Pages: 174-179

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CORRECTIONS IN THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE ARTICLE "SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND THE PROVISIONAL REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT".
№№ 13 AND 14 "VPERED", 8 AND 12 APRIL (26 AND 30 MARCH) 1905.
[Social Democracy and the Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship.]
Social Democracy and re the petty revolutionary government.
I.
Only five years ago the slogan "Down with the autocracy!"
[seemed premature, inappropriate, incomprehensible to the working masses, seemed such
to many representatives of Social Democracy] seemed premature to MANY representatives
of Social Democracy. These representatives were rightly considered opportunists. It was explained
and explained to them THAT
THEY lag
BEHIND the movement, [that they trail behind it] that they do not understand the tasks of the party, as the vanguard
of the class, as the leader, educator, organizer of the class, as a representative of the movement as a whole, its fundamental
and main goals, which** may temporarily be overshadowed by everyday
[practice] mundane
[work] work,
BUT
SHOULD NEVER
lose significance as a guiding star for the struggling proletariat.
And now the time has come when the revolutionary flame has engulfed
the entire country, when even the most unbelieving have become convinced of the inevitability of the overthrow of the autocracy in the near future [when
this inevitability was perceived by the least perspicacious people and the least progressive elemens
of the people]... After all, the closer we get to the direct
[practical] implementation of our immediate political tasks, the greater the need to understand these perfectly clearly
138*
* Coll. Works, VII, 183 - 195. Ed.
** The word "which" was replaced by Olminsky with the words: "these goals." Ed.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND PROV.-REV. GOVERNMENT

tasks, the more harmful any ambiguities, omissions or lack of thought on this issue.
...And if we are not simply putting forward the practical demand
for the immediate overthrow of the autocratic government, then we
must clarify for ourselves [and for others], what other government
we want to replace the government being overthrown with,
[in other words] or otherwise: how do we view the relationship of Social-
Democracy to the provisional revolutionary government?
...And his reactionary views on this [issue] point are most fully
developed in Martynov's pamphlet "Two Dictatorships"...
At the very beginning of his pamphlet, Martynov frightens us with such
a terrible prospect: if a strong organization of revolutionary
Social Democracy could "appoint and carry out a nationwide
armed uprising" against the autocracy, which
[the "Jacobin"] Lenin dreamed of, then "is it not obvious that the popular
will would appoint this very party as the provisional government immediately after the revolution"?...
...for in fact, the very [reforms,] transformations, which
they are striving for, will ensure the dominance of another class, the
peasant bourgeoisie...
II.
... Engels speaks of the political ruin of one who unconsciously strays from his class path onto another class
path, and the clever Martynov, reverently quoting Engels,
speaks
OF the ruin OF THE ONE WHO will go further [further than the tail-enders] and
further along the correct class path.
The difference in viewpoints [tactics] of revolutionary Social Democracy
and tail-endism is evident here with all clarity, [recoiling from the task]
Martynov and the new Iskra recoil from the task that falls on
the proletariat together with the peasantry of the most radical
democratic revolution, recoil from Social Democratic
LEADERSHIP of THIS revolution, [retreating before bourgeois democracy]
thus giving, even if unconsciously, the interests of the proletariat into the hands of bourgeois democracy...
...To confuse the participation of the proletariat in a government
resisting a socialist revolution, with the participation of the proletariat in
a democratic revolution, means hopelessly to not understand what is going on. It's like confusing Millerand's participation in the ministry of dyed-in-the-wool Panamists with the participation of

