V. I.

Lenin

The
Telegraf [1] for January 26 reports the following episode at a
meeting held on January 24 in the Civil Engineers’ Hall.

“V.V. Vodovozov appears on the platform and reminds the meeting
of the incident in the Nemetti Theatre: ’I asked there whether it was true
that Milyukov was conducting negotiations with Stolypin behind the backs of
the voters. I was answered by shouts: “Lies”, “Calumny”, and
Prof. Gredeskul answered that Milyukov was an honest man, in whom the party
had implicit confidence. I have not the least doubt about Milyukov’s
personal integrity, but such negotiations did take place. Milyukov himself
does not deny it. Today in Rech he writes that he discussed with
Stolypin the legalisation of the people’s freedom party, but that the
terms were unacceptable.

But Milyukov is concealing these terms. If they are abominable they ought to be made public, they ought to be publicly condemned
... pilloried !’ “‘Iclose the meeting!’ announces a police inspector.

“Thepublic make for the exit, shouting and whistling. The
organisers of the meeting sharply reproach Vodovozov, and the police
inspector sends a couple of constables to the platform, in case of
emergencies.”

Mr. Vodovozov deserves thanks and appreciation, not sharp reproaches, for his
attempts to expose Milyukov’s negotiations with Stolypin. Only
philistines who fail to understand their duties as citizens ,
or those who are anxious to conceal from the people the intrigues of
the Cadets, can reproach a politician for such action. We really do not know in
which of these categories to place the organisers of the meeting, at which the
principal speaker was Nabokov, a Cadet.

Thequestion of the negotiations between Milyukov and Stolypin is of tremendous
importance. Those who are inclined to treat this question lightly, to brush i
aside as a minor scandal of no significance, are a thousand times wrong. Those who
fear a scandal fail to recognise it as their civic duty to expose
political Lidvaliads .

Andthe negotiations between Milyukov and Stolypin are indeed a little bit of
political Lidvaliad, in which criminal embezzlement and fraud are replaced by
the politically dishonest and criminal haggling of a party that has
misappropriated the great words, “the people’s freedom”.

Wehave already pointed out in the newspaper

Trud [2] that Milyukov is concealing Stolypin’s “terms” from the people . He does not say whether there was one
audience or several, and when they took place. Nor does he say whether
Stolypin invited him, or whether he requested an audience. And lastly, he
does not say whether the St. Petersburg Committee and the Central Committee
of the Cadets have taken any decision on the matter, and whether anything
has been communicated to the provinces about it.

Itis not difficult to see that a full assessment of Cadet

Zubatovism [3] depends on these facts. Only shameful things are
concealed from the people. Mr. Vodovozov is right:

they must be made public . And it is Mr. Vodovozov’s duty
to continue his disclosures, if he wishes those citizens who understand their
political duties to regard him as an honest, consistent and sterling politician,
and not a journalist in search of sensation. In cases of infamy in
public affairs, it is the duty of a citizen to compel those
who are concealing the infamy to speak.

Anyonewho knows anything of these villanies and wants to do his duty
as a citizen must compel the Milyukovs to take him to court for libel,
and there expose the Cadet leader, who, in the thick of the
people’s election fight against the old regime, pays back-door visits to a
leader of the old regime, behind the backs of the people!

Wepublicly address the following questions to Mr. Milyukov and the Cadet
Party:

(1) When did Milyukov ( and his friends? ) have his audience or
audiences with Stolypin?

(2) Did Stolypin invite Milyukov? Did Milyukov at the time know anything about the “abominable” (to use
Mr. Vodovozov’s expression) terms which Stolypin wanted to discuss
with him?

(3) When did the St. Petersburg Committee and the Central Committee of the
Cadets (or the two committees jointly) meet to discuss Stolypin’s
proposals? Did they not decide to take certain steps towards meeting these proposals? Was anything about this
communicated to the provinces?

(4) What connection is there between Milyukov’s audience with Stolypin and
certain other steps taken by these two worthies to meet each other
half way, and the character of the Cadets’ behaviour at the
“conference” with the petty-bourgeois bloc on January 18?

Weshall return, probably more than once, to these disclosures about the
“audience” granted to a Cadet by a reactionary. With all the
documents in our hands that an outsider can procure, we shall yet prove that
these negotiations between the Cadets and the Black Hundreds caused the failure of the bloc of “Lefts” and Cadets which many people
desired, and which we have always opposed.

Forthe time being we say:

Let Mr. Milyukov and the Cadet Party be advised that not only
Vodovozov, but very many other people will exert all their efforts to expose this political Lidvaliad !

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Notes:
[1]
Telegraf ( Telegraph )—a liberal-bourgeois daily newspaper published in St. Petersburg in January and February 1907.

[2]
Trud ( Labour )—a Bolshevik daily newspaper published in
St. Petersburg in 1907. No copies of this newspaper have yet been found.
p. 84

[3]
Zubatovism —the policy of “police socialism”; the organisation in 1901-03, on the initiative of Colonel of Gendarmes Zubatov, head
of the Moscow secret police, of legal workers’ organisations for the purpose of
diverting the workers from the political struggle against tsarism. Zubatov’s
activities in founding the legal workers’ organisations were supported by
V. K. Plehve, Minister of the Interior. The Zubatov movement tried to keep the
working-class movement within the bounds of economic demands and to inculcate in
the workers the idea that the government was about to accede to those
demands. The first Zubatov organisation was formed in Moscow in May 1901, with
the title of “Mutual Aid Society for Workers in Machine
Industry”. Zubatov organisations were also founded in Minsk, Odessa,
Wilno, Kiev, and other towns.

Ina resolution on “The Trade Union Struggle”, the Second Congress
of the R.S.D.L.P. described Zubatovism as the policy of “the systematic
betrayal of the interests of the working class for the benefit of the
capitalists” and recognised the desirability of Party organisations, for
purposes of the struggle against Zubatovism, supporting and directing strikes
begun by legal workers’ organisations.

Therevolutionary Social-Democrats exposed the reactionary nature of
Zubatovism, but used the legal workers’ organisations to draw broad sections of
the working class into the struggle against the autocracy. In 1905 Lenin wrote:
“And now the Zubatov movement is outgrowing its bounds. Initiated by the
police in the interests of the police, in the interests of supporting the
autocracy and demoralising the political consciousness of the workers, this
movement is turning against the autocracy and is becoming an outbreak of the
proletarian class struggle” (see present edition, Vol. 5, p. 90).

Underpressure from the growing revolutionary movement the tsarist government
was compelled in 1903 to abolish the Zubatov organisations.