V. I.

Lenin

The Attitude of the Bourgeois Parties and of the Workers’ Party to the Duma Elections

Thepapers are full of news about the preparations for the
elections. Almost every day we are informed either of a new government
“interpretation” striking out of the voters’ list one more category
of unreliable citizens, or of new persecutions, prohibitions of meetings,
suppression of news papers and the arrest of suspected electors or
candidates. The Black Hundreds have raised their heads, whooping and hooting
more insolently than ever.

Theparties that are objectionable to the government are also preparing for the
elections. These parties are confident, and justly confident, that the
mass of the voters will have their say, will take advantage of the
elections to ex press their true convictions in spite of all the tricks,
pin-pricks and restrictions, great and small, that are directed against the
voters. This confidence is based on the fact that the most ferocious
persecutions, the most intolerable pin-pricks will at most eliminate hundreds,
thousands, let us say, tens of thousands of voters throughout Russia. But this
will not alter the sentiments and the attitude of the masses towards
the government. Ten or twenty thousand voters can be struck off the list in
St. Petersburg, say, but this will only cause the 150,000 voters in the capital
to withdraw into their shells, as it were, to lie low for a time. They will not
disappear, however, and their mass sentiment will not change; if it does change,
it will not, of course, be in favour of the government. Therefore, unless the
electoral law is radically amended, unless all remnants of electoral legality
are finally trampled upon (and they can still be further trampled upon by means
of systematic arrests of electors: one may expect the very worst from Stolypin!)—there is still no doubt that the
mood of the masses will decide the elections, and the decision will certainly
not be in favour of the government and its Black Hundreds.

Andall non-supporters of the government are placing their hopes in the masses
of the voters. But if you examine carefully what this hope in the masses really
amounts to, what the attitude of the various parties is towards the
masses—you will observe a vast difference between the bourgeois parties
and the party of the proletariat.

The Cadets are at the head of the liberal-bourgeois parties. During the
elections to the First Duma they shamefully betrayed the struggle, they refused
to take part in the boycott; they themselves went tamely to the elections and
drew the raw masses after them. Now they are placing their hopes on the
inertness of these masses, and on the restrictions which have been imposed on
agitation and on the Left parties in the conduct of their election
campaign. The Cadet’s hope in the masses is hope in the immaturity and servitude
of the masses. He argues as follows: the masses will not understand our
programme and tactics, they will not go beyond a peaceful and legal, the most
peaceful and timid protest—not because they do not wish to, but because
they will not be allowed to. They will vote for us, for the Lefts have no
newspapers, no meetings, no leaflets, no security against arbitrary arrest and
persecution. So thinks the Cadet. And he proudly raises his eyes to heaven and
says: I thank thee Lord that I am not as one of those “extremists”! I am
not a revolutionary; I shall be able to adjust myself most obediently and
abjectly to any measures; I shall even get my election forms [1] from the Peaceful Renovators.

Hence,the whole of the Cadets’ election campaign is directed to frightening the
masses with the Black-Hundred danger and the danger from the extreme Left
parties, to adapting themselves to the philistinism, cowardice and flabbiness
of the petty bourgeois and to persuading him that the Cadets are the safest, the
most modest, the most moderate and the most well-behaved of people. Every day
the Cadet papers ask their readers: Are you afraid, philistine? Rely on us! We are not going to frighten you, we are opposed to violence, we are
obedient to the government; rely on us, and we shall do everything for you
“as far as possible”! And behind the backs of the frightened
philistines the Cadets resort to eve ’y trick to assure the government of
their loyalty, to assure the Lefts of their love of liberty, to assure the
Peaceful Renovators of their affinity with their party and their election
forms.

Noenlightenment of the masses, no agitation to rouse the masses, no exposition
of consistent democratic slogans— only a haggling for seats behind the
backs of the frightened philistines—such is the election campaign of all
the parties of the liberal bourgeoisie, from the non-party people (of
Tovarishch ) to the Party of Democratic Reforms.

Theattitude of the workers’ party towards the masses is exactly the
reverse. The important thing for us is not to get seats in the Duma by means of
compromises; on the contrary, those seats are important only because and
insofar as they can serve to develop the political consciousness of the
masses, to raise them to a higher political level, to organise
them, not for the sake of philistine happiness, not for the sake of
“tranquillity”, “order” and “peaceful [bourgeois] bliss”, but for the struggle , the struggle for the complete
emancipation of labour from all exploitation and all oppression. Only for this
purpose, and only to the extent that they help us to achieve it, are seats in
the Duma and the whole election campaign important for us. The workers’
party places all its hopes on the masses; on the masses who are not frightened,
not passively submissive and who do not humbly bear the yoke, but who are
politically conscious, demanding and militant. The workers’ party must treat
with contempt the usual liberal method of frightening the philistine with the
bogey of the Black-Hundred danger. The whole task of the Social-Democrats is to
make the masses conscious of the real danger, of the actual aims in the
struggle of these forces whose strength lies not in the Duma, which find full
expression not in Duma debates, and which will settle the question of Russia’s
future outside the Duma.

