Date: 1906
Source: ru:PSS/v12

What, however, is the real reason that impelled Mr. Blank to arrive at this monstrously incorrect opinion that all Marxist principles and ideas disappeared during the period of the "whirlwind"? Consideration of this circumstance is very interesting: it exposes to us again and again the true nature of petty-bourgeoisness in politics.

In what did the main difference between the period of the "revolutionary whirlwind" and the present, "Cadet," period consist from the point of view of various methods of political activity? From the point of view of different methods of historical creativity of the people? First and foremost, in the fact that during the period of the "whirlwind" certain special methods of this creativity were applied, alien to other periods of political life. Here are the most essential of these methods: 1) the "seizure" by the people of political freedom – the realization of it without any rights or laws and without any restrictions (freedom of assembly, even in universities, freedom of the press, unions, congresses, etc.); 2) the creation of new organs of revolutionary power – Soviets of Workers', Soldiers', Railroad, Peasants' Deputies, new rural and urban authorities, etc., etc. These organs were created exclusively by the revolutionary strata of the population, they were created outside of any laws and norms, entirely by revolutionary means, as a product of original popular creativity, as a manifestation of the self-activity of the people, freed or being freed from the old police fetters. These were, finally, precisely organs of power, despite all their embryonic nature, spontaneity, unformedness, vagueness in composition and functioning. They acted as power, seizing, for example, printing houses (St. Petersburg), arresting police officials who prevented the revolutionary people from exercising their rights (examples also occurred in St. Petersburg, where the corresponding organ of the new power was the weakest, and the old power the strongest). They acted as power, addressing the entire people with a call not to give money to the old government. They confiscated the money of the old government (railroad strike committees in the south) and used it 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 its socio-political character, this was, in embryo, the dictatorship of the revolutionary elements of the people – are you surprised, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kizevetter? Do you not see here "reinforced security," which is equivalent to dictatorship for the bourgeois? We have already told you that you have no idea of the scientific concept: dictatorship. We will now explain it to you, but first we will point out the third "method" of action of the era of the "revolutionary whirlwind": the application by the people of violence in relation to the oppressors of the people.

The organs of power we have described were, in embryo, a dictatorship, because this power did not recognize any other power and any law, any norm, emanating from anyone whatsoever. Unlimited, extra-legal power, relying on force, in the most direct sense of the word – this is what dictatorship is. But the force on which this new power relied and sought to rely was not the force of the bayonet seized by a handful of military men, not the force of the "precinct," not the force of money, not the force of any previous, established institutions. Nothing of the kind. The new organs of new power had neither weapons, nor money, nor old institutions. Their strength – can you imagine, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kizevetter? – had nothing in common with the old instruments of force, nothing in common with "reinforced security," unless one means the reinforced protection of the people from oppression by the police and other organs of the old power.

What, then, did this force rely on? It relied on the popular masses. This is the fundamental difference between this new power and all the previous organs of the old power. Those were organs of the power of the minority over the people, over the mass of workers and peasants. These were organs of the power of the people, of the workers and peasants, over the minority, over a handful of police oppressors, over a clique of privileged nobles and officials. Such is the difference between a dictatorship over the people and a dictatorship of the revolutionary people, remember this well, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kizevetter! The old power, as a dictatorship of the minority, could be maintained exclusively with the help of police tricks, exclusively with the help of removing, alienating the popular masses from participation in power, from observing power. The old power systematically distrusted the masses, feared the light, and was maintained by deception. The new power, as a dictatorship of the vast majority, could be maintained and was maintained exclusively with the help of the trust of the vast masses, exclusively by attracting the entire mass to participation in power in the freest, broadest, and strongest way. Nothing hidden, nothing secret, no regulations, no formalities. Are you a working man? Do you want to fight for the liberation of Russia from a handful of police oppressors? You are our comrade. Elect your deputy. Elect him right now, immediately, as you see fit – we will gladly and joyfully accept him as a full member of our Soviet of Workers' Deputies, Peasant Committee, Soviet of Soldiers' Deputies, etc., etc. This is a power open to all, doing everything in full view of the masses, accessible to the masses, emanating directly from the masses, a direct and immediate organ of the popular masses and their will. – Such was the new power, or, rather, its embryos, for the victory of the old power trampled the shoots of the young plant very early.

