V. I.

Lenin

Late February (Early March) 1906

Statements in Defence of the Resolution on the Tactics of Boycott

The resolution is lengthy—“long-winded”, as Comrade Dan put it. That
is true; but it has a merit compensating for this defect—the resolution
examines all the arguments, without which the explanation of the tactics would
be superficial, and would be wrong. The masses want brevity, but this
resolution is for the organisations and not for the masses. Not all the points
have been debated, but all of them have been touched upon. It is necessary to
expound the whole set of views advocated in political agitation. There can be no
question of the majority suppressing the minority in any way, although the
position of the defeated section is not a happy one. As a way out, I can propose
a division of labour: you will criticise the Duma, and we shall elaborate the
tactics. No one wants to impose on Comrade Dan the defence of points he does not
agree with. The accusation of engaging in factionalism and polemics is
groundless.

There is also a polemic in the short resolution (Martov’s), but why do you want
to make us ridiculous by proposing that we should adopt it? The long draft
resolution seems to contain propositions that have not been discussed by the proletariat. But the
dummy made by the Rasterayev workers mocked at the very idea of
representation, [1] and they must have been thinking of the peasantry as well.

Objections to the Amendments to Points 3 and 6 of the
Draft Resolution

You are weakening the resolution; the government is not only obstructing the
elections, it is also planting rural superintendents [2] as delegates.

Comrade Dan’s amendment is inexact. The Union of October
Seventeenth [3] is an opposition group, but it is not persecuted. We must stand up for the Cadets if
they are persecuted, even if they are persecuted for no particular reason.

“ Zubatovism” [4] is not merely a police form of netting
suspects, for it takes account of the working-class movement; it is an
organisation of the working class. “Zubatovism” is a truly Russian
invention. And it is being used now too. The Duma is a police game, but there is
no hint of a constitution in it. Speaking generally, the term
“Zubatovism” has been used here for comparison and is therefore incomplete as a
definition. Besides, we do say that it is a “new” form of
all-Russian, state “Zubatovism”. Our tactics here are the
same as they have always been in relation to “Zubatovism”. We have
attended even Zubatovist meetings, hut we have never been members.

Statements During the Debate on Points 7 and 8 of the
Draft Resolution

Comrade Dan’s statement about a factual inaccuracy is something quite new to
me. So far no formal statement has been made anywhere of the permissibility of
“participating in the Duma”. [5]

Neither Parvus, nor even Plekhanov. has said that so far. Furthermore, it would be narrow-minded of
us to ignore the fact that the class-conscious section of the proletariat has
this opinion of the issue and no other, and we take that fact into
consideration, it is not accidental. I am willing to amend
“everyone” to “the overwhelming majority”.

Comrade Dan’s formal statement is particularly valuable to me, it is the first
time I have heard such a statement. One can only wish to see it in the press,
for the press has so far published no such thing. Indeed, the Mensheviks have
protested whenever such an opinion was attributed to them. The leaflet of the
Joint Central Committee affirms that both sections of the Party are agreed that
we must not go into the Duma. It is a document, and nothing contradicts it in
the relevant point of our resolution. Dan’s remark about Plekhanov is wrong. He
merely said: “I am against boycott”, and came to a stop at the most
interesting point. We are sufficiently well informed, and the allusion to
Poltava has not shaken our opinion of the view taken by the majority of the
proletariat on the question of participating in the Duma. Solidarity must be
stressed.

Dan believes that the very convocation of the Duma will bring back the year
1849. He is wrong. The Duma is the United Landtag of 1847, [6] and that Landtag we will not enter. I think we must take Lunacharsky’s
remarks into consideration. I believe we should answer three questions:

(1) Is it a fact that the majority is right? Yes, it is; no one has refuted us,
all that has been said is groundless and cannot serve as a sufficient reason
for crossing out the reference to the fact. (2) Should we take this fact into account? We must. (3) What is the
attitude of the editorial board of the Central Organ to the question
touched on in this point of the preamble? I maintain that the editorial
board regarded participation in the Duma as impossible . I had no
idea this would offend the Menshevik comrades so much; so far no one has
ever said anything like what Comrade Dan said. Comrade Dan is wavering, and
I feel very unhappy about it.

