V. I.

Lenin

The agenda of the forthcoming All-Russian Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. includes
the question: “The present situation and the tasks of the
Party”. The organisations of our Party have already begun (Moscow and
St. Peters burg ahead of all other centres in this respect) systematically to
discuss this question, which is undoubtedly of extreme importance.

The present period of lull in the movement for liberation, of rampant reaction,
of betrayals and despondency in the camp of the democrats, of crisis and partial
break-down in the Social-Democratic organisations, makes it particularly vital
to take into account first of all the main lessons of the first campaign of our
revolution. We have in mind not tactical lessons in the narrow sense of the
word, but in the first place the general lessons of the revolution. And, in
keeping with this, our first question will be, what are the objective changes
which have taken place in the grouping of classes and the political balance of
forces in Russia between 1904 and 1908? The main changes can be reduced, in our
view, to the following five: (1) There has been a fundamental shift in the
agrarian policy of the autocracy on the peasant question; support and
reinforcement of the old village commune have been superseded by a policy of
speeded-up police destruction and plundering of that commune. (2) The
representative arrangements of the Black-Hundred nobility and big bourgeoisie
have made a tremendous step forward: instead of the former local elect ed
committees of the nobles and merchants, instead of sporadic attempts at
representing them on an all-Russian scale, there is a single representative
body, the State Duma, in which these classes are guaranteed complete preponderance. Representation
of the liberal professions—to say nothing of the peasantry and the
proletariat—is reduced to the role of an appendage and a makeweight in
this so-called “constitutional” institution, the purpose of which
is to strengthen the autocracy. (3) For the first time the classes have achieved
a definite cleavage and taken shape in open political struggle during this
period: the political parties which now exist openly and secretly
(half-secretly, to be more exact, for there are no completely
“secret” parties in Russia since the. revolution), express with
previously unheard-of exactness the interests and viewpoint of classes which
during the three years have matured a hundred times more than during the
preceding half-century. The Black-Hundred nobility, the
national-“liberal” bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeois democrats (the
Trudoviks with their small Left wing of S.R.s) and proletarian Social-Democracy
have all during this period completed the “foetal” stage of their
development, and for years ahead have defined their nature, not in words but by
facts and mass actions. (4) What before the revolution was known as liberal and
liberal-Narodnik “society”, or the spokesman and “enlightened” part of the “nation” at large—the
broad mass of well-to-do, noblemen’s and intellectuals’
“opposition”, which seemed to be some thing integral, and
homogeneous, permeating the Zemstvos, the universities, all the
“decent” press, etc., etc.—has displayed itself in the revolution as the ideologues and supporters of the bourgeoisie, and has taken up
what all can recognise now as a counter-revolutionary position in
respect of the mass struggle of the socialist proletariat and the
democratic peasantry. The counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie has come
into existence and is growing—and this fact does not cease to be a fact
because it is denied by the “progressive” legal press, or because
our opportunists, the Mensheviks, keep silent about it and do not understand
it. (5) Millions among the population have gained practical experience ,
in the most varied forms, of a genuinely mass and directly revolutionary
struggle, including a “general strike”, the expulsion of landowners,
the burning of their country-houses, and open armed uprising. He who was already
a revolutionary or a class-conscious worker before the revolution cannot fully realise the tremendous significance of this
fact, which has radically changed a number of previous conceptions of the course
of development of a political crisis, the tempo of. this development, the
dialectics of history created in practice by the masses. The assessment of this
experience by the masses is an invisible, painful and slow process,
playing a far more important part than many an event on the surface of the
country’s political life which fascinate infants who are not only. of an
infantile age in politics but sometimes a good deal older. The leading role of
the proletarian masses all through the revolution and in all the fields of
struggle, from demonstrations, through insurrection, to (in chronological
order) “parliamentary” activity, has become apparent for all to see
during this period, if we look over it as a whole.

Such are the objective changes which have created a gulf between pre-October
and present-day Russia. Such are the results of three years of the most
eventful period in our history, results given, of course, in a summarised
form, so to speak, insofar as one is able in a few words to outline what is
most important and essential. Now let us examine the conclusions in the sphere
of tactics which these results dictate.