You may ask, perhaps, Mr. Blank or Mr. Kizevetter, why is there "dictatorship" here, why "violence"? Does the vast mass need violence against a handful, can tens and hundreds of millions be dictators over a thousand, over ten thousand?

This question is usually asked by people who see the application of the term dictatorship in a new meaning for them for the first time. People are used to seeing only police power and only police dictatorship. It seems strange to them that there can be power without any police, that there can be a non-police dictatorship. You say that millions do not need violence against thousands? You are mistaken, and you are mistaken because you do not consider the phenomenon in its development. You forget that the new power does not fall from the sky, but grows, arises alongside the old, against the old power, in the struggle against it. Without violence in relation to the oppressors, who have the instruments and organs of power in their hands, it is impossible to liberate the people from the oppressors.

Here is a simple example for you, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kizevetter, so that you can assimilate this wisdom, inaccessible to the Cadet mind, "dizzying" for Cadet thought. Imagine that Avramov is mutilating and torturing Spiridonova. On Spiridonova's side, let's say, there are tens and hundreds of unarmed people. On Avramov's side, a handful of Cossacks. What would the people do if Spiridonova's torture were not taking place in a dungeon? They would use violence against Avramov and his retinue. They would sacrifice, perhaps, several fighters shot by Avramov, but by force they would still disarm Avramov and the Cossacks, and, very likely, they would kill some of these, if you will, people on the spot, and put the rest in some kind of prison to prevent them from misbehaving further and to hand them over to the people's court.

You see, Mr. Blank and Mr. Kizevetter: when Avramov with the Cossacks tortures Spiridonova, this is a military-police dictatorship over the people. When the revolutionary (capable of fighting the oppressors, and not just of exhortations, admonitions, regrets, condemnations, whining and moaning, not petty-bourgeoisly limited, but revolutionary) people use violence against Avramov and the Avramovs, this is the dictatorship of the revolutionary people. This is a dictatorship, because it is the power of the people over Avramov, a power not limited by any laws (a petty-bourgeois, perhaps, would be against forcibly rescuing Spiridonova from Avramov: they say, is this not against the "law"? Do we have such a "law" to kill Avramov? Have some ideologists of petty-bourgeoisness not created a theory of non-resistance to evil by violence[58]?). The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing other than power that is not limited by anything, not constrained by any laws, by absolutely no rules, and that relies directly on violence. The concept of "dictatorship" means nothing other than this – remember this well, gentlemen Cadets. Furthermore, in the example we have taken, we see the dictatorship precisely of the people, because the people, the mass of the population, unformed, "accidentally" gathered in a given place, themselves and directly appear on the scene, themselves administer justice and retribution, apply power, create new revolutionary law. Finally, this is the dictatorship precisely of the revolutionary people. Why only of the revolutionary, and not of the entire people? Because in the entire people, suffering constantly and most cruelly from the exploits of the Avramovs, there are people who are physically beaten down, intimidated, people who are morally beaten down, for example, by the theory of non-resistance to evil by violence, or simply beaten down not by theory, but by prejudice, custom, routine, people who are indifferent, what are called philistines, petty-bourgeois, who are more capable of distancing themselves from the acute struggle, passing by or even hiding (lest they get hit in the fight!). That is why the dictatorship is exercised not by the entire people, but only by the revolutionary people, who are not at all afraid of the entire people, however, who reveal to the entire people the reasons for their actions and all the details of them, who willingly attract the entire people to participate not only in the "administration" of the state, but also in power, and to participate in the very structure of the state.

