V. I.

Lenin

Telegrams from Tiflis report that the Social-Democrats in that city have
achieved a complete victory in the elections. Of the 81 electors who were
elected, 72 are Social-Democrats, and only 9 are Cadets. [2]

In Kutais four deputies have been elected, Social-Democrats
all. [3]

The candidate for the Duma nominated for Tiflis is Noah Jordania, a very influential Social-Democrat in that city.

We welcome the successes of our comrades in the Caucasus. After the decision of
the Unity Congress of our Party, participation in the elections became
obligatory, on the condition, however, that the workers’ party did not enter
into any blocs, i.e., agreements, with other parties. [4]

If
our comrades in the Caucasus have secured the election of their candidates quite
independently, as one may believe was the case in Tiflis, then they have avoided
the mistakes made by our comrades in Armavir. [5]

In that case the decision of the Congress will have been fully adhered to; we shall have in
the Duma truly Party Social-Democrats, elected on strictly Party lines; and
soon we shall hear of the appointment by the Central Committee of the official
representatives of our Party in the Duma.

Our readers know that we were in favour of boycotting the Duma. At the Congress
we voted against the formation of a Social-Democratic parliamentary group, for
reasons that were given in detail in the resolution published in Volna ,
No.

12. [1]

These reasons did not involve matters of principle; they were prompted
by considerations of prudence and the practical conditions prevailing. But it goes without saying that,
if real party Social-Democrats have now been elected to the Duma on really
party lines, all of us, as members of a united party, will do all we can
to help them to fulfil their arduous duties.

Let us not exaggerate the importance of the Tiflis victory. We could rejoice
whole-heartedly at the parliamentary victories of Social-Democrats if we were
really living under conditions of anything like a “serious” and
established parliamentary system. But this is not the case in Russia. The
present conditions in Russia impose on the Social-Democrats tasks of a
magnitude that no Social-Democratic Party in Western Europe has to face. We are
incomparably more remote than our Western comrades from the socialist
revolution; but we are faced with a bourgeois-democratic peasant revolution in
which the proletariat will play the leading role. As an inevitable result of
these specific features of the situation, it is not in the Duma that the rapidly
maturing political crisis will be solved.

In times such as Russia is now passing through, the participation of
Social-Democrats in the elections does not at all mean that the masses really
become stronger in the course of the election campaign. Without unfettered news
papers, without public meetings and without wide agitation, the election of
Social-Democrats often expresses, not a consolidation of the proletarian and
fully Social-Democratic Party, but only a sharp protest of the people. In such
circumstances, large sections of the petty-bourgeoisie some times vote for any
anti-government candidate. Opinions on the value of the boycott tactics for the
whole of Russia, if based on the returns of the Tiflis elections alone, would be
much too rash and ill-considered.

Nobody can tell as yet what overall role the Cadet Duma will play in the long
run. That the Cadets are masters in the Duma is a fact. All Social-Democrats are
agreed that the Cadets in the Duma are behaving like bad democrats, like timid
and inconsistent, unstable and wavering partisans of people’s freedom. Being in
command of the Duma, the Cadets are now more than ever spreading constitutional
illusions among the people, and thereby befogging the political consciousness
of the workers and peasants.

Let us wait and see what experience shows before judging of the extent to which
it will be possible to counteract these reactionary strivings of the Cadets
within the Duma as well. Let us wish our comrades from the Caucasus, deputies to
the Duma, for the first time to speak from this new platform in full voice, to
speak the whole, bitter truth, to ex pose ruthlessly belief in words, promises
and scraps of paper, to fill the gaps in our newspapers, which continue to be
restricted and persecuted for speaking frankly, and to call upon the proletariat
and the revolutionary peasantry to pose their problems clearly and distinctly
and to settle the impending final contest for freedom outside the Duma.

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 292-93 of this volume— Ed .

[2]
The information supplied by the St. Petersburg Telegraph
Agency on the elections in Tiflis and used by Lenin in his article was
inaccurate.

The number of electors elected in Tiflis was not 81 but 80, of whom 71
were Social-Democrats and 9, Cadets.

[3]
The reference is to the election of electors in
Kutais. Elections to the First Duma took place later. Kutais Gubernia sent three
deputies to the Duma—l. G. Gomarteli, S. D. Japaridze and
I. I. Ramishvili, Mensheviks all.

[4]
Lenin is referring to the resolution “Attitude
Towards the State Duma”, which said: “...wherever elections are
still ahead and the R.S.D.L.P. can nominate its candidates without entering into
blocs with other parties, it should strive to have its candidates elected to the
Duma” ( The Fourth [Unity] Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. , Russ. ed.,
Moscow, 1959, p. 526).

[5]
The reference is to the disruptive conduct of the Menshevik Armavir Committee
of the R.S.D.L.P., which violated the Unity Congress decision forbidding blocs
with bourgeois parties. During the Duma elections the Armavir Committee issued
an appeal proposing to vote for the Social-Democrats, or at least for candidates
who were “not more to the right than the Cadets”.