V. I.

Lenin

The Duma election results demonstrate the physiognomy and strength of the
various classes.

Thefranchise in Russia is neither direct nor equal . In the first
place, the peasants elect one delegate per ten house holds; these, in turn,
elect a peasant delegate from among their number; the delegates so elected then
elect a peasant elector, and the latter, together with electors from other
social-estates, elect the deputies to the Duma. The system is the same for the
landowner, urban and worker curias, the number of electors from each curia
being fixed by law in the interests and to the advantage of the upper classes,
the landowners and the bourgeoisie. Furthermore, not only the revolutionary
parties, but the opposition parties as well are subjected to the most barbarous,
the most illegal police oppression; then there is the complete absence of
freedom of the press and assembly, arbitrary arrests and banishment, as well as
the military courts operating in the greater part of Russia, and the state of
emergency connected with them.

How,then, under such circumstances, could the new Duma have turned out more
oppositional and more revolutionary than the First?

Tofind an answer to this question, we must first of all examine the figures
published in the Cadet Rech on the distribution of the electors
according to party, in connection with the party-political composition of the
Second Duma; these figures cover about nine-tenths of all the electors in
European Russia (Poland, the Caucasus, Siberia, etc., being excluded). Let us
take the five chief political groups, since more detailed information on electors’ political leanings
is not available. The first group consists of the Rights . To this group
belong those known as the Black Hundreds (the monarchists, the Union of the
Russian People, etc.), who champion a return to complete autocracy in its purest
form, favour unbridled military terror against revolutionaries, and instigate
assassinations (like that of Duma Deputy Herzenstein), pogroms, etc. Further,
this group includes the so-called Octobrists (this is the name given in
Russia to the party of the big industrialists), who joined the
counter-revolution immediately after the tsar’s manifesto of October 17,
1905, and who now support the government in every possible way. This party
frequently forms election blocs with the monarchists.

Thesecond group consists of those belonging to no party . We shall see
later that many electors and deputies, especially those of the peasantry, hid
behind this name in order to escape repressions for their revolutionary
convictions.

The liberals form the third group. The liberal parties are headed by
the Constitutional-Democrats (known as the Cadet Party), or
“people’s freedom” party. This party constitutes the Centre in
the Russian revolution; it stands between the landlords and the peasants. The
bourgeoisie tries to reconcile these two classes. The assessment of this party
of the liberal bourgeoisie—the Cadets—is a most important point of
difference between the two trends within Russian Social-Democracy.

Foropportunist reasons and not because of their political convictions, the
Polish Black Hundreds are on the side of the Russian liberals in the Duma; this
is the party of “National-Democrats” who in Poland use every means,
including informing, lock-outs and assassination, to struggle against the
revolutionary proletariat.

Thefourth group is the Progressists . This is not the name of a party,
but, like the term “non-party” is a meaningless conventional term
whose primary purpose is to Serve as a screen against police persecution.

Lastly,the fifth group is the Lefts . To this group belong the
Social-Democratic and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, the Popular Socialists
(approximately the equivalent of the French Radical Socialists) and those known as the

Trudoviks [1]

–a

still completely amorphous peasant democratic organisation. In their class character, the Trudoviks, Popular
Socialists and Socialist-Revolutionaries are petty bourgeois and
peasant democrats. Sometimes electors from some revolutionary
groups attempted to hide under the general name of “Lefts” during the election campaign, in order the
better to escape police persecution.

The Rech figures will now show the correctness of the conclusions we
have drawn concerning the social composition of the parties.

