V. I. Lenin

Source: ru:PSS/v16; en:CW/CW13;es:MT
Translated: machine translation (DeepSeek) from the Russian; AI-translated.

After the dissolution of the Second Duma, the predominant feature of political literature became despondency, repentance, and renegacy. Beginning with Mr. Struve, continuing with Tovarishch, and ending with a number of writers close to the Social-Democrats, we see renunciation of the revolution, of its traditions, and of its methods of struggle, and a striving to adapt themselves in one way or another to the Right. To characterise the way some Social-Democrats now speak and write, we shall take the first specimens that come to hand from the current periodical press: an article by Mr. Nevedomsky in No. 7 of Obrazovaniye{25} and one by Mr. Vl. Gorn in No. 348 of Tovarishch.

Mr. M. Nevedomsky begins his article with the sharpest criticism of the Cadets in the Second Duma and the most resolute defence of the Left bloc tactics and the behaviour of the Social-Democrats. He ends his article as follows:

“Speaking in the indicative mood, I would say that one thing must be obvious to every Social-Democrat: at the stage of political evolution we have now reached, the activities of the socialist parties, in the long run, only pave the way for the bourgeois parties and prepare their temporary triumph.

“Hence the following imperative: whatever the nature of this ‘mimetic’ (‘now a brunette, now a blonde’) Cadet Party, as long as it is the only opposition party, socialist activities must be coordinated with its activities. This is dictated by the principle of economy of forces.”… “On the whole, speaking without any irony” (Mr. M. Nevedomsky had to make this reservation, for he cannot write without twists and turns that confuse both the reader and the author himself), “this phrase of Milyukov’s defines quite correctly, in its essential features, the mutual relations of the two parties”… (the reference is to the following phrase of Milyukov’s: “threats of intervention by the people can be carried out only when that intervention has been prepared beforehand, and it is on this preparation that the work of all those who consider the Duma’s own power insufficient for the fulfilment of its immense tasks must be directed”; let the Left prepare and create the movement—Mr. Nevedomsky interprets this phrase correctly—“and the Cadets and the Duma will take advantage of this work”)… “Perhaps this is not devoid of cynicism when it comes from the lips of a representative of a party that takes advantage of things, but when the question is put in this way by Plekhanov, for example, it is merely an exact and realistic definition of the line of conduct for the Social-Democracy and of its method of utilising the forces of the liberal opposition.”

We are prepared to admit that Plekhanov feels a certain sense… well, let us say, of awkwardness, when such gentlemen pat him condescendingly on the shoulder. But by his Cadet slogans, such as a united platform of the Social-Democrats and the Cadets, or “safeguarding the Duma”, Plekhanov undoubtedly gave them the right to use his speeches in this way.

Now listen to Mr. Vl. Gorn.

“It is clear that to overcome it” (the anti-democratic coalition of landowners and big bourgeoisie created by the electoral law of June 3) “two conditions are necessary. In the first place, all sections of the democracy, not excluding the proletariat, must come to an understanding with each other, so as to oppose one coalition with another; and, in the second place, the struggle must be waged not by inventing the most resolute slogans with a view to splitting off the insufficiently revolutionary elements and forcing the pace of the movement of the admittedly revolutionary minority” (Mr. Gorn’s italics), “but by a real, concrete struggle, which draws in the broadest masses, against the concrete measures of the anti-democratic coalition. To create a democratic coalition, there is no need for fusion; all that is needed is agreement on the paths and immediate aims of the struggle. And such agreements—if the conscious representatives of the masses, the parties, adopt the standpoint of achieving real changes in the conditions of social existence, and not merely the standpoint of agitation—are quite possible.”

Is it not clear from these extracts that both our heroes of fashionable Cadet phrases are in essence saying the same thing? Mr. Gorn is only a little more outspoken and a little more exposed, but his difference from Mr. Nevedomsky is no greater than the difference between Mr. Struve and Mr. Nabokov or Mr. Maklakov.