The change in the agrarian policy of the autocracy is of exceptionally great
importance for a “peasant” country like Russia. This change is not
an accident, it is not the fluctuations in ministerial lines of action, not an
invention of the bureaucracy. No, it is a profound “shift” towards
agrarian Bonapartism , towards a liberal (economically understood, i.e.,
bourgeois) policy in the sphere of peasant land relations. Bonapartism is the
manoeuvring on the part of a monarchy which has lost its old patriarchal or
feudal, simple and solid, foundation—a monarchy which is obliged to walk
the tightrope in order not to fall, make advances in order to govern, bribe in
order to gain affections, fraternise with the dregs of society, with plain
thieves and swindlers, in order not to rely only on bayonets. Bonapartism is the
objectively necessary evolution of the monarchy in any bourgeois country, traced
by Marx and Engels through a number of facts in the modern history of
Europe. And the agrarian Bonapartism of Stolypin, on this point quite consciously and steadfastly supported both by the
Black-Hundred landlords and the Octobrist bourgeoisie, could not even have
seen the light, much less have lasted two years now, if the village commune
itself in Russia were not developing in a capitalist direction, if within
the commune elements were not steadily shaping which the autocracy could
begin its flirtation with, to which it could say: “Enrich yourselves!”,
“Plunder the commune but support me!” Therefore, any assessment of
Stolypin’s agrarian policy that did not reckon with the Bonapartist methods
of the latter, on the one hand, and its bourgeois (that is, liberal)
essence on the other would be decidedly erroneous.

For example, our liberals express their dimly realised understanding
that Stolypin’s agrarian policy is Bonapartism by their attacks on its
police character, on the idiotic interference of officials in peasant
affairs, etc., etc. But when the Cadets lament the violent break-up of the
“age old” foundations of our country life, they become reactionary moaners. Without a violent, revolutionary break-up of
the foundations of the old Russian countryside there can be no development
of Russia. The struggle is going on— though very many indeed of its
participants do not realise it—only about whether it will be the
violence of a land lords’ monarchy against the peasants, or of a peasant re
public against the landlords. In both cases a bourgeois, and no other kind
of agrarian revolution in Russia is inevitable , but in the first
case it will be a slow and agonising one, in the second a swift, broad and
free-moving one. The struggle of the workers’ party for this second road is
ex pressed and recognised in our agrarian programme—not in the part where
the senseless idea of “municipalisation” is put forward, but in the part
which speaks about confiscating all the landed estates. After the
experience of three years it is only, perhaps, among the Mensheviks that
people can be still found who do not see the link between the struggle for
that confiscation and the struggle for a republic. Stolypin’s agrarian
policy, if maintained for a very long time, if it reconstructed all landed
relations in the countryside for good and all on purely bourgeois lines,
might force us to give up the idea of any agrarian programme in bourgeois society (up to this day even the Mensheviks, and, even the
Cherevanins among the Mensheviks, have not reached the point of renouncing
our agrarian programme). But Stolypin’s policy can by no means induce us to
change our tactics today. Since the “confiscation of all landed estates”
stands in the programme, only infants can fail to see the revolutionary
tactics (in the direct and narrow sense of the word “revolutionary”)
which follow from this. And it would be wrong to put the question in this
way, that if Stolypin’s policy is suffering “bankruptcy”, that means that
a revival is near—and vice versa. The failure of Bonapartist methods does
not imply the failure of the policy of the kulak plundering of the village
commune. And, vice versa, Stolypin’s success” in the countryside now and
in the next years to come will necessarily inflame the struggle
within the peasantry rather than quench it, for only by a long, a very long
road, can the “goal”, i.e., the final and complete consolidation of a
purely bourgeois peasant economy, be achieved. Stolypin’s
“success” in the years immediately ahead might lead at best to the
emergence of a stratum of consciously counter-revolutionary Octobrist
peasants, but it is just such a transformation of the well-to-do minority
into a politically conscious and united force that would inevitably give a
tremendous impetus to the development of political consciousness and unity
of the democratic mass against such a minority. We Social-Democrats could
wish for nothing better than the transformation of the spontaneous,
sporadic, blind struggle between the “sharks” and the “community” into
a conscious and open struggle between Octobrists and Trudoviks.