Thus, the simple example we have taken contains all the elements of the scientific concept: "dictatorship of the revolutionary people," as well as the concept: "military-police dictatorship." From this simple example, accessible even to a learned Cadet professor, we can move on to more complex phenomena of social life.

Revolution, in the narrow, immediate meaning of the word, is precisely such a period of people's life when the centuries-accumulated anger at the exploits of the Avramovs breaks out in actions, and not in words, and in the actions of millions of popular masses, and not of individual persons. The people awaken and rise up to liberate themselves from the Avramovs. The people liberate countless Spiridonovas of Russian life from the Avramovs, use violence against the Avramovs, take power over the Avramovs. This happens, of course, not as simply and not as "immediately" as in the example we have simplified for Professor Kizevetter – this struggle of the people with the Avramovs, the struggle in the narrow, immediate sense, this throwing off of the Avramovs from the people is stretched out for months and years of the "revolutionary whirlwind." This throwing off of the Avramovs from themselves by the people is the real content of what is called the great Russian revolution. This throwing off, if we consider it from the side of the methods of historical creativity, takes place in those forms that we have just described, speaking of the revolutionary whirlwind, namely: the seizure by the people of political freedom, that is, such freedom, the realization of which was hindered by the Avramovs; – the creation by the people of a new, revolutionary power, power over the Avramovs, power over the oppressors of the old police order; – the application by the people of violence in relation to the Avramovs to eliminate, disarm, and neutralize these wild dogs, all the Avramovs, Durnovos, Dubasovs, Minovs, and so on and so forth.

Is it good that the people use such illegal, disordered, unplanned, and unsystematic methods of struggle as the seizure of freedom, the creation of a new, formally unrecognized and revolutionary power, the application of violence against the oppressors of the people? Yes, it is very good. This is the highest manifestation of the people's struggle for freedom. This is that great time when the dreams of the best people of Russia about freedom are translated into action, the action of the popular masses themselves, and not of individual heroes. This is as good as the liberation by a crowd (in our example) of Spiridonova from Avramov, the forcible disarmament and neutralization of Avramov.

But here we come to the central point of the Cadets' hidden thoughts and fears. The Cadet is an ideologist of petty-bourgeoisness precisely because he transfers to politics, to the liberation of the entire people, to the revolution, the point of view of that philistine who, in our example of Avramov's torture of Spiridonova, would restrain the crowd, would advise not to violate the law, not to rush to liberate the victims from the hands of the executioner acting in the name of the legitimate authority. Of course, in our example, such a philistine would be a directly moral freak, and in application to the entire social life, the moral freakishness of the petty-bourgeois is a quality, we repeat, not at all personal, but social, conditioned, perhaps, by prejudices of bourgeois-philistine science of law that are firmly entrenched in the head.

Why does Mr. Blank consider it even not requiring proof that all Marxist principles were forgotten during the period of the "whirlwind"? Because he distorts Marxism into Brentanoism, considering such "principles" as the seizure of freedom, as the creation of revolutionary power, as the application of violence by the people, as not Marxist. Such a view shines through in the entire article of Mr. Blank, and not only of Blank, but of all the Cadets, of all the writers of the liberal and radical camp up to the Bernsteinianists from "Bez Zaglaviya"{133}, Messrs. Prokopovich, Kuskova, and tutti quanti[59], who are now praising Plekhanov for his love for the Cadets.

Let us consider how this view arose and why it had to arise.

It arose directly from the Bernsteinian or, more broadly, opportunistic understanding of Western European Social Democracy. Those errors of this understanding, which the "orthodox" in the West systematically and along the entire line exposed, are now being transferred "under the guise," under a different sauce and for a different reason, to Russia. The Bernsteinianists accepted and accept Marxism with the exception of its directly revolutionary side. They regard parliamentary struggle not as one of the means of struggle, suitable especially in certain historical periods, but as the main and almost exclusive form of struggle, making "violence," "seizures," "dictatorship" unnecessary. It is this vulgar petty-bourgeois distortion of Marxism that Messrs. Blanks and other liberal praisers of Plekhanov are now transferring to Russia. They have become so accustomed to this distortion that they do not even consider it necessary to prove the forgetting of Marxist principles and ideas during the period of the revolutionary whirlwind.

