V. I.

Lenin

St. Petersburg, April 10.

Themood of what is known as Russian “society” is one of depression,
dismay and perplexity. The article by

F. Malover [1] —who made an extremely apt choice of a pseudonym—in
the Sunday issue of Tovarishch (April 8) is an instructive and
typical manifestation because it correctly reflects that mood.

Mr. Malover’s article is called “The Duma and Society”. By
society is here understood, in accordance with the old Russian use of the word,
a handful of liberal government officials, bourgeois intellectuals, bored
rentiers and similar haughty, self-satisfied, and idle members of the public,
who fancy themselves the salt of the earth, proudly call them selves the
“intelligentsia”, create “public opinion”, etc., etc.

Itseems to Mr. Malover that “the campaign against the Duma, to be
observed during the past few days in the columns of the Left press, is extremely
risky”. That is the main idea behind the article. Mr. Malover’s
argument is a reference to the mood of society. Society is fatigued,
“waves aside” politics, does not protest against abuses, and reads
“light” novels in the libraries or buys them in the shops. “The environment is flaccid” ... “for the Duma to
revive, the country must revive.” “The Duma could, of course, at any
moment die an heroic death, but, judging by rumours in circulation, this would
only be to the advantage of its in voluntary godmothers. And what would the
people gain from that, other than a new election law?”

Wehave quoted these passages because they are typical of most Russian
liberals and all the intellectual backrooms of liberalism.

Notethat in the final sentence the word “people” has slipped in in
place of “society”! Mr. Malover, sly even to wards himself (as are
all intellectualists of little faith), has falsified his own argument and
has tried to make it appear that it is the notorious “society”
that really determines the “support from without” or the
attitude of the masses . Despite the skilfulness of the
counterfeit, it has not passed:

and he has had to substitute “the people” for “society”. And all the dust that the members of
“society” have accumulated in stuffy and fusty chambers so carefully
screened off and protected from the street, flies up in a cloud immediately the
door leading to the “street” is opened. The dry-as-dust sophistry
that they fancy is “intellectual” and “well-educated” is laid bare for all to see.

Thesis:the campaign of the Lefts against the Duma is risky.

Proof: society is fatigued and waves politics aside, preferring light
novels.

Conclusion:the people would gain nothing from the heroic death of the
Duma.

Politicalslogan: “nobody now has any doubts, it would seem, that the
political struggle of the immediate future can only be for the consolidation and
extension of the rights of the Duma as the one [!] weapon still in the hands of
the people [!], with which to struggle against the government”.

Thelogic of counter-revolutionary hypocrites cloaked in the noble mantle of
scepticism and satiated indifference is truly incomparable, is it not?

Thesis:we, “society”, are sitting in the mud. You, the Lefts, want
to try and clean up the mud. Leave it alone, the mud does not bother us.

Proof:we are weary of attempts (not made by us) to clean up the mud. Our ideas
about cleaning up are indecisive.

Conclusion:it is risky to touch the mud.

Thearguments of the Malovers are of great significance for, we repeat, they
truly reflect the mood that, in the final analysis, springs from the struggle of
the classes in the Russian revolution. The fatigue of the bourgeoisie and its
yearning for “light” literature constitute a phenomenon that is not
accidental, but inevitable. The grouping of the population by parties—that
was the most important lesson and the revolution’s most important political acquisition at the time of
the elections to the Second Duma—tellingly revealed, on a nation-wide
scale, the turn to the Right taken by broad sections of the landlords and
bourgeoisie. “Society” and “the intelligentsia” are simply a miserable, pitiful, basely cowardly appendage to the upper ten
thousand.

Thegreater part of the bourgeois intelligentsia live with, and are fed by,
those who have drawn away from politics. Only a few intellectuals enter the
propaganda circles of the workers’ party, those who from experience know the
“ ravenous hunger ” of the masses of the people for political books, newspapers and socialist knowledge. But of course such
intellectuals, even if they do not go to an heroic death, lead the really heroic
life of hard work of the poorly-paid, half-starved, constantly fatigued
“rank-and-file Party worker” who is overworked beyond all
belief. Such intellectuals find reward in getting away from the
dung-heap of “society” and in not having to think of the
indifference of their audience to social and political problems. And,
indeed, an “intellectual” who cannot find himself an audience that
is not in different to those problems as much resembles a “democrat”
or an intellectual in the best sense of the word, as a woman who sells herself
by marrying for money resembles a loving wife. Both are variations of officially
respectable and perfectly legal prostitution.

The Left parties are really Left, and deserve that name, only insofar as they
express the interests and reflect the psychology, not of
“society”, not of a bunch of whining intellectualist trash,
but the lower strata of the people, the proletariat and a certain section of the
petty bourgeois masses, both urban and rural. The Left parties are those whose
audiences are never indifferent to social and political problems any
more than a hungry man can be indifferent to the problem of a crust of
bread. “The campaign against the Duma” of those Left parties is a
reflection of a definite tendency among the lower strata of the people, it is
an echo of a certain—what shall we call it?—mass irritation with the
self-satisfied Narcissuses who are infatuated with the dung-heaps about them.

Onesuch Narcissus—Mr. Malover—writes: “The psychology of the
masses of the people, in the period we are living in is an absolutely unknown quantity, and nobody can be sure that these
masses will react to the dissolution of the Second Duma differently from
the way they reacted to the dissolution of the First Duma.”

Inwhat way does this differ from the psychology of an honest woman in bourgeois
society who says: “Nobody can say for sure that it is not for love I am
marrying the one who pays me most”?

Andyour own feelings, madame, will they not serve to make anybody sure of it?
And you, Maloyer & Co., do you not feel yourselves to be particles of the
“masses of the people”? Do you not feel yourselves participants (and not
mere onlookers)? Are you not conscious of being makers of the general mood, of
being those who make for progress?

Thebourgeoisie “cannot say for sure” that the proletariat will go
forward from defeat to victory. The proletariat is sure that the
bourgeoisie will distinguish itself by identical baseness both in the defeats
and in the victories of the people in the struggle for freedom.

Let Social Democrats who are given to vacillation and doubt learn from the
examples of the Malovers, learn to understand the reactionary nature
today, not only of talk about the “one-sided hostile” stand taken by
the Social-Democrats towards the liberals, but also of talk about a
“nationwide” revolution (headed by the Malovers!?).

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Notes:
[1]
Malover —pseudonym of the Cadet
V. Portugalov. The Russian word “malover” means “one of little
faith”.