Silence, silence in the trenches, thousands of officers and men of the East Asian expedition, standing in the trenches, looking at those officers with an indifferent look, just yesterday, the soldiers of the 396th Wing refused to obey the order to attack, this mutiny, it seems to have little impact, but in fact, it has attracted the attention of nearly a million Japanese troops on a front of thousands of kilometers, they are concerned about the development of the situation, and in the underground channels, newspapers advocating revolution have been continuously circulated to the hands of these soldiers through various channels.

If the success of the Meiji Restoration in Japan was that more than 90% of the people received education, then now, the education of illiterate people in the whole country is also conducive to the spread of revolutionary ideas, although these Japanese soldiers are more loyal than Russian soldiers, but compared with the Russians, their families are hungry and their country is humiliated, they are more susceptible to the influence of revolutionary ideas, and now, the mutiny of the 396th Wing is the embodiment of this influence.

Holding a saber, Hashimoto Kawa Daisa, standing in the trench, looked at the soldiers in front of him, and he frowned when he saw that some of them had somehow got a red cloth rope tied around their necks.

"Everyone, you must obey orders, you are royal soldiers......"

"The royal soldiers are defending Japan, not fighting for China!"

"That is, Japan has gained by killing so many people, and what has Japan gained?"

"China is doing everything possible to weaken Japan, and entering the war is nothing but a conspiracy by China."

……

Almost at the same time as Hashimoto Kawa Daisa's words fell, there was a burst of angry complaints around him. For these Japanese soldiers, they were fed up with death, fed up with the fate of being cannon fodder, now. As it was said in those revolutionary newspapers.

"We must control our own destiny and never be cannon fodder in imperialist wars!"

"Baga!"

Faced with questioning, Hashimoto Kawa cursed, and when he was about to take out his anger at the nearest soldiers, he saw a strange look in the eyes of those soldiers, which seemed to be ......

"Kill him!"

At this moment, an inaudible voice was heard in the crowd, and the soldier closest to Hashimoto received the order. Holding a rifle from the side and back towards Hashimoto was a thrust.

When the bayonet sank into his chest, Hashimoto could hardly believe his eyes, which ...... What's going on?

Hashimoto, who fell limply in the trench, stared at the soldier with wide eyes, from the soldier's eyes. What he saw was a hateful gaze, but the sudden change made everyone stunned, even the soldiers who had participated in the mutiny and refused to obey the order were stunned by the sudden change.

And the officers who followed Hashimoto. When he was about to draw his gun, he was surrounded by dozens of soldiers armed with rifles and light machine guns.

"Lay down your arms!"

Roars erupted from the soldiers' throats, just as the officers didn't know whether to resist or what to do. But one of the officers took the initiative to lay down his weapon. As he laid down his weapon, there was a hint of sadness on his face.

"This war. It's long overdue to fight anymore! ”

After these officers laid down their arms, more soldiers did not know what to do. Out of the crowd came a man in military uniform, but without rank, his face covered with a messy beard, he first glanced at the officers, and then turned to the soldiers from the ammunition box where Hashimoto had been standing.

"Comrades!"

As they shouted these three words, the soldiers saw the man's left hand crossed over his waist.

"History will always remember this day, remember today's 396th Wing, on this day, the military comrades of the 396th Wing resolutely decided to resist the foreign lackey regime, against this unjust war of Chinese imperialism, Japan's freedom must rely on the Japanese themselves to fight, relying on the Chinese imperialists and those powerful people who cooperate with the Chinese imperialist aggressors for personal glory and wealth, Japan will never be able to gain freedom, and now Japan's freedom is in your hands!" …,

When his voice fell, his raised right hand suddenly fell, pointing at the soldiers who were a little dazed.

"Today, the clarion call for revolution has been sounded from here, and today, the fate of Japan has changed......"

During his speech, the expressions of the soldiers in the trenches began to change slowly, as if at this moment, an unprecedented sense of mission lingered in their hearts, and even their eyes changed when they looked at the officers who were called "lackeys of Chinese imperialism" in the newspapers.

At this moment, no one knows what will happen in the future, of course, except for a very small number of people, the bayonets of the 396th Wing have provoked a prologue, at least for Japan, it is a prologue.

At the same time as the front line is changing, the changes in Russia, especially in Petrograd, are evolving in a radical direction, and the Russian Imperial Spy Agency, which is dedicated to monitoring the opposition in the country, is the best aware of this, and the agents are surprised to find that the army, which was the vanguard of the repression, not only did not stop the mass demonstrations, but on some occasions even managed to hinder the actions of the police officers. As a result, those who participated in the march believed that their actions would go unpunished, further exacerbating the situation in the capital.

After two days of march in the streets, with little hindrance, a mixed group of revolutionaries began to dominate the procession, in which they first shouted the slogan "Down with the war" and then after the temptation.