Politics has its own inner logic. How many times has it been pointed out that technical agreements between the Social-Democrats and the liberals are possible, agreements that in no way lead to a political bloc, which all Party Social-Democrats have always and invariably repudiated (we are not speaking here of non-Party Social-Democrats, or of those who play a double game, saying one thing in the Party and another in a “free”, non-Party newspaper). And life has invariably shattered these fine constructions and good intentions, because the ideas of a political bloc have persistently forced their way through the cover of “technical” agreements. In a petty-bourgeois country, in a period of bourgeois revolution, with an abundance of petty-bourgeois intellectuals in the workers’ party, the tendency towards the political subordination of the proletariat to the liberals has very real roots. And this tendency, rooted in the objective state of affairs, proves to be the real content of all quasi-socialist political chatter about coalitions with the Cadets. Mr. Gorn, with the naïveté of an intellectual who uses Social-Democratic phrases but whose thoughts, whose ideological background, whose whole “inner being” are purely liberal or philistine, Mr. Gorn preaches outright a political bloc, a “democratic coalition”, nothing more nor less.

It is highly characteristic that Mr. Gorn had to make the reservation: “there is no need for fusion”! In making this reservation he only betrayed the remnants of an unclean socialist conscience. For, while saying “there is no need for fusion, only agreement”, he immediately, without a moment’s pause, gave such a description of this “agreement”, such a definition of its content, as reveals his Social-Democratic renegacy with the utmost clarity. The point is not the word, not whether we call the thing “fusion” or “agreement”. The point is the real content of this “combination”. The point is the price at which you propose that the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party should become the kept woman of liberalism.

The price is clearly defined.

1) Abandon the standpoint of agitation.

2) Renounce the “invention” of resolute slogans.

3) Cease splitting off the insufficiently revolutionary elements.

4) Renounce “forcing the pace” of the movement of the admittedly revolutionary minority.

I would gladly offer a prize to anyone who could draw up a clearer and more precise programme of the most complete and most despicable renegacy. Mr. Gorn differs from Mr. Struve only in that Mr. Struve clearly sees his path and to a certain extent “independently” determines his steps. Mr. Gorn, however, is simply led by the nose by his Cadet mentors.

Abandon the standpoint of agitation—that is what the Cadets in the Second Duma were all the time teaching the people. That means not developing the class-consciousness and the demands of the working masses and the peasantry, but lowering both, damping down, extinguishing, preaching social peace.

Not invent resolute slogans—that means, as the Cadets did, renouncing the propaganda of the slogans advanced by the Social-Democrats long before the revolution.

Not split off the insufficiently revolutionary elements—that means renouncing all criticism before the masses of Cadet hypocrisy, falsehood and reactionary character; it means embracing Mr. Struve.

Not force the pace of the movement of the admittedly revolutionary minority—that means, in essence, renouncing revolutionary methods of struggle. For it is absolutely indisputable that in the revolutionary actions throughout 1905 it was an admittedly revolutionary minority that participated; precisely because, although the masses fought, they were nevertheless a minority, and precisely for that reason they did not achieve complete success in the struggle. But all the successes that the liberation movement in Russia achieved at all, all the gains it made at all—all these were won wholly and exclusively by this struggle of the masses that were in the minority. That is the first point. And, in the second place, what the liberals and their echoers call “forced movements” were the only movements in which the masses (although, unfortunately, on the first occasion they were in the minority) participated independently, and not through representatives—the only movement that was not afraid of the people, that expressed the interests of the masses, and that was sympathised with (as the elections to the First and particularly to the Second Duma proved) by the vast masses who did not directly participate in the revolutionary struggle.

In speaking of “forcing the pace of the movement of the admittedly revolutionary minority”, Mr. Gorn commits one of the most common, purely Burenin-like distortions. When Burenin’s newspaper{26} was at war with Alexinsky at the time of the Second Duma, it always presented the matter as if its hostility to Alexinsky was aroused not by his struggle for political liberty, but by the fact that Alexinsky wanted liberty… to smash windows, climb lamp-posts, and so on. The publicist of Tovarishch is doing exactly the same kind of Black-Hundred preparation. He tries to present the matter as if the obstacle to an agreement between the socialists and the liberals is not at all that the socialists have always stood and will always stand for developing the revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary activity of the masses in general, but only that the socialists force the pace, i.e., seize upon and artificially whip up the movement, that they foment movements that are admittedly hopeless.

We shall answer these sallies briefly. The entire socialist press, both Menshevik and Bolshevik, both in the period of the First Duma and in that of the Second, condemned every kind of “forcing” of the movement… The Cadets are at war with the S.D.’s, both in the First and in the Second Duma, not because the latter force the pace of the movement, but because the Social-Democrats develop the revolutionary consciousness and the demands of the masses, and expose the reactionary character of the Cadets and the illusory nature of constitutional illusions. These universally known historical facts cannot be evaded by any newspaper acrobatics. As for the form of Mr. Gorn’s utterances, it is extremely characteristic of our times, when “educated society”, renouncing the revolution, clutches at pornography. A person who considers himself a Social-Democrat goes to a non-Party newspaper to deliver before the general public Novoye Vremya speeches about the workers’ party “forcing the pace” of the movement of an “admittedly” minority! Renegade sentiments are creating renegade morals among us.

