V. I.

Lenin

The Victory of the Cadets and the Tasks of the Workers’ Party

Digression

A Popular Talk With Cadet Publicists and Learned
Professors

But what was the real reason that induced Mr. Blank to come to the
monstrously wrong conclusion that all Marxist principles and ideas
vanished in the period of the “whirl wind”? It is very interesting to examine this circumstance; it still further exposes the real nature of philistinism in politics.

What is it that mainly distinguished the period of the revolutionary
whirlwind” from the present “Cadet” period, as regards the
various, forms of political activity and the various methods by which the people
make history? First and mainly, it is that during the period of the
“whirlwind” certain special methods of making history were employed
which are foreign to other periods of political life. The following were the
most important of these methods:

(1) the seizure” by the people of political liberty—its exercise without any rights and laws, and
without any limitations (freedom of assembly, even if only in the universities,
freedom of the press, freedom of association, the holding of congresses, etc.); (2) the creation of new organs of revolutionary authority—
Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’, Railwaymen’s and Peasants’ Deputies, new rural
and urban authorities, and so on, and so forth. These bodies were set up
exclusively by the revolutionary sections of the people; they were
formed irrespective of all laws and regulations, entirely in a revolutionary
way, as a product of the native genius of the people, as a manifestation of the
independent activity of the people which had rid it self, or was ridding
itself, of its old police fetters. Lastly, they were indeed organs of
authority , for all their rudimentary, spontaneous, amorphous and
diffuse character, in composition and in activity. They acted as a government
when, for example, they seized printing plants (in St. Petersburg) and
arrested police officials who were preventing the revolutionary people from
exercising their rights (such cases also occurred in St. Petersburg, where the
new organ of authority concerned was weakest, and where the old government was
strongest). They acted as a government when they appealed to the whole people
to withhold money from the old government. They confiscated the old government’s
funds (the railway strike committees in the South) and used them for the needs
of the new, people’s government. Yes, these were undoubtedly the embryos of a
new, people’s, or, if you will, revolutionary government. In their social and
political character, they were the rudiments of the dictatorship of the
revolutionary elements of the people. This surprises you, Mr. Blank and
Mr. Kiesewetter! You do not see here the “reinforced security”, which for the bourgeois is tantamount to dictatorship? We have
already told you that you have not the faintest notion of the scientific
concept “dictatorship”. We will explain it to you in a moment;
but first we will deal with the third “method” of activity in the period of the “revolutionary whirlwind”; the use by the people of force against those who used force against the people .

The organs of authority that we have described represented a dictatorship in
embryo, for they recognised no other authority, no law and no standards, no
matter by whom established. Authority—unlimited, outside the law, and
based on force in the most direct sense of the word—is dictatorship. But
the force on which this new authority was based, and sought to base itself was
not the force of bayonets usurped by a handful of militarists, not the power of
the “police force”, not the power of money nor the power of any
previously established institutions. It was nothing of the kind. The new organs
of authority possessed neither arms, nor money, nor old institutions. Their
power—can you imagine it, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter? — had
nothing in common with the old instruments of power, nothing in common with
“rein forced security”, if we do not have in mind the reinforced
security established to protect the people from the tyranny of the police and
of the other organs of the old regime.

What was this power based on, then? It was based on the mass of the people. This
is the main feature that distinguished this new authority from all the
preceding organs of the old regime. The latter were the instruments of the rule
of the minority over the people, over the masses of workers and peasants. The
former was an instrument of the rule of the people, of the workers and peasants,
over the minority, over a handful of police bullies, over a handful of
privileged nobles and government officials. Such is the difference between
dictatorship over the people and dictatorship of the revolutionary people: mark this well, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter!
As the dictatorship of a minority, the old regime was able to maintain itself solely with the aid of
police devices, solely by preventing the masses of the people from taking part
in the government and from supervising the government. The old authority
persistently distrusted the masses, feared the light, maintained itself by
deception. As the dictatorship of the overwhelming majority, the new authority maintained itself and could maintain itself
solely because it enjoyed the confidence of the vast masses, solely because it,
in the freest, widest and most resolute manner, enlisted all the masses in the
task of government. It concealed nothing, it had no secrets, no regulations,
no formalities. It said, in effect: Are you a working man? Do you want to fight
to rid Russia of the gang of police bullies? You are our comrade. Elect your
deputy. Elect him at once, immediately, whichever way you think best. We will
willingly and gladly accept him as a full member of our Soviet of Workers’
Deputies, Peasant Committee, Soviet of Soldiers’ Deputies, and so forth. It was
an authority open to all, it carried out all its functions before the eyes of
the masses, was accessible to the masses, sprang directly from the masses, and
was a direct and immediate instrument of the popular masses, of their
will. Such was the new authority, or, to be exact, its embryo, for the victory
of the old authority trampled down the shoots of this young plant very soon.

Perhaps, Mr. Blank or Mr. Kiesewetter, you will ask:

Why “dictatorship”, why “force”? Is it necessary for a vast
mass to use force against a handful? Can tens and hundreds of millions be
dictators over a thousand or ten thousand?

This question is usually put by people who for the first time hear the term
dictatorship used in what to them is a new connotation. People are accustomed to
see only a police authority and only a police dictatorship. The idea that there
can be government without any police, or that dictatorship need not be a police
dictatorship, seems strange to them. You say that millions need not resort to
force against thousands? You are mistaken; and your mistake arises from the fact
that you do not regard a phenomenon in its process of development.. You forget
that the new authority does not drop from the skies, but grows up, arises
parallel with, and in opposition to, the old authority, in struggle against
it. Unless force is used against tyrants armed with the weapons and instruments
of power, the people cannot be liberated from tyrants.

Here is a very simple analogy, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter, which will help
you to grasp this idea, which seems so remote and “fantastic” to the
Cadet mind. Let us suppose that Avramov is injuring and torturing
Spiridonova. On

Spiridonova’s side, let us say, are tens and hundreds of unarmed people. On
Avramov’s side there is a handful of Cossacks. What would the people do
if Spiridonova were being tortured, not in a dungeon, but in public? They
would resort to force against Avramov and his body-guard. Perhaps they
would sacrifice a few of their comrades, shot down by Avramov; but in the
long run, they would forcibly disarm Avramov and his Cossacks, and in all
probability would kill on the spot some of these brutes in human form; and
they would clap the rest into some gaol to prevent them from committing
any more outrages and to bring them to judgement before the people.

