This was bound to happen, and it has happened. As of yesterday, there exists such a portion in the budget of the autocratic pogrom government as has been approved by the "popular," if you will, representatives. Only the first step is difficult, says the French proverb. Or in Russian: the first glass goes down hard, the second like a falcon, the rest like little birds. The first glass has been drunk by the Cadets together with the autocrats.

Let us restore more precisely the entire course of this historical event. The ministers of internal affairs and finance asked the Duma to appropriate 50 million rubles for aid to the starving. Without a resolution of the Duma, the ministers "by law" could not have obtained this money, could not have taken into their own hands the food relief campaign. The ministers did not ask the Duma who should conduct this campaign: "by law" this matter was in the hands of the pogrom government anyway. Nor did the ministers say in their proposal where to get the money: "leave it to the minister of finance to find the sources" and that is all. Only in committee did the ministers propose a loan as the method for obtaining money. And yesterday at a Duma session, the minister of finance directly declared: "The competence of the State Duma consists in granting authority to seek sources, and the procedure for seeking these sources (we quote from *Rech'* and disclaim responsibility for the style) belongs to the supreme authority." Thus, the ministers actually needed to obtain an appropriation from the Duma in general, and they were less concerned about the sources.

In the Duma, two basic approaches to the question immediately emerged, as we indicated three days ago.[51] The Cadets spoke in favor of appropriating 15 million rubles with a demand for an accounting of their expenditure and with charging this sum against "anticipated savings" in the 1906 budget. That is all. And the minister of finance replied to the Cadets with utter indifference: "if the State Duma passes a resolution to provide 15 million rubles, then the ministry of finance will release them, but will release them not against savings but against other secured expenditures." Having made the expenditure, the minister "will still come to the State Duma and say: you forced us to make an expenditure for which we found no surplus."

The matter, then, is clearer than clear. The minister directly spat in the face of the Cadet Duma: with your permission to take 15 million rubles we shall make use, but as for your "savings" resolution—it is an empty sound. The minister does not hesitate to declare that there will be no savings. The minister does not hesitate to declare that he is willing to receive money by Duma appropriations, but as for the Duma's advice about "savings," he spits upon it.

What role, then, did the Cadet Duma actually play? The role of witnesses summoned by the police to approve its actions in expenditure of money plundered from the people. "By law" the signature of witnesses is required on the appropriation of money. The police demanded it. The Cadet Duma signed. That is all the police needed. And if the witnesses put on an act—well, that is trifles.

The Cadet Duma played precisely the role of police witnesses. The deputies of the S.D. occupied an entirely different, correct position. Their statement was precisely in the spirit that we outlined three days ago. "I say, gentlemen," comrade Ramishvili said excellently, "that if we release even one kopeck into the hands of the government, this kopeck will never reach the people." And in their resolution, printed by us yesterday, the S.D. correctly stated that it is inadmissible to give money to the autocratic government, that the State Duma should form its own food relief committee, send its members to the localities, attract "free public organizations." The S.D. made of their resolution a revolutionary appeal to the people, lashing the government as the "true culprit in the famines," plundering people's money, throwing it into war against the people. The S.D. demanded the elimination of expenditures on the gendarmerie, the political police, the mounted police, etc., demanded the reduction of salaries and pensions of parasitic dignitaries and an audit of the treasury's assets and accounts. They also quite correctly demanded that aid to the hungry be provided from the income of cabinet, appanage, church, and monastery estates. The S.D. came forth with direct accusations against the entire old authority and all its organs in general, as well as with a critique of the entire budget.

What was the voting? The Cadets, of course, won. The Labor deputies voted with the S.D., according to the unanimous testimony of a number of newspapers (unfortunately, there was no recorded voting). The political alignment defines itself ever more clearly. The Octobrists and Cadets for a deal with the old authority. The S.D. and Labor deputies decisively against. With the united appearance of the S.D., they not only won over the peasants, but even introduced some split even in the K.D. camp: not only the left-wing Galetskii was ashamed of the role of police witness, but also the right-wing Kuzmin-Karavaev. The Cadets and only the Cadets carried through the shameful handwriting of "popular representatives" to the appropriation of money into the hands of the pogromists.

The principled significance of this act of signature by the Cadet Duma is enormous. Naive people and shortsighted politicians frequently say: to accuse the Cadets of betrayal and collusion with the bureaucracy is unfounded, premature. But the appropriation of money into the hands of the pogrom government is precisely such a—and not the first, strictly speaking—deal. Look at what pitiful evasions the Cadets use to justify themselves. This is a compromise, cries "Nasha Zhizn'," but it is justified by temporary circumstances. Of course, gentlemen, all compromises of the bourgeoisie with police autocracy have always been explained by temporary circumstances.

But the peasants must be helped immediately!—Have not the peasant deputies betrayed the peasants, you gentlemen Cadets? The peasant deputies, you see, voted against, knowing better than you where the money goes through police hands. And why could not the State Duma itself have taken up the task?

This is utopian, this is unachievable, one must reckon with the existing organization until it is changed by law,—cry in unison the Geydens, Kokovtsovs, Milyukovs, and even the Bernsteinian *Nasha Zhizn'*.—Yes, gentlemen, the bourgeoisie always considers it utopian to eliminate all organs of the old authority, because the bourgeoisie needs these organs against the proletariat and against revolutionary peasantry. In a police-class state, there will always be an abyss of "urgent" expenditures: one must feed the once-hired officials, one must pay for the contracts already made, etc., and so on. There will always be at hand the "existing organization" (precisely: the police-bureaucratic), which "cannot" be changed immediately, without the consent of the State Council and so on and so forth.

Such excuses will always exist. With such excuses everywhere in the world the liberal bourgeoisie feed the credulous people. Such excuses are the natural disguise of bourgeois betrayal of the cause of popular freedom.

Against all this hypocritical game, the proletariat will always rise up. It will call the people to struggle against all organs and institutions of the old authority, to struggle through the free organizations of the working class and revolutionary peasantry.

Written June 24 (July 7), 1906

Published June 25, 1906 in the newspaper *Ekho* No. 4

Printed from the newspaper text