikers, a revolutionary tribunal that judged traitors and provocateurs.

Before the arrival of reinforcements from the capital, the Moscow governor-general Dubasov could not cope with the rebels. He had less than 1,500 reliable soldiers at his disposal, who held only the center of the city (6,000 soldiers hesitated and were locked up in the barracks on Dubasov's orders). Major battles took place on the Garden Ring, Serpukhovskaya and Lesnaya streets, on Kalanchevskaya (now Komsomolskaya) square. However, these days the Nikolaevskaya railway, which connected Moscow with St. Petersburg, did not go on strike. On December 15, the Semyonovsky Guards Regiment arrived from St. Petersburg and the government units went on the offensive.

Under these conditions, the Moscow Soviet decided to stop the armed struggle and the strike in an organized way.

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On December 16, the headquarters of the Presnensky military squads issued an appeal to the workers, as if summing up the results of the uprising. "Comrade warriors! - it said. - We, the working class of enslaved Russia, declared war on tsarism, capital, landowners ... Presnya dug in. She alone fell to the lot of still facing the enemy ... The whole world is looking at us. Some - with curses, others - with deep sympathy. Loners flow to our aid. Druzhinnik has become a great word, and wherever there is a revolution, it will also be there, this word, plus Presnya, which is a great monument to us. The enemy is afraid of Presnya. But he hates us, surrounds us, sets fire to us and wants to crush us... We started. We are finishing. On Saturday night, dismantle the barricades and everyone disperse far away. The enemy will not forgive us his shame. Blood, violence and death will follow on our heels.

But this is nothing. The future belongs to the working class. Generation after generation in all countries on the experience of Presnya will learn perseverance ... We are invincible! Long live the struggle and victory of the workers!”

On December 18, the combatants stopped resistance. The December armed uprising was defeated. The workers still lacked experience, weapons, and organization. Serious flaws were in the combat leadership of the uprising, which clearly lacked a carefully developed plan of offensive operations. It was not possible to attract the army to the side of the revolution. Finally, despite the fact that, following Moscow, uprisings broke out in the Donbass and Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinoslav and Kharkov, in Siberia and the Caucasus, the armed struggle did not take on an all-Russian character in December 1905, and this greatly facilitated the position of tsarism.

DECEMBER ARMED UPRISING IN MOSCOW (10-18.XII, 1905)

And yet, answering Plekhanov, who threw out the now infamous phrase: “We shouldn’t have taken up arms,” Lenin said: on the contrary, it was necessary to take up arms more resolutely and energetically, explaining to the masses the need for the most fearless and merciless armed struggle. “By the December struggle,” he wrote, “the proletariat left the people one of those legacies that are capable of being, ideologically and politically, a beacon for the work of several generations.”

More about the December Uprising of 1905.

December 1905. There are fights on the streets of Moscow, blood is shed. The Moscow armed uprising was the culmination of the first Russian revolution and a foreshadowing of 1917.

On December 4, after receiving news of the arrest of the Petersburg Soviet, the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies discussed the question of a political strike. The next day, the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP approved a plan to begin on December 7 at 12 noon a general political strike with the aim of converting it into an armed uprising. It was about the practical implementation of the tactical guidelines of the Bolsheviks. On December 6, this decision was supported by the deputies of the Moscow Soviet. On December 7, most of Moscow's enterprises went on strike: more than 100,000 people stopped working. The specific demands of the strikers were mainly of an economic nature. Governor-General F. V. Dubasov introduced the position of emergency protection in Moscow. By evening, the leadership of the strike was arrested.
The next day the strike became general. Factories, factories, transport, government agencies, shops, printing houses did not work in the city. Only one newspaper, Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, was published, in which a call for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the autocracy was published. On the outskirts of the city, the formation and arming of workers' combat squads was going on. On December 9, police and troops surrounded the building of the Fiedler school near Chistye Prudy, where a meeting of combatants was taking place, and in response to revolver shots, subjected it to artillery fire. This event was the signal for an armed uprising.
Within the boundaries of the Garden Ring, the erection of barricades began, in which a variety of urban strata participated. Barricades served as an obstacle to the movement of artillery and cavalry. Vigilantes attacked the Cossack patrols, shot at the police. Dubasov had few reliable units at his disposal, the soldiers of the Moscow garrison were disarmed and locked in barracks. By using artillery to destroy the barricades, the troops and police were able to push the fighting squads out of the city center by December 14. The Semyonovsky Guards Regiment under the command of G. A. Ming was transferred to Moscow along the working Nikolaevskaya road. Other reliable parts arrived at the same time. In the order for the regiment, Ming instructed "to act mercilessly" and "to have no arrests." On December 16, residents began to dismantle the barricades. The Moscow Soviet decided on December 18 to stop the armed struggle and the strike.
However, part of the fighting squads continued to resist, the center of which was Presnya, where the headquarters of the uprising, headed by the Bolshevik 3. Ya. Litvin-Sedym, was located. The actions of the troops against the combatants were led by Ming, who gave the order to use artillery. On December 19, an armed uprising in Moscow was suppressed. During the uprising, 424 people were killed, mostly "random persons", as the official press reported. Liberal and socialist publications rated Ming's actions as a massacre that went beyond "restoring calm." A few months later, General Ming was killed by a Socialist-Revolutionary terrorist in front of his wife and daughter.

The defeat of the December armed uprising in Moscow, the armed uprisings of the workers, which at the same time took place in Rostov-on-Don, Krasnoyarsk, Chita, Kharkov, Gorlovka, Sormov and Motovilikha (Perm), meant the end of the period when an approximate balance was maintained between government and revolutionary forces. Most of the political parties condemned the Bolshevik policy of armed insurrection, recognizing it as adventurous and provocative. However, Lenin believed that, having been defeated, the workers gained invaluable experience, which "is of world significance for all proletarian revolutions."

History reference

In late November - early December 1905, the political balance between the revolutionary and government forces, which arose after the adoption of the Manifesto on October 17, 1905, was violated, the authorities went on the offensive: in Moscow, the leaders of the Postal and Telegraph Union and the postal and telegraph strike, members of the Union employees of the control of the Moscow-Brest railway, the newspapers Novaya Zhizn, Nachalo, Svobodny Narod, Russkaya Gazeta, etc. were closed down. time to raise an armed uprising; calls to speak were published in the Vperyod newspaper, sounded at rallies in the Aquarium Theater, in the Hermitage Garden, at the Land Survey Institute and the Technical School, at factories and plants.

Rumors about the upcoming performance caused a massive (up to half of the composition of the enterprises) flight of workers from Moscow: from the end of November, many left secretly, without calculation and personal belongings (the Dobrov and Nabgolts plant, the factories of Rybakov and G. Brocard, a number of printing houses; 70 - 80 people out of 950, 150 people a day left at the Prokhorovskaya manufactory). On December 6, a mass (6-10 thousand people) prayer service was held on Red Square on the occasion of the namesake of Emperor Nicholas II. In early December, unrest began in the troops of the Moscow garrison, on December 2, the 2nd Rostov Grenadier Regiment set out. The soldiers demanded the dismissal of spares, an increase in the daily allowance, better nutrition, they refused to carry out police service, to salute officers. Strong fermentation also took place in other parts of the garrison (in the grenadier 3rd Pernovsky, 4th Nesvizh, 7th Samogitsky, 221st Trinity-Sergius infantry regiments, in sapper battalions), among firefighters, prison guards and policemen.

However, by the beginning of the uprising, thanks to the partial satisfaction of the demands of the soldiers, the unrest in the garrison subsided. On December 4, the question of starting a strike was raised at a meeting of the Moscow Soviet (it was decided to ascertain the mood of the workers); On December 5, the same question was discussed by the conference of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, which approved the plan to begin on December 7 at 12 noon a general political strike with the aim of converting it into an armed uprising. On December 6, this decision was supported by the deputies of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, as well as the All-Russian Conference of Railway Workers, which was taking place in Moscow these days. At noon on December 7, the whistle of the Brest railway workshops announced the beginning of the strike (Presnensky Val Street, 27; memorial plaque). The Federal Committee (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks), the Federal Council (Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries), the Information Bureau (Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, the Peasant and Railway Unions), the Coalition Council of Combat Squads (Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries), the Combat organization of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP. The organizers of the uprising, St. Volsky (A.V. Sokolov), N.A. Rozhkov, V.L. Shantser ("Marat"), M.F. Vladimirsky, M.I. Vasiliev-Yuzhin, E.M. Yaroslavsky and others. On December 7, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., most of the enterprises of Moscow went on strike, about 100 thousand workers stopped working. Many enterprises were "removed" from work - groups of workers from striking factories and plants stopped work at other enterprises, sometimes by prior agreement, and often against the wishes of the workers.

