V. I.

Lenin

Thewave of excitement among the general public that spread over the
country after the events of this spring is not receding. It makes itself
felt in one form or another among all sections of Russian society, a
society that as recently as January of this year seemed to be deaf and
alien to the purposive work of Russian Social-Democracy. The government is
bending its every effort to calm the troubled public conscience as quickly
as possible with the usual soap bubbles such as the Manifesto of March 25
on “heart felt protection”, such as the so-called Vannovsky
Reforms or the Sipyagin and

Shakhovskoi [1] solemn buffoon tours of Russia.... Some of the more naive among the
general public will actually be calmed by such measures, but by far not
all. Even the present-day Zemstvo people, about fifty per cent of whom are
scared civil servants, seem to be coming out of the state of chronic
trepidation to which they were reduced in the now historical stagnant
epoch of the “Peacemaker-Tsar”.

His Majesty the Bureaucracy, having now shed its crude covering of
modesty, is arousing feelings of discontent and disgust even among the
Zemstvos, among those timid people in whom civic courage and civic
morality are almost completely atrophied.

Wehave been informed that in the city of X (for precaution, to remain
unnamed) a congress of Zemstvo members was called at the end of June. It
is said to have been attend ed by 40 or 50 Zemstvo people from several
gubernias.

Thesepeople did not, of course, assemble to discuss political questions,
but to solve peaceable, purely Zemstvo problems; they gathered
“without infringing the bounds of the department and the extent of their authority”, as it is
picturesquely expressed in the Zemstvo Instructions (Article 87). The
meeting, however, was called without the per mission and knowledge of the
administration and, consequently, was held “in contravention of the
Instructions for the activities of Zemstvo institutions”, to quote
the Instructions, and the assembled Zemstvo men gradually went over from
the discussion of peaceable, innocent questions to a discussion of the
general state of affairs. Such is the logic of life: conscientious Zemstvo
men, howsoever they at times denounce radicalism and illegal work, are, by
the force of events, faced with the necessity of illegal organisation and
a more determined form of activity. Far be it from us to condemn this
natural and perfectly correct path. It is time, at long last, for Zemstvo
members to give an energetic and organised rebuff to a government that has
taken the bit between its teeth, has killed rural self-government, has
mutilated both urban and Zemstvo self-government, and with asinine
obstinacy lays the axe to the last remnants of the Zemstvo institutions,
It is said that one of the elderly and respected men of the Zemstvo,
during the discussion at the congress on the question of how to combat the
law setting limits to taxation by the Zemstvos, exclaimed: “Zemstvo
members must, at last, say their word; for if they don’t, they’ll never be
able to!” We are in complete agreement with the outcry of this liberal who
is prepared to challenge the bureaucratic autocracy to open struggle. The
Zemstvos are on the eve of internal bankruptcy. If the best Zemstvo men do
not to day take energetic measures, if they do not get rid of their usual

Manilov [2] attitude, their trivial questions of secondary
importance—“tinkering”, as one venerable Zemstvo man put
it—the Zemstvos will lose their adherents and turn into the usual
“government offices”. Such an inglorious death is inevitable;
for one cannot with impunity for whole decades do nothing but show
cowardice, offer thanks, and humbly petition; one must threaten, demand,
stop wasting time on trifles, and settle down to the real work.

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Notes:
[1]
Sipyagin, D. S. —reactionary statesman in tsarist Russia;
Minister of the Interior from 1899 to 1902.

Shakhovskoi,D. I. —prince, Zemstvo leading figure.

[2]
Manilov —a character from Gogol’s Dead Souls whose name
has become a synonym for complacency, sentimentality; and futile
day-dreaming.