| Parties | Fifty-One Gubernias of European Russia | Big Cities |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Landowner | Urban | Peasant | Worker | Total |
| Elec- tors | per cent | Elec- tors | per cent | Elec- tors | per cent | Elec- tors | per cent | Elec- tors | per cent | Elec- tors | per cent |
| Rights | 1,224 | 70.9 | 182 | 13.9 | 764 | 33.8 | – | – | 2,170 | 40.0 | 346 | 20.7 |
| Non-party | 81 | 4.7 | 27 | 2.1 | 248 | 11.0 | 2 | 1.4 | 358 | 6.6 | – | – |
| Liberals | 154 | 8.9 | 504 | 38.7 | 103 | 4.6 | – | – | 761 | 14.0 | 940 | 56.4 |
| Progressists | 185 | 10.7 | 280 | 21.5 | 561 | 24.9 | 3 | 2.1 | 1,029 | 18.9 | 55 | 3.3 |
| Lefts | 82 | 4.8 | 311 | 23.8 | 582 | 25.7 | 140 | 96.5 | 1,115 | 20.5 | 627 | 19.6 |
| Totals | 1,726 | 100 | 1,304 | 100 | 2,258 | 100 | 145 | 100 | 5,433 | 100 | 1,668 | 100 |

| Parties | 51 Gubernias of European Russia | Poland | Caucasus | Siberia and Eastern Gubernias | Entire Russian Empire |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| From the Gubernias | From Peasant Curias | From Big Cities |
| D’s | % | D’s | % | D’s | % | D’s | % | D’s | % | D’s | % | D’s | % |
| Rights | 85 | 25.7 | 4 | 7.5 | 5 | 18.5 | 1 | 2.7 | 2 | 7.1 | – | – | 97 | 19.8 |
| Non-party | 18 | 5.4 | 3 | 5.7 | – | – | – | – | – | – | 1 | 7.1 | 22 | 4.5 |
| Liberals | 82 | 24.8 | 10 | 18.9 | 17 | 63.0 | 32 | 86.5 | 9 | 32.2 | 6 | 42.9 | 156 | 31.8 |
| Progressists | 20 | 6.0 | 10 | 18.9 | – | – | 3 | 8.1 | 2 | 7.1 | – | – | 35 | 7.1 |
| Lefts | 126 | 38.1 | 26 | 49.0 | 5 | 18.5 | 1 | 2.7 | 15 | 53.6 | 7 | 50.0 | 180 | 36.8 |
| Totals | 331 | 100 | 53 | 100 | 27 | 100 | 37 | 100 | 28 | 100 | 14 | 100 | 490 | 100 |

Ascan be seen from the tables (on pages 199 and 200 ), the big cities constitute a special group—St. Petersburg elects 6
deputies, Moscow 4, Warsaw and Tashkent 2 each, the remainder 1 each, a total of
27 deputies for 17 cities. The remaining deputies to the Duma are elected at
joint meetings of electors of all four curias for each gubernia; but in addition
to this the peasant electors elect one deputy from the peasant curia for each
gubernia. Thus we get three groups of deputies—from the gubernia electoral
meeting, from the peasant curia and from the big cities.

Afew dozen electors from the progressive or Left bloc could be ascribed to the
various party groups only on the basis of estimates; on the whole, however,
these figures provide the fullest and most reliable material for an
understanding of the class structure of the various Russian parties.

The worker curia even in the provinces, and, needless to say,
particularly in the big cities, voted almost exclusively Left,
96.5 per cent to be exact. Out of the 140 Left electors from the
worker curia 84 were Social-Democrats, 52 were unspecified Lefts (but mostly
Social-Democrats), and four were Socialist-Revolutionaries. Despite the false
assertions of the liberals who want to depict it as a party of revolutionary
intellectuals, the Russian Social-Democratic Party is, therefore, a real
working-class party. In St.

Petersburg—both the city and the gubernia—of the twenty-four
electors chosen by the worker curia twenty were Social-Democrats and four
Socialist-Revolutionaries; in Moscow—both the city and the
gubernia—only Social-Democrats were elected—thirty-five, etc.

Inthe peasant curia we immediately see an astonishing disproportion;
33.8 per cent of the peasant electors belong to the Right, whereas of the
Duma deputies elected by those same electors from the peasant curia
only 7.5 per cent were Rights. Obviously the peasant electors only
called themselves Rights to avoid government repressions. The Russian
press has recorded this phenomenon in more than a hundred cases, and the
election statistics now provide full confirmation of it.

