V. I.

Lenin

The question put by the Social-Democratic group in the
Third Duma concerning the dastardly frame-up staged by the secret police
that led to the criminal proceedings being instituted against the
Social-Democrat members of the Second

Duma, [3] apparently marks a certain turn in our entire Party activity,
as well as in the position of democracy in general and in the mood of the
working masses.

It is probably the first time that such a resolute protest,
revolutionary in tone and content, against the “masters of June Third”
has been heard from the rostrum of the Third Duma, a protest supported by
the entire opposition, including the extremely moderate,
liberal-monarchist, Vekhi variety of “His Majesty’s Opposition”,
i.e., the Cadet Party, and Including even the Progressists. It is probably
the first time since the period of gloom set in (i.e., since 1908), that
the country sees, feels, and is tangibly aware that in connection with the
revolutionary protest voiced by the deputies of the revolutionary
proletariat in the reactionary Duma, the masses of workers are stirring,
that there is a rising spirit of unrest in the working-class districts of
the capital, that workers are holding meetings (meetings again!) at which
revolutionary speeches are delivered by Social-Democrats (the meetings at
the Putilov Works, the Cable Works, and other plants), and that there is
talk and rumour of a political mass strike (see report from St. Petersburg
in the Octobrist Golos Moskvy of November 19).

To be sure, revolutionary speeches were made by Social-Democrat
deputies in the Third Duma on more than one occasion in the paste too. On
more than one occasion our comrades of the Social-Democratic group in the Third Duma did their duty
splendidly and from the platform of the reactionary and servile
Purishkevich “parliament” they spoke plainly, clearly and sharply of the
bankruptcy of the monarchy, of a republic, of a second revolution. These
services rendered by the Social-Democrat members of the Third Duma must be
emphasised all the more strongly, the more often we hear the contemptible
opportunist talk of the sham Social-Democrats of Golos Sotsial-Demokrata or Dyelo Zhizni who frown upon such
speeches.

But never before has there been such a combination of political
symptoms indicating a turn—the, entire opposition backing the
Social-Democrats; the liberal-monarchist, “loyal”, “responsible”, and
cowardly Rech stating that the situation is fraught with conflict;
the masses showing unrest in connection with the question in the Duma; and
the censored press reporting the existence of “alarming sentiments” in
the rural districts. Following as it does upon the “Muromtsev” and
“Tolstoi” demonstrations of last year, the strikes in 1910 and 4911, and
last year’s students’ “affair”, the present instance undoubtedly serves
to confirm us in our conviction that the first period of the Russian
counter-revolution—the period of absolute stagnation, of dead calm,
hangings and suicides, of the orgy of reaction and the orgy of renegacy of
every brand, particularly the liberal brand—that this period has come to an end . The second period in the history of the
counter-revolution has set in: the state of utter dejection and often of
“savage” fright is waning; among the broadest and most varied sections of
the population there is a noticeably growing political consciousness—or,
if not consciousness exactly, at least a feeling that “things cannot go on
as before”, and that a “change” is required, is necessary, is
inevitable; and we see the beginning of an inclination, half instinctive,
often still undefined, to lend support to protests and struggle.

It would, naturally, be imprudent to exaggerate the significance of
these symptoms and to imagine that the revival is already under way. That
is not yet so. The features that characterise the counter-revolution at
present are not the same as those distinguishing its first period;
but the counter revolution still reigns supreme and imagines itself to be invincible. To quote the December 1908 resolution of the R.S.D.L.P., the
“protracted task of training, educating, and organising” the
proletariat [4] is still, as before, on the order of the day. However,
the fact that a turn has set in compels us to pay particular attention to
the attitude of the Social-Democratic Party to other parties, and to the
immediate tasks of the working-class movement.