The most common were the requirements of an 8-10-hour working day, a 15-40% salary supplement, polite treatment, etc.; the introduction of the "Regulations on the Deputy Corps" - a ban on the dismissal of deputies of Moscow and district Soviets of Workers' Deputies, their participation in the hiring and dismissal of workers, etc.; allowing outsiders free access to factory bedrooms, removal from police enterprises, etc. On the same day, Moscow Governor-General F.V. Dubasov introduced the Regulations of Emergency Security in Moscow. On the evening of December 7, members of the Federal Council, 6 delegates of the railway conference were arrested, the trade union of printers was crushed. On December 8, the strike became general, involving over 150,000 people. Factories, plants, printing houses, transport, government agencies, shops did not work in the city. Only one newspaper was published - Izvestia of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies, in which the appeal "To all workers, soldiers and citizens!" with a call for an armed uprising and the overthrow of the autocracy. The professional and political unions of medical workers, pharmacists, barristers, court employees, middle and lower city employees, the Moscow Union of Secondary School Workers, the Union of Unions, the Union of Equal Rights of Women, as well as the Moscow Department of the Central Bureau of the Constitutional Democratic parties. Only the Nikolaevskaya (now Oktyabrskaya) railway did not go on strike (on December 7, the Nikolaevsky railway station was occupied by troops). Members of combat squads attacked police posts. On the afternoon of December 9, there was an episodic gunfight in different parts of the city; in the evening, the police surrounded the rally in the Aquarium Garden, all the participants were searched, 37 people were arrested, but the combatants managed to escape; at the same time, the first serious armed clash took place: the troops fired on the school of I.I. Fidler, where the Socialist-Revolutionary combatants gathered and trained (113 people were arrested, weapons and ammunition were seized).

On the night of December 10, the construction of barricades began spontaneously and continued throughout the next day. At the same time, the decision to build barricades was made by the restored Federal Council, supported by the Social Revolutionaries. Barricades surrounded Moscow in three lines, separating the center from the outskirts. By the beginning of the uprising, there were 2,000 armed combatants in Moscow, 4,000 armed themselves during the struggle. The units pulled into the center of the city were cut off from the barracks. In remote areas, fenced off from the center by lines of barricades, fighting squads seized power into their own hands. This is how the “Simonovskaya Republic” arose in Simonovskaya Sloboda, which was ruled by the Soviet of Workers' Deputies.

The actions of the rebels on Presnya were led by the headquarters of the combat squads, headed by the Bolshevik Z.Ya. Litvin-Sedym; in the area, all police posts were removed and almost all police stations were liquidated, the maintenance of order was monitored by the district Council and the headquarters of military squads, which forced the bakers to bake bread for Presnya, and the merchants to trade; all wine shops, pubs and taverns were closed. On December 10, armed clashes began between combatants and troops, which escalated into fierce battles. Consolidated military detachment under the command of General S.E. Debesh, who was at the disposal of Dubasov, could not seize the situation, moreover, the overwhelming majority of the soldiers of the Moscow garrison turned out to be "unreliable", were disarmed and locked in the barracks. In the first days of the uprising, out of 15 thousand soldiers of the Moscow garrison, Dubasov was able to move only about 5 thousand people into battle (1350 infantry, 7 cavalry squadrons, 16 guns, 12 machine guns), as well as gendarmerie and police units. The troops were concentrated at the Manege and on Theater Square. From the center of the city, military units continuously moved through the streets throughout the day, firing at the barricades. Artillery was used both to destroy barricades and to fight individual groups of combatants. On December 11-13, barricades were constantly destroyed (but rebuilt), shelling of houses where combatants were located was carried out, there was a shootout between troops and combatants.

Fierce battles unfolded on Kalanchevskaya Square, where the combatants repeatedly attacked the Nikolaevsky railway station, trying to block the Moscow-Petersburg railway (a memorial plaque on the building of the Kazansky railway station); On December 12, reinforcements from the workers of the Lyubertsy and Kolomna plants, led by the driver, former non-commissioned officer, Socialist-Revolutionary A.V., arrived at the square by special trains. Ukhtomsky; fighting continued for several days; a small group of combatants managed to reach the Nikolaev railway through the ways of the Yaroslavl railway and dismantle the railway track. The administration of the factories of E. Tsindel, Mamontov, Prokhorov, printing houses I.D. provided support to the rebels with money and weapons. Sytin, Kushnerev Partnerships, jeweler Ya.N. Kreines, the family of the manufacturer N.P. Shmita, Prince G.I. Makaev, Prince S.I. Shakhovskaya and others. The middle urban strata supported the strike and the uprising; intellectuals, employees, students and students participated in the construction of barricades, provided food and lodging for the night to combatants.

The bureau of the Moscow branch of the Union of Medical Workers organized 40 flying medical teams and 21 points for the provision of medical care. The city duma obtained an order from Dubasov to stop the persecution of medical units, allowed the free supply of medicines from city warehouses. On December 13-14, the Duma adopted a resolution calling on the government to accelerate the progress of reforms; delay was regarded as the main cause of bloodshed. On December 12, with the permission of Dubasov, the police armed with revolvers and rubber sticks began to operate: the Black Hundreds - in the 1st section of the Khamovniki part (leaders - Duma vowel A.S. Shmakov, Prince N.S. Shcherbatov, manufacturer A.K. Zhiro (see article "K.O. Giro Sons"); from the exchange artel workers - on Ilyinka to protect banks (headed by A.I. Guchkov).

On December 12-13, shelling of Presnya began, on December 13 Sytin's printing house was burned down, on December 14 almost the entire city center was cleared of barricades. The number of police officers was increased from 600 to 1000 people On December 15-16, the Life Guards 1st Yekaterinoslavsky, grenadiers 5th Kyiv, 6th Tauride, 12th Astrakhan, as well as the Life Guards Semenovsky, 16th infantry Ladoga and 5 Cossack regiments, which provided Dubasov with absolute superiority over the rebels. On December 15, banks, a stock exchange, commercial and industrial offices, shops opened in the center, the Russkiy Listok newspaper began to appear, and some factories and factories began to work. On December 16-19, work began at most enterprises (individual factories were on strike until December 20 - the factories of A. Gubner, the Moscow Lace Factory Partnership, until December 21 - in the Yauza part, until December 29 - the Blok mechanical plant, the printing houses of the Kushnerev Partnership, etc.) . On December 16, the townspeople began to dismantle the barricades.

At the same time, the Moscow Soviet, the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP and the Council of Combat Squads decided on December 18 to stop the armed struggle and the strike; The Moscow Soviet issued a leaflet calling for an organized end to the uprising. On December 16, a punitive expedition was sent along the Kazan Railway (commander - Colonel N.K. Riman), for 5 days they dealt with workers at the stations of Sorting, Perovo, Lyubertsy, Ashitkovo, Golutvino. However, part of the combatants moved to Presnya, where they continued to resist; the most combat-ready squads of about 700 people were concentrated here (weapons - about 300 revolvers, rifles, hunting rifles). Punitive units under the command of Colonel G.A. were sent here. Mine; The Semyonovites stormed Presnya from the side of the Gorbaty Bridge and captured the bridge. As a result of the shelling, the Schmitt factory, the barricades near the Zoo were destroyed, and a number of houses were set on fire.

On the morning of December 18, the headquarters of the fighting squads of Presnya ordered the combatants to stop fighting, many of them left on the ice across the Moscow River. On the morning of December 19, an offensive began on the Prokhorovka Manufactory and the neighboring Danilovsky Sugar Factory, after shelling, the soldiers captured both enterprises. On December 20, Colonel Min personally "tried" the captured combatants - 14 people were shot in the yard of the Prokhorovskaya manufactory, they also shot at those leaving along the Moscow River. During the uprising, 680 people were injured (including military and policemen - 108, combatants - 43, the rest - "random persons"), 424 people were killed (military and policemen - 34, combatants - 84); the largest number of dead and wounded (170 people) - on Presnya. 260 people were arrested in Moscow, 240 in the Moscow province; 800 workers of the Prokhorovskaya manufactory, 700 workers and employees of the Kazan railway, 800 workers of the Mytishchi car-building plant, as well as workers of other enterprises in Moscow and the Moscow province, were dismissed. November 28 - December 11, 1906 in the Moscow Court of Justice held a trial of 68 participants in the defense of Presnya; 9 people were sentenced to various terms of hard labor, 10 people - to imprisonment, 8 - to exile. Many participants in the December battles are buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery. The memory of the Revolution of 1905 is enshrined in the names of a number of streets in the Presnya area; a monument was opened on Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava Square in 1981.

Monument to the Heroes-combatants, participants in the barricade battles
on Krasnaya Presnya
Konyushkovskaya street, Krasnopresnenskaya metro station
Opened on December 22, 1981 next to the Humpback Bridge.
Sculptor D. B. Ryabichev.
Architect V. A. Nesterov.
Bronze, granite.

The December uprising of 1905 in Moscow is the name of the mass riots that was fixed in Soviet historiography (in the documents of that time it was called the "mutiny") that took place in Moscow on December 7 (20) -18 (31), 1905; climax of the 1905 Revolution.

In October 1905, a strike began in Moscow, the purpose of which was to achieve economic concessions and political freedom. The strike swept the whole country and developed into the All-Russian October political strike. On October 12-18, over 2 million people were on strike in various industries.

By November 23, the Moscow censorship committee initiated criminal prosecutions against the editors of liberal newspapers: Vechernyaya Pochta, Golos Zhizn, Novosti dniy, and against the social-democratic newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda.

On November 27 (December 10), the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Borba was published in Moscow, funds for which were allocated by the publisher Sergei Skyrmunt. The newspaper was devoted entirely to the revolutionary movement of the working class. A total of 9 issues were published; the last issue came out with an appeal "To all workers, soldiers and toilers!", Calling for a general political strike and armed uprising.

In December, criminal prosecutions were initiated against the editors of the Bolshevik newspapers Borba and Vperyod. During the December days, the editor of the liberal newspaper Russkoye Slovo, as well as the editors of the satirical magazines Sting and Shrapnel, were persecuted.

