V. I.

Lenin

The separation of liberalism from democracy in Russia is
one of the basic questions of the entire emancipation movement.

What is the cause of the movement’s weakness? Is it because democracy
has been insufficiently aware and definite in separating from
liberalism and has allowed itself to become infected by liberalism’s
importance and wavering? Or is it because democracy separated from
liberalism too soon (or too sharply, etc.) and thus weakened the “force of
the common onslaught”?

There can scarcely be anybody interested in the cause of freedom who
will argue that this is not a question of fundamental importance. One
cannot be a conscious champion of freedom without giving a definite answer
to this question. To settle it one must understand which social forces,
which classes support liberalism, and which support democracy, and what
political strivings have their roots in the nature of these classes.

In this article we want to throw some light on this fundamental
question from the point of view of current foreign political events. The
burning question is naturally that of the Second Balkan War, the defeat of
Bulgaria, the Bucharest peace that was so humiliating for her, and Russia’s
unsuccessful attempt to blame France for not having supported “us”, and
to obtain a revision of the peace terms.

As we know, Novoye Vremya and Rech are in agreement about these accusations against France, about this attempt to renew
Russia’s “active” policy in the Balkans. This means that there is agreement between the feudal landowners and reactionary
nationalist ruling circles on the one hand, and the most politically
conscious, most organised circles of the liberal bourgeoisie, who have long
been gravitating towards an imperialist policy on the other.

Apropos of this, Kievskaya Mysl , a provincial newspaper with a
large circulation, which expresses the views of certain sections of
petty-bourgeois democracy, said the following in a very instructive
editorial on August 1:

“ It is not that the opposition and nationalism have changed places [as Mr. Milyukov asserted in his well-known foreign policy
speech in the Duma] but that liberalism has separated
[ Kievskaya Mysl’s italics] from democracy and has entered, at
first timidly, with backward glances, and then with head held high, upon
the same path, the path of political adventure, along which nationalism
leads the way under the same Slavophile banner.”

And the newspaper in all justice recalls the generally known
facts—how Rech displayed “chauvinist enthusiasm”, how that
newspaper, permeated, in general, with “imperialist tendencies”, called
for an advance to Armenia, to the Bosphorus.

“ Liberalism,” said Kievskaya Mysl , “by supporting at its own risk Russian foreign policy, which cannot be anything
but a reaction cry nationalist policy as long as home policy remains such,
has also taken upon itself political responsibility for that support.”

An incontestable truth. It only has to he fully analysed . If
it is true that the Russian foreign political line is deter mined by the
line in home policy (and it undoubtedly is), does this refer only to the
reactionaries? Obviously not. Obviously it refers to liberalism as well.

Liberalism could not have “separated from democracy” in foreign
policy if it was not separated from democracy in home policy. Kievskaya Mysl itself has to admit this when it says that “the character of the
political mistake of liberalism ... is evidence of profound organic
disorders”.

That is just it! We should have put it differently—profound class
interests of the bourgeoisie—instead of using that somewhat high-sounding
and obscure expression. It was these class interests of liberalism that
made it fear (especially in 1905) the democratic movement, and that made it turn to the right both in home and foreign policy.

It would be ridiculous for anyone to think of denying the connection
between Cadet imperialism and chauvinism today and the Cadet-Octobrist
slogan to save the Duma in the spring of 1907, between the Cadet vote
against local land committees in the spring of 1908 and the Cadet decision
to enter the Bulygin
Duma [1] in the autumn of 1905. This is the same policy of one
and the same class, which fears revolution more than it does reaction.

One of the main causes of the weakness of the Russian emancipation
movement is the lack of understanding of this truth by the broad sections
of the petty bourgeoisie in general, and by petty-bourgeois politicians,
writers and ideological leaders in particular.

Contrary to the tales of the liberals who, in order to cover the steps
they were taking towards reconciliation with the Rights, pointed to the
“implacability” of the Lefts, working-class democrats have never lumped
the liberals and Rights together in “one reactionary mass”, [2] have never refused to use their differences (at the
second stage of the Duma elections, for example) in the interests of the
emancipation movement. But working-class democrats considered—and must
always consider—their task to be one of neutralising the
wavering liberals, who are capable of becoming “infatuated” with
imperialism under Stolypin or Maklakov.

Russian democracy cannot make a serious advance if it does not
recognise the deep-going class roots that separate liberalism from
democracy, if it does not spread the consciousness of this among the
masses , if it does not learn to neutralise in this way the
waverings of the liberals and their betrayals of the cause of “people’s
freedom”. Without this all talk of the successes of the emancipation
movement is meaningless.

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Notes:
[1]
Bulygin Duma —the advisory representative institution that
the tsarist government promised to convene in 1905. The draft of a law
founding an advisory State Duma and the election procedure were elaborated
by a commission under the chairmanship of Minister of the Interior Bulygin
and promulgated on August 6 (19), 1905 The Bolsheviks declared an active
boycott of the Bulygin Duma and put it into effect; the government was
unable to convene the Duma, its attempts to do so being foiled by the
political general strike of October 1905.

[2]
This refers to Lassalle’s well-known thesis that all other classes
constitute one reactionary mass as compared with the working class. The
thesis was included in the programme of the Socialist Workers’ Party of
Germany adopted at the Gotha Congress in 1875.

Marx criticised this anti-revolutionary thesis in his “Critique of the
Gotha Programme”. (See K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works ,
Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, pp. 25–27).