So you see, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kiesewetter, when Avramov and his Cossacks torture
Spiridonova, that is military and police dictatorship over the people. When a
revolutionary people (that is to say, a people capable of fighting the tyrants,
and not only of exhorting, admonishing, regretting, condemning, whining and
whimpering; not a philistine narrow-minded, but a revolutionary people) resorts
to force against Avramov and the Avramovs, that is a dictatorship of the
revolutionary people. It is a dictatorship , because it is the
authority of the people over Avramov, an authority unrestricted by any laws (the
philistine, perhaps, would be opposed to rescuing Spiridonova from Avramov by
force, thinking it to be against the “law”. They would no doubt ask:
Is there a “law” that permits the killing of Avramov? Have not some
philistine ideologists built up a theory of non-resistance to evil?). [1]

The scientific term “dictatorship” means nothing more nor less than
authority untrammeled by any laws, absolutely unrestricted by any rules
whatever, and based directly on force. The term “dictatorship”
has no other meaning but this— mark this well, Cadet gentlemen. Again, in the analogy we have drawn, we see the dictatorship of the people , because the people, the mass of the population, unorganised,
“casually” assembled at the given spot, itself appears on the scene,
exercises justice and metes out punishment, exercises power and creates a new, revolutionary law. Lastly, it is the dictatorship of the
revolutionary people. Why only of the revolutionary, and not of the
whole people? Because among the whole people, constantly suffering, and most
cruelly, from the brutalities of the Avramovs, there are some who are
physically cowed and terrified; there are some who are morally degraded by the
“resist not evil” theory, for example, or simply degraded not by
theory, but by prejudice, habit, routine; and there are indifferent people, whom
we call philistines, petty-bourgeois people who are more inclined to hold aloof
from intense struggle, to pass by or even to hide themselves (for fear of
getting mixed up in the fight and getting hurt). That is why the dictatorship is
exercised, not by the whole people, but by the revolutionary people who,
however, do not shun the whole people, who explain to all the people the motives
of their actions in all their details, and who willingly enlist the
whole people not only in “administering” the state, but in
governing it too, and indeed in organising the state.

Thus our simple analogy contains all the elements of the scientific
concept “dictatorship of the revolutionary people”, and also of the
concept “military and police dictatorship”. We can now pass from
this simple analogy, which even a learned Cadet professor can grasp, to the more
complex developments of social life.

Revolution, in the strict and direct sense of the word, is a period in the life
of a people when the anger accumulated during centuries of Avramov brutalities
breaks forth into actions , not merely into words; and into the actions
of millions of the people , not merely of individuals. The people awaken
and rise up to rid themselves of the Avramovs. The people rescue the countless
numbers of Spiridonovas in Russian life from the Avramovs, use force against
the Avramovs, and establish their authority over the Avramovs. Of course, this
does not take place so easily, and not “all at once”, as it did in
our analogy, simplified for the benefit of Professor Kiesewetter. This struggle
of the people against the Avramovs, a struggle in the strict and direct sense of
the word, this act of the people in throwing the Avramovs off their backs,
stretches over months and years of “revolutionary whirlwind”. This
act of the people in throwing the Avramovs off their backs is the real content
of what is called the great

Russian revolution. This act, regarded from the standpoint of the methods of
making history, takes place in the forms we have just described in
discussing the revolutionary whirl wind, namely: the people seize
political freedom, that is, the freedom which the Avramovs had prevented
them from exercising; the people create a new, revolutionary authority,
authority over the Avramovs, over the tyrants of the old police regime;
the people use force against the Avramovs in order to remove, disarm and
make harmless these wild dogs, all the Avramovs, Durnovos, Dubasovs, Mins,
etc., etc.

Is it good that the people should apply such unlawful, irregular, unmethodical
and unsystematic methods of struggle as seizing their liberty and creating a
new, formally unrecognised and revolutionary authority, that it should use
force against the oppressors of the people? Yes, it is very good. It is the
supreme manifestation of the people’s struggle for liberty. It marks that great
period when the dreams of liberty cherished by the best men and women of Russia
come true , when liberty becomes the cause of the vast masses of the
people, and not merely of individual heroes. It is as good as the rescue by the
crowd (in our analogy) of Spiridonova from Avramov, and the forcible disarming
of Avramov and making him harmless.

But this brings us to the very pivot of the Cadets’ hidden thoughts and
apprehensions. A Cadet is the ideologist of the philistines precisely because he
looks at politics, at the liberation of the whole people, at revolution,
through the spectacles of that same philistine who, in our analogy of the
torture of Spiridonova by Avramov,would try to restrain the crowd, advise it not
to break the law, not to hasten to rescue the victim from the hands of the
torturer, since he is acting in. the name of the law. In our analogy, of course,
that philistine would be morally a monster; but in social life as a whole, we
repeat, the philistine monster is not an individual, but a social phenomenon,
conditioned, perhaps, by the deep-rooted prejudices of the bourgeois-philistine
theory of law.

Why does Mr. Blank hold it as self-evident that all Marxist principles were
forgotten during the period of “whirl wind”? Because he distorts Marxism
into Brentanoism, and thinks that such “principles” as the seizure
of liberty, the establishment of revolutionary authority and the use of force by the people are not Marxist. This idea runs through the whole of
Mr.. Blank’s article; and not only Mr. Blank’s, but the articles of all the
Cadets, and of all the writers in the liberal and radical camp who, today, are
praising Plekhanov for his love of the Cadets; all of them, right up to the
Bernsteinians of Bez Zaglavia , [8] the Prokopoviches, Kuskovas
and tutti quanti .

Let us see how this opinion arose and why it was bound to arise.

It arose directly out of the Bernsteinian or, to put it more broadly, the
opportunist concepts of the West-European Social-Democrats. The fallacies of
these concepts, which the “orthodox” Marxists in Western Europe have
been systematically exposing all along the line, are now being smuggled into
Russia “on the sly”, in a different dressing and on a different
occasion. The Bernsteinians accepted and accept Marxism minus its
directly revolutionary aspect. They do not regard the parliamentary struggle as
one of the weapons particularly suitable for definite historical periods, but
as the main and almost the sole form of struggle making “force”,
“seizure”, “dictatorship”, unnecessary. It is this vulgar philistine distortion of Marxism that the Blanks and other liberal
eulogisers of Plekhanov are now smuggling into Russia. They have become so
accustomed to this distortion that they do not even think it necessary to prove
that Marxist principles and ideas were forgotten in the period of the
revolutionary whirlwind.

Why was such an opinion bound to arise? Because it accords very well with the
class standing and interests of the petty bourgeoisie. The ideologists of
“purified” bourgeois society agree with all the methods
used by the Social-Democrats in their struggle except those to which the revolutionary people resort in the period of a “whirlwind ”, and
which revolutionary Social-Democrats approve of and help in using. The
interests of the bourgeoisie demand that the proletariat should take part in the
struggle against the autocracy, but only in a way that does not lead to the
supremacy of the proletariat and the peasantry, and does not completely
eliminate the old, feudal-autocratic and police organs of state power. The
bourgeoisie wants to preserve these organs, only establishing its direct
control over them. It needs them against the proletariat , whose struggle would be too greatly facilitated if they
were completely abolished. That is why the interests of the bourgeoisie as a
class require both a monarchy and an Upper Chamber, and the prevention of
the dictatorship of the revolutionary people. Fight the autocracy, the
bourgeoisie says to the proletariat, but do not touch the old organs of
state power, for I need them. Fight in a “parliamentary” way,
that is, within the limits that we will prescribe by agreement with the
monarchy. Fight with the aid of organisations, only not organisations like
general strike committees, Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ Deputies, etc.,
but organisations that are recognised, restricted and made safe for capital
by a law that we shall pass by agreement with the monarchy.

It is clear, therefore, why the bourgeoisie speaks, with disdain, contempt,
anger and hatred about the period of the “whirlwind”, [2] and with
rapture, ecstasy and boundless philistine infatuation for reaction, about the
period of constitutionalism as protected by Dubasov. It is once again that
constant, invariable quality of the Cadets: seeking to lean on the people and at
the same time dreading their revolutionary initiative.

It is also clear why the bourgeoisie is in such mortal fear of a repetition of
the whirlwind, why it ignores and obscures the elements of the new revolutionary
crisis, why it fosters constitutional illusions and spreads them among the
people.