“ His Majesty’s Opposition”, including the Cadets and the
Progressists, appeared to recognise for a moment the leading role of the
Social-Democrats and, following the lead of the workers’ deputies, walked
out of the Duma of landowners and Octobrists, the Duma founded by the
Black-Hundred and pogrom-making monarchy of Nicholas Romanov; they walked
out and stayed away during the base trickery of the majority who were
afraid that the story of the frame-up would be made public.

What does this mean? Have the Cadets ceased to be a counter-revolutionary party or have they never been one, as is asserted by
the opportunist Social-Democrats? Ought we to make it our task to
“support” the Cadets and to think of some slogan calling for a “general
national opposition”?

The enemies of revolutionary Social-Democracy have from time
immemorial, it may be said, resorted to the method of reducing its views to
an absurdity and have, for the convenience of their polemics, drawn a
caricature of Marxism. Thus, in the second half of the nineties of the last
century, when Social-Democracy was just springing up in Russia as a mass
movement, the Narodniks drew a caricature of Marxism which they labelled
“strike-ism”. And, such was the irony of history that there were Marxists
whom that caricature fitted. They were the Economists. It was possible to
save the honour and good name of Social-Democracy only by a ruthless
struggle against Economism. And after the Revolution of 1905, when
Bolshevism, as the adaptation of revolutionary Marxism to the particular
conditions of the epoch, scored a great victory in the working-class
movement, a victory which now even its enemies concede, our adversaries
drew a caricature of Bolshevism, which they labelled “boycottism”,
“combatism”, etc. And, again, such was the irony of history that there
were Bolsheviks whom that caricature fitted. They were the Vperyod
group.

These lessons of history should serve as a warning against attempts to
distort the views of revolutionary Social-Democrats concerning the attitude
towards the Constitutional-Democrats (see, for instance, Vperyod ,
No. 2). The Cadets are unquestionably a counter-revolutionary party. Only
absolutely ignorant or unscrupulous persons can deny this; and it is the
bounden duty of Social-Democrats to make this fact known far and wide,
including the rostrum of the Duma. But the Cadets are a party of
counter-revolutionary liberals , and their liberal nature, as has
been emphasised in the resolution on non-proletarian parties adopted at the
London Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. (in 1907), makes it our duty to “take
advantage” of the peculiar situation and the particular conflicts or cases
of friction arising from this situation, to take advantage, for instance,
of their sham democracy to advocate true, consistent, and selfless
democracy.

Since counter-revolutionary liberalism has sprung up in the country,
the forces of democracy in general, and of proletarian democracy in
particular, must do everything to separate themselves from it; not for a
moment must they forget the dividing line between it and them. But it does
not in the least follow from this that it is permissible to confuse
counter-revolutionary liberalism with, say, counter revolutionary
feudalism, or that it is permissible to ignore the conflicts between them,
to hold aloof from these conflicts or brush them aside. Counter-revolutionary liberalism, for the very reason that it is
counter-revolutionary, will never be able to assume the role of
leader in a victorious revolution; but, for the very reason that it is
liberalism, it will inevitably keep coming into “conflict” with
the Crown, with feudalism, with non-liberal bourgeoisie, and by its
behaviour it will sometimes indirectly reflect the “Left”, democratic
sentiments of the country, or the be ginning of a revival, etc.

Let us recall the history of France. At the time of the revolution,
bourgeois liberalism had already shown its counter-revolutionary
nature—this subject is dealt with, for instance, in Cunow’s fine book on
revolutionary news paper literature in France, Yet, not only after the
great bourgeois revolution, but even after the revolution of 1848, when the counter-revolutionary nature of the liberals had brought matters
to such a pass that workers were being shot down by republicans—in
1868–70, the last years of the Second Empire—these liberals by their
opposition ex pressed the change of sentiment in the country and the
beginning of the democratic, revolutionary, republican revival.

If the Cadets are now playing at “eyes left”, as the Octobrists taunt
them, that is one of the symptoms and one of the results of the country
moving “leftward”; it shows that revolutionary democracy is stirring in
the womb of its mother, preparing to come into God’s world again. The womb
of Russia under the rule of the Purishkeviches and Romanovs is such that it
must give birth to revolutionary democracy!

