Comrades! I will not read the Bolshevik resolution to you, for this resolution is probably known to all of you. (In view of the demand on the part of the congress members, the speaker nevertheless reads out the text of the Bolshevik resolution once more.) A comparison of this resolution with the resolution of the Mensheviks shows us the following four fundamental points of difference, or four fundamental shortcomings of the Menshevik resolution.

1) The Menshevik resolution contains no assessment of the elections, no accounting of the objective results of our political experience in this regard.

2) Throughout this resolution there permeates a careless, to put it mildly, or optimistic attitude towards the State Duma.

3) The resolution lacks a clear division of the various trends or parties within bourgeois democracy from the standpoint of our tactics towards them.

4) Your resolution resolves to form a parliamentary fraction at a moment and under conditions when the benefit of such a measure for the proletarian party can in no way be proven.

Such are the real disagreements between us, if one examines the disagreements seriously, without quibbling over words or minor details. Let us consider these four points.

An accounting of the experience regarding the elections is of enormous significance if we wish to base our conclusions not on general phrases about parliamentarism in general, etc., but on the actual relation of political forces. Indeed, we have advanced and continue to advance the quite definite position that participation in the elections really means support for the Cadets, that participation is impossible without blocs with the Cadets. Do you examine this consideration on its merits? Do you examine reality from the standpoint of the factual data on this question? Nothing of the kind. Axelrod completely bypassed the first half of the questions and, concerning the second, gave two contradictory assertions. At first he spoke of blocs with the Cadets in general in the most disparaging terms. Then he said that he would have nothing even against such blocs, but, of course, not in the form of the old and petty "whispering" and agreements in the dark, but in the form of open and direct steps, visible to the entire proletariat. This last "position" of Axelrod's is a splendid specimen of "Cadet" daydreaming, real "innocent wishes" engendered by constitutional illusions. We have no constitution in fact, no soil for our open actions, but rather Dubasovite "constitutionalism". Axelrod's dreams will remain empty dreams, while the Cadets will derive real benefit from the agreements, whether silent or signed, formal or informal.

And when they speak of our "self-elimination" from the elections, they constantly forget that it was precisely the political conditions, and not our will, that eliminated our party in fact, eliminated it from newspapers, from meetings, from putting forward prominent party members as candidates. And without all these conditions parliamentarism is far more an empty and paltry game than a means of educating the proletariat: it is naive to take parliamentarism "in its pure form", "in the idea", and not in its real setting.

When they speak of the elections, they usually forget that in fact two strong "parties" contended on the soil of Dubasovite constitutionalism: the Cadets and the Black Hundreds. The Cadets were right when they told the voters that any dispersion of votes, any putting forward of "third" candidates, could only lead to a victory for the Black Hundreds. Take examples like those from Moscow: Guchkov receives, say, 900 votes, the Cadet 1300. It would have been enough for the Social-Democrats to gather 401 votes, and the Black Hundreder would have won. Consequently, the Cadet understanding of Social-Democratic participation in the elections corresponded to reality (the Cadets gave the Moscow workers one seat in the State Duma for the workers' participation in the elections), while your, the Menshevik, understanding does not correspond to reality, is an empty and idle dream. Either one does not take up parliamentarism and does not utter commonplaces about it, or one takes it up seriously. Otherwise, the result is a position that is good for nothing.

Second point. In his speech Axelrod brought out even more the shortcomings of the resolution that I have indicated. The resolution speaks of turning the Duma into an instrument of the revolution. You regard the Duma exclusively from the standpoint of governmental pressure on us, governmental oppression against the revolution. We regard the State Duma as the representation of a definite class, as an institution with a defined party composition. Your reasoning is entirely incorrect, incomplete, not constructed in a Marxist way. You do not take into account the internal structure of the Duma according to the class composition of the C.-D. party. You say that the government is stifling the revolution, yet you forget to add that the C.-D. too have already fully and wholly revealed a striving to smother the revolution. The Cadet Duma cannot but display the properties of the Cadet party. The example of the Frankfurt Parliament, when a representative institution in a revolutionary epoch clearly revealed a striving to smother the revolution (owing to the petty-bourgeois narrow-mindedness and cowardice of the Frankfurt windbags) – this example you altogether lose sight of.