Why should such a view have arisen? Because it corresponds most deeply to the class position and interests of the petty bourgeoisie. The ideologist of "purified" bourgeois society allows all methods of struggle of Social Democracy, except precisely those that the revolutionary people apply in the epochs of the "whirlwind" and that revolutionary Social Democracy approves and helps to apply. The interests of the bourgeoisie require the participation of the proletariat in the struggle against the autocracy, but only such participation that would not turn into the leadership of the proletariat and the peasantry, only such participation that would not completely eliminate the old, autocratic-serf and police organs of power. The bourgeoisie wants to preserve these organs, only subjecting them to its direct control – they are needed against the proletariat, to which the complete destruction of these organs would make its proletarian struggle too easy. That is why the interests of the bourgeoisie, as a class, require both a monarchy and an upper chamber, require the prevention of the dictatorship of the revolutionary people. Fight the autocracy, the bourgeoisie tells the proletariat, but do not touch the old organs of power – I need them. Fight "parliamentarily," i.e., within those limits that I prescribe to you by agreement with the monarchy, fight by means of organizations – only not such as general strike committees, Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' Deputies, etc., but by means of such as the law recognizes and limits, neutralizes in relation to capital, issued by me by agreement with the monarchy.

It is clear from this why the bourgeoisie speaks of the period of the "whirlwind" with disdain, contempt, malice, hatred[60] – and of the period of constitutionalism protected by Dubasov with delight, rapture, with endless petty-bourgeois infatuation... with reaction. This is all the same constant and unchanging quality of the Cadets: the desire to rely on the people and the fear of their revolutionary self-activity.

It is also clear why the bourgeoisie fears the repetition of the whirlwind more than fire, why it ignores and obscures the elements of a new revolutionary crisis, why it supports and spreads constitutional illusions among the people.

Now we have fully explained why Mr. Blank and the like declare that all Marxist principles and ideas were forgotten during the period of the "whirlwind." Mr. Blank, like all petty-bourgeois, recognizes Marxism minus its revolutionary side – recognizes Social-Democratic methods of struggle minus the most revolutionary and directly revolutionary methods.

Mr. Blank's attitude to the period of the "whirlwind" is extremely characteristic as an illustration of the bourgeois misunderstanding of proletarian movements, the bourgeois fear of acute and decisive struggle, the bourgeois hatred of all manifestations of a steep, breaking old institutions, revolutionary in the immediate sense of the word way of solving socio-historical issues. Mr. Blank gave himself away, gave away at once all his bourgeois limitations. He has heard and read that Social Democrats made "mistakes" during the whirlwind period – he hastened to conclude and declare with aplomb, peremptorily, unsubstantiatedly, that all the "principles" of Marxism (of which he has no idea!) were forgotten. We will note regarding these "mistakes": was there ever such a period in the development of the labor movement, in the development of Social Democracy, when one or another mistake was not made? When one or another deviation to the right or to the left was not observed? Is not the history of the parliamentary period of the German Social-Democratic struggle – that period which seems to all limited bourgeois in the whole world to be the limit, beyond which there is no going! – full of such mistakes? If Mr. Blank were not a complete ignoramus in matters of socialism, he would easily recall both Mühlberger and Dühring, and the question of Dampfersubvention{134}, and the "young"{135}, and the Bernsteinian controversy, and much, much more. But it is not important for Mr. Blank to study the actual course of the development of Social Democracy, he only needs to belittle the proletarian scope of the struggle in order to magnify the bourgeois poverty of his Cadet party.