What is the practical conclusion to be drawn from this? The conclusion
is that we must watch the growth of this new revolutionary democracy with
the greatest attention. Just because it is new, because it is coming into
the world after 1905 and after the counter-revolution, and not before it,
it is sure to grow in a new way ; and in order to be able properly
to approach this “new”, to be able to influence it and help it grow
successfully, we must not confine our selves to the old methods, but must
search for new methods as well—we must mingle with the crowds, feel the
pulse of real life, and sometimes make our way not only into the thick of
the crowd, but also into the liberal salon.

Mr. Burtsev’s sheet L’Avenir , for instance, is very reminiscent of a liberal salon. There the stupid, liberal, Octobrist-Cadet
slogan calling for “a revision of the Statutes of June 3” is defended in
a liberal manner; there they prattle eagerly about stool-pigeons, police,
agents provocateurs , Burtsev, bombs. Nevertheless, when Mr. Martov
was in a hurry to get into that salon, he might have been accused only of
tactless haste, but not of a fundamental falsehood, if
... if he had not behaved there like a liberal. We may justify,
and sometimes even praise, a Social-Democrat who makes his appearance in a
liberal salon as long as he be haves like a Social-Democrat, But in the
liberal salon Mr. Martov came out with the liberal balderdash about
“solidarity in the struggle for the very freedom of elections and election propaganda”, which is supposed to be maintained “for the period
of the elections”!! ( L’Avenir , No. 5).

A new democracy is growing up—under new conditions, and in a new
way. We must learn to approach it properly—that is beyond doubt. We must
not approach it for the purpose of lisping like liberals, but in order to
uphold and advocate the slogans of true democracy. Social-Democrats must
advocate three slogans to the new democracy, slogans which are
alone worthy of our great cause and which alone correspond to the
real conditions for the attainment of freedom in
Russia. These slogans are: a republic; the eight-hour day; and the
confiscation of all landed estates.

This is the one correct nation-wide programme of struggle for a free
Russia. Anyone who doubts this programme is not yet a democrat. Anyone who
denies this programme while calling himself a democrat, has understood all
too well how necessary it is for him to hoodwink the people in order to
achieve his anti-democratic (i.e., counter-revolutionary) aims.

Why is the struggle for the eight-hour working day a natural condition
for the attainment of freedom in Russia? Because experience has shown that
freedom cannot be achieved without a selfless struggle on the part of the
proletariat, and such a struggle is inseparably bound up with the struggle
to improve the workers’ conditions. The eight-hour day is an example of
such improvements and is the banner of struggle for them.

Why is the struggle for the confiscation of all landed estates a
natural condition for the attainment of freedom in Russia? Because, without
radical measures to help the millions of peasants who have been reduced by
the Purishkeviches, Romanovs, and Markovs to unheard of ruin, suffering,
and death from starvation, all talk of democracy and of “people’s
freedom” is absurd and utterly hypocritical. And unless the landed estates
are confiscated for the benefit of the peasants, there can be no question
of any serious measures to help the muzhik, there can be no
question of any serious determination to put an end to muzhik Russia, i.e.,
to feudal Russia, and to build up a Russia of free tillers of the soil, a
democratic bourgeois Russia.

Why is the struggle for a republic a natural condition for the attainment of freedom in Russia? Because experience, the great and
unforgettable experience of one of the greatest decades in the history of
Russia—the first decade of the twentieth century—has shown clearly,
conclusively, and incontestably that our monarchy is incompatible
with even the most elementary guarantees of political freedom. The result
of Russia’s historical development and centuries of tsardom is that at the
beginning of the twentieth century there is no other monarchy in Russia,
nor can there be any other , than a Black-Hundred and pogrom-making monarchy . With social conditions and class relations
what they are, all the Russian monarchy can do is to organise gangs of
murderers to shoot our liberal and democratic deputies from behind, or set
fire to buildings in which meetings are held by democrats. The only answer
the Russian monarchy can give to the demonstrations of the people demanding
freedom is to let loose gangs of men who seize hold of Jewish children by
their legs and smash their heads against stones, who rape Jewish and
Georgian women and rip open the bellies of old men.