And the appearance of these slogans convinced the masses that now that the revolution had begun, that victory would belong to the masses, that the government was powerless to suppress the movement, because the army was on their side; to think that a decisive victory is near, because the army, if not today, will openly participate in the revolutionary forces tomorrow; The movement that was thought to have begun will not be calm, but will continue to grow until it is all victorious and the country is transformed. ”

At noon, the crowd gathered more and more on Znamensky Square. Speak in the square. There were several small detachments of Cossack cavalry around the square. A detachment of mounted police arrived to disperse the crowd in the square, and a Cossack soldier dissatisfied with the behavior of the mounted police fired a shot at the captain of the mounted police, killing Sergeant Krylov on the spot, which became the first shot in the revolution! This first shot took place between the demonstrators. Subsequently. The Mounted Police opened fire on the crowd, killing and wounding more than a dozen demonstrators.

In the face of the tense situation in the capital, Khabarov resorted to a trump card -- issuing a proclamation that had been effective on several occasions: all workers who had been registered for conscription would be sent to the front if they did not go to work before the 28th.

The situation was exacerbated by the sudden crackdown by force, and Prime Minister Golitsyn convened an extraordinary meeting of several ministers at his private residence to discuss countermeasures, and the meeting discussed the problem of food shortages. In the case of mass demonstrations, most ministers insisted on the idea of suppressing them by force, while Protov "" at the meeting.

After the meeting, General Belyaev, Minister of War, telegraphed to the base camp one after another about the situation in the capital. I hope the tsar will come back soon. But the Tsar considered it just another parade and did not deserve much attention, at least not for his personal attention, and on the way to the cinema in the evening, he dictated a telegram to Khabarov:

"We will order that all the riots in Kyoto be stopped tomorrow. This is a difficult time to fight against Germany and Austria. Riots must not be allowed. ”

At 10 o'clock in the evening of the same day, Khabarov, having received the telegram, was stunned by the decision of the tsar, who knew it very well. He simply does not have the ability to quell the riots in the capital tomorrow, if the masses simply shout "for bread". You can give them bread, and you're done. But now the flag reads "Down with Tsarism". What role can bread play in this situation? …,

What to do?

In the face of this imperial decree, Khabarov naturally thought of an explanation - shoot!

Then Khabarov held a meeting of the leaders of the military and police at his home, read out the tsar's telegram, and made arrangements: if there was a small crowd and there was no flag, the Cossack guards would be used and the leather whips would be used to disperse...... If you encounter a provocative crowd with flags, hit three flares and shoot!

In accordance with this deployment, nearly 200,000 soldiers and police subdivisions suppressed the mass revolutionary action, and it is expected that order will be restored in Petrograd and throughout the country within four days. This deployment is based on the garrison, which totals 150,000 men. The Petrograd garrison consisted almost entirely of reserve soldiers, who were not strictly trained in military affairs, many of whom had been recruited from among the workers of the capital's factories and had relatively close ties with the workers, and who were under psychological pressure to be transferred to the front at any time to fight at any time, and there was no possibility of going to such people to suppress demonstrations.

Therefore, the only thing Khabarov could count on was the main role of 3,500 policemen in the capital, two regiments of Don Cossack cavalry and several non-commissioned officer students of the Petrograd non-commissioned officer school, who were the backbone of maintaining and restoring order in the capital.

Late that night, after receiving a direct order, the Petrograd police immediately took action and arrested more than 100 key elements of various revolutionary groups.

The State Duma also held a joint meeting of various social groups in the evening, the topic of the meeting was to discuss the situation of urban food and the implementation of the voucher supply system, but in fact this meeting has become a political meeting for various groups to express their views on the situation, outside the State Duma meeting, including Kerensky, Shengaliov and others, political leaders have spoken one after another, strongly protesting against the government's shooting at the masses, and they have also launched an attack on the government for their own political purposes, to be precise, for the formation of a party cabinet. He even directly proposed that "the current government is completely incompetent and should step down and give way to the coalition cabinet", calling for the implementation of freedom of march and speech.

At the time of the State Duma meeting, the crowd spontaneously gathered in the rooms, corridors, staircases and surrounding areas of the Duma building of the Tavlida Palace, and they conveyed the contents of the speeches in the Duma one by one, and the surrounding area was in chaos. At the same time, a number of leaders of the workers' movement and trade unions held meetings at the capital's consumer associations to discuss the creation of a Soviet of workers' deputies.

The success of the premiere of "The Masquerade" at the Royal Theatre that night, while the people in the theater cheered for the success of the opera, no one could have imagined that the death of the protagonist, the mourning atmosphere that enveloped the play, and the funeral scene at the end of the play seemed to be an elegy for the Romanov dynasty.