Now we have fully explained why Mr. Blank and his like declare that in the
period of the “whirlwind” all Marxist principles and ideas were
forgotten. Like all philistines, Mr. Blank accepts Marxism minus its
revolutionary aspect; he accepts Social-Democratic methods of struggle minus the most
revolutionary and directly revolutionary methods.

Mr. Blank’s attitude towards the period of “whirlwind” is extremely
characteristic as an illustration of bourgeois failure to understand proletarian
movements, bourgeois horror of acute and resolute struggles, bourgeois hatred
for every manifestation of a radical and directly revolutionary method of
solving social historical problems, a method that breaks up old
institutions. Mr. Blank has betrayed himself and all his bourgeois
narrow-mindedness. Somewhere he heard and read that during the period of
whirlwind the Social-Democrats made “mistakes”—and he has hastened
to conclude, and to declare with self-assurance, in tones that brook no
contradiction and require no proof, that all the “principles” of
Marxism (of which he has not the least notion!) were forgot ten. As for these
“mistakes”, we will remark: Has there been a period in the
development of the working-class movement, in the development of
Social-Democracy, when no mistakes were made, when there was no deviation to the
right or the left? Is not the history of the parliamentary period of the
struggle waged by the German Social-Democratic Party—the period which all
narrow-minded bourgeois all over the world regard as the utmost
limit—filled with such mistakes? If Mr. Blank were not an utter ignoramus
on problems of socialism, he would easily call to mind Mülberger,
Dühring, the Dampfersubvention [9] question, the “Youth”, [10] the Bernsteiniad [11] and many, many more. But Mr. Blank is not interested in studying the actual
course of development of the Social-Democratic movement; all he wants is to
minimise the scope of the proletarian struggle in order to exalt the bourgeois
paltriness of his Cadet Party.

Indeed, if we examine the question in the light of the deviations that the
Social-Democratic movement has made from its ordinary, “normal”
course, we shall see that even in this respect there was more and not
less solidarity and ideological integrity among the Social-Democrats in the
period of “revolutionary whirlwind” than there was before it. The
tactics adopted in the period of “whirlwind” did not further
estrange the two wings of the Social-Democratic Party, but brought them closer
together. Former disagreements gave way to unity of opinion on the question of
armed uprising.

Social-Democrats of both factions were active in the Soviets of Workers’
Deputies, these peculiar instruments of embryonic revolutionary
authority; they drew the soldiers and peas ants into these Soviets, they
issued revolutionary manifestos jointly with the petty-bourgeois
revolutionary parties. Old controversies of the pre-revolutionary period
gave way to unanimity on practical questions. The upsurge of the
revolutionary tide pushed aside disagreements, compelling Social-Democrats to
adopt militant tactics; it swept the question of the Duma into the
background and put the question of insurrection on the order of the day;
and it brought closer together the Social-Democrats and revolutionary
bourgeois democrats in carrying out immediate tasks. In
Severny Golos , [12] the Mensheviks, jointly with the Bolsheviks,
called for a general strike and insurrection; and they called upon the
workers to continue this struggle until they had captured power. The
revolutionary situation itself suggested practical slogans. There were
arguments only over matters of detail in the appraisal of events: for
example, Nachalo [13] regarded the Soviets of Workers’
Deputies as organs of revolutionary local self-government, while Novaya Zhizn regarded them as embryonic organs of revolutionary state power
that united the proletariat with the revolutionary democrats.

Nachalo inclined towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. Novaya Zhizn advocated the democratic dictatorship of the
proletariat and the peasantry. But have not disagreements of this kind been
observed at every stage of development of every socialist party in Europe?

Mr. Blank’s misrepresentation of the facts and his gross distortion of recent
history are nothing more nor less than a sample of the smug bourgeois banality,
for which periods of revolutionary whirlwind seem folly (“all principles
are forgotten”, “even intellect and reason almost vanish”), while
periods of suppression of revolution and philistine “progress” (protected
by the Dubasovs) seem to be periods of reasonable, deliberate and methodical
activity. This comparative appraisal of two periods (the period of
“whirlwind” and the Cadet period) runs through the whole of
Mr. Blank’s article.

When human history rushes forward with the speed of a locomotive, he calls it a
“whirlwind”, a “torrent”, the “vanishing” of all “principles and ideas”. When history plods along at dray-horse pace, the very symbol of it becomes reason and method. When the masses
of the people themselves, with all their virgin primitiveness and simple, rough
determination begin to make history, begin to put “principles and
theories” immediately and directly into practice, the bourgeois is terrified
and howls that “intellect is retreating into the back ground” (is
not the contrary the case, heroes of philistinism? Is it not the intellect of
the masses, and not of individuals, that invades the sphere of history at such
moments? Does not mass intellect at such a time become a virile, effective, and
not an armchair force?). When the direct movement of the masses has been crushed
by shootings, repressive measures, floggings, unemployment and starvation, when
all the bugs of professorial science financed by Dubasov come creeping out of
their crevices and begin to administer affairs on behalf of the people,
in the name of the masses , selling and betraying their interests to a
privileged few—then the knights of philistinism think that an era of calm
and peaceful progress has set in and that “the turn of intellect and
reason has come”. The bourgeois always and everywhere remains true to
himself: whether you take Polyarnaya Zvezda or Nasha Zhizn ,
whether you read Struve or Blank, you will always find this same narrow-minded,
professorially pedantic and bureaucratically lifeless appraisal of periods of
revolution and periods of reform. The former are periods of madness, tolle Jahre , the disappearance of intellect and reason. The latter are periods of
“deliberate and systematic” activities.

Do not misinterpret what I am saying. I am not arguing that the Blanks prefer
some periods to others. It is not a matter of preference; our subjective
preferences do not determine the changes in historical periods. The thing is
that in analysing the characteristics of this or that period (quite
apart from our preferences or sympathies), the Blanks shamelessly distort the truth . The thing is that it is just the revolutionary periods which are
distinguished by wider, richer, more deliberate, more methodical, more
systematic, more courageous and more vivid making of history than periods of
philistine, Cadet, reformist progress. But the Blanks turn the truth in side
out! They palm off paltriness as magnificent making of history. They regard the
inactivity of the oppressed or down trodden masses as the triumph of
“system” in the work of bureaucrats and bourgeois. They shout about the disappearance of intellect and
reason when, instead of the picking of draft laws to pieces by petty
bureaucrats and liberal penny-a-liner [3] journalists, there begins
a period of direct political activity of the “common people”,
who simply set to work without more ado to smash all the instruments for
oppressing the people, seize power and take what was regarded as belonging
to all kinds of robbers of the people—in short, when the intellect and
reason of millions of downtrodden people awaken not only to read books, but
for action, vital human action, to make history.

Look how majestically this Cadet knight argues: “The whirlwind raged for a
time and then subsided on the spot where it began.” Why, the fact that
the liberal philistines are still alive, that they have not been gobbled up by
the Dubasovs, is due entirely to this whirlwind. “On the spot
where it began,” you say? You say that Russia in the spring of 1906 is on the
same spot as she was in September 1905?

Yes, throughout the “Cadet” period the Dubasovs and Durnovos have
been dragging, and will drag Russia “deliberately, methodically
and systematically” back, in order to return her to September 1905;
but they haven’t the strength to do so , because during the whirlwind
the proletarians, the railway- men, the peasants, the mutinous soldiers, have
driven all Russia forward with the speed of a locomotive.