In fact, if we look at the matter from the point of view of the deviations of Social Democracy from its usual, "normal" path, then we will see that in this respect, too, the period of the "revolutionary whirlwind" shows greater, and not lesser, compared with the previous one, cohesion and ideological integrity of Social Democracy. The tactics of the era of the "whirlwind" did not distance, but brought closer both wings of Social Democracy. Instead of the former disagreements, there was a unity of views on the question of armed uprising. Social Democrats of both factions worked in the Soviets of Workers' Deputies, these peculiar organs of embryonic revolutionary power, attracted soldiers, peasants to these Soviets, issued revolutionary manifestos jointly with petty-bourgeois revolutionary parties. The former disputes of the pre-revolutionary era were replaced by solidarity on practical issues. The rise of the revolutionary wave pushed aside disagreements, forcing recognition of the combat tactics, eliminating the question of the Duma, putting on the agenda the question of the uprising, bringing Social Democracy and revolutionary bourgeois democracy closer together in immediate, immediate work. In the "Severny Golos"{136} the Mensheviks together with the Bolsheviks called for a strike and an uprising, called on the workers not to stop the struggle until power was in their hands. The revolutionary situation itself suggested practical slogans. The disputes concerned only details in the assessment of events: "Nachalo"{137}, for example, considered the Soviets of Workers' Deputies as organs of revolutionary self-government, "Novaya Zhizn" – as embryonic organs of revolutionary power, uniting the proletariat and revolutionary democracy.

"Nachalo" leaned towards the dictatorship of the proletariat. "Novaya Zhizn" stood on the point of view of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry. But does not any period in the development of any European socialist party show us such and similar disagreements within Social Democracy?

No, Mr. Blank's distortion of the matter, his blatant distortion of the history of yesterday, is explained by the fact and only by the fact that we have before us a sample of self-satisfied bourgeois vulgarity, to which periods of revolutionary whirlwind seem like madness ("all principles are forgotten," "thought itself and simple reason almost disappear"), and periods of suppression of the revolution and petty-bourgeois "progress" (protected by Dubasovs) seem like an era of reasonable, conscious, and planned activity. This comparative assessment of two periods (the period of the "whirlwind" and the Cadet period) runs like a red thread through the entire article of Mr. Blank. When the history of mankind moves forward at the speed of a locomotive, this is a "whirlwind," a "stream," a "disappearance" of all "principles and ideas." When history moves with the speed of horse-drawn transport, this is reason itself and planning itself. When the popular masses themselves, with all their pristine primitiveness, simple, rough decisiveness, begin to create history, to embody "principles and theories" directly and immediately, then the bourgeois feels fear and cries out that "reason recedes into the background" (is it not the opposite, O heroes of petty-bourgeoisness? Is it not precisely at such moments that the reason of the masses comes to the fore in history, and not the reason of individual personalities, does not mass reason become a living, effective, and not a study force precisely then?). When the direct movement of the masses is crushed by shootings, executions, floggings, unemployment, and starvation, when bedbugs of professorial science, maintained on Dubasov's money, crawl out of the cracks and begin to manage affairs for the people, on behalf of the masses, selling and betraying their interests to handfuls of privileged people, then it seems to the knights of petty-bourgeoisness that an era of calmed and peaceful progress has come, "the turn of thought and reason has come." The bourgeois is always and everywhere true to himself: whether you take the "Polar Star" or "Our Life," whether you read Struve or Blank, it is always the same, everywhere this limited, professorial-pedantic, bureaucratic-dead assessment of revolutionary and reformist periods. The first are periods of madness, tolle Jahre, the disappearance of thought and reason. The second are periods of "conscious, systematic" activity.