Thepeasant curia cannot be judged by what the electors call themselves, but
exclusively by the party which their deputies consider themselves as
belonging to. We see that, following upon the worker curia , the peasant
curia forms the group that is most Left . The peasants elected only 7.5
per cent Rights and 67.95 per cent standing Left of the liberals ! The
greater part of the Russian peasantry are revolutionary in
temper—such is the lesson to be drawn from the elections to the Second
Duma. This is a fact of great importance because it shows that the revolution in
Russia has not come to an end by a long way. Until the peasant’s demands
have been met, or, at least, until he has calmed down, the revolution
must continue. Of course, the peasant’s revolutionary temper has
nothing in common with Social-Democracy; the peasant is a bourgeois-democratic
revolutionary, and by no means a socialist. He is not struggling for the
transfer of all means of production into the hands of society, but for the
confiscation of the landlord’s land by the peasantry.

Thebourgeois-democratic, revolutionary consciousness of the peasantry finds its
typical party-political expression in the Trudoviks’, and in the
Socialist-Revolutionary and the Popular Socialist parties. Out of the
fifty-three Duma deputies from the peasant curia, twenty-four belong to the
peasant democrats (ten Lefts, ten Trudoviks and four
Socialist-Revolutionaries), and, furthermore, of the ten Progressists
and three non-party deputies elected by the peasants the majority undoubtedly belong to the Trudoviks. We say
“undoubtedly” because the Trudoviks have been ruthlessly
persecuted since the First Duma, and the peas ants are wary enough not to
call themselves Trudoviks, although in actual fact they
vote together with the Trudoviks in the Duma. For example, the
most important bill introduced in the First Duma by the Trudoviks was the
Agrarian Bill, known as the “Draft of the 104” (the essence of
this Bill was the immediate nationalisation of the landlords’ land, the future
nationalisation of peasant allotments and equalitarian laud tenure). This, Bill
is an outstanding product of peasant political thought on one of the
most important problems of peasant life. It was endorsed by
seventy Trudoviks and by twenty-five peasants who described themselves as non-party, or gave no answer
to the question on their party membership!

Thusthe “Trudovik” Group in Russia is undoubtedly a rural, peasant
democratic party. It comprises parties that are revolutionary not in the
socialist, but in the bourgeois-democratic sense of the word.

Adistinction must be made between the big cities and the smaller towns in the
urban curia . The political contradictions between the different
classes are not so clearly marked in the smaller towns, where there are no large
masses of proletarians (who form a special worker curia) and the Rights are
weaker. In the big cities there are no non-party electors at all, and the
number of indeterminate “Progressists” is insignificant; but here
the Right is stronger and the Left weaker. The reason is a simple one; in the
big cities the proletariat constitutes a separate curia, which is not included
in our table of electors. [2]

The petty bourgeoisie are less numerous than in the smaller towns. Big industry predominates, and is represented partly by the
Rights and partly by the liberals.

Thefigures on the composition of the electors show convincingly that the basis
of the liberal parties (mainly, therefore, the Cadets) is the urban, primarily
the big industrial bourgeoisie. The swing to the Right of this bourgeoisie,
which is frightened by the independent action and strength of the proletariat,
becomes particularly clear when we compare the larger cities and the smaller
towns. The urban (i.e., bourgeois) curia is permeated with Left elements to a
much greater degree in the latter.

Thebasic differences amongst Russian Social-Democrats are closely connected
with this last problem. One wing (the Minority, or “Mensheviks”)
regard the Cadets and liberals as being the progressive urban bourgeoisie as
compared with the backward rural petty bourgeoisie (Trudoviks). It follows from
this that the bourgeoisie is recognised as the motive force of the revolution,
and a policy of support for the Cadets is proclaimed. The other wing (the
Majority, or “Bolsheviks”) regards the liberals as representatives
of big industry, who are striving to put an end to the revolution as quickly as
possible for fear of the proletariat, and are entering into a compromise with
the reactionaries. This wing regards the Trudoviks as revolutionary
petty-bourgeois democrats, and is of the opinion that they are
inclined to adopt a radical position on a land question of such importance to the peasantry, the question
of the confiscation of the landed estates. This accounts for the tactics of the
Bolsheviks. They reject support for the treacherous liberal bourgeoisie, i.e.,
the Cadets, and do their utmost to get the democratic petty bourgeoisie away
from the influence of the liberals; they want to draw the peasant and the urban
petty bourgeois away from the liberals and muster them behind the proletariat,
behind the vanguard, for the revolutionary struggle. In its social-economic
content, the Russian revolution is a bourgeois revolution; its motive force,
however, is not the liberal bourgeoisie but the proletariat and the democratic
peasantry. The victory of the revolution can only be achieved by a
revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry.

