Date: 1908-11-01
Source: ru:PSS/v17; en:CW/CW15

The question "The Present Situation and the Tasks of the Party" has been placed on the agenda of the upcoming All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP. The organizations of our party have already begun – Moscow and St. Petersburg are ahead of all other centers in this regard – to systematically discuss this question, which undoubtedly has extremely important significance.

The period of lull in the liberation movement, the unbridled reaction, betrayals, and despondency in the camp of democracy, the crisis and partial disintegration of Social-Democratic organizations that we are experiencing, makes it especially urgent to take into account, first of all, the main lessons of the first campaign of our revolution. We are speaking not about tactical lessons in the narrow sense of the word, but first about the general lessons of the revolution, and accordingly our first question will be as follows: what are the objective changes that have taken place in the class alignment and in the political balance of forces in Russia from 1904 to 1908? The main changes can be reduced, in our view, to the following five: 1) The agrarian policy of the autocracy in the peasant question has shifted fundamentally and strongly; the support and strengthening of the old commune has been replaced by a policy of accelerated police destruction and plunder of it. 2) The representation of the Black-Hundred nobility and the big bourgeoisie has made a huge step forward: instead of the former local elected committees of nobles and merchants, instead of the scattered and random attempts at their all-Russian representation, there is a single representative body – the State Duma, in which these classes are assured of complete dominance. The representation of the liberal professions – not to mention the peasantry and the proletariat – has been reduced to the role of an appendage and a tag in this supposedly "constitutional" institution, which is supposed to strengthen the autocracy. 3) For the first time in Russia, classes have demarcated and defined themselves in open political struggle during this time: the political parties that now exist openly and secretly (or rather: half-secretly, for there is no such thing as "secret" parties after the revolution in Russia) express with unprecedented accuracy the interests and points of view of the classes, which in three years have matured a hundred times more than in the previous half-century. The Black-Hundred nobility, the national-"liberal" bourgeoisie, the petty-bourgeois democracy (the Trudoviks with their small left wing of Socialist-Revolutionaries) and the proletarian Social-Democracy have all completed the "womb" period of their development during this time and have determined for many, many years to come – not in words, but in facts and actions of the masses – their nature. 4) What before the revolution was called the liberal and liberal-Narodnik "society" or the "enlightened" part and representative of the "nation" in general, the broad mass of well-to-do, noble, intellectual "opposition," which seemed to be something whole, homogeneous, permeating the zemstvos, universities, the entire "respectable" press, etc., etc. – all this manifested itself in the revolution as ideologists and supporters of the bourgeoisie, all this took an obviously counter-revolutionary position in relation to the mass struggle of the socialist proletariat and the democratic peasantry. The counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie was born and is growing. This fact does not cease to be a fact because it is denied by the "progressive" legal press, or because it is hushed up and not understood by our opportunists, the Mensheviks. 5) Millions of people have gained practical experience in the most diverse forms of truly mass and directly revolutionary struggle, up to the "general strike," the expulsion of landowners, the burning of their estates, and open armed uprising. Someone who was already a revolutionary or a conscious worker before the revolution cannot immediately imagine in all its enormous significance this fact, which has made the most fundamental change in a whole series of previous ideas about the course of development of the political crisis, about the pace of this development, about the dialectic of history practically created by the masses. Taking this experience into account by the masses is an invisible, difficult, and slow process, playing a much more important role than many phenomena on the surface of the political life of the state, which tempt infants not only of infantile age in politics, but sometimes also of very "decent" age. The leading role of the proletarian masses in the entire revolution and in all fields of struggle, starting from demonstrations, continuing with the uprising, and ending (in chronological order) with "parliamentary" activity, has become clearly visible to everyone during this period, taken as a whole.

Such are the objective changes that have dug a chasm between pre-October and contemporary Russia. Such are the results of three years of the richest period in our history in terms of its content – of course, results that are, so to speak, summary, insofar as it is possible to outline the most important and essential things in a few words. Let us now look at the conclusions in the field of tactics to which these results oblige us.

The change in the agrarian policy of the autocracy is of extremely great importance for a "peasant" country like Russia. This change is not accidental, not a fluctuation in the course of ministries, not an invention of the bureaucracy. No, this is the deepest "shift" towards agrarian Bonapartism, towards a liberal (in the economic sense of the word, i.e. = bourgeois) policy in the field of peasant land relations. Bonapartism is the maneuvering of a monarchy that has lost its old, patriarchal or feudal, simple and solid support – a monarchy that is forced to equilibrate in order not to fall, to flirt in order to rule, to bribe in order to please, to fraternize with the dregs of society, with outright thieves and swindlers, in order to hold on not only with the bayonet. Bonapartism is an objectively inevitable evolution of the monarchy in any bourgeois country, traced by Marx and Engels in a whole series of facts of modern European history. And the agrarian Bonapartism of Stolypin, fully consciously and unshakably firmly supported on this point by both the Black-Hundred landowners and the Octobrist bourgeoisie – could not even have been born, let alone lasted for two years now, if the commune itself in Russia had not developed capitalistically, if elements had not constantly formed within the commune with which the autocracy could begin to flirt, to whom it could say: "enrich yourselves!", "plunder the commune, but support me!". Therefore, any assessment of Stolypin's agrarian policy that does not take into account, on the one hand, its Bonapartist methods, and on the other hand, its bourgeois (= liberal) essence, would be an unconditional mistake.