Had this unreasoning whirlwind really subsided, the Cadet Duma would have been
doomed to engage only in tinkering with wash-basins.

But Mr. Blank has no inkling that the question whether the whirlwind has
subsided is a separate and purely scientific question, the answer to which will
settle a number of problems of tactics, and an answer to which is essential if
we want to understand at all clearly the problems of present-day
tactics. Mr. Blank has not based his conclusion that the conditions for a
movement in the form of a whirl wind are lacking at present on the examination
of facts and arguments (if it were well-founded, such a conclusion would really
be of fundamental importance in determining tactics, for, we repeat, these
tactics cannot be determined simply by one’s “preference” for one course or another). No, he is simply and
frankly expressing his profound (and profoundly short sighted) conviction that
it cannot be otherwise. Strictly speaking, Mr. Blank regards the
“whirlwind” just as it is regarded by the Wittes, Durnovos, Bülows
and other German bureaucrats, who long .ago pronounced the year 1848 to have
been a “mad year”. Mr. Blank’s phrase “the whirl wind subsided” expresses, not a scientific conviction, but philistine
stupidity, which regards every whirlwind, and whirlwinds in general, as the
“disappearing of intellect and reason “ The Social-Democrats have returned to their starting-point,” Mr. Blank
assures us. The Mensheviks’ new tactics direct the Russian Social-Democratic
movement along the path that is being followed by the entire international
Social-Democratic movement.

You see that for some reason Mr. Blank declares the parliamentary path to be
the “starting-point” (although it could not have been the
starting-point for Social-Democracy in Russia). Mr. Blank regards the
parliamentary path as what may be called the normal, the main and even the sole,
all-embracing and exclusive path for international Social-Democracy. He has no
inkling that, in this respect, he is repeating in its entirety the bourgeois
distortion of Social- Democracy that predominates in the German. liberal press,
and which at one time was borrowed by the followers of Bern stein. The liberal
bourgeois imagines that one of the methods of fighting is the sole method. This
fully expresses the Brentano conception of the working-class movement and the
class struggle. Mr. Blank has no inkling that the Social-Democrats in Europe
took the parliamentary path, and were able to do so, only when objective
conditions had removed the question of carrying the bourgeois revolution to its
complete fulfilment from the agenda of history, only when the parliamentary
system had really become the principal form of bourgeois rule and the principal
arena of the social struggle. He does not even stop to think whether there is a
parliament and a parliamentary system in Russia, but declares in a peremptory
manner: the Social-Democrats have returned to their starting-point. The
bourgeois mind can conceive only of incomplete democratic revolutions
(for at bottom the interests of the bourgeoisie require incomplete revolutions). The
bourgeois mind shuns all non-parliamentary methods of struggle, all open
mass actions, any revolution in the direct sense of the term. The bourgeois
instinctively hastens to declare, proclaim and accept all sham
parliamentarism as real parliamentarism in order to put a stop to
the “dizzying whirlwind” (which may be dangerous not only for the heads of many
weak-headed bourgeois, but also for their pockets). That is why the Cadet
gentlemen are totally incapable even of understanding the scientific and
really important question whether the parliamentary method of struggle can
be recognised as having any real meaning for Russia, and whether the
movement in the form of a “whirl wind” has spent itself. And the
material, class background of this incomprehension is quite clear: let the
workers support a Cadet Duma by a peaceful strike or some other action, but
they must not think of waging an earnest and resolute war of extermination,
they must not think of rising in revolt against the autocracy and the
monarchy.

“ Now the turn of intellect and reason has come again,” says Mr. Blank,
going into raptures over the period of Dubasov’s victories. Do you know what,
Mr. Blank? There has been no period in the history of Russia to which the
expression “the turn of intellect and reason has come again” could be
better applied than the period of Alexander III! That is really a fact. It was
in that period that the old Russian Narodism ceased to be merely the dreamy
contemplation of the future and made its rich contribution to Russian social
thought by its researches into the economic life of Russia. It was in that
period that Russian revolutionary thought worked hardest, and laid the
groundwork for the Social-Democratic world-outlook. Yes, we revolutionaries are
far from denying the revolutionary role of reactionary periods. We know that the
form of the social movement changes, that periods of direct, constructive
political activity by the masses of the people give way in history to periods of
outward calm, when the masses, downtrodden and crushed by back-breaking toil and
want, are silent or dormant (appear to be dormant), when modes of production
become revolutionised with particular rapidity, when the intellect of the
foremost representatives of human thought is summing up the past and devising new systems and new methods of research. After all, in Europe, too, the period
after the suppression of the revolution of 1848 was distinguished by
unprecedented economic progress and by the labours of the intellect that
created, say, Marx’s Capital . In short, “the turn of intellect
and reason” comes sometimes in periods of human history just as a period
of imprisonment in the life of a political leader gives him an opportunity to
engage in scientific study and work.

But the trouble with our bourgeois philistine is that he does not realise that
his remarks have, so to speak, a prison or Dubasov ring. He does not notice the
fundamental question: Is the Russian revolution crushed, or is it on the eve of
a revival? Has the form of the social movement changed from a revolutionary form
to one adjusted to the Dubasov regime? Have the forces making for a
“whirlwind” spent them selves, or not? The bourgeois intellect does
not trouble it self with these questions because, in general, it regards
revolution as an unreasoning whirlwind, and reform as the return of intellect and
reason.

Examine his most edifying argument about organisation. “The first
thing” intellect and reason must do, he informs us, “is to take
precautions to prevent a repetition of what occurred in the first period of the
Russian revolution, in its Sturm- und Drang-Zeit , that is, measures
against the destructive effects of revolutionary torrents and hurricanes. The
only effective precaution against this is to enlarge and strengthen the
organisation.”

You see that, as the Cadet conceives it, the period of hurricane destroyed
organisations and organisation itself (see Novoye Vremya , I mean
Polyarnaya Zvezda , containing Struve’s articles against anarchy,
spontaneity, lack of firm authority during revolutions, etc., etc.); whereas the
period of intellect and reason protected by Dubasov is a period for building up
organisations. Revolution is evil; it destroys, it is a hurricane, a dizzying
whirlwind. Reaction is good; it creates, it is a favourable wind and a time for
deliberate, methodical, and systematic activity.

So once again the philosopher of the Cadet Party slanders the revolution and
betrays all his infatuation with bourgeois-restricted forms and conditions of
the movement. The hurricane destroyed organisations! What a glaring untruth!