Let us go on to the question of the Duma. Undoubtedly this
Black-Hundred “constitutional” body is just another development of the
absolute monarchy towards Bonapartism. All those features of Bonapartism
which we noted above are revealed with perfect clarity in the present
electoral law, in the faked majority of Black-Hundred representatives plus
the Octobrists, in the sham imitation of Europe, in the rush for loans, the
expenditure of which is allegedly controlled by “the representatives of
the nation”, and the complete ignoring of all the debates and decisions of
the Duma by the autocracy in its practical policy.

The contradiction between the Black-Hundred autocracy, which virtually
reigns supreme, and the window-dressing of a bourgeois “constitution” is
revealing itself more and more obviously, and bringing with it the elements
of a new revolutionary crisis. The autocracy was to have been covered up,
dressed up, decked out with the help of the Duma; in effect, the
Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma with every day of its existence reveals,
exposes, lays bare the true character of our state power, its real class
foundations and its Bonapartism; One cannot but recall in this connection
the remarkably profound observation of Engels (in his letter to Bernstein
on August 27, 1883 [3] ) on the meaning of the transition from an
absolute to a constitutional monarchy. While the liberals in general and
the Russian Cadets in particular see in such a transition the workings of
their notorious “peaceful” progress and its guarantee, En- gels pointed
out the historic role of the constitutional monarchy as a form of state
which facilitates a decisive struggle between the feudalists and
the bourgeoisie. Engels wrote: “But just as this struggle [between
feudalism and the bourgeoisie I could not be fought out to a decisive
conclusion under the old absolute monarchy but only in a constitutional one
(England, France 1789-92 and 1815-30), so the struggle between bourgeoisie
and proletariat can only be fought out in a republic.” Engels here gives
the title of constitutional monarchy, among others, to the France of 1816,
when the famous Chambre Introuvable, a reactionary counter-revolutionary
chamber, ran amuck in sup port of the. White Terror against the revolution
probably no less violently than our Third Duma. What does this mean? Does
Engels recognise the reactionary assemblies of representatives of the
landlords and capitalists, who support absolutism in its struggle with
revolution, as being genuinely constitutional institutions? No. It means
that there may arise historical conditions when institutions which falsify
a constitution inflame the struggle for a real constitution, and become a
stage in the development of new revolutionary crises. In the first
campaign of our revolution the majority of the people still believed in the
possibility of reconciling a genuine constitution with the autocracy; and
the Cadets built their whole policy on systematically sustaining this belief among the people, while the Trudoviks followed the
lead of the Cadets at least half-way in this respect. Now the autocracy by
its Third Duma is showing the people in practice with what “constitution”
it can “reconcile itself”—and thereby brings nearer a wider and more
resolute struggle against the autocracy .

It follows from this, incidentally, that it would be quite wrong to
replace our old slogan of “down with the autocracy” with the slogan
“down with the Third Duma”. Under what conditions could a slogan like
“down with the Duma” acquire meaning? Let us assume that we are faced
with a liberal, reform-seeking, compromising Duma in a period of the
sharpest revolutionary crisis, which had developed to the point of direct
civil war. It is quite possible that at such a moment our slogan might be
“down with the Duma”, i.e., down with peaceable negotiations with the
tsar, down with the deceptive institution of “peace”, let’s call for a
direct attack. Now let us assume, on the contrary, that we are faced with
an arch-reactionary Duma, elected under an obsolete electoral law, and the
absence of any acutely revolutionary crisis in the country. In that case
the slogan “down with the Duma” might become the slogan of a struggle for
electoral reform. We see neither of these contingencies at the present
time. The Third Duma is not a compromising but a downright,
counter-revolutionary body, which does not cover up the autocracy, but
exposes it, and which plays no independent part in any respect; no one
anywhere expects it to produce progressive reforms; no one imagines that
the source of tsarism.’s real power and strength lies in this assembly of
diehards. All are agreed that tsarism does not repose on it, but makes use
of it; that tsarism can pursue its entire present policy, both if the
calling of such a Duma be postponed (as the calling of a parliament was
“postponed” by Turkey in 1878) and if it be replaced by a “Zemsky