Manifesto of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies "To All Workers, Soldiers and Citizens!", Izvestia MSRD newspaper.
On December 5, 1905, the first Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies gathered at the Fidler School (Makarenko Street, house No. 5/16) (according to other sources, a meeting of the Moscow City Conference of the Bolsheviks was held), which decided to declare a general political strike on December 7 and transfer it to an armed uprising. Fiedler's school has long been one of the centers in which revolutionary organizations gathered, and rallies often took place there.

On December 7, the strike began. In Moscow, the largest enterprises stopped, electricity was cut off, trams stopped, shops closed. The strike covered about 60% of Moscow plants and factories, technical staff and part of the employees of the Moscow City Duma joined it. At many large enterprises in Moscow, workers did not come to work. Rallies and meetings were held under the protection of armed squads. The most trained and well-armed squad was organized by Nikolai Schmit at his factory in Presnya.

The railway communication was paralyzed (only the Nikolaevskaya road to St. Petersburg operated, which was served by soldiers). From 4 p.m. the city was plunged into darkness, as the Council forbade lamplighters to light lanterns, many of which were also broken. In such a situation, on December 8, the Moscow Governor-General F.V. Dubasov declared a state of emergency in Moscow and the entire Moscow province.

Despite the abundance of threatening external signs, the mood of the Muscovites was rather cheerful and joyful.
“Just a holiday. Everywhere there are masses of people, workers are walking in a cheerful crowd with red flags, Countess E. L. Kamarovskaya wrote in her diary. - The mass of youth! Every now and then one hears: “Comrades, a general strike!” Thus, they are as if congratulating everyone on the greatest joy ... The gates are closed, the lower windows are boarded up, the city seems to have died out, and look at the street - it lives actively, lively.

On the night of December 7-8, Virgil Shantser (Marat) and Mikhail Vasiliev-Yuzhin, members of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, were arrested. Fearing unrest in parts of the Moscow garrison, Governor-General Fyodor Dubasov ordered that part of the soldiers be disarmed and not let out of the barracks.

The first clash, so far without bloodshed, took place on December 8 in the evening in the Aquarium Garden (near the current Triumphal Square near the Mossovet Theater). The police tried to disperse the rally of many thousands by disarming the vigilantes present at it. However, she acted very indecisively, and most of the combatants managed to escape by jumping over a low fence. Several dozen of those arrested were released the next day.

However, on the same night, rumors of a mass execution of protesters prompted several SR militants to commit the first terrorist attack: having made their way to the building of the security department in Gnezdnikovsky Lane, they threw two bombs into its windows. One person was killed and several others were wounded.

On the evening of December 9, about 150-200 vigilantes, gymnasium students, students, and young students gathered at the school of I. I. Fidler. A plan was discussed to capture the Nikolaevsky railway station in order to cut off communication between Moscow and St. Petersburg. After the meeting, the vigilantes wanted to go and disarm the police. By 9 p.m., Fiedler's house was surrounded by troops who issued an ultimatum to surrender. After the troops refused to surrender, artillery shelling of the house was carried out. Only then did the combatants surrender, having lost three people killed and 15 wounded. Then some of those who surrendered were hacked to death by lancers.

The order was given by the cornet Sokolovsky, and if Rachmaninov had not stopped the massacre, hardly anyone had survived. Nevertheless, many Fidlerites were injured, and about 20 people were hacked to death. A small part of the combatants managed to escape. Subsequently, 99 people were put on trial, but most of them were acquitted. I. I. Fidler himself was also arrested and, after spending several months in Butyrka, he hurried to sell the house and go abroad. The destruction of the Fiedler school by government troops marked the transition to an armed uprising. At night and during the next day, Moscow was covered with hundreds of barricades. The armed uprising began.

At 9 pm Fiedler's house was surrounded by troops. The lobby was immediately occupied by the police and gendarmes. There was a wide staircase going up. The combatants were located on the upper floors - in total there were four floors in the house. From overturned and piled one on top of the other school desks and benches, a barricade was arranged at the bottom of the stairs. The officer offered the barricaded men to surrender. One of the leaders of the squad, standing on the top landing of the stairs, several times asked those standing behind him if they wanted to surrender - and each time he received a unanimous answer: “We will fight to the last drop of blood! It's better to die together!"

The warriors from the Caucasian squad were especially excited. The officer asked all the women to leave. Two sisters of mercy wanted to leave, but the combatants advised them not to do so. “They will tear you apart in the street anyway!” “You must leave,” the officer said to two young schoolgirls. “No, we are fine here too,” they answered, laughing. “We will shoot you all, you better leave,” the officer joked. “But we are in the sanitary detachment - who will bandage the wounded?” “Nothing, we have our own Red Cross,” the officer assured. The policemen and dragoons laughed.

Overheard a telephone conversation with the Security Department. “Negotiations are negotiations, but we’ll cut everyone down anyway.” At 10.30 they reported that they had brought guns and pointed them at the house. But no one believed that they would begin to act. They thought that the same thing that happened yesterday in the Aquarium would repeat itself - in the end, everyone would be released. “We give you a quarter of an hour to think,” said the officer. “If you don’t give up, we’ll start shooting exactly in a quarter of an hour.” The soldiers and all the police went out into the street. A few more desks were piled on top. Everyone got into place. Below are Mausers and rifles, above are Brownings and revolvers. The sanitary detachment is located on the fourth floor. It was terribly quiet, but everyone was in high spirits. Everyone was excited, but silent. Ten minutes have passed.

The signal horn sounded three times - and a blank salvo from the guns rang out. There was a terrible commotion on the fourth floor. Two sisters of mercy fainted, some orderlies became ill - they were soldered with water. But soon everyone recovered. The guards were calm. Not even a minute passed - and shells flew with a terrible crack into the brightly lit windows of the fourth floor. The windows rattled. Everyone tried to hide from the shells - they fell to the floor, crawled under the desks and crawled out into the corridor. Many were baptized. The guards began to shoot at random.

Five bombs were thrown from the fourth floor - only three of them exploded. One of them killed the very officer who negotiated and joked with the female students. Three combatants were wounded, one was killed. After the seventh salvo, the guns fell silent. A soldier appeared from the street with a white flag and a new offer to surrender. The head of the squad again began to ask who wants to surrender. The parliamentarian was told that they refused to surrender. During a 15-minute respite, I. I. Fidler walked up the stairs and begged the combatants: “For God's sake, don't shoot! Give up!" - The combatants answered him: - "Ivan Ivanovich, do not embarrass the public - leave, otherwise we will shoot you."

Fiedler went outside and begged the troops not to fire. The police officer approached him and with the words - "I need a little help from you" - shot him in the leg. Fidler fell, they took him away (he later remained lame for the rest of his life - this is well remembered by the Parisians, among whom I. I. Fidler lived, in exile, where he died). Cannons roared again and machine guns crackled. Shrapnel tore in the rooms. The house was hell. The shelling continued until midnight. Finally, seeing the futility of resistance - revolvers against cannons! sent two parliamentarians to tell the troops that they were surrendering.

When the parliamentarians went out into the street with a white flag, the firing stopped. Soon both returned and reported that the officer in command of the detachment had given his word of honor that they would no longer shoot, all those who had surrendered would be taken to the transit prison (Butyrki) and rewritten there. By the time of delivery, 130-140 people remained in the house. About 30 people, mostly workers from the railway squad and one soldier, who was among the combatants, managed to escape through the fence. First, the first large group came out - 80-100 people. The rest hurriedly broke the weapons so that the enemy would not get it - they struck with revolvers and rifles on the iron railing of the stairs. On the spot, 13 bombs, 18 rifles and 15 Brownings were later found by the police.

On December 10, the construction of barricades unfolded everywhere. The topography of the barricades was basically as follows: across Tverskaya Street (wire barriers); from Trubnaya Square to Arbat (Strastnaya Square, Bronnye Streets, B. Kozikhinsky Lane, etc.); along Sadovaya - from Sukharevsky Boulevard and Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street to Smolenskaya Square; along the line of Butyrskaya (Dolgorukovskaya, Lesnaya streets) and Dorogomilovskaya outposts; on the streets and alleys crossing these highways. Separate barricades were also built in other parts of the city, for example, in Zamoskvorechye, Khamovniki, and Lefortovo. The barricades, destroyed by the troops and the police, were actively restored until December 11.

Vigilantes, armed with foreign weapons, began to kill soldiers, policemen and officers. Robbery of warehouses and murders of ordinary inhabitants began. The revolutionaries drove the townspeople out into the street and forced them to build barricades. The Moscow authorities withdrew themselves from the fight against the uprising and did not provide any support to the army.

According to historian Anton Valdin, the number of armed combatants did not exceed 1000-1500 people. Using the tactics of a typical guerrilla war, they did not hold their positions, but quickly and sometimes chaotically moved from one outskirts to another. In addition, in a number of places, small mobile groups (flying squads) operated under the leadership of SR militants and a squad of Caucasian students formed on a national basis.

One of these groups, led by the Maximalist Socialist-Revolutionary Vladimir Mazurin, on December 15 carried out a demonstrative execution of the assistant chief of the Moscow detective police, 37-year-old A.I. Another squad was commanded by the sculptor Sergei Konenkov. The future poet Sergei Klychkov acted under his command. The militants attacked individual military posts and policemen (in total, according to official figures, more than 60 Moscow policemen were killed and wounded in December).