Mention a period in Russian or world history, find any six months or six years,
when as much was done for the free and independent organisation of the
masses of the people as was done during the six weeks of the revolutionary
whirlwind in Russia when, according to the slanderers of the revolution,
all principles and ideas were forgotten and reason and intellect
disappeared! What was the all-Russian general strike? Was it not
organisation? True, it was not registered by the police, it was not a
permanent organisation, and there fore you refuse to take it into
account. Take the political organisations. Do you know that the working
people, the raw masses, never joined political organisations so eagerly,
never increased the membership of the political associations so
enormously, never created such original, semi-political organisations as
the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies? But you are a bit afraid of the
political organisations of the proletariat. Like a true disciple of
Brentano, you think that trade unions are safer for the bourgeoisie (and
therefore more sound and respectable). If we take the trade unions, we
shall find that, in spite of all the philistine tittle-tattle about their
being ignored in time of revolution, Russia never saw such a multitude of
trade union organisations formed by the workers as in those days. The
columns of the socialist, and precisely the socialist, newspapers, both
Novaya Zhizn and Nachalo , were packed with reports of the
formation of more and more trade unions. Even backward sections of the
proletariat, like domestic servants, who could barely be roused in decades
of “methodical and systematic” philistine progress, displayed
the greatest eagerness and ability to organise. Take the Peasant Union. One
often meets Cadets today who speak about this Union with magnificent
disdain. Why, it was a semi-fictitious organisation, they say. It has
disappeared without leaving a trace. I wonder, gentlemen, how much of your
Cadet organisations would be left had you been obliged to contend with
punitive expeditions, with innumerable rural Luzhenovskys, Rimans,
Filonovs, Avramovs and Zhdanovs. The Peasant Union grew with fabulous speed in
the period of the revolutionary whirl wind. It was a genuinely popular, mass
organisation, sharing, of course, in a number of peasant prejudices, and
susceptible to the petty-bourgeois illusions of the peasants (just like our Socialist-Revolutionaries); but it was undoubtedly a real organisation
of the masses, of “men of the soil”, unquestionably revolutionary
at bottom, capable of employing genuinely revolutionary methods of struggle. It
did not restrict but extended the scope of the political initiative of the
peasantry, and brought them, with their hatred of the government officials and
the landlords, into the arena—not the semi-intellectuals who are so often
inclined to hatch all sorts of proposals for a deal between the revolutionary
peasantry and the liberal landlords. The current disdain for the Peasant Union
most of all expresses the philistine bourgeois narrow-mindedness of the Cadet,
who has no faith in the in dependent revolutionary activity of the masses and is
afraid of it. In the days of liberty, the Peasant Union was one of the mightiest
realities, and we can confidently predict that, if the Luzhenovskys and Rimans
do not butcher more tens of thousands of young, progressive peasants, if the
slightest breeze of liberty blows again, this Union will grow with lightning
speed, and will become an organisation against which the present Cadet
committees will look like specks of dust. [4]

To sum up: the organising abilities of the people, particularly of the
proletariat, but also of the peasantry, are revealed a million times more
strongly, fully and productively in periods of revolutionary whirlwind than in
periods of so-called calm (dray-horse) historical progress. The Blanks’ opinion to the contrary is a bourgeois-bureaucratic distortion of history. The
good bourgeois and honest bureaucrat regard as “genuine” only
such organisations as have been properly registered by the police and
scrupulously conform to all sorts of “provisional regulations”. They cannot conceive of methods and system without
provisional regulations. We must therefore have no illusions about the
true significance of high-sounding words from a Cadet about romantic
contempt for legality and aristocratic disdain for economics. These words
have only one real meaning—a bourgeois opportunist dread of the
independent revolutionary activity of the people.

Finally, let us examine the last point in Mr. Blank’s Cadet
“theory”: the relation between worker democrats and bourgeois
democrats. Mr. Blank’s arguments on this subject deserve the closest attention
of Social-Democrats, for they provide an example of how Marx is misrepresented
by quotations from Marx. Just as Brentano, Sombart, Bernstein and
Co. substituted Brentanoism for Marxism by employing Marxian terminology, by
quoting some of Marx’s statements and by assuming a Marxist disguise, so our
Cadets indulge in the “subtle art” of faking Marxism on the question
of the relation between worker democrats and bourgeois democrats.

Unless the activities of the worker democrats and bourgeois democrats are
co-ordinated, the bourgeois-democratic revolution cannot be successful. This is
gospel truth. Absolute truth. It seems to you, Messrs. Blank, Izgoyev and Co.,
that the revolutionary Social-Democrats forgot this particularly during the days
of the “whirlwind”? You are mistaken, or are deliberately substituting for
the concept revolutionary bourgeois democrats the concept bourgeois
democrats in general, which includes the monarchist-liberal democrats and the
opportunist democrats, but above all the monarchist-liberal democrats. Take
Novaya Zhizn , and you will find that it deals with the question of
joint action, of a fighting agreement between the worker democrats and the
revolutionary bourgeois democrats in nearly every issue. It speaks of
the importance of the Peasant Union and of the peasant movement in the most
emphatic terms. Despite the Cadet fables about the Marxists’ intolerance and
narrow-minded dogmatism, you will find that that paper fully recognises the
importance of non-party associations and organisations [5]

:

but of course only non-party revolutionary organisations. The pivot of the question that
is so artfully concealed by our Brentanoists in politics is: Which
elements of bourgeois democracy are capable of pushing the bourgeois-democratic
revolution to its complete fulfilment when that revolution is, so to speak,
half-way towards its goal? Is it the elements that accept the monarchist-liberal
programme, that are completely submerged in constitutional illusions and
be-spatter revolutionary periods and revolutionary methods of making history with
the slime of their philistine anger, condemnation and regret? Or is it those who
accept the programme of a complete victory of the peasant uprising (instead of a
deal between the peasants and the landlords), of complete victory for democracy
(instead of a deal between the democratic Lower Chamber, on the one hand, and
the Upper Chamber and the monarchy, on the other)? Have these gentlemen, the
Blanks and the Izgoyevs, ever given a thought to this question? Must we at the
present time “strike together” with the bourgeois-democratic
compromisers or with the bourgeois-democratic revolutionaries ?

Have you, esteemed gentlemen, who are so fond of quoting and misrepresenting
Marx, ever heard how mercilessly Marx lashed the bourgeois-democratic
compromisers in Germany in 1848? [14]

And yet these compromisers were members of a National Assembly and not of a paltry State Duma:

as democrats, they were far more “resolute” (in words) than our
Cadets.

And fifteen years later, during the “constitutional conflict” in
Prussia, the same Marx and Engels advised the workers’ party to support the
bourgeois-democratic Progressists, who were not a whit better than the
Frankfurt democrats. [15]

You think that this shows that Marx and
Engels were inconsistent and contradicted themselves? You think this proves that
they, too, in the period of the “revolutionary whirlwind” almost
lost their “intellect and reason” (this view is held by the majority
of the Bernsteinians and most of the Cadets)? As a matter of fact, there is no
contradiction here at all. In the period of revolutionary struggle, Marx
concentrated his attack on constitutional illusions and constitutional
compromisers. When the force of the revolutionary “whirlwind”
was spent, and there could no longer be any doubt that the German Cadets
had utterly betrayed the revolution, when the insurrections had been
finally and completely suppressed, and economic prosperity was making any
repetition of them hopeless, then and only then (Marx and Engels
were not craven-hearted, and their faith in insurrection did not dwindle
after the very first defeat!), did they recognise the parliamentary struggle
as the main form of struggle. In parliament, once you have gone into it, it
is not only permissible but obligatory, in certain circumstances, to support
the turncoat Izgoyev against Shipov, and Shipov against Durnovo. In the
fight for real parliamentarism there is sometimes nothing more
dangerous than Cadet “compromisers”.

If you want to quote Marx, gentlemen, try to prove that our Duma is already an
instrument of the rule of the bourgeoisie in a free Russia, and not a fig-leaf
for the autocracy. You will say that the latter may evolve into the former
through a few slight changes, and that the election of the Cadets is already not
a slight, but an important testimony of this “evolution”.