Let us now approach the question from another angle. The views of Messrs. Nevedomsky and Gorn, which arouse such disgust when they are presented by alleged Social-Democrats, are undoubtedly highly typical and natural views of broad sections of our bourgeois intelligentsia, of the liberal “society”, of the “frondeur” officials, etc. It is not enough to characterise these views as an expression of the politically characterless, flabby and unstable petty bourgeoisie. They must also be explained from the standpoint of the given state of affairs in the development of our revolution.

Why is it that just now, on the eve of the Third Duma, certain circles of the petty bourgeoisie give rise to such views? Because these circles, submissively changing their convictions with every turn of government policy, believe in the Octobrist Duma, i.e., consider its mission feasible, and hasten to adapt themselves to “Octobrist reforms”, hasten to provide an ideological basis and justification for their adaptation to Octobrism.

The mission of the Octobrist Duma, according to the government’s intention, is to complete the revolution by a direct deal between the old authorities and the landowners and the big bourgeoisie on the basis of a certain minimum of constitutional reforms. Abstractly speaking, there is nothing absolutely impossible in this, for in Western Europe a number of bourgeois revolutions have been completed by the consolidation of “Octobrist” constitutional systems. The question is only whether Octobrist “reforms” capable of stopping the revolution are possible in present-day Russia? Are not the Octobrist “reforms”, owing to the depth of our revolution, doomed to the same collapse as the Cadet “reforms”? Will not the Octobrist Duma be as brief an episode as the Cadet Dumas, an episode on the road to the restoration of the rule of the Black Hundreds and the autocracy?

We have passed through a period of direct revolutionary struggle by the masses (1905), which yielded certain gains in freedom. We then passed through a period of cessation of this struggle (1906 and half of 1907). This period yielded a number of victories for reaction and not a single victory for the revolution, which lost the gains of the first period. The second period was the Cadet period, the period of constitutional illusions. The masses still believed more or less in “parliamentarism” under the autocracy, and the autocracy, realising the danger of the undiluted rule of the Black Hundreds, tried to come to terms with the Cadets, made experiments, tried on different types of constitutional costumes, tested what measure of reform the “masters of Russia”, the big landowners, would accept. The experiment of a Cadet constitution ended in collapse, despite the fact that the Cadets behaved in the Second Duma in a thoroughly Octobrist manner, not only refraining from attacking the government and from rousing the masses against it, but systematically calming the masses, fighting the “Lefts”, i.e., the parties of the proletariat and the peasantry, and directly and resolutely supporting the government (the budget, etc.). The experiment of a Cadet constitution failed, in short, not because the Cadets or the government lacked good will, but because the objective contradictions of the Russian revolution proved too deep. These contradictions proved so deep that it proved impossible to throw a Cadet bridge across the abyss. Experience showed that even when the mass struggle was for the time being completely suppressed, and the old authorities were completely arbitrary in rigging the elections, etc., the peasant masses (and in a bourgeois revolution the outcome depends most of all on the peasantry) advanced such demands that no diplomatic art of Cadet mediators could adapt to the rule of the privileged landowners. If Mr. Struve now vents his spite on the Trudoviks{27} (not to mention the Social-Democrats), if Rech{28} is conducting a regular campaign against them, this is not accidental, nor is it mere vexation on the part of a bourgeois lawyer whose services have been rejected by the muzhik. It is an inevitable political step in the evolution of the Cadets: they failed to reconcile the landowners with the Trudoviks—therefore (for the bourgeois intelligentsia the conclusion can only be this) therefore, instead of rousing wider masses to fight the landowners, the demands of the Trudoviks must be lowered, further concessions must be made to the landowners, “revolutionary utopias must be discarded”, as Struve and Rech put it, or the invention of resolute slogans and the forcing of the pace of the movement must be discarded, as the Cadets’ new servant, Mr. Gorn, puts it.