Theworkers’ party therefore warns the masses against the clandestine election
tricks of the Cadet bourgeoisie, against its stultifying cry: Entrust to us,
lawyers, professors and enlightened landlords, the task of combating the Black Hundred danger!

Theworkers’ party tells the masses: trust only your socialist consciousness
and your socialist organisation. To surrender priority in the struggle and the
right to lead it to the liberal bourgeoisie is tantamount to selling the cause
of liberty for grandiloquent phrases, for the tawdry brilliance of fashionable
and gaudy signboards. No Black-Hundred danger in the Duma can be as harmful as
the corruption of the minds of the masses who are blindly following the liberal
bourgeoisie, its slogans, its candidates and its policy.

Amongthe masses to whom the workers’ party is appealing, the strongest
numerically are the peasants and various sections of the petty bourgeoisie. They
are more determined than the Cadets, more honest and a thousand times more
capable of fighting, but in politics they are too often led by the Cadet
windbags. Even now they are wavering between the militant proletariat and the
compromising bourgeoisie.

Theadvocates of blocs with the Cadets are not only doing harm to the
proletariat and to the whole cause of liberty. They are prejudicing the
development of political consciousness among the urban and rural poor. They are
not performing their immediate duty, which is to free these people from the
influence of the liberal bourgeoisie. Look at the Trudoviks, the “Popular
Socialists” and the Socialist-Revolutionaries. They, too, are wavering,
and are also mainly occupied with plans for deals with the Cadets. The leaders
of the Trudoviks, having failed to form a party of their own, are multiplying
their Duma mistakes tenfold by appealing to the masses to vote for the Cadets
(Anikin—through news paper reporters, Zhilkin—in
Tovarishch , etc.). This is down right treachery to the cause of the
peasants’ struggle, down right betrayal of the peasants to the liberal
landlords, who would rob the peasants by means of a “fair”
compensation as thoroughly as their forefathers did in 1861. And as for the
“Popular Socialists”, even the Cadets are laughing at them and
calling them “second reserve Cadets” (Milyukov in Rech ).
Their leaders (Annensky and others) also appeal for blocs with the Cadets. Their
tiny party (which according to Tovarishch , a paper which is favourably
disposed to them, is weaker even than the party of peaceful plunder, and which has only about 2,000 members throughout Russia!) is a mere appendage of the
Cadets. The position of the Socialist-Revolutionaries is also ambiguous:
both in the October period and in the period of the First Duma they
concealed the fact that they had split with the Popular Socialists; they
continued to collaborate with them and jointly published the same
newspapers. Today, they are net conducting any open and independent
struggle, are not sufficiently broadly, openly and sharply attacking the
“second reserve Cadets”, are not supplying the masses with
adequate data for criticising that party, and are not making any appraisal
in principle of the whole election campaign and all electoral agreements
in general.

Itis the great historical duty of the workers’ party to help to create an
independent political party of the working class. Those who advocate
blocs with the Cadets hinder the fulfilment of this duty.

Anothergreat duty that confronts the workers’ party is to free the masses of
the ruined, poverty-stricken and doomed urban petty bourgeoisie and peasantry
from the influence of the ideas and prejudices of the liberal bourgeoisie. The
fulfilment of this duty is also being hindered by those who advocate blocs with
the Cadets. They are not divorcing the peasants from the liberals, but are
strengthening this unnatural alliance, which is fatal to the cause of liberty
and to the cause of the proletariat. They are not warning the peas ant masses
against the liberals’ backstairs politics (or rather, political intrigue for
the distribution of seats in the Duma), but are sanctioning this intrigue by
taking part in it.

Downwith all blocs! The workers’ party must conduct its election campaign
independently, not only in words, but in deeds. It must provide the whole
people, and the masses of the proletariat in particular, with a model of
courageous and consistent criticism based on principle. Only in that way shall
we succeed in rallying the masses for effective participation in the struggle
for freedom and not in the sham liberalism of the Cadet betrayers of freedom.

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Notes:
[1]
See p. 885 of this volume.— Ed .