Do not misinterpret my words. Do not say that I am talking about the preference of Messrs. Blanks for certain periods. The point is not at all in preference – the change of historical periods does not depend on our subjective preference. The point is that in the analysis of the properties of one or another period (completely independently of our preference or of our sympathies) Messrs. Blanks shamelessly distort the truth. The point is that precisely revolutionary periods are distinguished by greater breadth, greater richness, greater consciousness, greater planning, greater systematicity, greater boldness and brightness of historical creativity compared with periods of petty-bourgeois, Cadet, reformist progress. And Messrs. Blanks portray the matter inside out! They pass off poverty as historically creative wealth. They regard the inactivity of the suppressed or crushed masses as the triumph of "systematicity" in the activity of officials, bourgeois. They cry out about the disappearance of thought and reason when, instead of the mangling of draft laws by all sorts of clerical chinovniks and liberal penny-a-liners, there comes a period of direct political activity of the "common people," who simply directly, immediately break the organs of oppression of the people, seize power, take for themselves what was considered to belong to all sorts of robbers of the people, in a word, when precisely the thought and reason of millions of downtrodden people awaken, awaken not only for reading books, but for action, living, human action, for historical creativity.

Look how majestically this Cadet knight reasons: "The whirlwind swirled and calmed down in the same place." Yes, if the liberal petty-bourgeois are still alive, if the Dubasovs have not devoured them, it is precisely thanks to this whirlwind. "In the same place," you say? Is Russia in the spring of 1906 in the same place as in September 1905?

Yes, during the entire "Cadet" period, the Dubasovs and Durnovos are dragging and will drag Russia "consciously, plannedly, and systematically" back in order to return it to September 1905, but they do not have enough strength, because during the whirlwind the proletarian, the railroad worker, the peasant, the rebellious soldier moved all of Russia forward at the speed of a locomotive.

If this unreasonable whirlwind has really calmed down, then the Cadet Duma would be doomed to deal with questions about the tinning of washbasins.

But Mr. Blank does not even suspect that the question of whether the whirlwind has calmed down is an independent and purely scientific question, the answer to which predetermines a whole series of questions of tactics and without an answer to which, on the contrary, it is impossible to make any sense of the questions of modern tactics. Mr. Blank did not come to the conclusion about the absence now of conditions for movement in the form of a whirlwind on the basis of one or another analysis of data and considerations (such a conclusion, if it were substantiated, would have a truly fundamental significance in determining tactics, because, we repeat, it is impermissible to base this determination on a simple "preference" for one or another path) – no, he directly and simply expresses his deep (and deeply short-sighted) conviction that it cannot be otherwise. Mr. Blank looks at the "whirlwind" in exactly the same way, strictly speaking, as Messrs. Witte, Durnovo, Bülows, and other German officials, who have long declared 1848 a "mad year." Mr. Blank does not express a scientific conviction with the words about the calming of the whirlwind, but a philistine lack of thought, for which any whirlwind and whirlwind in general is a "disappearance of thought and reason."

"Social Democracy has returned to its starting point," Mr. Blank assures us. The new tactics of the Mensheviks direct the Russian Social-Democratic movement to the path along which all international Social Democracy is moving.

You see: Mr. Blank declares the parliamentary path for some reason to be the "starting point" (although for Russia it could not be the starting point of Social Democracy). Mr. Blank considers the parliamentary path, so to speak, normal, main, and even exhaustive, the only, exclusive path of international Social Democracy. Mr. Blank does not even suspect that in this respect he completely repeats the bourgeois distortion of Social Democratism, which prevails in the German liberal press and was adopted at one time by Bernsteinianism. One of the methods of struggle seems to the liberal bourgeois to be the only method. The Brentano understanding of the labor movement and the class struggle is fully manifested here. Mr. Blank does not even suspect that European Social Democracy entered and could enter the parliamentary path only when objective conditions removed from the historical agenda the question of bringing the bourgeois revolution to an end, only when the parliamentary system became truly the main form of the domination of the bourgeoisie and the main arena of social struggle. He does not even think about whether there is a parliament and a parliamentary system in Russia, and already decides peremptorily: Social Democracy has returned to its starting point. The bourgeois mind imagines exclusively unfinished democratic revolutions (for the failure to bring the revolution to an end lies at the heart of bourgeois interests). The bourgeois mind shuns all non-parliamentary methods of struggle, all open actions of the masses, all revolution in the immediate meaning of the word. The bourgeois instinctively hastens to declare, proclaim, and accept any counterfeit parliamentarism as genuine in order to put an end to the "dizzying whirlwind" (dangerous not only for the heads of many weak-headed bourgeois, but also for their pockets). That is why the scientific and truly important question of whether the parliamentary method of struggle can be recognized as having significant importance in Russia and the movement in the form of a "whirlwind" has dried up – this question the gentlemen Cadets are not even able to understand. And the material, class basis of this misunderstanding is quite clear: let them support the Cadet Duma with a peaceful strike or other action, but only let them not think about a serious, decisive, exterminating struggle, about an uprising against the autocracy and the monarchy.

