Ambassador McCormick to the Secretary of State.
St. Petersburg, January 23, 1905.
(Mr. McCormick reports that crowds filled the streets leading to the Winter Palace yesterday with the expectation that the Emperor might appear and address the workingmen, but they were stopped by mounted Cossacks. Only those driving were permitted to pass through the palace square. No evidence of evil intent on the part of the workingmen was manifested nor was there any evidence of hostile intent by the crowds beyond jeering at the officers and soldiers. Some effort was made to disband the crowd especially that part of it which was congregated in the Alexander Park facing the palace square. The ambassador does not know what warning was given, but an eyewitness told him that an order to fire upon the crowd in the park was given. This crowd was partly composed of women and children, and some 60 persons were killed and wounded. At other points in the streets leading to the palace many were cut down by the Cossacks. A large number is reported killed and wounded in the manufacturing district, but there is no reliable information as to the actual numbers. A reliable eyewitness reported to him that officers appealed to the crowd to disperse, calling attention to the posters displayed everywhere warning the public to keep off the streets and that their lives were in danger if they remained; no notice seems to have been paid to this warning. The crowd shoved the officers about and in some instances attacked them and tore their insignia from their uniforms and inflicted severe wounds with clubs. Quiet now prevails in the center of the city, which is cut off from the manufacturing districts by the troops. A large amount of socialistic literature was circulated among the workingmen, and a petition which was sent to His Majesty by them was not written by a Russian workingman, but by a German socialist, as a large employer of labor informed him. A deep-seated discontent exists among the working class throughout the large towns, and yesterday’s happenings will probably increase the antigovernment feeling and discontent with the present unhappy conditions.)