“At about 6 pm, a group of armed combatants appeared at Skvortsov’s house in Volkov Lane on Presnya ... a bell rang from the front door in Voiloshnikov’s apartment ... They began to shout from the stairs, threatening to break down the door and break in by force. Then Voiloshnikov himself ordered the door to be opened. Six people armed with revolvers burst into the apartment ...

Those who came read the verdict of the revolutionary committee, according to which Voiloshnikov was to be shot ... Weeping arose in the apartment, the children rushed to beg the revolutionaries for mercy, but they were adamant. They took Voiloshnikov out into the alley, where the sentence was carried out right next to the house... The revolutionaries, leaving the corpse in the alley, disappeared. The body of the deceased was picked up by the relatives.”
Newspaper "New time".

The fighting unfolded on Kudrinskaya Square, Arbat, Lesnaya Street, on Serpukhovskaya and Kalanchevskaya Squares, at the Red Gate.
MOSCOW, 10 December. Today the revolutionary movement is concentrated mainly on Tverskaya Street between Strastnaya Square and the Old Triumphal Gates. Here shots of guns and machine guns are heard. The movement concentrated here as early as midnight today, when the troops surrounded Fiedler's house in Lobkovsky Lane and captured the entire combat squad here, and another detachment of troops the rest of the guards of the Nikolaev station. The plan of the revolutionaries was, as they say, to

at dawn, capture the Nikolayevsky railway station and take over the communication with St. Petersburg, and then the fighting squad was to leave Fidler's house to take possession of the Duma building and the state bank and declare a provisional government. Today at 2 1/2 o'clock in the morning, two young people, driving in a reckless car along Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane, threw two bombs into the two-story building of the security department. There was a terrible explosion.

In the security department, the front wall was broken, part of the alley was demolished, and everything inside was torn apart. At the same time, the police officer, who had already died in the Ekaterininsky hospital, was seriously wounded, and the policeman and the lower rank of the infantry, who happened to be here, were killed. All the windows in the neighboring houses were shattered. The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, by special proclamations, announced an armed uprising at 6 pm, even all cab drivers were ordered to finish work by 6 o'clock. However, action began much earlier. At 3 1/2 p.m. the barricades at the Old Triumphal Gate were knocked down. With two weapons behind them, the troops passed through the whole of Tverskaya, broke down the barricades, cleared the street, and then fired guns at Sadovaya, where the defenders of the barricades fled.

The Executive Committee of the Council of Workers' Deputies forbade bakeries to bake white bread, since the proletariat needed only black bread, and today Moscow was without white bread. At about 10 pm, the troops dismantled all the barricades on Bronnaya. At 11 1/2 o'clock everything was quiet. The shooting stopped, only occasionally, patrols, circling the city, fired at the streets with blank volleys to frighten the crowd.

On December 10, it became clear to the rebels that they had failed to fulfill their tactical plan: to squeeze the center into the Garden Ring, moving towards it from the outskirts. The districts of the city turned out to be disunited and the control of the uprising passed into the hands of the district Soviets and representatives of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP in these areas. In the hands of the rebels were: the area of ​​​​Bronny streets, which was defended by student squads, Georgians, Presnya, Miusy, Simonovo.

The city-wide uprising fragmented, turning into a series of district uprisings. The rebels urgently needed to change tactics, techniques and methods of street fighting. In this regard, on December 11, in the newspaper Izvestia Mosk. S.R.D.” No. 5, "Advice to the insurgent workers" was published:
» basic rule - do not act in a crowd. Operate in small detachments of three or four people. Let only there be more of these detachments, and let each of them learn to attack quickly and quickly disappear. moreover, do not occupy fortified places. The army will always be able to take them or simply damage them with artillery. Let our fortresses be passage yards from which it is easy to shoot and just leave.

This tactic had some success, but the insurgents' lack of centralized control and a unified uprising plan, their low professionalism and the military-technical advantage of government troops put the rebel forces in a defensive position.

By December 12, most of the city, all stations, except for Nikolaevsky, were in the hands of the rebels. Government troops held only the center of the city [source not specified 286 days]. The most stubborn battles were fought in Zamoskvorechye (teams of the Sytin printing house, the Tsindel factory), in the Butyrsky district (the Miussky tram park, the Gobay factory under the control of P. M. Shchepetilnikov and M. P. Vinogradov), in the Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district (the so-called "Simonovskaya republic", a fortified self-governing working-class district in Simonovskaya Sloboda.

Of the representatives of the Dynamo plant, the Gan pipe-rolling plant and other plants (about 1000 workers in total), squads were made there, the police were expelled, the settlement was surrounded by barricades) and on Presnya. Presnya revolutionaries organized a hospital in the Biryukov baths. Old-timers recalled that in the intervals between battles, combatants were steaming there, defending the barricades that were built near the Humpback Bridge and near Kudrinskaya Square

MOSCOW, 12 December. Today, guerrilla warfare continues, but with less energy on the part of the revolutionaries. Whether they are tired, whether the revolutionary upsurge has fizzled out, or whether this is a new tactical maneuver - it is difficult to say, but today there is much less shooting. In the morning, some shops and stores opened, and traded in bread, meat and other provisions, but in the afternoon everything was closed, and the streets again took on an extinct appearance with shops boarded up tightly and steles knocked out from the concussion due to artillery cannonade in the windows.

The traffic on the streets is very weak. Volunteer militia, organized by the governor-general with the assistance of the “Union of Russian People,” began to work today. The militia operates under the direction of policemen; she began today to dismantle the barricades and to perform other police functions in three police stations. Gradually, this militia will be introduced in other areas throughout the city. The revolutionaries called this militia the Black Hundreds. Sytin's printing house on Valovaya Street burned down at dawn today. This printing house is a huge architecturally luxurious building overlooking three streets. With her cars, she was estimated at a million rubles.

Up to 600 vigilantes barricaded themselves in the printing house, mostly printing workers, armed with revolvers, bombs and a special kind of rapid-fire guns, which they call machine guns. To take armed combatants, the printing house was surrounded by all three types of weapons. They began to shoot back from the printing house and threw three bombs. Artillery bombarded the building with grenades. The combatants, seeing their situation as hopeless, set fire to the building in order to take advantage of the turmoil of the fire to leave. They succeeded. Almost all of them escaped through the neighboring Monetchikovsky Lane, but the building was all burned out, only the walls remained. The fire killed many people, families and children of the workers who lived in the building, as well as outsiders who lived in the area. The troops besieging the printing house suffered losses in killed and wounded.

During the day, the artillery had to fire on a number of private houses, from which they threw bombs or fired at the troops. All of these houses had large gaps. The defenders of the barricades kept to the old tactics: they fired a volley, scattered, fired from houses and from ambushes, and moved to another place.

On the night of December 14-15, 2,000 soldiers of the Semyonovsky Guards Regiment arrived from St. Petersburg along the operating Nikolaev railway.

By the morning of December 15, when the soldiers of the Semyonovsky regiment arrived in Moscow, the Cossacks and dragoons operating in the city, supported by artillery, pushed the rebels out of their strongholds on Bronny Street and the Arbat. Further fighting with the participation of the guards took place on Presnya around the Schmitt factory, which was then turned into an arsenal, a printing house and an infirmary for living rebels and a mortuary for the fallen.

On December 15, the police detained 10 militants. They had correspondence with them, from which it followed that such rich entrepreneurs as Savva Morozov (who died in May) and 22-year-old Nikolai Shmit, who inherited a furniture factory, as well as part of the liberal circles of Russia, were involved in the uprising, through the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti significant donations to "freedom fighters".

Nikolai Schmit himself and his two younger sisters all the days of the uprising formed the headquarters of the factory squad, coordinating the actions of groups of its militants with each other and with the leaders of the uprising, ensuring the operation of a home-made printing device - a hectograph. For the sake of conspiracy, the Shmits did not stay in the family mansion at the factory, but in a rented apartment on Novinsky Boulevard (on the site of the current house number 14)

On December 6-17, Presnya became the center of the fighting, where the combatants concentrated. The Semyonovsky regiment occupied the Kazansky railway station and several nearby railway stations. A detachment with artillery and machine guns was sent to suppress the uprising at the stations of Perovo and Lyubertsy, the Kazan road.

Also on December 16, new military units arrived in Moscow: the Horse Grenadier Regiment, part of the Guards Artillery, the Ladoga Regiment and the railway battalion. To suppress the rebellion outside Moscow, the commander of the Semyonovsky regiment, Colonel G. A. Min, allocated six companies from his regiment under the command of 18 officers and under the command of Colonel N. K. Riman. This detachment was sent to workers' settlements, plants and factories along the line of the Moscow-Kazan railway. More than 150 people were shot without trial, of which A. Ukhtomsky is the most famous

In the early morning of December 17, Nikolai Shmit was arrested. At the same time, the artillery of the Semyonovsky regiment began shelling Schmitt's factory. On that day, the factory and the neighboring Schmitt mansion burned down, although some of their property managed to be taken home by local proletarians who were not busy at the barricades.

December 17, 0345 The shooting in Presnya intensifies: the troops are firing, and the revolutionaries are also firing from the windows of the buildings engulfed in flames. The Schmidt factory and the Prokhorovka manufactory are being bombed. Residents sit in basements and cellars. The Humpback Bridge, where a very strong barricade has been set up, is being shelled. More troops are coming.
Newspaper "New time", December 18 (31), 1905

The divisions of the Life Guards of the Semyonovsky regiment captured the headquarters of the revolutionaries - the Schmidt factory, cleared Presnya with the help of artillery and freed the workers of the Prokhorov factory, who were subjected to repression by the revolutionaries.
By December 19, the uprising was crushed.