"Now the turn of thought and reason has come again," Mr. Blank says with enthusiasm about the period of Dubasov's victories. Do you know what, Mr. Blank? After all, there was no era in Russia about which one could say to such an extent: "the turn of thought and reason has come," as about the era of Alexander III! That's right. It was precisely in this era that the old Russian Narodism ceased to be a dreamy look into the future and gave studies of the economic reality of Russia that enriched Russian social thought. It was precisely in this era that Russian revolutionary thought worked most intensively, creating the foundations of the Social-Democratic worldview. Yes, we, revolutionaries, are far from the idea of denying the revolutionary role of reactionary periods. We know that the form of social movement changes, that periods of direct political creativity of the popular masses are replaced in history by periods when external calm reigns, when the masses, beaten down and crushed by hard labor and need, are silent or sleeping (apparently sleeping), when the methods of production are revolutionized especially quickly, when the thought of the advanced representatives of human reason sums up the past, builds 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 the work of thought, which created at least Marx's "Capital." In a word, the "turn of thought and reason" sometimes comes in historical periods of mankind in exactly the same way as the stay of a political figure in prison contributes to his scientific work and studies.

But the trouble with our bourgeois philistine is that he is not aware of this, so to speak, prison or Dubasov character of his remark. He does not notice the fundamental question: has the Russian revolution been suppressed or is it moving towards a new upsurge? Has the form of social movement changed from revolutionary to adaptive to Dubasovism? Have the forces for the "whirlwind" dried up or not? The bourgeois mind does not ask these questions, because for him revolution in general is an unreasonable whirlwind, and reform is the turn of thought and reason.

Look at his most instructive reasoning about organization. "The first thing" of thought and reason, he proclaims to us, "should be the adoption of precautionary measures against the repetition of what happened in the first period of the Russian revolution, in its Sturm-und-Drang-Zeit[61], i.e., against the destructive actions of revolutionary streams and hurricanes. The only effective means for this can only be the expansion and strengthening of the organization."

You see: the Cadet thinks of the matter in such a way that the period of the hurricane destroyed organizations and organization (see "Novoye Vremya," that is, "Polar Star" with Struve's articles against anarchy, spontaneity, lawlessness in the revolution, etc., etc.), and the period of thought and reason protected by Dubasov is a period of creation of organizations. Revolution is bad, it destroys, it is a hurricane, a dizzying whirlwind. Reaction is good, it creates, it is a tailwind and a time of conscious, planned, systematic activity.