Very well. But in that way you are only putting the question off, you are not
answering it. Has the present Duma, right now, already outgrown its limits to
such an extent that it can become an organ of state power? Those of you who
think so, and are trying to make the people think so, are deliberately spreading
the most harmful constitutional illusions: you are downright
counter-revolutionaries. Those of you, however, who think it probable that
“Durnovo will remain in order to disperse the

Duma”, [6] or who realise that nothing is certain yet without an extra-“parliamentary”,
revolutionary onslaught, [7] are proving how shaky your position is. Their
admissions clearly show that the Cadets’ policy is a policy of the moment , and not a policy of earnestly defending the permanent and fundamental interests of the
revolution. These admissions show that during the solution of the new revolutionary crisis that is now maturing, a large number of revolutionary
bourgeois democrats will break away from the Cadets, and will be impelled by the
Durnovos’ outrages against the Duma to go to the barricades. Thus the whole
difference is that you want to restrict this inevitable new battle, to
fetter it, to narrow it down to the task of supporting the Cadet Duma;
whereas we want to concentrate all our plans, all our energies, all our work of
agitation, propaganda and organisation on extending the scope of this battle
beyond the limits of Cadet programmes, to extend it to the complete overthrow of
the autocracy., to the complete victory of the peasant uprising, to the
convocation of a national constituent assembly by revolutionary means.

It seems to you that there are no revolutionary bourgeois democrats in Russia,
that the Cadets are the only, or at all events, the main force of bourgeois
democracy in Russia. But it seems so to you only because you are short-sighted, be cause you are content to observe only the surface of political events; you do
not see or understand the “essence of the constitution”. Being
hand-to-mouth politicians, you are most typical opportunists, for the
momentary interests of democracy shut out from your view its more profound and
fundamental interests: because, engrossed in the tasks of the moment, you forget
the more serious tasks of the future: the label prevents you from seeing the
contents. There are revolutionary bourgeois democrats in Russia, and there must
be, so long as there is a revolutionary peasantry, which by thousands of
millions of threads is also bound up with the poorer classes in the towns. These
democrats are lying low only because of the activities of the Rimans
and Luzhenovskys. [16]

The events of the very near future will dispel
Cadet illusions. Either the regime of repression continues, the Rimans and
Luzhenovskys “do things” while the Cadet Duma talks—and in
that case the paltriness of this Duma and of the party that predominates in it
will immediately become evident to the vast masses of the people. There will be
a strong outbreak, in which it will not be the Cadets as a party that will
participate, of course, but those elements among the people that constitute the
revolutionary democracy. Or the regime of repression will be relaxed, the government will make a few concessions, and the Cadet
Duma, of course, will begin to melt as a result of the very first
concessions, and will settle for Shipov, or even perhaps for something
worse. The counter revolutionary nature of the Cadets (which stood out in
striking relief during the days of the “whirlwind”, and is
constantly evident in their literature) will display itself in full. But the
very first fresh breeze of liberty, the slightest relaxation of
repression, will again inevitably call into being hundreds and
thousands of organisations, unions, groups, circles and undertakings of a
revolutionary-democratic nature. And this will as inevitably result in
another “whirlwind”, in a repetition of the October-December
struggle, but on an immeasurably greater scale. The Cadets, who are shining
so brightly today, will be dimmed once again. Why? Because maggots are found
near corpses, not near living people.

In other words, the Cadets may finally make the people “acquire a
taste”, as Durnovo would say, for “people’s freedom”, but they
can never under any circumstances wage a genuine struggle for real freedom of
the people, freedom without inverted commas, without a compromise with the
autocracy. This struggle has still inevitably to be waged; but it will be waged,
not by the Cadets, but by other parties, other social elements. It is clear,
therefore, why the revolutionary Social-Democrats do not in the least envy the
successes of the Cadets, and continue to concentrate on this forthcoming real,
and not sham, fight.

Mr. Blank quotes what Marx said about the supreme significance of bourgeois
democracy. To express Marx’s real opinion, he should have added: and
supremely treacherous significance. Marx said this a thousand times in
different passages in his various writings. Comrade Plekhanov, who is inclining
towards Brentanoism in present-day politics, has forgotten what Marx said on
this score. Indeed, Comrade Plekhanov has no inkling of what the
liberal democrats may betray. The answer to this is very simple, Comrade
Plekhanov. The party of “people’s freedom” has betrayed
the freedom of the people, and will continue to do so.

Mr. Blank admonishes us not to push the bourgeois democrats “into the camp
of reaction and counter-revolution”. We ask this sagacious Cadet: do you
want to take the world of ideas, theories, programmes and lines of tactics, or the world of
material class interests? Let us take both. Who pushed your friend Mr. Struve
into the camp of counter revolution, and when? Mr. Struve was a
counter-revolutionary in 1894, when, in his Critical Remarks , he
made Brentanoist reservations concerning Marxism. And despite the efforts some
of us made to “push” him from Brentanoism to Marxism, Mr. Struve
went over entirely to Brentanoism. And the counter-revolutionary tone
never left the pages of Osvobozhdeniye , the illegal “Osvobozhdeniye ”. Was this mere chance? Was it by chance that
Mr. Struve was prompted to start that model organ of reactionary spleen,
Polyarnaya Zvezda , precisely in the period of the “whirlwind”, of the independent revolutionary activity of the
people?

What, in general, pushes the small producer in a commodity economy over to the
side of reaction and counter-revolution? The position he occupies in
capitalist society between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The petty
bourgeois inevitably, in all countries and in every combination of political
circumstances, vacillates between revolution and counter-revolution. He wants to
free himself from the yoke of capital and to strengthen his position as a small
proprietor. This is virtually impossible; and the vacillations of the petty
bourgeois are inevitable and ineradicable owing to the very system of modern
society. That is why no one but the ideologists of the petty bourgeoisie can
imagine that it is thinkable for the workers, or for the peasants
rising in revolt against landlordism, to display independent revolutionary
activity that will not push a certain section of the bourgeois
democrats into the camp of reaction. Only knights of philistinism can regret
this.

Do the Blanks and the Izgoyevs (or Comrade Plekhanov) really imagine that it is
possible, for example, to have a complete victory of the peasant
uprising, that it is possible completely to “take the land”
(Plekhanov’s slogan) from the landlords without compensation, without
three-fifths of the Cadet “bourgeois democrats” being pushed into
the camp of counter-revolution? Should we, therefore, begin bargaining
with the Cadets about a “reasonable” peasant programme?
What do you think, Comrade Plekhanov? What is your opinion, Messrs. Blank and
Izgoyev?

And now for the finale of the political arguments advanced by
our Cadet: if the bourgeois democrats are opposed to armed uprising at the present time, it is useless talking about it .

