V. I. Lenin

Report at a Conference of the St. Petersburg Organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. on Electoral Agreements in Elections for the Second Duma {1}

JANUARY 6 (19), 1907

BRIEF NEWSPAPER REPORT

Therapporteur notes the absence in St. Petersburg of any Black-Hundred
danger tales of which are being spread about by the Cadets in order to
induce the electorate to vote for them. The local Social-Democrats are
faced with the question of how to release the masses of the population in
the capital from the ideological hegemony of the Cadets. Considerable
sections of the urban poor who are semi-proletarians keep wavering between
the Cadets and the Social-Democrats. The Cadets have been trying to bribe
them by promising seats in the Duma in order to reinforce their influence
on them. That is why it would, perhaps, be advisable to enter an agreement
with the revolutionary-democratic parties and groups so as to work together
to under mine the influence of the Cadets. The rapporteur believes that it
is up to the practical workers in the local organisation to decide on the
actual need and possibility of an agreement and also on its forms.

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Notes:
{1}
The City and Gubernia Conference of the St. Petersburg Organisation of the R.S.D.L.P. met at Terioki on January 6 (19), 1907. It was
attended by 70 delegates with vote (42 Bolsheviks and 28 Mensheviks). Four
representatives of the Menshevik C.C. and C.O., one representative each
from the St. Petersburg Committee of the R.S.D.L.P. and from the Editorial
Board of the Bolshevik newspaper Proletary , and others attended
with voice only. When the credentials were verified, it turned out that in
some sub-districts, mainly represented by the Mensheviks, there had been
breaches of the resolution of the St. Petersburg Committee requiring that elections of delegates to the Conference should be held only after
discussions by Party members of the question of whether agreements with the
Cadets ought to be concluded. The Conference regarded such credentials as
invalid. It rejected the proposal motioned by the representative of the
C.C. that the Conference should be divided into two sections (the city and
the gubernia) in accordance with the existing electoral districts, for the
proposal was aimed at giving the Mensheviks an artificial superiority at
the Conference. The Mensheviks used this decision as a pretext for breaking
with the revolutionary Social-Democrats and making a deal with the Cadets;
they walked out, splitting the St. Petersburg organisation on the eve of
the election.

Theother delegates decided to continue the Conference. Lenin gave the
report on Duma-electoral agreements, and after a debate the Conference
affirmed the “Minority Opinion” entered by the Bolsheviks at the Second
(First All-Russia) Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. (pp. 188–91). The
Conference rejected the idea of forming a bloc with the Cadets and decided
to propose to the S.R.s and the Trudoviks an agreement for the election
period, provided they repudiated the idea of any alliance with the Cadets.

The Conference was described in detail in Lenin’s “The
Social-Democrats and the Duma Elections”, “\thinspace‘When You Hear the
Judgement of a Fool’ ...(From the Notes of a Social-Democratic
Publicist)”, “The Workers’ Party Election Campaign in St. Petersburg”,
“The Social-Democratic Election Campaign in St. Petersburg”, “The
Protest of the Thirty-One Mensheviks” et al.

(see present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 431–55, 456–74, 426–30; Vol. 12,
pp. 15–23, 29–32).

p. 193