Didn't slow down Russian Revolution 1905-1907 years. The radicals, on the contrary, considered this largest concession a sign of the weakness of the authorities and intensified their attacks on it. A whole wave of demonstrations and bloody uprisings swept across the country: mass demonstrations in the Kingdom of Poland, a general strike in Finland, uprisings of drunken soldiers in Kronstadt (October 25, 1905) and Vladivostok (October 30). In St. Petersburg, the self-proclaimed Soviet of Workers' Deputies, headed by socialist adventurers Leon Trotsky and Khrustalev-Nosar, seized printing houses and imposed censorship on the printing of all publications that seemed to him insufficiently "leftist".

On October 31, 1905, the long-fluctuating authorities decided to introduce martial law in the Kingdom of Poland. The revolutionary parties responded to this by proclaiming on November 2 a second general political strike. This strike, however, did not take on broad dimensions: the majority of the townsfolk were already tired of the turmoil and became disillusioned with the revolutionaries, who, in their propensity for violence, far surpassed the “autocracy” they cursed. In mid-November, there was another uprising of the garrison in Sevastopol (the leader was a loose Lieutenant Schmidt), but then more and more signs of calm began to appear. Guards regiments arrived at Tsarskoye Selo with declarations of loyalty to Nicholas II. Among the military there was a growing desire for a decisive restoration of order.

In order to seize the initiative, on December 2, 1905, the St. Petersburg Soviet published in the newspapers "Manifesto" with an appeal to the people not to pay taxes, to demand payment in all transactions only in gold and silver, to take deposits from cash desks only in gold and silver (in such ways it was supposed to disperse the gold reserves of the State Bank and devalue the paper ruble). This action brought about the end of the Soviet: on December 3, 1905, the authorities arrested its entire composition.

The extremist parties felt that the paralysis of power was ending and decided to fight a general battle: another general strike turning into an armed uprising. The rebels counted on the rebellious soldiers joining them. Moscow was recognized as the most convenient place for starting an uprising, where Governor-General P. P. Durnovo, with his complete inaction, facilitated the activities of revolutionary organizations. In addition, fermentation took place in the troops of the Moscow garrison (especially in the Rostov regiment); the soldiers "made demands" to the commanders, refused to obey.

The course of the December armed uprising

On December 5, 1905, a new governor-general, Admiral FV Dubasov, arrived in Moscow to replace Durnovo. He immediately delivered a momentous speech:

“In this very Moscow, where the heart of Russia beat with a passionate love for the motherland, criminal propaganda made its nest. Moscow has become a gathering place and a hotbed of people who boldly rise up to destroy the foundations of order... Under such conditions, my appointment to the post of Moscow governor-general takes on a special character. This is - assignment to a military post... I am convinced of the victory over sedition, which can be defeated not only by volleys and bayonets, but by the moral influence of the best social forces. Sedition is now turning to legitimate authority with daring demands, throwing out a daring challenge with arms raised. That is why I will not hesitate for a single moment and will use the most extreme measures: and I will act as duty commands me.

Admiral Fedor Vasilyevich Dubasov, hero of the fight against the December uprising of 1905 in Moscow

On the same day, the riots in the Rostov regiment ended: the soldiers "rocked" their commander and shouted "Hurrah" to him.

In response, on December 6, 1905, the socialists issued an "order of revolution": at 12 noon, on December 8, the start of another general strike was announced. “The proletariat will not be satisfied with any partial transfers of political figures of government personnel. He does not stop the strikes until all the local authorities surrender their powers to the body of the provisional revolutionary administration chosen from the local population.", - it was said in the appeal, signed: by the parties social democrats and SRs, the Union of Railway Workers, the Postal and Telegraph Union, and the Moscow and St. Petersburg Soviets of Workers' Deputies.

The third general strike began at the appointed time on December 8, 1905, but was immediately marked by its failure. Many railroads refused to join it. Only a small part of the workers went on strike in St. Petersburg. “They ordered to start a strike, but they don’t obey!” - ironically noted the newspaper "New Time" on December 9, and the very next day it reported: "The All-Russian strike failed in the most deplorable way."

Nevertheless, the roads of the Moscow junction were on strike (except for the Nikolaevskaya, which was heavily guarded by troops), and the revolutionary parties, who had gathered about two thousand armed warriors in Moscow, decided to start an uprising according to the planned plan.

The task was to achieve the transfer of troops to the side of the revolution. But the uprising began in an atmosphere of popular indifference. The headquarters of the fighting squads therefore decided to lead in Moscow guerrilla war. The bosses of the December uprising gave the terrorist vigilantes the following "technical instructions":

“Act in small groups. Against hundreds of Cossacks, put one or two shooters. It is easier to hit a hundred than one, especially if this one suddenly shoots and disappears to no one knows where ... Let our fortresses be courtyards and all places from which it is easy to shoot and easy to leave.

The leaders of the December uprising calculated: the soldiers would shoot, hitting not at the hiding combatants, but at the civilian population of Moscow; this will embitter him and induce him to join the rebellion.

Throughout Moscow, the terrorists built barricades - mostly from overturned sledges or carts, and broken gates, with a foundation of snow. There were many barricades, but the rebels did not defend them at all; they were only supposed to delay the movement of troops, and facilitate the possibility of shelling from the windows.

Such tactics made it possible to fight with almost no losses: the rebels fired at the troops and immediately hid in the labyrinth of courtyards. They shot at individual policemen who were on duty. The Moscow authorities did not immediately cope with this form of struggle. But the dragoons and Cossacks, who at first acted reluctantly, became embittered and, with genuine passion, chased the elusive enemy around the city. “Can it be considered courage to shoot from around the corner, from the doorway, from the window?” - wrote in "New Time" (December 23, 1905) "Moskvich": "Shoot ... and then run away through fences and passage yards, forcing peaceful citizens to pay for their courage with life and blood - where what courage and heroism, beyond description ".

Barricades on Malaya Bronnaya during the December Uprising of 1905 in Moscow

The Moscow authorities issued an order ordering the janitors to keep the gates locked. The leaders of the December uprising responded with a counter-order: beat the janitors who lock the gates, and, if repeated, kill them. Several houses, from the windows of which the rebels fired, came under artillery fire.

The Moscow uprising did not flare up, but the guerrilla war did not stop either. It lasted from December 9 to December 14, 1905 - among the Cossacks and dragoons, physical fatigue began to affect - when Admiral Dubasov turned to the Sovereign by direct wire to Tsarskoe Selo. He explained the situation and emphasized the importance of the outcome of the fight against the uprising in Moscow. Nicholas II gave the order to send the Semyonovsky Regiment to the aid of the Life Guards.

Fatigue was felt in the troops, but the layman was tired of shooting. The rebels found less and less assistants in the construction of barricades, more and more often they ran into open hostility, against voluntary militia organized by the "right" Union of Russian people. The arrival in Moscow on December 15, 1905 of the Semyonovsky regiment finally decided the fate of the uprising. The guards began to move out of the city. Before leaving, they broke into the apartment of the head of the security department, Voiloshnikov, and shot him, despite the pleas of his children.

The main "communication line" of the December uprising was the Moscow-Kazan road. A detachment of Semyonovtsev, led by Colonel Riemann, moved along this road, occupying stations and shooting terrorists captured with weapons. In the city, the shooting died down. Only in the working-class quarter of Presnya, rising high above the meander of the Moskva River, did the revolutionaries hold out two or three days longer. Finally, on December 18, 1905, after shelling, Presnya was occupied - without a fight - by a detachment of Semenovites. The energy of Admiral F. V. Dubasov and General G. A. Ming broke the bloody December armed uprising without great casualties: in ten days of struggle, the total number of killed and wounded did not exceed two thousand.

Consequences of the December uprising in Moscow. Burnt house

The general strike ended even before the cessation of fighting in Moscow. On December 19, 1905, an uprising broke out in Rostov-on-Don, but two days later it was crushed.

Original taken from humus in pre-revolutionary Russia in photographs. December Uprising of 1905 in Moscow

The December Uprising of 1905 in Moscow is the name of the mass riots fixed in Soviet historiography (in the documents of that time it was called the “mutiny”) that took place in Moscow on December 7 (20) -18 (31), 1905; climax of the 1905 Revolution.
In October 1905, a strike began in Moscow, the purpose of which was to achieve economic concessions and political freedom. The strike swept the whole country and developed into the All-Russian October political strike. On October 12-18, more than 2 million people went on strike in various branches of industry.

By November 23, the Moscow censorship committee initiated criminal prosecutions against the editors of liberal newspapers: Vechernyaya Pochta, Golos Zhizn, Novosti dniy, and against the social-democratic newspaper Moskovskaya Pravda.
On November 27 (December 10), the first issue of the legal Bolshevik newspaper Borba was published in Moscow, funds for which were allocated by the publisher Sergei Skyrmunt. The newspaper was devoted entirely to the revolutionary movement of the working class. A total of 9 issues were published; the last issue came out with an appeal "To all workers, soldiers and toilers!", Calling for a general political strike and armed uprising.
In December, criminal prosecutions were initiated against the editors of the Bolshevik newspapers Borba and Vperyod. During the December days, the editor of the liberal newspaper Russkoye Slovo, as well as the editors of the satirical magazines Sting and Shrapnel, were persecuted.