These words express the whole sum and substance of Cadet policy: to subordinate
the proletariat to the Cadets, to take it in tow on the fundamental question of
its political conduct and its political struggle. It is no use shutting our eyes
to that. Mr. Blank rather dexterously tries to distract our attention from the
main point. He speaks not about the Cadets, but about bourgeois democrats in
general. He talks about the “present juncture”, but not about
insurrection in general. But only a child could be taken in by this trick, and
fail to realise that the true meaning of Blank’s conclusion is the one we have
indicated. We have already cited a number of examples to show that Mr. Blank
(like all the Cadets) systematically ignores the bourgeois democrats who are
more to the left than the Cadets; and that, in keeping with his whole position
as an advocate of constitutional illusions, he identifies the Cadets with the
bourgeois democrats, and ignores the revolutionary bourgeois democrats. It only
remains for us to prove that the Cadets are opposed to armed uprising in
general, and not only to choosing the wrong “moment” (it is curious
how often these two things are confused, and it is particularly to the advantage
of the Cadets to confuse them, and to cover up their repudiation of insurrection
by arguments about the moment chosen for it). This is quite easy to prove. It is
sufficient to refer to the illegal “Osvobozhdeniye” , where
Mr. Struve, in the spring and summer of 1905, after January 9 and before October
9, strongly opposed armed uprising, and argued that to preach it was
“folly and a crime ”. Events have sufficiently refuted this
counter-revolutionary. Events have proved that it was the combination of general strike and armed uprising—which the Marxists foresaw and put
forward as a watchword — that alone won the recognition of liberty and the
rudiments of constitutionalism in Russia. Only a very few Social-Democrats,
with no supporters in Russia (like Plekhanov), cravenly said about the December
insurrection: “It was wrong to take up arms.” On the contrary, the
overwhelming majority of Social-Democrats agree that insurrection was a
necessary act of resistance to the withdrawal of liberties; that it raised the entire movement to a higher plane and demonstrated the possibility of
fighting against regular troops. The latter circumstance has been admitted by
such an impartial, sober-minded and cautious witness as Kautsky.

Now let us see what the moral that the Blanks draw amounts to: the proletariat
must not think of insurrection if the Cadet Party (which was never
revolutionary) is not in sympathy with it (although at present, and at all other times , it is opposed to insurrection). No, Mr. Blank! The
proletariat will certainly reckon with the bourgeois democrats on the question of
insurrection in general, and on the question of the moment to be chosen f or it
in particular—only, it will reckon not with the Cadet bourgeois
democrats, but with the revolutionary bourgeois democrats; not wit.h
the liberal-monarchist, but with the revolutionary-republican trends and
parties; not with windbags who are satisfied with a toy parliament, but with the
masses of the peasantry (who are also bourgeois democrats), whose attitude
towards insurrection differs from that of the Cadets.

“ The Cadets are opposed to insurrection.” Why, they have never been in
favour, nor can they ever be in favour of it. They dread it. They naively
imagine that it depends on their wishes—the wishes of the
intermediary elements who stand aloof from the most acute and direct
struggle—whether there is to be an insurrection or not. What a delusion!
The autocracy is preparing for civil war, and is just now preparing for it very
methodically. A new, much wider and more pro found political crisis is maturing
because of the Duma. Both the peasant masses and the proletariat still have in
their midst vast numbers of militants who are emphatically demanding freedom for
the people, not deals that will curtail the freedom of the people. Can the
wishes of this or that party determine in these circumstances whether an
insurrection will break out or not?

Just as the West-European philistine on the eve of socialist revolution yearns
for an abatement of the class antagonisms between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat, pleads with the latter not to push the representatives of the
bourgeoisie into the camp of reaction, declares in favour of social peace, and
with profound moral indignation rejects the unscientific, narrow-minded,
conspiratorial, anarchist, and so forth, idea of a cataclysm, so the Russian philistine, half way on the road
towards our bourgeois-democratic revolution, yearns for an abatement of
the antagonism between the autocracy and people’s freedom, pleads with the
revolutionaries, that is, with all resolute and consistent support ers of
the people’s freedom, not to push the liberal bourgeoisie into the camp
of reaction, advocates the constitutional path, and with sincere
indignation, reinforced with philosophical idealism, rejects the
unscientific, narrow-minded, conspiratorial, anarchist, and so forth,
idea of insurrection. The class-conscious worker says to the West-European
philistine:

“ The question of a cataclysm will be decided by the intensification of
extremes and not by the intermediary elements.” To the Russian philistine (and
the Cadet is the ideal philistine in politics) the class-conscious worker says:
“The question of insurrection depends, not on the will of the liberals,
but on the actions of the autocracy and the growth of the class-consciousness
and the indignation of the revolutionary peasantry and the proletariat. The
West-European philistines say to the proletariat: “Don’t repel the small
peasants and the enlightened, social-liberal, reforming petty bourgeoisie
generally; don’t isolate yourselves; it is the reactionaries who want to isolate
you.” To this the proletarian replies: “I must, in the interests of the
whole of toiling humanity, isolate my self from those who advocate compromise
between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, for these compromisers are
advising me to disarm; they are exercising the most harmful, immediately and
practically harmful influence on the minds of the oppressed class by preaching
compromise, abatement of antagonisms, etc. But I do not isolate myself from that
vast mass of the petty bourgeoisie, the working masses, who are capable of
adopting the point of view of the proletariat, of not yearning for compromise, of
not being carried away by the consolidation of petty economy in capitalist
society, and of not renouncing the struggle against the capitalist system
itself.”

Much the same is taking place in Russia, but in different conditions, in a
different historical period, on the eve (and not even on the eve, but in the
midst) of a bourgeois-democratic and not a socialist revolution. The philistine
says to the proletarian: “The reactionaries want to isolate you; you must isolate the reactionaries; don’t repel the enlightened, politically-liberal
Cadets who want reforms.” To this the proletarian replies: “In the
interests of the genuine struggle for real freedom, I must isolate myself from
the advocates of a compromise between the autocracy and the representatives of
the people, for these compromisers are advising us to disarm, they are befogging
the civic consciousness of the people by their advocacy of ’political peace’ and
constitutional illusions. But these compromisers, all these Cadets, are not the
people at all, they are not the masses at all, they are not a force at all, as
seems to those who give way to the moods and impressions of the moment, and are
now shouting about the danger of the proletariat being isolated. The real masses
are the revolutionary peasantry and the poorer sections of the town
population. From these masses I do not isolate myself; I call upon them to cast
off their constitutional illusions,I call upon them to take up the real
struggle, I call them to insurrection. In deciding on the moment for the
insurrection, I will pay very serious attention to the mood and to the process
of political development of these masses (not of the Cadet
compromisers); but I will not for a moment forget the revolutionary struggle
against the autocracy that is maturing very fast, and will probably break out
in the near future, for the sake of momentary successes, for the sake of the
tawdry brilliance of Cadet parliamentarism (or rather Dubasov parliamentarism,
to put it more correctly).”

In Europe, not so long ago, the flashy and loud-mouthed social-liberal, the
petty-bourgeois compromiser, importunately pressed his offers of alliances and
agreements upon the proletariat. The intellectual wing of the Social-Democratic
parties took the bait, succumbed to the policy of the moment, founded the
notorious Bernsteiniad, etc. A year or two passed, the fog of “social
peace” was completely dispelled, and the correctness of the position taken
up by the revolutionary wing of the Social-Democratic parties, which
consistently adhered to the proletarian point of view, became perfectly evident.

In Russia today everybody is intoxicated with the Cadet victories and with the
prospect of a Cadet Duma. There is a danger that the intellectual wing of our
Party will be fascinated by these brilliant successes and will be taken in by
the

idea of an election bloc with the Cadets, by the idea of sup porting them, by a
policy of “dealing tactfully” with the Cadets. There is a
danger that they will be reluctant clearly and distinctly to define from
the proletarian point of view the petty-bourgeois class nature of this
party, the harmfulness of its constitutional illusions and the constant
danger created by its tactics of “compromise”. But in a few
years, or perhaps even months, the fog will be dispelled; the views of the
revolutionary Social-Democrats will be borne out by reality, and the
columns of the Cadet newspapers and magazines will cease to ring with
eulogies of certain Social-Democrats, which are offensive to the
proletariat and are symptomatic of some disease within the
Social-Democratic Party.