Sobor” [1] or something similar. The slogan “down with the Duma” would mean
concentrating the main attack on an institution which is neither
independent nor decisive, and which does not play the principal part. Such
a slogan would be wrong. We must keep the old slogan of “down with the autocracy” and “long live the Constituent Assembly’, because it
is precisely the autocracy which continues to remain the real authority,
the real support and bulwark of reaction. The fall of the autocracy
inevitably means the removal (and the revolutionary removal at. that) of
the Third Duma as an institution of tsarism; but the fall of the Third Duma
by itself would mean either a new adventure by that same autocracy or an
attempt at reform—a deceptive and only apparent reform—undertaken by
the same autocracy. [2]

To proceed. We have seen that the class nature of the political parties
during the three years of the first revolutionary campaign has become
defined with remarkable force and salience. Hence it follows that in all
discussions of the present balance of political forces, of the tendencies
to change in this balance, etc., it is essential to reckon with these
concrete data of historical experience, and not with abstract “general
arguments”. The entire history of the European states bears witness that
precisely in the periods of direct revolutionary struggle deep and lasting
foundations of class groupings are laid, and divisions into large political
parties take place, which thereafter persist even in very long periods of
stagnation. Some parties may go underground, give no sign of life,
disappear from the front of the political stage: but at the slightest
revival the main political forces inevitably will give signs of them selves
again, perhaps in an altered form but with the same character and direction
of their activity, so long as the objective tasks of the revolution, which
has suffered defeat to this or that extent, are not fulfilled. Hence, it
would be. the greatest short-sightedness, for example, to presume that
because there are no Trudovik organisations in the local areas, and the
Trudovik group in the Third Duma is distinguished by its particular
confusion and impotence, the masses of the democratic peasantry have
therefore completely fallen apart, and play no essential role in the
process of the rise of a new revolutionary crisis. Such a view is worthy only of the Mensheviks, who more and more are falling into
the most humdrum “parliamentary cretinism” (take, for example, their
truly disgraceful renegade attacks against the illegal Party
organisation). Marxists should know that the conditions of representation,
not only in our Black-Hundred Duma but even in the most ideal bourgeois
parliament, will always create an artificial disparity between the real
strength of the various classes and its reflection in the representative
institution. For example, the liberal-bourgeois intelligentsia always and
everywhere seems in parliaments to be a hundred times stronger than it is
in reality (in our revolution, too, opportunist Social-Democrats took the
Cadets for what they seemed to be), and on the contrary very broad
democratic strata of the petty bourgeoisie (in the towns during the
bourgeois revolutions of 1848, in the countryside in Russia) often prove to
be an extremely important factor in the open struggle of the masses, while
being quite insignificant from the point of view of their representation in
parliaments.

Our peasantry entered upon the revolution immeasurably less politically
conscious than the liberal bourgeois on the one hand and the socialist
proletariat on the other. For this reason it drew from the revolution more
painful but valuable disillusionments, more bitter but salutory lessons,
than any other class. Quite naturally, it is digesting these lessons with
particular difficulty and particularly slowly. Quite naturally many
“radicals” from among the intelligentsia will lose patience, and give it
all up as a bad job— and so will some Social-Democratic philistines, on
whose faces a contemptuous grimace appears whenever some one talks about
some peasant democracy or other, but whose mouths water at the mere sight
of the “enlightened” liberals. But the class-conscious proletariat will
not so easily strike out of its memory what it saw and what it took part in
during the autumn and winter of 1905. And taking into account the balance
of forces in our revolution, we must know that the certain sign of a
genuinely widespread rise in the social tide, of a genuinely approaching
revolutionary crisis, will inevitably be, in the Russia of today, a
movement among the peasantry.