Ifwe want to know exactly whether the alliance between the liberals and the
urban petty bourgeoisie is a stable one, we shall be interested in the
statistics on the number of votes cast in the cities for the party blocs, According to
Smirnov’s statistics for 22 big cities, 17,000 votes were cast for the
monarchists, 34,500 for the Octobrists, 74,000 for the Cadets and 41,000 for
the Left bloc. [3]

Duringthe elections to the Second Duma a fierce struggle was waged between the
two wings of Social-Democracy, between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, on the
question of whether to enter into a bloc with the Cadets or with the Trudoviks
against the Cadets. In Moscow the supporters of the Bolsheviks were stronger; a
Left bloc was formed there, with the Mensheviks taking part in it. In
St. Petersburg the Bolsheviks were also stronger, and a Left bloc was formed
there as well, but the Mensheviks did not take part and withdrew from the organisation. A
split occurred and still continues. The Mensheviks referred to the Black-Hundred
danger, i.e., they feared a victory of the Black Hundreds at the
elections because of the votes of the Lefts and the liberals being split. The
Bolsheviks declared that this danger was an invention of the liberals, whose one
purpose was to attract petty-bourgeois and proletarian democracy under the wing
of bourgeois liberals. The figures show that the total number of votes cast for
the Lefts and the Cadets was more than double the combined votes cast for the
Octobrists and the monarchists. [4]

A split vote for the opposition, therefore, could not have helped the victory of
the Right.

Thesefigures, covering more than 200,000 urban voters, and data on the general
composition of the Second Duma, show that the real political meaning of the
blocs of Social-Democrats and Cadets is by no means the avoidance of the Black-Hundred
danger (this opinion, even if it were sincere, is, in general, a false one);
the blocs were meant to thwart the independent policy of the working class and
subordinate that class to the hegemony of the liberals.

Theessence of the dispute between the two wings of the Russian
Social-Democratic. Party is in deciding whether to recognise the hegemony of the
liberals or whether to strive for the hegemony of the working class in the
bourgeois revolution.

Thefact that in twenty-two cities the Left, on the first agreement between the
Social-Democrats and the Trudoviks against the Cadets and despite the
unprecedented difficulties with which their agitation was faced, obtained
41,000 votes, i.e., received more votes than the Octobrists, and over half as
many as the liberals,—this fact is proof enough for the Bolsheviks that
the democratic petty bourgeoisie in the cities follow the Cadets more from force
of habit and because of the intrigues of the liberals than because of the
hostility of these strata to the revolution.

Nowlet us examine the last curia, that of the land owners. Here we find a
clearly expressed preponderance of Rights—70.9 per cent of the electors
are Rights. It is absolutely inevitable that, under the impact of the peasant
struggle for land, the big landed proprietor should turn away from the
revolution and towards counter-revolution.

Ifwe now compare the composition of the electoral groups at the gubernia
election meetings with the composition of the Duma from the standpoint of the
political tinge of the deputies elected at those meetings, we shall see that
Progressist is, to a considerable extent, only a name concealing the
Lefts. There were 20.5% Lefts and 18.9% Progressists among the electors. Of the
deputies, 38% belong to the Lefts! The Rights have only 25.7% deputies while
they had 40% of the electors; but if we subtract electors from the peasantry
from this figure (we have already shown that only agents of the Russian
Government who falsified the information on the election could regard them as
Rights), then we get 2,170–764=4,406 belonging to the Right electors, i.e.,
25.8%. And so the two results coincide. The liberal electors, apparently,
concealed themselves partly under the name of “non-party” and partly under the name of
“Progressist”, and the peasants, even under the name of
“Rights”.