Varlin in the Commune, [which did not set itself the goal of socialist revolution]
which defended and upheld the republic....
...The whole point boils down again to that difference between
democratic and socialist revolution, which
Martynov forgets, to the existence of that gigantic peasant
and petty-bourgeois population, which a democratic revolution is capable of supporting, but a socialist revolution at this
moment [absolutely] is NOT CAPABLE of.
III.
...Martynov has heard that it is unbecoming for a socialist to participate
in a bourgeois ministry (under the conditions of struggle * for a
socialist revolution) and hastened to "understand" this in such a way that
one should not participate together with the revolutionary bourgeois
democracy in a revolutionary-democratic revolution and in that
dictatorship that is necessary
FOR the COMPLETE
[and consistent] implementation of such a revolution. Martynov has read our program-
minimum, but did not notice that the strict separation in it
of transformations that can be carried out on the basis of bourgeois society
in contrast to socialist transformations, has not just a bookish
[, not a dogmatic] meaning, [which Marxist pedants willingly attribute to it,] but the most vital, practical;
[subjecting to, that it is subject to** immediate*** verification and application in practice during the revolutionary period... Is it not clear [at first glance]
that the implementation of these transformations on the basis of the bourgeois system
is unthinkable without the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship
of the lower classes? Is it not clear that we are talking here precisely not about
ONE proletariat in contrast to the "bourgeoisie" ([as a
pedant argues, applying the completely completed and pure categories of the bourgeois
system inappropriately] on the eve of its collapse), but about the "lower classes" that
are the active drivers of any democratic revolution?... But it is even more certain that in the interests of this
*
The words "under the conditions of struggle" were replaced by Olminsky with the words:
"when the proletariat is fighting". Ed.
** After the word "is subject to," Olminsky inserted: "he did not notice, that in". Ed.
*** Instead of the word "immediate," Olminsky wrote above: "it is subject to immediate". Ed.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND PROV.-REV. GOVERNMENT

in the masses lies the complete realization of democracy, and that the more enlightened this mass, the more inevitable its [decisive, desperate] struggle FOR THIS COMPLETE REALIZATION. [The conscious leader of the proletariat)] The Social Democrat will never forget, of course, the dual political and economic nature of the petty-bourgeois urban and rural masses, he will never forget the need for a separate and independent class organization of the proletariat fighting for socialism. But he will also not forget that this mass has "besides the past a future, besides prejudices Understanding," pushing it forward, toward the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship*; that enlightenment [(which this mass so lacks)] is given not only by a book, and even not so much by a book, as by the very course of the revolution, [shaking it,] opening [its] eyes, giving [it] a political school. Under such conditions, a theory that rejects the idea of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship cannot be called anything other than a philosophical consideration of the "rear" of the Russian proletariat**.

A revolutionary Social Democrat will scorn such a theory. On the eve of the revolution, he will not only point out its "bad end" [(And he will never again see this bad end as an impossible and unthinkable "restoration of absolutism in its pristine form.")] No, he will also point out the possibility of a better end. He will dream, he is obliged to dream, if he is not a hopeless philistine, that after the gigantic experience of Europe, after the unprecedented scope of the energy of the working class in Russia [under the oppression of the most incredible Asian conditions], we will succeed in kindling, as never before, the lamp of revolutionary light before the dark and downtrodden masses [of the urban and rural poor], we will succeed, thanks to the fact that we stand on the shoulders of a whole series of revolutionary generations of Europe, in carrying out with unprecedented completeness all the democratic transformations, our entire program-minimum; we will succeed in ensuring that the Russian revolution is a movement embracing not a few months, but many years, that it leads not only to concessions***

* After "dictatorship" Olminsky inserted: "he will not forget". Ed.
** The words "consideration of the 'rear' of the Russian proletariat" were replaced by Olminsky with the words: "justification of political backwardness". Ed.
*** The last two lines were replaced by Olminsky with: "not a movement of a few months, but a movement of many years, so that it leads not only to petty concessions". Ed.


