In *Tovarishch*{34} of September 20th there is published an extraordinarily instructive "conversation" between a Cadet and a certain more left-wing politician (a Trudovik?), expressing the viewpoint of a contributor to this newspaper, Mr. V. V. Kh—ov. Here is how the radical takes the Cadet to task:

"Is it not the reverse?" – he asks the Cadet, who is holding forth on the idea that only confidence in one's right is capable of creating power. "Is it not power that gives confidence in the inviolability of right?" "The activity of your party... I consider political Quixotism... You were strengthening fictions"... "Your constitutional illusions are to blame... What you said and how you said it created excessive faith in the omnipotence of the Duma. And this did not contribute to the accumulation of public forces... I always wished, when I listened to your Duma and extra-Duma speeches, that you would stop considering the Duma a constitutional organ, and would see in it only an organ of public will, which wages war with another will... The situation above all required the organization of one's own forces... The Duma should have directed all its efforts toward creating for itself the apparatus which the law did not grant it... You reveal your Achilles' heel – constitutional illusions... I have always been convinced only of how firmly constitutional fictions had become embedded in your party... I censure (you Cadets) because you ceased to feel yourselves a fighting side, and became some kind of liquidators of the struggle. You proposed, among other things, what in other countries appeared only as the result of struggle between sides."

Are not these instructive speeches, I ask? It is only a pity that our dashing Bernsteinian{35} "dragged out" such a stupid Cadet merely to defeat him in "conversation." There are some cleverer ones after all. There are those who follow carefully the Menshevik literature and especially the writings of Plekhanov. Such a Cadet would have answered his interlocutor differently.

He would have said: my dear radical! *Qui prouve trop, ne prouve rien*. Who proves too much proves nothing. And you certainly prove far too much from the standpoint of your own position. Were you not the ones who supported us in the elections to the Duma and fought against the boycottists? And yet these elections obligated us. These elections took place entirely under the sign of what you now call "constitutional illusions" (fie! fie! have you not been reading Bolshevik works?). I could show you, my dear radical, such passages – and not just one! – in your very own newspaper *Tovarishch*, where you (not necessarily you personally, but your like-minded comrades) assured the credulous Russian philistine that bad ministers would be forced to resign if the "People's Freedom" party won in the elections. What? What? Have you forgotten this, my dear radical? And we remember it, we remember it very well. One could not be elected, most respectable sir, without making promises to be loyal, without swearing to employ only constitutional methods of struggle. And we, we, the People's Freedom party, we make promises only for that, solely for that, in order to fulfill them!

You say that we believed too much in the omnipotence of the Duma, that this did not contribute to the accumulation of "one's own" forces? But please read what Plekhanov wrote, a writer who is absolutely authoritative for you. Is it not you, your like-minded comrades, and by no means the Cadets, who love to declare in intimate conversations that they are, in fact, quite, quite social-democrats and would declare themselves as such, if only... if only social-democracy entirely adopted Plekhanov's point of view? And did not Plekhanov himself say at the Unity Congress of the RSDLP that only anarchists can cry out about constitutional illusions? Did not Plekhanov propose a resolution in which the Duma was not only called a power – and this designation was affirmed by the Unity Congress of social-democrats!! – but moreover a power "summoned to life by the tsar himself and affirmed by law"? Did not Plekhanov write in the respectable organ of the Mensheviks – and you, gentlemen from *Nasha Zhizn*{36}, always praised these Menshevik tendencies! – that organic work in the Duma possessed the greatest agitational significance? And you applauded Plekhanov, you published your admiration for his "courage" (yes! yes! you expressed yourself precisely thus!) in the struggle against "Blanquism"! In the literal sense of the word you have not worn out your shoes since all this happened, and you are already repeating the very same sad Blanquist delusions!!

If the Cadet had defended himself in this manner, his defense would have turned into an attack, and the radical would have been utterly defeated...

This radical, with his present partisan attacks on constitutional illusions, reminds one of that hero of popular epic who cried: "you will never carry so much!" at the sight of a funeral procession. Think about it, really: when was it important and urgently necessary to struggle against constitutional illusions? Clearly, when they flourished and could bring, and did in fact bring, widespread harm, seducing all manner of "these little ones." In other words: when the broad masses could and should have seemed to themselves that there was a constitution, while in fact there was no constitution at all. Precisely such a time was during the period of elections to the First Duma and during the sittings of the Duma, that is, in March–June of 1906. It was precisely then that constitutional illusions brought widespread harm. But then they were systematically fought against by the Bolshevik social-democrats alone, swimming against the current. Then Messrs. Kh—ov and other writers from *Nasha Zhizn* supported these illusions, "fighting" against the Bolsheviks, censuring them for their sharp criticism of the Cadets.

Now the Duma has been dissolved. The Cadets are defeated. No one even imagines that there is a constitution. Now even not very noble animals can kick at the Cadets ("I censure them" – see the "conversation") and every fourth or fifth word curse constitutional illusions. Ah, gentlemen radicals! An egg is expensive on Easter Day!...

The example of Mr. Kh—ov and Co. is an instructive specimen of how people, considering themselves educated politicians and even free-thinkers or radicals, float helplessly and without ideas, flabbily and impotently, with the current. In March–June of 1906 they supported constitutional illusions, calling the Duma a power, trailing in the wake of the Cadets, contemptuously wrinkling their noses at the merciless criticism of this then-fashionable party. In September 1906 they "censure" the Cadets and "fight" with constitutional illusions, not understanding that they have fallen behind once again, that now this is insufficient, and what is needed is a direct call to a definite (determined by preceding historical development) form of revolutionary struggle.

It would be good if, by the example of such gentlemen, the Russian intelligentsia, which produces a mass of similar weaklings, learned to recognize all the harm of opportunism. People among us often incorrectly consider this word "mere abuse," not reflecting on its meaning. An opportunist does not betray his party, does not defect from it, does not abandon it. He sincerely and assiduously continues to serve it. But his typical and characteristic feature is yielding to the mood of the moment, inability to resist fashion, political short-sightedness and lack of principle. Opportunism is the sacrifice of the party's lasting and essential interests for its momentary, transitory, secondary interests. Some slight upturn in industry, relative prosperity of trade, slight revival of bourgeois liberalism – and the opportunist is already crying out: do not frighten the bourgeoisie, do not shun it, drop "phrases" about social revolution! The Duma assembled, there was a whiff of police-constitutional "spring" – and the opportunist is already calling the Duma a power, hastening to curse the "pernicious" boycott, rushing to put forward a slogan about supporting Duma demands, that is, Cadet ministerial demands. The wave has ebbed – the opportunist with equal sincerity and equal inappropriateness begins to "censure" the Cadets and criticize constitutional illusions.

No consistent policy, worthy of a truly revolutionary class, steadily leading through all petty deviations and waverings to preparation for a decisive and utterly bold battle with the enemy, is possible under the dominance of such intelligentsia moods. This is why the conscious proletariat must be able to relate critically to the intelligentsia coming over to its side, must learn unsparing struggle against opportunism in politics.

*Vestnik Zhizni* No. 12, October 18, 1906. Signed: N. Lenin

Printed according to the text of the journal *Vestnik Zhizni*