Lenin: The Workers’ Group in the State Duma












V. I.

Lenin



The Workers’ Group in the State Duma


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Published:

Volna, No. 13, May 10, 1908.

Published according to the Volna text.


Source:

Lenin
Collected Works,

Progress Publishers,

1965,

Moscow,

Volume 10,

pages 402-405.


Translated:


Transcription\Markup:
R. Cymbala


Public Domain:



(2004).

You may freely copy, distribute,
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• README




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In the State Duma there is a Workers’ Group of fifteen. How did these deputies
get into the Duma? They were not nominated by workers’ organisations. The Party
did not authorise them to represent its interests in the Duma. Not a single
local organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. adopted a resolution (although it might
have done) to nominate its members for the State Duma.

The worker deputies got into the Duma through non-party channels. Nearly all, or
even all, got in by direct or indirect, tacit or avowed, agreements with the
Cadets. Many of them got into the Duma in such a way that it is difficult to
tell whether they were elected as Constitutional-Democrats or as
Social-Democrats. This is a fact, and a fact of enormous political
importance. To hush it up, as many Social-Democrats are doing today, is
unpardonable and use less. Unpardonable, because it means keeping in the dark
the electorate generally, and the workers’ party in particular. Useless,
because the fact is bound to come out in the course of events.

In declaring that the formation of a Social-Democratic parliamentary group was
desirable, the Unity Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. made a mistake by not taking
this fact into account. As is evident from the resolution of the Left

Social-Democrats[1]

that we published yesterday, this fact was pointed out at the
Congress. But it must be stated in fairness that on the insistence of the Left
wing, the Congress adopted a very important instruction to the Central
Committee of the Party. The failure to print this resolution has left a very
serious gap in the Central Committee’s publication,



from which we reproduced the Congress resolutions. The resolution on the
parliamentary group instructs the Central Committee to inform all Party
organisations (I) whom, (2) when and (3) on what conditions the Central
Committee recognises as the Party’s representative in the State Duma. Further,
it instructs the Central Committee to give the Party periodical reports of the
activities of the parliamentary group, and lastly, it imposes on those workers’
organisations to which the Social-Democratic members of the State Duma belong
the duty of exercising special control over these members.

Having mentioned this extremely important resolution, let us proceed to examine
the question of the Workers’ Group in the Duma. On entering the Duma,
Mikhailichenko, the leader of this group, proclaimed himself a
Social-Democrat. Through him the Workers’ Group clearly expressed its
desire to dissociate
itself from the Cadets and become a genuine Social-Democratic group.

Such a desire is worthy of all sympathy. At the Congress we were opposed to the
formation of an official parliamentary group. Our motives are set out precisely
and in detail in our resolution published yesterday. But it goes without saying
that the fact that we did not think it opportune to form an official
parliamentary group does not in the least prevent us from encouraging
any desire of any workers’ representative to shift
from the Constitutional-Democrats towards the Social-Democrats.

But there is some distance between desire and fulfilment. It is not enough to
proclaim oneself a Social-Democrat. To be a Social-Democrat, one must pursue a
genuinely Social-Democratic workers’ policy. Of course, we fully understand the
difficulties of the position of parliamentary novices. We are well aware of the
need to be indulgent to wards the mistakes that may be made by those who are be
ginning to pass from the Constitutional-Democrats to the Social-Democrats. But
if they are destined ever to complete this passage, it will only be through open
and straight forward criticism of these mistakes. To look at these mistakes
through one’s fingers would be an unpardonable transgression against the
Social-Democratic Party and against the whole proletariat.