from the powers that be, but to the complete overthrow of these powers. And if this succeeds, then... then the revolutionary fire will ignite Europe; [then] the European worker, EXHAUSTED IN [decades of gray and boring] bourgeois reaction, will rise in his turn; then he [already]* will show us, [in turn,] "how it is done"; then the revolutionary upsurge of Europe will have a reverse effect on Russia and turn the era of several revolutionary years into an era of several revolutionary decades, then...
BUT [we will not be Don Quixotes] WE will still have time to talk about what we will do "then," to talk not from the cursed Geneva distance, but before thousands of gatherings of workers in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, before the free [popular] gatherings of RUSSIAN "PEASANTS."
IV.
Such dreams are, of course, alien and strange to the philistines of the new *Iskra* and its "master of thought," our good pedant Martynov. They are afraid of the complete realization** of our entire program-minimum through the revolutionary dictatorship of the "people," the simple and black people. They are afraid for their own consciousness, [as if not] afraid to lose [their leadership] guidance from a memorized (but not thought out) book, [as if not] afraid to be unable to distinguish correct and bold steps of democratic transformations from the adventurous leaps of non-class, populist socialism or anarchism....
...Parvus finally managed to move forward, instead of crawling backward like a crayfish. He did not want to do the "Sisyphean work" of endless corrections to endless Martynovian and Martovian stupidities. He came forward directly (unfortunately, together WITH [empty chatterbox] TROTSKY [in the preface to his empty chatterbox pamphlet "Before the 9th of January"]) with a defense of the idea of a revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, the idea of the duty of Social Democracy to participate in a temporary revolutionary government after the overthrow of the autocracy. Parvus is a thousand times right when he says that SOCIAL DEMOCRACY should not [be afraid to take responsibility for the temporary government, should not] be afraid of BOLD STEPS forward, SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND TEMPORARY REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT

* The words "then he already" were replaced by Olminsky with the word "and". Ed.
** After the word "realization" Olminsky inserted: "of our program-minimum". Ed.

should not be afraid of inflicting joint "blows" on the enemy hand in hand with revolutionary bourgeois democracy, on the obligatory (very aptly reminded [by Parvus]) condition of not mixing organizations; go separately, strike together; do not hide the heterogeneity of interests; watch your ally as your enemy, etc.
But the hotter our sympathy for all these slogans of the revolutionary Social Democrat who has turned away from the tail-enders [*], the more unpleasantly surprised we were by some incorrect notes taken by Parvus.... But the reader cannot have in mind only the tail-enders, and among [the enemies] dangerous friends of the revolution from the camp of revolutionaries, besides the tail-enders, there are also completely different people, there are "Socialist-Revolutionaries," there are people drawn in by the stream of events, helpless before the revolutionary phrase, like Nadezhdins, or those whose instinct [wants] replaces the revolutionary worldview (like Gapon)....
...It is already raising them, it will raise them, this task is facilitated by the very government with its convulsive [efforts] resistance, but of course [that] there can be no question of a thought-out political consciousness, of the Social Democratic consciousness of these masses and their numerous "original," folk, and even peasant leaders. They cannot now, without undergoing a [long and long] series of revolutionary trials, become Social Democrats....
...going steadily and boldly forward, not fearing the revolutionary-democratic dictatorship, but passionately desiring it, fighting for the republic and complete republican freedom, for serious economic reforms, in order to create for ourselves a truly [free] wide and truly worthy arena of struggle for socialism in the 20th century.
[* The Iskra maintains a modestly silent position on Trotsky's pamphlet with a preface by Parvus, published in the party's printing house, regarding the substance of the raised question. It is, of course, not advantageous for it to untangle the confusion: Martynov to the forest, Parvus for firewood, and we are silent, now Plekhanov will drag Martov out by the ears! This is what we call "ideological leadership of the party"! By the way, one "formalistic" curiosity. Our Solomons in the Soviet decided that the party title is permissible only on pamphlets published on behalf of party organizations. It would be interesting to know from the Solomons which organization commissioned the publication of pamphlets by Nadezhdin, Trotsky, and others! Or were those right who declared the above-mentioned "resolution" to be a stupid* circle prank against Lenin's publishing house!]
* The word "stupid" was replaced by Olminsky with "shoddy". Ed.