Acomparison with the non-Russian parts of Russia, with Poland and the Caucasus,
provides fresh proof that the real motive force of the bourgeois revolution in
Russia is not the bourgeoisie. In Poland there is no revolutionary peasant
movement, no urban bourgeois opposition and there are practically no
liberals. The revolutionary proletariat is opposed by a reactionary bloc
composed of the big and the petty bourgeoisie. There, the National-Democrats
were therefore victorious. In the Caucasus the revolutionary peasant movement
is very strong, the strength of the liberals is almost equal to that in Russia,
but the Lefts are the strongest party there: the percentage of Lefts in the Duma
(53.6%) is approximately the same as the percentage of deputies from the peasant
curia (49%). Only the workers and the revolutionary democratic peasantry can
complete the bourgeois revolution. There, is no agrarian problem in the Russian
sense in highly developed capitalist Poland, and there is no revolutionary
struggle on the part of the peasantry to confiscate the landed estates. The
revolution, therefore, has no sound basis in Poland outside the proletariat. The
class contradictions there are getting closer to the West-European type. We meet
with the opposite in the Caucasus.

Herelet us mention the fact that, according to Rech estimates, the 180 Lefts
are distributed among the various parties in the following way: 68 Lefts, 9
Popular Socialists (the Right wing of the Trudoviks), 28
Socialist-Revolutionaries and 46 Social-Democrats.... Actually the last-named
now number 65. The liberals try to minimise the number of Social-Democrats as
far as possible.

Thesegroups may be divided into two strata according to their class structure:
the urban and, particularly, the rural democratic petty bourgeoisie have 134
deputies, and the proletariat, 46 deputies.

Ingeneral, we see that in Russia the class stratification of the various
parties is expressed with unusual clarity. The big landed proprietors belong to
the Black Hundreds, the monarchists and the Octobrists. The big industrialists are represented by the Octobrists and the liberals. Land owners in Russia are
divided, according to the system of farming, into those that run their farms in
a semi-feudal manner, employing the animals and implements of the peas ants (the
peasants are in bondage to the landlord), and those who now run their farms in
the modern, capitalist manner. There are more than a few liberals among the
latter. The urban petty bourgeoisie are represented by the liberals and the
Trudoviks. The peasant petty bourgeoisie are represented by the Trudoviks,
especially the Left wing of the group, the Socialist-Revolutionaries. The
proletariat has its representative in the Social-Democrats. With an obvious lag
in the capitalist development of Russia, this clear-cut division into party
groups according to the class structure of society is only to be explained by
the stormy revolutionary mood of an epoch in which parties are formed more
quickly and class-consciousness grows and takes shape infinitely more quickly
than in an epoch of stagnation or of so-called peaceful progress.

---
Notes:
[1]
In the German press this party is often called the “labour group”,
which seems to point to kinship with the working class. In actual fact
there is not even this verbal relationship between them in Russian. it is,
therefore, better to leave The word “Trudoviks” untranslated, using it to
mean petty-bourgeois, specifically peasant, democrats.— Lenin

[2]
There are no data for this, and so the figures on electors from the
worker curia have been removed from the table. We have precise figures on
only 37 worker-electors. All of them, without exception, belong to the Left . According to the law, the total number of worker-electors for
the whole of Russia is 208. We have more precise data concerning 145 of
them, which, together with the above mentioned 37 electors from the worker
curia in the big cities makes 182, i.e., nine-tenths of the total number of
worker-electors.— Lenin

[3]
By “Left bloc” we mean the election bloc of the Social-Democrats and
the petty-bourgeois democratic parties (primarily the Trudoviks, using that
name in its widest sense and recognising the Socialist-Revolutionaries as
the Left wing of the group). This was a bloc directed against both the
Rights and the liberals.— Lenin

[4]
According to the estimates of that same Mr. Smirnov, in sixteen cities
where 72,000 people went to the polls and where there were two (or three)
election lists instead of four, the opposition obtained 58.7% and the
Rights 21% of the votes. Here,. too, the first figure is more than double
the second. Here, too, the danger from the Black Hundreds was a deceptive
bogey invented by the liberals, who talked a lot about the danger from the
Right although they actually feared the “ Left danger ” (an
expression which we borrow from the Cadet newspaper Rech ).— Lenin