The liberal bourgeoisie in our country has entered upon the path of
counter-revolution. Only the brave Cherevanins can deny this—they and the
cowardly editors of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata , who deny their own
comrade-in-idea and -arms. But if this counter-revolutionary nature of the
bourgeois liberals were to lead anyone to infer that their opposition and
discontent, their conflicts with the Black- Hundred landlords, or any
rivalry and struggle of the different sections of the bourgeoisie among
themselves, can be of no importance in the process of a new upsurge, this
would be a tremendous mistake, and real, Menshevism inside out. The
experience of the Russian revolution, like the experience of other
countries, proves beyond doubt that where the objective conditions of a
profound political crisis exist, the tiniest conflicts seemingly remote
from the real breeding ground of revolution, can be of the most serious
importance as the reason, as the last straw, as a turning-point in public
feeling, etc. Let us recall that the Zemstvo campaign and the liberals’
petitions of 1904 were the forerunner of such an original and purely
proletarian “petition” as that of January the Ninth. When the Bolsheviks
were arguing about the Zemstvo campaign, it was not against its use for
proletarian demonstrations, but against our Mensheviks wanting to confine
these demonstrations to the Zemstvo assembly halls, against the
demonstrations before the Zemstvo people being declared the highest form of
demonstration, and against plans for the demonstrations being drawn up with
a view to preventing the liberals from being frightened off. Another
example is the student movements. . In a country which is going through an
era of bourgeois-democratic revolution involving a progressive accumulation
of inflammable material, these movements may easily spark off events
infinitely more far-reaching than a petty and local conflict over the
management of affairs in a single branch of the state administration. Naturally, the Social-Democrats, who carry on the
independent class policy of the proletariat, will never adapt themselves
either to the student struggle or to new Zemstvo congresses, or to the
conceptions of sections of the bourgeoisie which have fallen out among
themselves; they will never ascribe independent importance to this family quarrel, and so on. But it is precisely the Social- Democratic Party
which is the part.y of the class leading the whole struggle for
emancipation; it is unquestionably bound to make use of each and every
conflict, to inflame it, to extend its importance, to link with it its own
agitation for revolutionary slogans, to bring the news of these conflicts
to the broad masses, to induce them to take in dependent and open action
with their own demands, etc. In France after 1793, a counter-revolutionary
liberal bourgeoisie came into being and steadily grew; nevertheless the
conflicts and the struggle between its different sections continued for
another hundred years to serve in one way or another as grounds for new
revolutions in which the proletariat invariably played the part of the
principal motive force, and which it carried through to the point
of winning a republic.

Let us now consider the conditions for an offensive by this leading and
advanced class in our bourgeois-democratic revolution, the
proletariat. When the Moscow comrades were discussing this question, they
quite rightly underlined the root importance of the industrial crisis. They
collected extremely interesting material about this crisis, took into
account the significance of the struggle between Moscow and Lodz, and
amended in several respects certain conceptions which had hitherto
prevailed. It re mains only to he wished that this material should,
not.wither away in the subcommittees of the Moscow Committee or the Moscow
Area Committee, but should be worked over and published in the press for
the whole Party to discuss. For our part we shall confine ourselves to a
few remarks on the presentation of the question. The direction in
which the crisis is moving is, by the way, a moot question (it is generally
admitted- that a very severe depression, bordering on a crisis, once more
reigns in our industry after a very brief and slight boom). Some say that
offensive economic struggles by the workers are as impossible as before,
and consequently a revolutionary upswing is impossible in the near
future. Others say that the impossibility of economic struggle impels a
turn t& a political struggle, and therefore a revolutionary upswing is
inevitable in the near future.