The liberal innocents prattle about the example of a constitutional
monarchy like that of England. But if in a civilised country like England,
a country which has never known anything like the Mongolian yoke or the
tyranny of a bureaucracy, or a military clique riding roughshod over it, if
it was necessary in that country to chop off the head of one crowned robber
in order to impress upon the kings that they must be “constitutional”
monarchs, in a country like Russia we should have to chop off the heads of
at least a hundred Romanovs in order to wean their successors from the
habit of organising Black-Hundred murders and anti-Jewish pogroms.

If Social-Democracy has learned anything at all from the first Russian
revolution, it must insist that in all our speeches and leaflets we discard
the slogan “Down with the autocracy”, which has proved to be vague and
worthless, and that we advance only the slogan: “Down with the
tsarist monarchy , long live a republic”.

And let no one try to tell us that the slogan calling for a republic
does not apply to the present stage of the political development of the
workers and peasants. About ten or twelve years ago there were not only some Narodniks who would not dare even
to think of the slogan, “Down with the autocracy”, but even certain
Social-Democrats, the so-called Economists, opposed that slogan as being
inopportune. Yet by 1903–04 the slogan, “Down with the autocracy”, had
become a “household word”! There cannot be even a shadow of doubt that
systematic and persistent republican propaganda is now bound to find very
fertile soil in Russia; for there can be no doubt that the broadest masses,
particularly the peasant masses, are thinking grim, profound thoughts about
the meaning of the dispersal of two Dumas and the connection between the
tsarist government and the landowner-ridden Third Duma, between the tsarist
government and the ruin of the countryside by the Markovs. Nobody today can
tell how quickly the seed of republican propaganda will sprout—but that
is beside the point; the main thing is that the sowing should be done
properly, really democratically.

since we are discussing the question of the slogans for the forthcoming
elections to the Fourth Duma and those for all our work outside the Duma,
we cannot refrain from mentioning a very important and very incorrect
speech made by the Social-Democrat Kuznetsov in the Third Duma. On
October 17, 1911, the sixth anniversary of the first victory of the Russian
revolution, Kuznetsov spoke in the debate on the workers’ Insurance
Bill. It must be said in fairness to him, that, in general, he spoke very
well. He vigorously championed the interests of the proletariat and made no
bones about telling the truth directly, not only to the majority of the
reactionary Duma, but to the Cadets as well. But, while fully granting this
service rendered by Kuznetsov, we must likewise make no bones about
pointing out the mistake he committed.

“ I think,” said Kuznetsov, “that the workers who have followed
attentively the general debate on these questions, as well as the debate on
individual clauses of the Bill under discussion, will come to the
conclusion that their immediate slogan at present must be: ‘Down with the
June Third Duma, long live universal suffrage!’ Why? Because, I say, the
interests of the working class can be properly taken care of only if and
when that class will, through universal suffrage, send into the legislative body a sufficient number of its deputies; they
alone will be able to provide a proper solution to the problem of insurance
for the working class.”

It was here that Kuznetsov came a cropper in a way he probably never
suspected, but which we foretold long ago—he came a cropper because the
mistakes of the liquidators coincide with those of the otzovists.

While launching, from the rostrum of the Duma, a slogan inspired by the
liquidationist magazines Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni ,
Kuznetsov did not notice that the first (and most essential) part of this
slogan (“Down with the Third Duma”) fully reproduces the slogan
which the otzovists openly advanced three years ago, and which since then
only Vperyod , that is to say, the cowardly otzovists, have
defended stealthily and covertly.