The reference in the S.-D. resolution to "an authority, recognised by the tsar and confirmed by law" is quite unfortunate. The Duma is not an authority in actual fact. The reference to the law does not strengthen, but weakens your entire argumentation and all your agitational slogans flowing from this resolution. It is Witte who will be most willing to refer to "the law" and to the "will of the tsar", hindering the slightest attempt by the Duma to go beyond the bounds of its ridiculously reduced competence. It is not the Social-Democrats, but *The Russian State* that derives benefit from such arguments as the reference to the tsar and the law.

I pass to the third point. The absence of a clear characterisation of the Cadets, the refusal to expose all their tactics, the failure to distinguish the Cadets from the peasant and revolutionary democracy is a fundamental error of the resolution, an error closely bound up with all the preceding ones. Yet it is precisely the Cadets who are the masters of the situation in the present Duma. And these Cadets have already, more than once, revealed their betrayals of "people's freedom". When the kindhearted windbag Vodovozov, wishing to stand to the left of the Cadets, reminded them after the elections of the promises they had made regarding the constituent assembly, etc., *Rech*, which had assumed a "great-power" tone, answered Vodovozov rudely, with vulgar rudeness, that it did not need unsolicited advice.

Your resolution is equally erroneous on the question of the striving to weaken the revolution. As I have already said, such a striving exists not only with the government, but also with those petty bourgeois-conciliators who are making the most noise now on the surface of our political life.

Your resolution says that the Duma strives to lean on the people. This is only half true and for that reason it is not true. What is the State Duma? Is it permissible for us to limit ourselves to a general reference to this institution instead of an analysis of those classes and parties that determine its actual content and significance? Which Duma strives to lean on the people? Not the Octobrist Duma, for such a striving is entirely alien to the Octobrists. And not the peasant Duma, for the peasant deputies are already an inseparable part of the people, and there is no need for them to "strive to lean on the people". The striving to lean on the people is characteristic precisely of the Cadet Duma. But the Cadets are equally characterised by both a striving to lean on the people and a fear of the revolutionary independent activity of the people. By pointing to one side of the matter and being completely silent about the other, your resolution sows not only incorrect, but directly harmful notions. This silence about the second side – which is emphasised in our resolution on the attitude towards other parties – is a lie, if one takes the objective meaning of such silence.

No, it is in no case permissible to define our tactics towards bourgeois democracy with silence about the Cadets, with a refusal to sharply criticise them. We can and must seek the support only of the peasant and revolutionary democracy, and by no means of those who blunt the political contradictions of the present moment.

Finally, let us look at the proposal to form a parliamentary fraction. Even the Mensheviks do not venture to deny that the Social-Democrats' utilisation of the new weapon, "parliamentarism", must be arranged with particular caution. They are fully prepared to acknowledge this "in principle". But the matter now is not at all one of principled acknowledgment, the matter is one of a correct accounting of the concrete conditions. The "principled" acknowledgment of caution is worth nothing if the real conditions turn this acknowledgment into an innocent and idle daydream. The Caucasians, for instance, speak well of independent elections, of purely party candidates, of their rejection of blocs with the Cadets. But what are these fine words worth if at the same time one of the comrades from the Caucasians, in conversation with me, reported that in Tiflis, this centre of Menshevik Caucasia, the left Cadet Argutinsky will probably get through and, in all probability, not without the help of the S.-D.? What are our wishes concerning broad and open declarations before the masses worth if we have, as now, the Central Committee's *Party News* against the abyss of Cadet newspapers?

Note also that the most optimistic of the S.-D. hope to get their candidates through only via the peasant curiae. That means they wish "to begin parliamentarism" in the practice of a workers' party precisely not with the workers, but with the petty-bourgeois, semi-Socialist-Revolutionary curiae. Just think: does a Social-Democratic or a non-Social-Democratic workers' policy have more chances to emerge out of all this situation?