We think that both arguments have at their foundation the same error,
which consists in simplifying a complex issue. Undoubtedly the detailed
study of the industrial crisis is of the greatest importance. But it is
also beyond doubt that no data about the crisis, even if they were ideally
accurate, can in reality decide the question of whether a rise of the
revolutionary tide is at hand or not: because such a rise depends on a
thousand additional factors which it is impossible to measure
beforehand. It is indubitable that without the general groundwork of an
agrarian crisis in the country, and depression in industry, profound
political crises are impossible. But if the general groundwork exists, that
does not permit us to conclude whether the depression will for a time
retard the mass struggle of the workers in general, or whether at a certain stage of events the same depression will not push new
masses and fresh forces into the political struggle. To answer such a
question there is only one way: to keep a careful finger on the pulse of
the country’s whole political life, and especially the state of the
movement and of the mood of the mass of the proletariat. Recently, for
example, a number of reports from Party workers in different parts of
Russia, in both industrial and agricultural areas, point to an undoubted
revival of interest, an influx of fresh forces, a growing interest in
agitation, etc. Comparing with this the beginning of mass unrest among the
students, on the one hand, and the attempts to revive the Zemstvo
congresses, on the other, we can record a certain turn in events, something
that is breaking up the complete stagnation of the last eighteen
months. how strong that turn is, whether it means the opening stage for a
new epoch of open struggle, etc., facts will show. All that we can do now,
and all that we must do in any case, is to intensify our efforts to
strengthen the illegal Party organisation and multiply tenfold our
agitation among the mass of the proletariat. Only agitation can reveal on a
broad scale the real state of mind of the masses, only agitation can make
for close co-operation between the Party and the whole working class, only
making use for the purposes of political agitation of every strike, of
every important event or issue in working-class life, of all conflicts
within the ruling classes or between one section of those classes or another and the autocracy, of every speech by a
Social-Democrat in the Duma, of every new expression of the
counter-revolutionary policy of the government, etc.—only work like this
can once again close the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat, and
provide accurate material for judging the speed with which conditions for
new and more decisive battles are coming to a head.

To sum up. A survey of the results of the revolution and the present
situation show clearly that the objective tasks of the revolution have not
been performed. The shift to wards Bonapartism in the autocracy’s agrarian
policy and in its general policy both in the Duma and through the medium of
the Duma, only sharpens and widens the contradiction between the
Black-Hundred autocracy and the supremacy of the “wild landlord”, on the
one hand, and the requirements of the economic and social development of
the whole country, on the other. The police and kulak drive against the
masses in the countryside is making the struggle there more acute and
politically conscious, bringing—so to speak—the struggle against the
autocracy closer to the everyday and vital problems of every village. The
defence of revolutionary-democratic demands in the agrarian question
(confiscation of all landed estates) is exceptionally binding a duty for
the Social-Democrats at such a moment. The Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma,
which shows clearly in practice with what “constitution” the autocracy
can “be reconciled” and which does not resolve a single question even
within the narrowest limits of meeting the needs of the country’s economic
development, is turning the struggle “for a constitution” into a
revolutionary struggle against the autocracy . The local conflicts
of individual sections of the bourgeoisie among themselves and with the
government, in these conditions, bring just such a struggle nearer. The
impoverishment of the countryside, depression in industry, a general
feeling that there is no way out in the present political situation and
that the notorious “peaceful constitutional” way is hopeless, all give
rise more and more to new elements of a revolutionary crisis. Our business
now is not artificially to invent any new slogans (like that of “Down with
the Duma” instead of “Down with the autocracy”), but to strengthen the illegal Party organisation (in spite of the
reactionary outcry of the Mensheviks who, are trying to bury it) and to
develop wide revolutionary Social-Democratic agitation, which will bind the
Party firmly together with the masses of the proletariat and mobilise
those masses.

---
Notes:
[1]
A central representative assembly.— Ed .

[2]
In the next issue we shall examine the other aspect of the question of
“Duma” tactics, and discuss the “letter” from an otzovist comrade in
Rabocheye Znamya , No. 5. (See pp. 286–302 of this volume.— Ed .) — Lenin

[3]
See K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence , Moscow,
1955, pp. 438-39.