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to the December rising of ninety-five years ago. We have never forgotten or will forget that, side by side with the reactionary crimes which the officer class has committed against its own people in the past, and is committing at present in the „White Guard“ ranks, stand the names of those great men who a hundred years ago headed the December insurrection.
As far back as a hundred years ago, the more highly educated, intelligent and cultured among the officers rose against the Tsar in favour of a republic. Scores of officers perished at the time, many families were ruined. But such names as Pestel, Ryleyev, Muraviov, Kakhovsky etc. shine as stars in a dark sky. Our people must know that, out of the ranks of the privileged classes. the wealthy aristocrats of a hundred years ago, issued a whole constellation of champions, officers, who attempted to overthrow Tsarism, depending on the Petersburg regiments and intending to establish a republic. This attempt failed, the people were too ignorant, the troops did not support it, there was as yet hardly a working class at all, the peasants were forgotten—the „Decembrists“ did not take them into account—so that this primitive attempt ended in utter defeat.
Thus, already in the beginning of the 19th century, our officer class was not a compact, dark reactionary mass; then already it was in a way divided into strata, and certain well-