Manifesto of the Moscow Council of Workers' Deputies "To All Workers, Soldiers and Citizens!", Izvestia MSRD newspaper.
On December 5, 1905, the first Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies gathered at the Fidler School (Makarenko Street, house No. 5/16) (according to other sources, a meeting of the Moscow City Conference of the Bolsheviks was held), which decided to declare a general political strike on December 7 and transfer it to an armed uprising. Fiedler's school has long been one of the centers in which revolutionary organizations gathered, and rallies often took place there.
On December 7, the strike began. In Moscow, the largest enterprises stopped, electricity was cut off, trams stopped, shops closed. The strike covered about 60% of Moscow plants and factories, technical staff and part of the employees of the Moscow City Duma joined it. At many large enterprises in Moscow, workers did not come to work. Rallies and meetings were held under the protection of armed squads. The most trained and well-armed squad was organized by Nikolai Schmit at his factory in Presnya.

The railway communication was paralyzed (only the Nikolaevskaya road to St. Petersburg operated, which was served by soldiers). From 4 p.m. the city was plunged into darkness, as the Council forbade lamplighters to light lanterns, many of which were also broken. In such a situation, on December 8, the Moscow Governor-General F.V. Dubasov declared a state of emergency in Moscow and the entire Moscow province.
Despite the abundance of threatening external signs, the mood of the Muscovites was rather cheerful and joyful.
“Just a holiday. There are masses of people everywhere, workers are walking in a cheerful crowd with red flags, Countess E. L. Kamarovskaya wrote in her diary. - Mass of youth! Every now and then one hears: “Comrades, a general strike!” Thus, they are as if congratulating everyone on the greatest joy ... The gates are closed, the lower windows are boarded up, the city seems to have died out, but look at the street - it lives actively, lively.

On the night of December 7-8, Virgil Shantser (Marat) and Mikhail Vasiliev-Yuzhin, members of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, were arrested. Fearing unrest in parts of the Moscow garrison, Governor-General Fyodor Dubasov ordered that part of the soldiers be disarmed and not let out of the barracks.

The first clash, so far without bloodshed, took place on December 8 in the evening in the Aquarium Garden (near the current Triumphal Square near the Mossovet Theater). The police tried to disperse the rally of many thousands by disarming the vigilantes present at it. However, she acted very indecisively, and most of the combatants managed to escape by jumping over a low fence. Several dozen of those arrested were released the next day.

However, on the same night, rumors of a mass execution of protesters prompted several SR militants to commit the first terrorist attack: having made their way to the building of the security department in Gnezdnikovsky Lane, they threw two bombs into its windows. One person was killed and several others were wounded.

On the evening of December 9, about 150-200 vigilantes, gymnasium students, students, and young students gathered at the school of I. I. Fidler. A plan was discussed to capture the Nikolaevsky railway station in order to cut off communication between Moscow and St. Petersburg. After the meeting, the vigilantes wanted to go and disarm the police. By 9 p.m., Fiedler's house was surrounded by troops who issued an ultimatum to surrender. After the troops refused to surrender, artillery shelling of the house was carried out. Only then did the combatants surrender, having lost three people killed and 15 wounded. Then some of those who surrendered were hacked to death by lancers. The order was given by the cornet Sokolovsky, and if Rachmaninov had not stopped the massacre, hardly anyone had survived. Nevertheless, many Fidlerites were injured, and about 20 people were hacked to death. A small part of the combatants managed to escape. Subsequently, 99 people were put on trial, but most of them were acquitted. I. I. Fidler himself was also arrested and, after spending several months in Butyrka, he hurried to sell the house and go abroad. The destruction of the Fiedler school by government troops marked the transition to an armed uprising. At night and during the next day, Moscow was covered with hundreds of barricades. The armed uprising began.

At 9 pm Fiedler's house was surrounded by troops. The lobby was immediately occupied by the police and gendarmes. There was a wide staircase going up. The combatants were located on the upper floors - in total there were four floors in the house. From overturned and piled one on top of the other school desks and benches, a barricade was arranged at the bottom of the stairs. The officer offered the barricaded men to surrender. One of the leaders of the squad, standing on the top landing of the stairs, several times asked those standing behind him if they wanted to surrender - and each time he received a unanimous answer: "We will fight to the last drop of blood! It's better to die together!" The warriors from the Caucasian squad were especially excited. The officer asked all the women to leave. Two sisters of mercy wanted to leave, but the combatants advised them not to do so. "All the same, you will be torn to pieces in the street!" “You must leave,” the officer said to two young schoolgirls. “No, we are fine here too,” they answered, laughing. - "We will shoot you all, you better leave," the officer joked. - "Why, we are in the sanitary detachment - who will bandage the wounded?" "Nothing, we have our own Red Cross," the officer assured. The policemen and dragoons laughed.

Overheard a telephone conversation with the Security Department. - "Negotiations by negotiations, but still we will cut everyone down." At 10.30 they reported that they had brought guns and pointed them at the house. But no one believed that they would begin to act. They thought that the same thing that happened yesterday in the "Aquarium" would be repeated - in the end, everyone would be released. - "We give you a quarter of an hour to think," said the officer. “If you don’t give up, we’ll start shooting exactly in a quarter of an hour.” - The soldiers and all the policemen went out into the street. A few more desks were knocked down from above. Everyone stood in their places. It was terribly quiet, but everyone was in high spirits. Everyone was excited, but silent. Ten minutes passed. The signal horn sounded three times - and a blank volley of guns rang out. There was a terrible commotion on the fourth floor. Two sisters of mercy fainted ", some orderlies became ill - they were given water to drink. But soon everyone recovered. The vigilantes were calm. Not even a minute passed - and shells flew into the brightly lit windows of the fourth floor with a terrible crack. The windows flew out with a clang. Everyone tried to hide from the shells - they fell on floor, climbed under the desks and crawled out into the corridor. Many crossed themselves. The combatants began to shoot at random.

Five bombs were thrown from the fourth floor - only three of them exploded. One of them killed the very officer who negotiated and joked with the female students. Three combatants were wounded, one was killed. After the seventh salvo, the guns fell silent. A soldier appeared from the street with a white flag and a new offer to surrender. The head of the squad again began to ask who wants to surrender. The parliamentarian was told that they refused to surrender. During a 15-minute respite, I. I. Fidler walked up the stairs and begged the combatants: - "For God's sake, don't shoot! Give up!" - The combatants answered him: - "Ivan Ivanovich, do not embarrass the public - leave, otherwise we will shoot you." - Fiedler went out into the street and began to beg the troops not to shoot. The police officer approached him and with the words - "I need a little help from you" - shot him in the leg. Fidler fell, they took him away (he later remained lame for the rest of his life - this is well remembered by the Parisians, among whom I. I. Fidler lived, in exile, where he died). Cannons roared again and machine guns crackled. Shrapnel tore in the rooms. The house was hell. The shelling continued until midnight. Finally, seeing the futility of resistance - revolvers against guns! sent two parliamentarians to tell the troops that they were surrendering. When the parliamentarians went out into the street with a white flag, the firing stopped. Soon both returned and reported that the officer in command of the detachment had given his word of honor that they would no longer shoot, all those who had surrendered would be taken to the transit prison (Butyrki) and rewritten there. By the time of delivery, 130-140 people remained in the house. About 30 people, mostly workers from the railway squad and one soldier, who was among the combatants, managed to escape through the fence. First, the first large group came out - 80-100 people. The rest hurriedly broke weapons so that the enemy would not get it - they struck with revolvers and rifles on the iron railing of the stairs. On the spot, 13 bombs, 18 rifles and 15 Brownings were later found by the police.

On December 10, the construction of barricades unfolded everywhere. The topography of the barricades was basically as follows: across Tverskaya Street (wire barriers); from Trubnaya Square to Arbat (Strastnaya Square, Bronnye Streets, B. Kozikhinsky Lane, etc.); along Sadovaya - from Sukharevsky Boulevard and Sadovo-Kudrinskaya Street to Smolenskaya Square; along the line of Butyrskaya (Dolgorukovskaya, Lesnaya streets) and Dorogomilovskaya outposts; on the streets and alleys crossing these highways. Separate barricades were also built in other parts of the city, for example, in Zamoskvorechye, Khamovniki, and Lefortovo. The barricades, destroyed by the troops and the police, were actively restored until December 11.

Vigilantes, armed with foreign weapons, began to kill soldiers, policemen and officers. Robbery of warehouses and murders of ordinary inhabitants began. The revolutionaries drove the townspeople out into the street and forced them to build barricades. The Moscow authorities withdrew themselves from the fight against the uprising and did not provide any support to the army.

According to historian Anton Valdin, the number of armed combatants did not exceed 1000-1500 people. Using the tactics of a typical guerrilla war, they did not hold their positions, but quickly and sometimes chaotically moved from one outskirts to another. In addition, in a number of places, small mobile groups (flying squads) operated under the leadership of SR militants and a squad of Caucasian students formed on a national basis. One of these groups, led by the Maximalist Socialist-Revolutionary Vladimir Mazurin, on December 15 carried out a demonstrative execution of the assistant chief of the Moscow detective police, 37-year-old A.I. Another squad was commanded by the sculptor Sergei Konenkov. The future poet Sergei Klychkov acted under his command. The militants attacked individual military posts and policemen (in total, according to official figures, more than 60 Moscow policemen were killed and wounded in December).