The government adapts itself to the landowners by placing the elections entirely in their hands and virtually depriving the peasantry of the franchise. The Cadets adapt themselves to the landowners by attacking the Trudoviks for their revolutionary spirit and intransigence. The non-Party political schemers, like the contributors to Tovarishch in general, and Mr. Gorn in particular, adapt themselves to the landowners by calling upon the proletariat and the peasantry to “harmonise” (“coordinate”, as Mr. Nevedomsky puts it) their policy with that of the Cadets, to enter a “democratic coalition” with the Cadets, to renounce “resolute slogans”, and so on and so forth.

The government is acting systematically. Step by step it is taking away what was won by the “forced movement” and what remained undefended when that movement subsided. Step by step it is testing what “reforms” the landowners could be brought to agree to. The Cadets failed to do this? They failed because of obstacles from the Left, despite the sincere desire and efforts of the Cadets themselves? Then the franchise of the “Lefts” must be curtailed and the decision placed in the hands of the Octobrists: only if this experiment also fails will it be necessary to surrender entirely to the “Council of the United Nobility”.{29}

There is sense, system, logic in the government’s actions. It is the logic of the class interests of the landowner. These interests must be defended, and the bourgeois development of Russia must be safeguarded somehow.

To carry out these plans of the government, the interests and the movement of the masses must be forcibly suppressed, they must be deprived of the franchise and handed over to the tender mercies of 130,000 persons. Whether these plans can be carried out—that is a question nobody can decide now. That question will be decided only by the struggle.

We Social-Democrats decide this question by our struggle. And the Cadets decide this question by their struggle… against the Lefts. The Cadets are fighting for a governmental solution of this question: they did this systematically in the Second Duma on the parliamentary arena. They are doing this systematically now by their ideological struggle against the Social-Democrats and the Trudoviks.

Of course, to the ordinary Russian intellectual, as to every half-educated philistine, this sounds paradoxical: the Cadets, who call themselves democrats and make liberal speeches, are fighting for a governmental solution of the question! That is an obvious absurdity! Democrats—then lump them together in a “democratic coalition”! That is such an obvious conclusion for political simpletons, whom even two years of the Russian revolution have not taught to seek the real basis of both government measures and liberal verbiage in the struggle of different classes. And how many “Marxists” we have from the intellectual camp who profess the principle of the class struggle, but in practice argue in a purely liberal way about the Cadets, the role of the Duma, and the boycott! And how many Cadet votes for the budget will be needed for these political simpletons to digest a phenomenon long familiar to Europe: the liberal who makes speeches against the government and supports it on every serious issue.

The replacement of the Second Duma by the Third Duma is the replacement of the Cadet, who acts in an Octobrist way, by the Octobrist, who acts with the aid of the Cadet. In the Second Duma the dominant party was that of the bourgeois intellectuals, who called themselves democrats at the expense of the people and supported the government at the expense of the bourgeoisie. In the Third Duma the dominant party is to be that of the landowners and big bourgeoisie, who hire the bourgeois intelligentsia for demonstrative opposition and for practical services. This simple thing has been proved by the whole political behaviour of the Cadet Party, and by the Second Duma in particular. Even the man in the street is now beginning to understand this simple thing: we would refer to such a witness as Mr. Zhilkin, whom it would be ridiculous to suspect of sympathy with Bolshevism or of a prejudiced and irreconcilable hostility to the Cadets.

In today’s issue (No. 351) of Tovarishch, Mr. Zhilkin describes the impressions of a “cheerful” (sic!{11} Mr. Zhilkin understands “cheerfulness” in much the same way as Gorn or Nevedomsky) provincial as follows:

“The Octobrist landowners with whom I talked argue like this: ‘Cadets can be elected. What is good about them? They are accommodating. In the First Duma they asked too much. In the Second they gave way. They even made cuts in their programme. Well, in the Third they will give way still more. Who knows, they may bargain for something. And then, to tell the honest truth, we have no one among the Octobrists to put up.

…Let the Cadets get in. The difference between us is not so very great. They, too, will move to the Right in the Third Duma… We are friends with the Octobrists only out of necessity… Where are their orators or big men?’”

He who judges parties by their names, programmes, promises and speeches, or who is satisfied with the crude, Bernsteinised “Marxism” that consists in repeating the truth about supporting bourgeois democracy in a bourgeois revolution—he may cherish hopes regarding a democratic coalition of the Lefts and the Cadets in the Third Duma. But he who has a grain of revolutionary instinct and a thoughtful attitude to the lessons of our revolution, or who is really guided by the principle of the class struggle and judges parties by their class character, will not be in the least surprised that the party of the bourgeois intelligentsia is fit only for menial services to the party of the big bourgeoisie. Messrs. Gorn and Nevedomsky are capable of thinking that the divergence between the Cadets and the democracy is the exception, and their divergence from the Octobrists the rule. The very opposite is the case. The Cadets are the real kin of the Octobrists in their entire class nature. Cadet democracy is tinsel, a temporary reflection of the democracy of the masses, or sheer deception, to which the Russian Bernsteinians and philistines, especially those of the newspaper Tovarishch, succumb.