We must mention at once one mistake that the Workers’ Group in the Duma has
made. A few days after the vote on the reply to the address from the
throne the members of the Workers’ Group declared in the press that
“they had abstained from voting, but had not made a demonstration of
their refusal to vote, because they did not want to be confused
with Count Heyden’s[2]

group”. The Cadets are a party that wavers between
revolution and reaction. The Heydens on the right and the Social-Democrats
on the left must, and always will, demonstrate against this party. The
Workers’ Group made a mistake by not making a demonstration. Over the
heads of the Cadets, it should have openly and plainly stated for all to
hear: “You, gentlemen of the Cadet Party, are taking the wrong
tone. Your address smacks of a deal. Drop that diplomacy. Speak out loudly
and say that the peasants are demanding all the land, that the peasants
must obtain all the land without compensation. Say that the people are
demanding complete freedom, and that the people will take full power in
order to ensure real freedom, and not merely freedom on paper. Do not
trust written ’constitutions’, trust only the strength of the fighting
people! We vote against your address.”

Had the Workers’ Group said this, it would have per formed an act of genuine
Social-Democratic workers’ policy. By doing so, it would have expressed the
interests not only of the workers, but of the whole revolutionary people, which
is fighting for freedom. And concerning the rejection of the request for an
audience, it would have been able to say: “See, Cadet gentlemen, you have
received a good lesson! You are properly punished for the wrong tone of your ad
dress. If you continue in the same key, the day will not be far distant when
the people will speak of you ’with the withering scorn of the disillusioned son
for his garrulous father’.”[3]

We say again, in order to avoid malicious misinterpretation, that we are
criticising the conduct of the Workers’ Group, not to reproach its members, but
to assist the political development of the Russian proletariat and peasantry.

And with the same object in view, we must point to a serious mistake made by
Nevskaya Gazeta. “We cannot regard the incident over the
address,” writes that paper,



"as an excuse for stopping the activities of the Duma”....

“We see no ground for putting the question bluntly just now”
(No. 6). This is the wrong tone. It is unseemly for Social-Democrats to pose as
people who can in any way be responsible for the Duma. If the Social-Democrats
had a majority in the Duma, the Duma would not be a Duma, or else the
Social-Democrats would not be Social-Democrats. Let the Cadets bear all the
responsibility for the Duma. Let the people learn to cast off constitutional
illusions at their expense, and not ours.

You yourselves say, comrades: “The proletariat will not agree to the
Milyukovs being left free to strike a bargain with the old regime.” Well
spoken. But what, in substance, are the bargains struck by the Cadets? Not
personal acts of treachery, of course. Such a crude opinion is utterly alien to
Marxism. The substance of the bargains is (and is only) that the Cadets don’t
abandon, and don’t want to abandon, their stand for preserving the old regime
and for obeying the commands of this regime. The Cadets, so long as they remain
Cadets, are quite right when they say: to abandon this position means putting
the question bluntly, providing an excuse for stopping the activities of the
Duma.

It is unseemly for Social-Democrats to argue in a way that might give the people
cause for seeing in their arguments a justification of the Cadets. It is not
our business to justify

their’

hypocritical statements that it was all a
question of the Duma’s “politeness” and Trepov’s
“rudeness” (Struve in Duma). We must expose that hypocrisy,
and show that the “first lesson” which the Cadets have received is a
result of the intrinsic duplicity of their whole position, of their entire
address. We must not appraise the revolutionary situation in the country from
the standpoint of what goes on in the Duma. On the contrary, we must appraise
questions and incidents that arise in the Duma from the standpoint of the
revolutionary situation in the country.


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Notes



[1]

See pp. 292-93 of this volume—Ed.



[2]

Count Heyden’s group—the “Left”
wing of the Octobrist group in the First Duma; it included several Right
Cadets. At the Duma session on May 5(18), 1906, during the discussion of the
reply to the address from the throne, the Heyden group refused to vote for the
text of the reply, couched by the Cadets in constitutional-monarchist terms,
for it considered the text too radical, and left the session. Following the
dissolution of the Duma the group organised itself into the Party of Peaceful
Renovation, which stood close to the Octobrists. Lenin gave a political
characterisation of Heyden and his group in the article “In memory of
Count Heyden” (see present edition, Vol. 13.)

[3]

The words in quotation marks are a paraphrase of the
closing lines of Lermontov’s poem “Meditation” (Duma in
Russian) (see M. Y. Lermontov, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow,
1934, p. 7).




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