“At about 6 pm, a group of armed combatants appeared at Skvortsov’s house in Volkov Lane on Presnya ... a bell rang from the front door in Voiloshnikov’s apartment ... They began to shout from the stairs, threatening to break down the door and break in by force. Then Voiloshnikov himself ordered the door to be opened. Six people armed with revolvers burst into the apartment ... Those who came read the verdict of the revolutionary committee, according to which Voiloshnikov was to be shot ... Crying rose in the apartment, the children rushed to beg the revolutionaries for mercy, but they were adamant. They took Voiloshnikov out into the alley, where the sentence was carried out right next to the house... The revolutionaries, leaving the corpse in the alley, disappeared. The body of the deceased was picked up by the relatives.”
Newspaper "New time".

The fighting unfolded on Kudrinskaya Square, Arbat, Lesnaya Street, on Serpukhovskaya and Kalanchevskaya Squares, at the Red Gate.
MOSCOW, 10 December. Today the revolutionary movement is concentrated mainly on Tverskaya Street between Strastnaya Square and the Old Triumphal Gates. Here shots of guns and machine guns are heard. The movement concentrated here as early as midnight today, when the troops surrounded Fiedler's house in Lobkovsky Lane and captured the entire combat squad here, and another detachment of troops the rest of the guards of the Nikolaev station. The plan of the revolutionaries was, as they say, to

at dawn, capture the Nikolayevsky railway station and take over the communication with St. Petersburg, and then the fighting squad was to leave Fidler's house to take possession of the Duma building and the state bank and declare a provisional government.<…>Today at 2 1/2 o'clock in the morning, two young people, driving in a reckless car along Bolshoy Gnezdnikovsky Lane, threw two bombs into the two-story building of the security department. There was a terrible explosion. In the security department, the front wall was broken, part of the alley was demolished, and everything inside was torn apart. At the same time, the police officer, who had already died in the Ekaterininsky hospital, was seriously wounded, and the policeman and the lower rank of the infantry, who happened to be here, were killed. All the windows in the neighboring houses were shattered.<…>The Executive Committee of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies, by special proclamations, announced an armed uprising at 6 pm, even all cab drivers were ordered to finish work by 6 o'clock. However, action began much earlier.<…>At 3 1/2 p.m. the barricades at the Old Triumphal Gate were knocked down. With two weapons behind them, the troops passed through the whole of Tverskaya, broke down the barricades, cleared the street, and then fired guns at Sadovaya, where the defenders of the barricades fled.<…>The Executive Committee of the Council of Workers' Deputies forbade bakeries to bake white bread, since the proletariat needed only black bread, and today Moscow was without white bread.<…>At about 10 pm, the troops dismantled all the barricades on Bronnaya. At 11 1/2 o'clock everything was quiet. The shooting stopped, only occasionally, patrols, circling the city, fired at the streets with blank volleys to frighten the crowd

On December 10, it became clear to the rebels that they had failed to fulfill their tactical plan: to squeeze the center into the Garden Ring, moving towards it from the outskirts. The districts of the city turned out to be disunited and the control of the uprising passed into the hands of the district Soviets and representatives of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP in these areas. In the hands of the rebels were: the area of ​​​​Bronny streets, which was defended by student squads, Georgians, Presnya, Miusy, Simonovo. The city-wide uprising fragmented, turning into a series of district uprisings. The rebels urgently needed to change tactics, techniques and methods of street fighting. In this regard, on December 11, in the newspaper Izvestia Mosk. S.R.D.” No. 5, "Advice to the insurgent workers" was published:
" <…>the main rule is not to act in a crowd. Operate in small detachments of three or four people. Let only there be more of these detachments, and let each of them learn to attack quickly and quickly disappear.
<…>moreover, do not occupy fortified places. The army will always be able to take them or simply damage them with artillery. Let our fortresses be passage yards from which it is easy to shoot and just leave<…>.

This tactic had some success, but the insurgents' lack of centralized control and a unified uprising plan, their low professionalism and the military-technical advantage of government troops put the rebel forces in a defensive position.

By December 12, most of the city, all stations, except for Nikolaevsky, were in the hands of the rebels. Government troops held only the center of the city [source not specified 286 days]. The most stubborn battles were fought in Zamoskvorechye (teams of the Sytin printing house, the Tsindel factory), in the Butyrsky district (the Miussky tram park, the Gobay factory under the control of P. M. Shchepetilnikov and M. P. Vinogradov), in the Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district (the so-called "Simonovskaya republic", a fortified self-governing working-class district in Simonovskaya Sloboda. Of the representatives of the Dynamo plant, the Gan pipe-rolling plant and other plants (about 1000 workers in total), squads were made there, the police were expelled, the settlement was surrounded by barricades) and on Presnya. The revolutionaries set up a hospital. Old-timers recalled that in the intervals between battles, combatants were steaming there, defending the barricades that were built near the Humpback Bridge and near Kudrinskaya Square

MOSCOW, 12 December. Today, guerrilla warfare continues, but with less energy on the part of the revolutionaries. Whether they are tired, whether the revolutionary upsurge has fizzled out, or whether this is a new tactical maneuver is hard to say, but today there is much less shooting.<…>In the morning, some shops and stores opened, and traded in bread, meat and other provisions, but in the afternoon everything was closed, and the streets again took on an extinct appearance with shops boarded up tightly and steles knocked out from the concussion due to artillery cannonade in the windows. The traffic on the streets is very weak.<…>Volunteer militia, organized by the governor-general with the assistance of the “Union of Russian People,” began to work today. The militia operates under the direction of policemen; she began today to dismantle the barricades and to perform other police functions in three police stations. Gradually, this militia will be introduced in other areas throughout the city. The revolutionaries called this militia the Black Hundreds. Sytin's printing house on Valovaya Street burned down at dawn today. This printing house is a huge architecturally luxurious building overlooking three streets. With her cars, she was estimated at a million rubles. Up to 600 vigilantes barricaded themselves in the printing house, mostly printing workers, armed with revolvers, bombs and a special kind of rapid-fire guns, which they call machine guns. To take armed combatants, the printing house was surrounded by all three types of weapons. They began to shoot back from the printing house and threw three bombs. Artillery bombarded the building with grenades. The combatants, seeing their situation as hopeless, set fire to the building in order to take advantage of the turmoil of the fire to leave. They succeeded. Almost all of them escaped through the neighboring Monetchikovsky Lane, but the building was all burned out, only the walls remained. The fire killed many people, families and children of the workers who lived in the building, as well as outsiders who lived in the area. The troops besieging the printing house suffered losses in killed and wounded. During the day, the artillery had to fire on a number of private houses, from which they threw bombs or fired at the troops. All of these houses had large gaps.<…>The defenders of the barricades kept to the old tactics: they fired a volley, scattered, fired from houses and from ambushes, and moved to another place.

On the night of December 14-15, 2,000 soldiers of the Semyonovsky Guards Regiment arrived from St. Petersburg along the operating Nikolaev railway.

By the morning of December 15, when the soldiers of the Semyonovsky regiment arrived in Moscow, the Cossacks and dragoons operating in the city, supported by artillery, pushed the rebels out of their strongholds on Bronny Street and the Arbat. Further fighting with the participation of the guards took place on Presnya around the Schmitt factory, which was then turned into an arsenal, a printing house and an infirmary for living rebels and a mortuary for the fallen.

On December 15, the police detained 10 militants. They had correspondence with them, from which it followed that such rich entrepreneurs as Savva Morozov (who died in May) and 22-year-old Nikolai Shmit, who inherited a furniture factory, as well as part of the liberal circles of Russia, were involved in the uprising, through the newspaper Moskovskie Vedomosti significant donations to "freedom fighters".

Nikolai Schmit himself and his two younger sisters all the days of the uprising formed the headquarters of the factory squad, coordinating the actions of groups of its militants with each other and with the leaders of the uprising, ensuring the operation of a home-made printing device - a hectograph. For the sake of conspiracy, the Shmits did not stay in the family mansion at the factory, but in a rented apartment on Novinsky Boulevard (on the site of the current house number 14)

On December 6-17, Presnya became the center of the fighting, where the combatants concentrated. The Semyonovsky regiment occupied the Kazansky railway station and several nearby railway stations. A detachment with artillery and machine guns was sent to suppress the uprising at the stations of Perovo and Lyubertsy, the Kazan road.

Also on December 16, new military units arrived in Moscow: the Horse Grenadier Regiment, part of the Guards Artillery, the Ladoga Regiment and the railway battalion.
To suppress the rebellion outside Moscow, the commander of the Semyonovsky regiment, Colonel G. A. Min, allocated six companies from his regiment under the command of 18 officers and under the command of Colonel N. K. Riman. This detachment was sent to workers' settlements, plants and factories along the line of the Moscow-Kazan railway. More than 150 people were shot without trial, of which A. Ukhtomsky is the most famous

In the early morning of December 17, Nikolai Shmit was arrested. At the same time, the artillery of the Semyonovsky regiment began shelling Schmitt's factory. On that day, the factory and the neighboring Schmitt mansion burned down, although some of their property managed to be taken home by local proletarians who were not busy at the barricades.