And so, if you look at the question that interests us from this angle, if you understand the real historical role of the Cadet—that bourgeois intellectual who helps the landowner to satisfy the muzhik with a beggarly reform—then the whole profundity of the wisdom of Messrs. Gorn and Nevedomsky, who advise the proletariat to coordinate its actions with the Cadets, will be revealed to you! The picture of the Octobrist “reforms” that are promised us is quite clear. The landowner is “fixing up” the muzhik, and fixing him up in such a way that without punitive expeditions, without flogging peasants and shooting workers, it is impossible to make the population accept the reforms. The Cadet professor “makes opposition”: he proves, from the standpoint of modern jurisprudence, the necessity of constitutional confirmation of the rules concerning punitive expeditions, while condemning the excessive zeal of the police. The Cadet lawyer “makes opposition”: he proves that the law requires that 60 strokes be given, not 200, and that the government should be granted money for birches, on condition that legality is observed. The Cadet doctor is ready to feel the pulse of the victim and to write a study on the necessity of reducing the maximum number of strokes by half.

Was not this the character of the Cadet opposition in the Second Duma? And is it not clear that for such an opposition the Octobrist landowner will not only elect the Cadet to the Duma, but will also agree to pay him a professor’s or some other salary?

A democratic coalition of the socialists with the Cadets in the Second Duma, after the Second Duma, or in the Third Duma, would mean in practice, owing to the objective state of affairs, nothing but the transformation of the workers’ party into a blind and miserable appendage of the liberals, nothing but a complete betrayal by the socialists of the interests of the proletariat and the interests of the revolution. It is quite possible that Messrs. Nevedomsky and Gorn do not realise what they are doing. With such people convictions very often go no deeper than the tip of the tongue. But in essence their strivings amount to putting an end to the independent party of the working class, putting an end to the Social-Democracy. The Social-Democracy, which understands its tasks, must put an end to such gentlemen. Unfortunately, the category of bourgeois revolution is still understood by us in too one-sided a fashion. We lose sight, for example, of the fact that this revolution must show the proletariat—and it alone can for the first time show the proletariat—what the bourgeoisie of a given country is really like, what are the national features of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie in a given national bourgeois revolution. The real, final, and mass separation of the proletariat as a class, its opposition to all bourgeois parties, can take place only when the history of its country shows the proletariat the whole aspect of the bourgeoisie as a class, as a political whole—the whole aspect of the petty bourgeoisie as a stratum, as a definite ideological and political quantity that has revealed itself in such-and-such open, broadly political actions. We must untiringly explain to the proletariat the theoretical truths concerning the essence of the class interests of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie in capitalist society. But these truths will become part of the flesh and blood of the really broad proletarian masses only when these classes are seen and felt in the behaviour of the parties of this or that class—when a clear consciousness of their class nature is supplemented by the direct reaction of the proletarian psyche to the whole aspect of the bourgeois parties. Nowhere in the world, perhaps, has the bourgeoisie in a bourgeois revolution displayed such reactionary brutality, such a close alliance with the old authorities, such a “freedom” from anything even remotely resembling sincere sympathy for culture, progress, and the defence of human dignity, as in our country—let our proletariat, then, derive from the Russian bourgeois revolution a threefold hatred for the bourgeoisie and a determination to fight it. Nowhere in the world, probably, has the petty bourgeoisie—from the “Popular Socialists”{30} and the Trudoviks to the intellectuals who have wormed their way into the Social-Democracy—displayed such cowardice and lack of character in the struggle, such a despicable orgy of renegade sentiments, such sycophancy towards the heroes of bourgeois fashion or reactionary violence—let our proletariat, then, derive from our bourgeois revolution a threefold contempt for petty-bourgeois flabbiness and instability. However our revolution may proceed in the future, whatever hard times the proletariat may sometimes have to go through, this hatred and this contempt will unite its ranks, purge it of worthless elements from other classes, increase its strength, and steel it for the blows which in due time it will deal to the whole of bourgeois society.