It is said that the rest is full of polemics. That is not true, we would never
pursue any such aims. Why must we not go into the Duma? Because the people may
imagine that it is worth going to the polls irrespective of what the Menshevik
comrades think of the people. We are not bickering, we are examining an
argument. We hold that we must send nothing but dummies.

Written Statement to the Conference Bureau

Statement of fact . I declare that Comrade Dan’s assertions are wrong
and that he has not refuted any of my statements about the absence in the press
of assertions similar to the statement made by Comrade Dan.

Resolution on the Motivation of the Boycott Tactics

This Conference deems it necessary to give a detailed motivation of the decision
of the St. Petersburg Social-Democratic organisation on the inadvisability of
participating in the elections, not at all in order to engage in polemics with
the comrades who were formerly Mensheviks or to cast aspersions on them as
Social-Democrats, but with the aim of giving an accurate and official statement
of the opinion of the majority of the organisation as to the character and
significance of a complete boycott.

---
Notes:
[1]
Lenin has in mind the following indication of the workers’
ironical attitude to the Duma: in February 1906 workers at the St. Petersburg
Mechanical Works made a dummy inscribed “Deputy to State Duma” and
paraded it round the premises.

[2]
Rural superintendent ( zemsky nochalnik )— an administrative office instituted by the tsarist government in 1889 to strengthen
the authority of the landlords over the peasants. The rural superintendents
were appointed from among the local landed nobility and were granted very great
powers—not merely administrative, but also judicial—with regard to
the peasants.

[3]
Union of October Seventeenth , or Octobrists —a counter-revolutionary party of the big industrial bourgeoisie and the big
landlords using capitalist methods of farming. It arose in November 1905. While
accepting in theory the Manifesto of October 17, in which the tsar, frightened
by the revolution, promised the people “civil liberties” and a
constitution, the Octobrists unquestioningly backed the home and foreign
policies of the tsarist government. Their leaders were A. Guchkov, a big
industrialist, and M. Rodzyanko, owner of huge estates.

[4]
Zubatovism —the policy of “police socialism”, so named after Colonel Zubatov, chief of the Moscow Secret Police, on
whose initiative legal workers’ organisatoins were formed in 1901-03
to divert the workers from the political struggle against the
autocracy. Zubatov’s activity in this field was supported by
V. K. Plehve, Minister of the Interior. The Zubatovists sought to
direct the working-class movement into the narrow channel of purely
economic demands, and suggested to the workers that the government was
willing to meet those demands. The first Zubatovist organisation— the Society for Mutual Assistance of Mechanical
Industry Workers—was set up in Moscow in May 1901. Similar
organisations were founded in Minsk, Odessa, Vilno, Kiev and other
cities.

The revolutionary Social-Democrats, in exposing the reactionary character of
Zubatovism, used legal workers’ organisations to draw large sections of
the working class into the struggle against the autocracy. The growing
revolutionary movement in 1903 compelled the tsarist government to
abolish the Zubatovist organisations.

[5]
Speaking at the St. Petersburg City Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (II),
held late in February and early in March 1906, Dan, a Menshevik
leader, openly declared for the first time that it was permissible to
participate in the Duma. He referred to the stand of the Poltava
Social-Democratic organisation, which had expressed itself to that effect. Until
then, the Mensheviks had formally advanced the half-way slogan: participate in
the election of delegates and electors, but not in the Duma elections.

[6]
United Landtag of 1847 —the joint assembly of the social-estate provincial Landtags, convened by Friedrich Wilhelm IV in
Berlin in April 1847 to overcome financial difficulties by obtaining a foreign
loan. It opened on April 11, 1847. As the king refused to meet the humblest
political demands of the bourgeois majority in the Landtag, the latter refused
to guarantee the loan. The king reacted by dissolving the Landtag in June of the
same year, which increased oppositionist sentiment in the country and hastened
the revolution.