December 17, 0345 The shooting in Presnya intensifies: the troops are firing, and the revolutionaries are also firing from the windows of the buildings engulfed in flames. The Schmidt factory and the Prokhorovka manufactory are being bombed. Residents sit in basements and cellars. The Humpback Bridge, where a very strong barricade has been set up, is being shelled. More troops are coming.<…>
Newspaper "New time", December 18 (31), 1905

The divisions of the Life Guards of the Semyonovsky regiment captured the headquarters of the revolutionaries - the Schmidt factory, cleared Presnya with the help of artillery and freed the workers of the Prokhorov factory, who were subjected to repression by the revolutionaries.
By December 19, the uprising was crushed.

At 12 noon on December 7, 1905, the whistles of factories, factories, and locomotive whistles sounded invitingly in Moscow. By decision of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, a general political strike was declared in the city. The moment of the highest upsurge of the people's revolution was approaching. The Moscow Bolsheviks, starting a general political strike, sought to go over to an armed uprising and overthrow the autocracy.

About 400 factories and plants, all printing houses, went on strike in Moscow. The movement of trains was stopped on all railways, except for Nikolaevskaya (now Oktyabrskaya), between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The number of strikers reached 100,000.

On that day, not a single newspaper was published, except for Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet, which was printed by workers in several printing houses without the permission of their owners.

On the front page of the newspaper was published the manifesto of the Moscow Soviet written by the Bolsheviks "To all workers, soldiers and citizens." It said: “The revolutionary proletariat can no longer endure the abuse and crimes of the tsarist government and declares a decisive and merciless war on it ... The whole future of Russia is at stake: life or death, freedom or slavery ... Boldly into battle, comrade workers, soldiers and citizens !"

The strike grew in the city. On December 8, it already covered 150,000 people. Rallies and meetings took place all over Moscow - at enterprises, squares, in canteens, tea houses. After the rallies, the workers lined up in columns and marched through the streets under a red banner with the song “Get up, get up, working people” or with the “La Marseillaise”. Along the way, they fired those who had not yet joined the strike. There were clashes with the police. When meeting with the troops, the demonstrators urged the soldiers to go over to the side of the strikers.

In Zamoskvorechye, a company of soldiers blocked the way for a column of metalworkers. The officer gave the command. The shutters clicked, the soldiers took aim. But the workers, as if not noticing this, continued to move forward, and their song became even more friendly. The soldiers backed off. On Strastnaya Square (now Pushkinskaya) the workers surrounded the Cossacks and persuaded them to leave. After a rally at the Prokhorov factory in the Presnya region, the workers went on a demonstration. The 10,000th column headed for Kudrinskaya Square (now Uprising Square). The demonstrators were attacked by Cossacks with swords drawn. The column trembled, but two working girls ran out to meet the Cossacks with a red banner in their hands and shouted to them: “Kill us! We will not give up the banner alive!” They shouted from the column: “Cossacks, are you really going to shoot at us? Will you really be criminals?..” The Cossacks hesitated, then turned their horses and sped off.

But a peaceful strike, rallies and demonstrations could no longer satisfy the workers. They wanted to be more active. There were about 2,000 combatants in Moscow, and on the night of December 8, the workers' squads, led by the Bolsheviks, began to disarm the police and seize weapons stores. Weapons were also made in workshops.

The scope of the strike forced Governor-General Dubasov to declare Moscow and the province in a state of emergency. He sent a telegram to St. Petersburg asking him to send troops immediately. All troops loyal to tsarism in Moscow were put on alert. But there were few of them: no more than one third of the entire garrison of the city. This was the result of the work of the Bolsheviks. Six thousand soldiers refused to participate in the suppression of the strike. They were disarmed and locked up in the barracks. Most of the soldiers took a vacillating position.

Having launched an offensive against the workers, the tsarist authorities arrested the organizers of the uprising. Already on the night of December 7, they imprisoned the leaders of the Moscow Bolsheviks V. L. Shantser (underground nickname Marat), M. I. Vasiliev-Yuzhin, and others. Deprived of a single leadership, the Moscow uprising turned into an uprising of individual districts of the city. The next day, the police carried out an armed raid on a rally in the Aquarium Theater (Bolshaya Sadovaya Street). Dozens of workers were beaten and seriously injured. In the evening, participants in the rally on Strastnaya Square and combatants on Triumphalnaya Square (now Mayakovsky Square) came under fire.

On December 9 and 10, the snow-covered streets of Moscow were covered with barricades. Fierce battles ensued. The strike developed into an armed uprising. Its main centers were Presnya, Zamoskvorechye, Rogozhsko-Simonovsky district and the area of ​​the Kazan railway. The forward line of combatants, on which the fighting unfolded, passed along the Garden Ring.

The combatants used the tactics of guerrilla warfare. They broke up into small mobile detachments - dozens, threes. These small units acted boldly, decisively, and were elusive. The children of the workers also took part in the uprising. They helped build barricades, were scouts, liaisons; girls cared for the wounded.

On December 12, in the afternoon, the tsarist troops launched artillery, but this did not help them break through the Garden Ring (see plan).

Governor-General Dubasov begged St. Petersburg for help. He sent three telegrams there, one after the other.

By order of Tsar Nicholas II, the Semyonovsky Regiment was sent to Moscow from St. Petersburg, the Ladoga Infantry Regiment from the Warsaw region, and the Dragoon Regiment from Tver (now the city of Kalinin).

Before the approach of these regiments, the tsarist troops did not even manage to gain a foothold at the turn of the Garden Ring. Major battles unfolded near Kudrinskaya Square, on the Arbat, Serpukhovskaya, Lesnaya streets. On Kalanchevskaya Square (now Komsomolskaya Square) there was a fierce battle for the Nikolaevsky (now Leningradsky) railway station. The teams of workers here were headed by A. V. Shestakov, A. I. Gorchilin and the machinist A. V. Ukhtomsky.

Ukhtomsky formed a train of several cars, in which the squad ran from Moscow to Ramenskoye. Early in the morning the train brought combatants to the Kazan station. They fought on Kalanchevskaya Square and at the Red Gate.

On December 15, the Semyonovsky regiment arrived in Moscow to suppress the uprising. Vigilantes did not allow the soldiers to enter the square for about three hours. On this day, Ukhtomsky's train with combatants was subjected to machine-gun fire from the Semenovites. There were dead and wounded. Ukhtomsky, having developed great speed, with difficulty took the combatants out of the shelling. With the arrival of the Semyonovsky regiment, the balance of forces changed dramatically in favor of the counter-revolution. The next day, the tsarist authorities crushed the resistance of the combatants throughout the city, except for the Presnya workers' district. The military headquarters of Presnya was headed by the Bolshevik 3. Ya. Litvin-Sedoy.

The government sent the Semyonovsky regiment to Presnya. A handful of brave workers were now opposed by a well-trained regular military unit, armed with rifles, machine guns and supported by artillery. Presnya's combatants were armed with 200 rifles and shotguns, about 600 revolvers.

The troops surrounded Presnya and opened heavy artillery fire on it. Buildings collapsed, people died, but the heroic vigilantes did not give up. Then one and a half thousand soldiers began to storm the Presnensky and Gorbaty bridges. However, the assault column, even with the help of artillery, could not advance. The Moscow authorities concentrated all their armed forces on Presnya. The writer A. Serafimovich spoke about the days of the assault on Presnya: “The glow flared up. Houses protruded gloomily, illumined with blood, with dead, sightless windows... The end! What a surprise it was in the morning when I saw that this was not the end yet: the newly erected barricades proudly showed off, and the red flag adamantly waved. Everything in the city was suppressed, only Presnya, deserted and all bound by barricades, sullenly and proudly gave the last battle.

An attempt to drown the proletarian Presnya in blood and capture the leaders of the uprising on the move failed, but the forces of the combatants were quickly depleted. The Moscow Soviet decided to end the unequal armed struggle on December 18 and end the strike on December 19.

The mayor of Moscow reported to the tsar: "The rebellion ends with the will of the rebels, and an opportunity has been lost for the extermination of the latter." The governor-general reported to St. Petersburg that the main leaders of the uprising scattered and fled, carrying away the threads of the conspiracy and the intention to continue their work.

Most of the combatants managed to get out of the encirclement. The last order of the headquarters of the Presnensky squads said: “We have begun. We are ending... Blood, violence and death will follow on our heels. But this is nothing. The future belongs to the working class. Generation after generation in all countries will learn from the experience of Presnya perseverance... Long live the struggle and victory of the workers!”

After the suppression of the uprising on Presnya, a brutal reprisal began: searches, arrests, beatings, torture, executions of workers, their wives and children. According to incomplete information, 922 men, 137 women and 86 children died during the uprising.

What are the reasons for the defeat of the Moscow uprising? The workers failed to get the soldiers to go over to their side. After the arrest of the Moscow Committee of the Bolsheviks, the uprising lost its leadership and turned into armed uprisings of separate regions of Moscow that were not connected with each other. The rebels were defending, not advancing. And defense, as F. Engels said, is death to an armed uprising. The rebels had few weapons. The Moscow armed uprising did not develop into a single all-Russian armed uprising of the proletariat.

Despite the defeat, the workers believed in their cause and looked boldly into the future. They understood that one more powerful blow - and the damned autocratic system, hated by the whole country, would finally collapse.

The December armed uprising, according to Lenin, showed that "freedom is not given without the greatest sacrifices, that the armed resistance of tsarism must be broken and crushed by an armed hand."

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