And again the philosopher of the Cadet party slanders the revolution and gives away all his infatuation with bourgeois-limited forms and conditions of movement. The hurricane destroyed organizations! What a blatant untruth! Name such a period in Russian or world history, find such six months or six years when so much was done for the free, spontaneous organizations of the popular masses as in six weeks of the Russian revolutionary whirlwind, when, according to the slanderers of the revolution, all principles and ideas were forgotten, when reason and thought disappeared. What was the all-Russian general strike? Is this not an organization, in your opinion? It is not registered in the police books, it is not a permanent organization, you do not want to consider it. Take political organizations. Do you know that the working people, the gray mass, never went so willingly into political organizations, never increased the composition of political unions so gigantically, never created original semi-political organizations like the Soviets of Workers' Deputies? But you are afraid of the political organizations of the proletariat. To you, as a true Brentanoist, professional organizations seem safer for the bourgeoisie (and therefore more solid, more serious). Let us take professional organizations, and we will see, contrary to all philistine gossip about ignoring them in the revolutionary moment, that in Russia such an abyss of professional workers' organizations was never created as in these days. The pages of socialist, and precisely socialist newspapers, both "Novaya Zhizn" and "Nachalo," were overflowing with information about new and new professional organizations. Such backward strata of the proletariat, which for decades can hardly be shaken up in the period of "planned and systematic" petty-bourgeois progress, like domestic servants, showed the greatest inclination and ability to organize. Take the Peasant Union. Now it is very easy to meet a Cadet who speaks of this union with majestic disdain: what, they say, after all, this is a semi-fictitious organization! There is no trace of it left now! Yes, gentlemen, I would see how much would remain of your Cadet organizations if they had to fight against punitive expeditions, against countless village Luzhenovskys, Rimans, Filonovs, Avramovs, and Zhdanovs. The Peasant Union grew with fabulous speed during the revolutionary whirlwind. It was a truly popular, mass organization, sharing, of course, a number of peasant prejudices, susceptible to the petty-bourgeois illusions of the peasant (as our Socialist-Revolutionaries are susceptible to them), but absolutely "native," a real organization of the masses, absolutely revolutionary in its basis, capable of applying truly revolutionary methods of struggle, not narrowing, but expanding the scope of political creativity of the peasantry, putting on the scene the peasants themselves with their hatred of officials and landowners, and not semi-intellectuals, who are so often inclined to compose all sorts of projects of deals between the revolutionary peasantry and the liberal landowners. No, the Cadet's philistine-bourgeois limitation, which does not believe in the revolutionary self-activity of the people and is afraid of such self-activity, is most evident in the current disdain for the Peasant Union. The Peasant Union in the days of freedom was one of the most powerful realities, and it can be predicted with certainty that if the Luzhenovskys and Rimans do not kill tens of thousands more of the advanced peasant youth, if a somewhat free breeze blows again, this union will grow not by the day, but by the hour, it will be an organization compared to which the current Cadet committees will seem like a speck of dust[62].

Let us summarize: the organizational creativity of the people, especially of the proletariat, and then of the peasantry, manifests itself in periods of revolutionary whirlwinds millions of times stronger, richer, more productive than in periods of so-called calm (horse-drawn) historical progress. The opposite opinion of Messrs. Blanks is a bourgeois-bureaucratic distortion of history. To a good bourgeois and an honest official, only those organizations seem "real" that are well registered in the police books and carefully conformed to all sorts of "temporary rules." Without temporary rules, he cannot imagine planning and systematicity. Therefore, one should not be deceived about the true meaning of the Cadet's sonorous words when he speaks of romantic contempt for legality and aristocratic disdain for economics. The real meaning of these words is one: a bourgeois-opportunistic fear of the revolutionary self-activity of the people.

Finally, let us consider the last point in Mr. Blank's Cadet "theory": the relationship between working-class and bourgeois democracy. Mr. Blank's reasoning on this topic deserves the great attention of Social Democracy, for it is a sample of how Marx is distorted with the help of references to Marx. In exactly the same way as Brentano, Sombarts, Bernsteins, and Co. replaced Marxism with Brentanoism, using Marx's terminology, referring to individual statements of Marx, pretending to be Marxism – in exactly the same way our Cadets are engaged in the "fine work" of counterfeiting Marx on the question of the relationship between working-class and bourgeois democracy.

Without coordinating the actions of working-class and bourgeois democracy, the success of the bourgeois democratic revolution is impossible. A sacred truth. An unconditional truth. Does it seem to you, Messrs. Blanks, Izgoevs, and Co., that the revolutionary Social Democrats forgot this especially in the days of the "whirlwind"? You are mistaken or consciously substitute the concept of revolutionary bourgeois democracy for the concept of bourgeois democracy in general – including monarchist-liberal, including opportunistic, even mainly monarchist-liberal. Take "Novaya Zhizn" and you will see that joint action, a combat agreement between working-