For example, our liberals express their vague awareness that Stolypin's agrarian policy is Bonapartism by attacking its police character, the idiotic bureaucratic interference in peasant life, etc., etc. But when the Constitutional-Democrats lament the violent breaking of the "primordial" foundations of our rural life, they become reactionary whiners. Without a violent, without a revolutionary breaking of the foundations of the old Russian village, there can be no development of Russia. The struggle is going on – although very, very many of its participants are not aware of this – only over whether this violence will be the violence of the landlord monarchy over the peasants or the violence of the peasant republic over the landlords. In both cases, a bourgeois, and not any other, agrarian revolution is inevitable in Russia, but in the first case it is slow and painful, in the second it is fast, broad, and free. The struggle of the workers' party for this second path is expressed and recognized in our agrarian program – not in that part of it where the absurd "municipalization" is put forward, but in that part where it speaks of the confiscation of all landlord lands. After the experience of three years, only among the Mensheviks can there still be people who do not see the connection between the struggle for this confiscation and the struggle for a republic. Stolypin's agrarian policy, if it lasted for a very, very long time, if it completely recreated all rural land relations in a purely bourgeois way, could force us to abandon any agrarian program in bourgeois society (so far, even the Mensheviks and even the Cherevanins among the Mensheviks have not gone so far as to renounce our agrarian program). But Stolypin's policy can in no way induce us now to change our tactics. Once the program states "confiscation of all landlord lands," only infants can fail to notice the revolutionary (in the direct and narrow sense of the word) tactics that follow from this. And it would be wrong to put the question like this: if Stolypin's policy is suffering a "crash," then it means that an upsurge is near, and vice versa. The collapse of Bonapartist methods is not yet the collapse of the policy of kulak ruin of the commune. And, conversely, Stolypin's "success" in the countryside now and in the near future will essentially do more to inflame the struggle within the peasantry than to extinguish it, for it is impossible to achieve the "goal" – i.e., the final and complete consolidation of a purely bourgeois peasant economy – except by a long and very long path. Stolypin's "success" in the coming years could lead at best to the separation of a layer of consciously counter-revolutionary, Octobrist peasants, but precisely such a transformation of the well-to-do minority into a politically conscious united force would inevitably mean a gigantic impetus to the development of political consciousness and unification against such a minority of the democratic mass. We, the Social-Democrats, could not wish for anything better than the transformation of the spontaneous, fragmented, blind struggle of the "world-eaters" and the "society" into a conscious and open struggle of the Octobrists and the Trudoviks.

Let us move on to the question of the Duma. Undoubtedly, this Black-Hundred-"constitutional" institution represents exactly the same development of the absolute monarchy along the path of Bonapartism. All those features of Bonapartism that we noted above are quite clearly revealed both in the current electoral law, and in the falsified majority of Black-Hundreds plus Octobrists, and in the game of imitating Europe, and in the pursuit of loans, the expenditure of which is supposedly controlled by "representatives of the people," and in the complete ignoring by the autocracy in its business policy of all debates and decisions of the Duma. The contradiction between the Black-Hundred autocracy, which in fact completely dominates, and the ostentatious appearance of a bourgeois "constitution" is becoming clearer and clearer, bringing with it elements of a new revolutionary crisis. The autocracy wanted to cover up, dress up, and adorn itself with the help of the Duma; in reality, the Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma, with each day of its existence, increasingly reveals, exposes, and bares the true character of our state power, its real class supports, and its Bonapartism. One cannot fail to recall in this connection Engels' remarkably profound indication (in a letter to Bernstein of August 27, 1883) of the significance of the transition from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy. While liberals in general and the Russian Constitutional-Democrats in particular see in such a transition a manifestation of the notorious "peaceful" progress and a guarantee of such, Engels pointed to the historical role of the constitutional monarchy as a form of state that facilitates the decisive struggle of the feudal lords and the bourgeoisie. "Just as," Engels wrote, "the struggle of feudalism with the bourgeoisie could not be brought to a decisive end in the old absolute monarchy, but only in the constitutional monarchy (England, France 1789-1792 and 1815-1830), so the struggle of the bourgeoisie with the proletariat can be brought to a decisive end only in the republic." Engels here calls constitutional monarchy, among other things, France in 1816, when the famous Chambre introuvable, a Black-Hundred, counter-revolutionary chamber, raged and raved in support of the white terror against the revolution, probably no less than our Third Duma. What does this mean? Does Engels really recognize as constitutional institutions the reactionary assemblies of representatives of landowners and capitalists who support absolutism in the struggle against the revolution? No. It means that there are historical conditions when institutions that falsify the constitution ignite the struggle for a real constitution and serve as a stage in the development of new revolutionary crises. In the first campaign of our revolution, the majority of the population still believed in the possibility of reconciling a real constitution with the autocracy; the Cadets built their entire policy on systematically supporting this belief among the people, and the Trudoviks at least half followed the Cadets on this point. Now the autocracy, with its Third Duma, shows the people in practice what kind of "constitution" it can "reconcile" itself with, thereby bringing closer a broader and more decisive struggle against the autocracy.

