V. I. Lenin

Onsecond thoughts, Rech finds that the general has asked much
too much for his patronage of the Cadet minis try and it declares that the
Cadets will not give up the principle of compulsory alienation of the land
in favour of the peasants and total amnesty, whatever portfolios they may
be offered. We think that the general, being the practical statesman that
he is, will see no reason for spoiling the deal over a matter of
principle. After all, under the Cadet plan not the whole of the land is
subject to compulsory alienation, but only as much as has to be allocated
to the peasants to enable them to pay the state taxes; further more, the
owners of the alienated land are to be paid in cash “on a fair valuation”
and these days money is ever so much easier to manage than land, which no
longer brings in as much income as before, in view of the stubborn refusal
of the peasants to cultivate it for others. As for the amnesty, the Cadets
have already done their duty to the country by informing the supreme
authorities of the people’s unanimous desire to see prisoners and exiles at
liberty, and, to refrain from encroaching on the inalienable prerogative of
the crown in this business, have decided to kill the amnesty bill which the
Trudovik group intends to table in the
Duma. {1} What the devil does General Trepov still want? Let’s have done
with the bargaining, General, and hand over the reins to the new driver,
“without any pangs, without any fatal brooding, and without futile and empty doubts”: after
all, in ease of failure the “extreme measures” will still be at your
disposal....

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Notes:
{1}
First Duma (the so-called Witte Duma) was convened on April 27
(May 10), 1906, under an ordinance worked out by Chairman of the Council of
Ministers S. Y. Witte.

Electedto the Duma were 478 deputies, over one-third of whom belonged
to the Cadet Party. It was dissolved on July 8 (21), 1906.

Trudoviks —agroup of petty-bourgeois democrats in Russian
Dumas consisting of peasants and Narodnik-minded intellectuals. The
Trudovik group was formed in April 1906 from the peasant deputies of the
First Duma.

Inthe Duma the Trudoviks vacillated between the Cadets and the
Social-Democrats, which was due to the class character of the peasant petty
proprietors. In view of the fact that the Trudoviks represented the peasant
masses, the Bolsheviks in the Duma pursued the tactic of reaching agreement
with them on various questions for conducting a common struggle against the
tsarist autocracy and the Cadets. In 1917, the Trudovik group merged with
the Popular Socialist Party and gave active support to the bourgeois
Provisional Government. After the October Revolution the Trudoviks sided
with the bourgeois counter-revolution.

p. 182