---
Notes:
[1]
Mr. Berdayev! Messrs. editors of Polyarnaya Zvezda or
Svoboda Kultura ! [17]

Here is another subject for your lengthy lamentations— I mean,
for lengthy articles against the “hooliganism” of revolutionaries. Fancy, they dare to call Tolstoi a philistine!!
“Quelle horreur!”—as the lady with many good points [18] used to say.— Lenin

[2]
Compare, for example, the views of Russkiye Vedomosti , No.1,
1906, on the activities of the Peasant Union—which is nothing less than a
denunciation to Dubasov of the revolutionary democrats, of their Pugachev
aspirations, [19] of their approval of the idea of seizing the land and of establishing a
new government, and so forth. Even the Left Cadets of Bez Zaglavia (No. 10) admonished Russkiye Vedomosti , and rightly
put it on a par with Moskovskiye Vedomosti , for publishing such
views. Unfortunately, the Left Cadets admonish Russkiye Vedomosti
in a tone that sounds like an apology. Bez Zaglavia defends the
Peasant Union, hut does not accuse the counter-revolutionary
bourgeoisie. Whether this not altogether decent method of controversy with
Russkiye Vedomosti is due to its “fear of the Jews”, or to the
fact that Mr. Blank writes for that paper, I cannot say. The Left Cadets
are, after all, Cadets.— Lenin

[3]
These words are in English in the original.— Ed .

[4]
Of course, not being a class organisation, the Peasant Union also
contains elements of disintegration. The more imminent the victory of the
peasant uprising and the fuller that victory, the more imminent will be the
disintegration of this Union. But up to the victory of the peasant
uprising, and for such a victory, the Peasant Union is a mighty and viable
organisation. Its function will cease with the complete victory of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, whereas the function of the proletarian
organisations at that moment will he particularly important and vital in
the struggle for socialism. But the function of the Cadet organisations is
to hamper the complete victory of the bourgeois revolution, to excel in the
preparatory periods of that revolution, in the periods of depression,
stagnation and Dubasov rule. In other words, the peasantry will be
victorious in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and then cease to be
revolutionary as a peasantry. The proletariat will be victorious in the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, and only thereby will fully develop its
true, genuine, socialist revolutionary nature. But the Cadet petty
bourgeoisie will cease to be an opposition on the very next day after
constitutional illusions are dispelled.— Lenin

[5]
See my article in Novaya Zhizn : “The Socialist Party and
Non-Party Revolutionism”. (See pp. 75-82 of this volume.— Ed .)— Lenin

[6]
Rus and Molva . — Lenin

[7]
P. Milyukov, “The Elements or the Conflict”, in Rech ,
No. 30, March 24—the extremely interesting credo of a compromiser.— Lenin

[17]
Svoboda i Kultura ( Freedom and Culture )—a weekly magazine of
the Right wing of the Cadet Party. It was published in St. Petersburg instead of
Polyarnaya Zvezda from April 1 (14) to May 31 (June 13), 1906. Its
editor was S. L. Frank, with P. B. Struve as a close associate. Eight issues
appeared in all. The publication was suspended due to a sharp drop in
circulation.

[18]
The lady with many good points — a character in
Gogol’s Dead Souls .

[8]
Bez Zaglavia ( Without Title )—a political weekly published in St. Petersburg from January 24 (February 6) to May 14 (27),
1906. Its editor was S. N. Prokopovich, with Y. D. Kuskova, V. Y. Bogucharsky,
V. V. Khizhnyakov and others as his associates. The Bez Zaglavia group
was made up of Russian bourgeois intellectuals with semi-Cadet and
semi-Menshevik leanings. Under cover of their formal non-partisanship, they
advocated bourgeois liberalism and opportunism, and backed the revisionists
among the Social-Democrats in Russia and abroad.

[19]
Yemelyan Pugachev (1742?-1775)—leader of the war which Russia’s peasants waged against feudal tyranny in 1773-75.

[9]
In March 1885, during the Reichstag debate on government
subsidies to private business for the establishment of regular steamship
services to East Asia, Australia and Africa, a majority of the
Social-Democratic Group (the Right wing, which virtually supported Bismarck’s
colonial policy) voted for an East-Asian and an Australian line. It also
promised its support for other lines, provided all new ships were built in
Germany It was not until alter the Reichstag had rejected this condition that
the whole group voted against granting any subsidy The conduct of the group
majority was denounced by Social-Democratic organisations. Engels condemned
the opportunist stand of the Reichstag group.

[10]
The “ Youth ” were a petty-bourgeois group that arose in 1890 among the German Social-Democrats. The group consisted
chiefly of university students who had broken off their studies and of young
writers (which accounted tom the name of the group). It advanced a platform
rejecting all Social-Democratic participation in the Reichstag. The Erfurt
Congress, held in October 1891, expelled the group from the Party

[11]
Bernsteiniad ( Bernsteinianism )—an anti-Marxist trend in inter national Social-Democracy. It arose at the end of
the nineteenth century in Germany and was so named after the German
Social-Democrat Eduard Bernstein, an opportunist. After Frederick Engels’s death
Bernstein undertook an open revision of the revolutionary theory of Marx in the
spirit of bourgeois liberalism, and sought to turn the Social-Democratic Party into a petty-bourgeois
party advocating social reforms.

[12]
Severny Golos ( The Voice of the North )—a legal daily newspaper of
the R.S.D.L.P., published in St. Petersburg from December 6
(19), 1905 onwards and edited jointly by the Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks. It was closed with issue No. 3 on December 8 (21),
1905. Nash Golos ( Our Voice ), published
once—on December 18 (31), 1905—was its continuation.

[13]
Nachalo ( The Beginning )—a legal Menshevik daily, published in St. Petersburg from November 13 (26) to December 2 (15),
1905. Altogether 16 issues were brought out.

[14]
See Frederick Engels, “Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung
(1848-49)” (Marx and Engels, Selected Works , Vol. II, Moscow,
1958, pp. 328-37), and Frederick Engels, “Revolution and Counter
Revolution in Germany”, VII. “The Frankfort National
Assembly”, New York Daily Tribine , 1852. Articles from
the Neue Rheinisehe Zeitung , June 1-November 7, 1848 (Marx, Engels,
Werke , Bd. 5, Berlin, 1959).

[15]
F. Engels,

Die preuβische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterpartei , Hamburg, 1865; Marx and Engels, “To the Editorial Board of the Social-Demokrat ” (see Marx and
Engels, Selected Correspondence , Moscow, 1955, p. 201); F. Engels,
“Notizen zur
Broschüre:

Die preuβische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbetterpartei” (Berliner Reform , Nr. 53, 1865); K. Marx,
“Rezension von Engels’ Broschüre:

Die preuβische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterpartei ” ( Hermann , März 18, 1865);
K. Marx, “Erklärung
vom März 18, 1865” ( Berliner Reform , Nr. 67, 1865).

[16]
Riman, N. K. (1864-1917)—colonel of the tsarist army who was in command of a punitive expedition on the
Moscow-Kazan Railway during the suppression of the Moscow armed uprising in
December 1905.

Luzhenovsky, G. N. (1870-1906)—one of the organisers of
Black-Hundred pogroms in 1905-06, notorious for the cruel suppression
of the peasants’ revolutionary movement in the Tambov region. He was assassinated by the
Socialist-Revolutionaries in 1906.