Three years ago Proletary , No. 38, of November 1 (14), 1908,
wrote the following in regard to this slogan advanced at the time by the
otzovists:

“ 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 nothing of either of these contingencies at the present time.” [1]

The supplement to Proletary , No. 44 (of April 4 [17], 1909)
printed the resolution of the St. Petersburg otzovists which demanded outright that “Widespread agitation should be started among the masses in favour of the slogan ‘Down with the Third
Duma’”. In the same issue Proletary came out against this resolution and pointed out: “This slogan, which for a time appealed
to some anti-otzovist workers, is wrong . It is either a Cadet
slogan, calling for franchise reform under the autocracy [it so happens
that, although this was written at the beginning of 1909, it is a perfectly
fitting argument against the way Kuznetsov presents the question at the end
of 1911!], or a repetition of words learned by rote during the period when
the liberal Dumas were a screen for counter-revolutionary tsarism designed
to prevent the people from seeing clearly who their real enemy was.” [2]

Hence the nature of Kuznetsov’s mistake is clear. His generalised
slogan is the Cadet slogan for an electoral reform, which is absolutely
meaningless if all the other charms of the Romanov monarchy—the Council
of State, the omnipotence of bureaucrats, the Black-Hundred pogrom
organisations of the tsar’s clique, etc., are left intact. What Kuznetsov
should have said, assuming that the question is approached in the same way
as he approached it, and assuming that nothing is changed in the general
tone of his speech, is approximately the following:

“ The workers’ Insurance Bill provides the very example which again
proves to the workers that neither the immediate interests of their class
nor the rights and needs of the people as a whole can be defended without
such changes as the introduction of universal suffrage, full freedom of
association, of the press, etc. Is it not obvious, however, that it is
useless to expect the realisation of such changes so long as the present
political system of Russia remains intact, so long as any decisions of any
Duma can be over ruled, and so long as even a single non-elective govern
mental institution is left in the state?”

We know perfectly well that Social-Democrat deputies succeeded—and
that is to their credit—in making even much plainer and clearer
republican statements from the rostrum of the Third Duma. The members of the Duma have an opportunity to
conduct republican propaganda legally from the floor of the Duma, and it is
their duty to avail themselves of this opportunity. Our example of how
Kuznetsov’s speech could be corrected is merely intended to illustrate how
he could have avoided the mistake, while preserving the general tone of the
speech, and pointing to and emphasising the tremendous importance of such
unquestionably indispensable changes as the introduction of universal
suffrage, freedom of association, etc.

Wherever a Social-Democrat makes a political speech, it is his duty
always to speak of a republic. But one must know how to speak of a
republic. One cannot speak about it in the same terms when addressing a
meeting in a factory and one in a Cossack village, when speaking at a
meeting of students or in a peasant cottage, when it is dealt with from the
rostrum of the Third Duma or in the columns of a publication issued
abroad. The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to
find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a
definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to
digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.

Never for a moment must we forget the main thing: a new democracy is
awakening to a new life and a new struggle in Russia. It is the duty of
class-conscious workers, the vanguard of the Russian revolution and leaders
of the popular masses in the struggle for freedom, to explain the tasks of
consistent democracy: a republic, the eight-hour day, and the confiscation
of all landed estates.

---
Notes:
[1]
Proletary then went on to defend the slogan, “Down with the
autocracy”. This slogan, as we have already pointed out, must now give way
to the slogan: “Down with the tsarist monarchy, long live a
republic”. (See present edition, Vol. 15, “The Assessment of the Present
Situation”.— Ed .) — Lenin

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 15, “A Caricature of
Bolshevism”.— Ed .

[3]
The question put by the Social-Democratic group was discussed on
November 15 (28), 1911 and it was again discussed on three occasions behind
closed doors; the question was then handed over to a commission by which it
was rejected.

[4]
This quotation is from the resolution of the Fifth (All-Russia)
Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. in 1908 “The Present Moment and the Tasks of
the Party”.