Sunday, March 11, morning. Nevsky Prospect is quiet and peaceful. The Empress was reassured, and she sent a telegram to the Tsar: "There is calm in the city. ”

But this lull did not last long. In the morning, workers walked out of their homes and gradually gathered in the city center. Khabarov had been deployed, and the city of Petrograd was full of patrols, sentry lines, and cavalry. The suspension bridge to the city center has been pulled up. Demonstrators from industrial areas flocked to the city center across the frozen Neva River.

According to the direct order received from Khabarov, the police and soldiers began to shoot at the crowd on the glacier and on the street after firing signal flares, while the capital gendarmerie horse squad slashed the demonstrators with sabers, brutally suppressed, successfully dispersed the march, and in the face of the frenzied suppression, the crowd scattered and fled. The whole of Petrograd fell with panicked faces.

However, despite the brutal and ruthless repression, the masses quickly recovered from their panic under the organization of the revolutionaries. In the midst of the chaos, it is often observed by anyone that the rioting masses show extreme disrespect to the army, throwing stones and ice at the army when they want them to disperse. When the army shoots into the sky as a warning. Instead of fleeing, the crowd replied with laughter. Crowds can only be dispersed when live ammunition is fired at the centre of the crowd, although most of the demonstrators hide in the courtyards of nearby houses. As soon as the shooting stopped, they went out into the street again. …,

The whole city. A game of cat and mouse was played between the army and the population, and a limited number of police officers and non-commissioned officers, Cossacks. It was clearly impossible to maintain order throughout Petrograd, and at first demonstrations took place in the center of the city, but then in the midst of the repression broke out throughout the city.

Faced with the chaos already taking place in the city, Rocheok first demanded that a reliable army be sent back to the capital from the front, and then he changed his mind and advised the Minister of War Belyaev not to shoot and to use fire hoses to spray cold water to disperse the crowd. However, the opinion of Belyaev and Khabarov was firm and unanimous: to solve the problem by force.

In the end, it was clear that Rodenko's request could not shake the decision of Belyaev and Khabarov to settle by force!

On Nevsky Prospect, hundreds of thousands of workers, holding high red flags, waving slogans, drinking revolutionary songs from 12 years ago, marched to the front, and whenever the procession moved forward, in the nearby lanes, more people often poured out to join the march, "Women comrades go ahead!" ”

In the procession, the revolutionaries constantly appealed to the women, they knew the psychology of the soldiers, who could shoot at ordinary workers, but it was difficult to shoot at women, especially the beautiful women, after the "exercises" of 1905, these revolutionaries had already mastered the skills of rioting and marching.

"Gun loaded! Shoot at the enemy! ”

In the face of the demonstrators who crowded the streets, the officers with command knives shouted orders, but the soldiers hesitated in the face of the female workers in the textile mills, they did not want to kill these women, especially many of them were beautiful.

"Shoot!"

In their hesitation, the officer, seeing the workers approaching closer, once again commanded loudly.

"Don't shoot your brothers and sisters!"

The workers and women confronting the soldiers shouted loudly,

"You are also like us, before joining the army, you were also workers, they want to send you to the battlefield to die, come with us! Don't be cannon fodder for the capitalists, don't listen to the lies of the capitalists......"

The marchers marched toward the soldiers' barricade line while they made their propaganda efforts, while the women in the front row looked into the eyes of the soldiers, their faces full of unyielding expressions, and the soldiers with guns unconfidently avoided their gaze in the face of these women, and when the women approached the soldiers, the soldiers did not express hatred, but remained silent with a slight apology.

Armed repression is bankrupt in front of a woman!

At two o'clock in the afternoon, several workers came to the barracks of the Pavlovsky regiment, sympathetic to the workers' movement, and they found the soldiers who had worked with them in a factory before joining the army, mobilized the soldiers they knew, and then led by the soldiers, gave speeches in the barracks:

"Tell your comrades, even the brothers of the Pavlov regiment shot at us, we saw soldiers in uniforms like yours on Nevsky Street, the whole street was red with blood, and those soldiers shot not only workers, but also women, children, ......"

In the speeches of those revolutionaries, there seemed to be a massacre in Petrograd, and the soldiers who had been in Petrograd were stunned by the tragedy from the speaker's mouth, and the regimental teaching team transferred by the government opened fire on the people, and also shot women, children, and maybe even their relatives, the danger of their relatives, the rumors of a massacre, only made the soldiers who remained in the camp fall into a state of righteous indignation, but at this time the officers could barely maintain order in the troops.

Some soldiers from Petrograd, fearing for the safety of their uncles, left the barracks with guns without permission, and on Nevsky Street these soldiers encountered the mounted police, and after firing the bullets they carried, they withdrew to the camp and were surrounded and disarmed, but this spontaneous action, in the mouth of the revolutionaries, became "soldiers rebelling against tyranny", and under the influence of deliberate propaganda, the soldiers of the other garrisons in Petrograd wavered.

On this night, Russia is not destined to be peaceful...... (To be continued......)

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