It follows from this, among other things, that replacing our old slogan "Down with the autocracy" with the slogan "Down with the Third Duma" would be completely wrong. Under what conditions could such a slogan as "Down with the Duma" gain significance? Let's say we have a liberal, reformist, conciliatory Duma in an era of the most acute revolutionary crisis, which has already matured to direct civil war. It is quite possible that the slogan at such a moment could become "Down with the Duma," i.e., down with peaceful negotiations with the Tsar, down with the deceptive institution of "peace," let us call for a direct onslaught. Let's say, on the contrary, that we have an arch-reactionary Duma, elected on the basis of an outdated electoral law, and the absence of an acute revolutionary crisis in the country; the slogan "Down with the Duma" could then become the slogan of the struggle for electoral reform. We see nothing similar to either case in our country. The Third Duma is not conciliatory, but directly counter-revolutionary, not covering up the autocracy, but exposing it, not playing an independent role in any respect: no one and nowhere expects progressive reforms from it; no one thinks that the source of the real power and strength of Tsarism lies in this assembly of bison. Everyone agrees that Tsarism does not rely on it, but uses it – that Tsarism can pursue its entire current policy both with a postponement of the convocation of such a Duma (similar to the "postponement" of the convocation of parliament by Turkey in 1878) and with its replacement by a "Zemsky Sobor" or something similar, etc. The slogan "Down with the Duma" would mean focusing the main struggle precisely on an institution that is not independent, not decisive, and does not play the most important role. Such a slogan is incorrect. We must retain the old slogan "Down with the autocracy" and "Long live the Constituent Assembly," for it is precisely the autocracy that continues to be the real power, the real support and bulwark of reaction. The fall of the autocracy inevitably means the elimination (and moreover, the revolutionary elimination) of the Third Duma, as one of the institutions of Tsarism; the fall of the Third Duma, taken by itself, would mean either a new adventure of the same autocracy, or an attempt at reform, a deceptive and visible reform only, undertaken by the same autocracy.

Let's go further. We have seen that the class nature of political parties was determined during the three years of the first revolutionary campaign with remarkable force and clarity. It follows from this that in all discussions about the current balance of political forces, about the direction of change in this balance, etc., it is necessary to take into account these concrete data of historical experience, and not abstract "general reasoning." The entire history of European states testifies that it is precisely in periods of direct revolutionary struggle that such deep and lasting foundations of class groupings and divisions into large political parties are laid, which then last even during the longest periods of stagnation. Individual parties may hide underground, not make themselves known, disappear from the political stage, but at the slightest revival, the main political forces will inevitably reappear, perhaps in a changed form, but necessarily with the same character and direction of activity, until the objective tasks of the revolution that suffered one defeat or another are resolved. Therefore, it would be, for example, the greatest shortsightedness to assume that since there are no Trudovik organizations in the localities, and the Trudovik group in the Third Duma is distinguished by particular confusion and helplessness, therefore the masses of the democratic peasantry have already completely scattered and do not play a significant role in the process of the growth of a new revolutionary crisis. Such a view is worthy only of the Mensheviks, who are increasingly sliding into the most base "parliamentary cretinism" (take at least their truly shameful, renegade attacks against the illegal party organization). Marxists must know that the conditions of representation not only in our Black-Hundred Duma, but even in the most ideal bourgeois parliament, will always create an artificial discrepancy between the real strength of various classes and its reflection in the representative institution. For example, the liberal-bourgeois intelligentsia always and everywhere seems in parliaments a hundred times stronger than it really is (and in our revolution, the opportunist Social-Democrats took the Cadets for what they seem to be), and, conversely, very broad democratic strata of the petty bourgeoisie (urban – in the era of bourgeois revolutions of 1848, rural – in our country) often manifest themselves as an extremely important factor in the open struggle of the masses, being completely insignificant from the point of view of their representation in parliaments.

Our peasantry entered the revolution immeasurably less conscious than the liberal bourgeois, on the one hand, and the socialist proletariat, on the other. Therefore, it has taken out of the revolution the most difficult, but useful disappointments, the most bitter, but saving lessons. It is quite natural that it digests these lessons especially difficultly and especially slowly. It is quite natural that many "radicals" from the intelligentsia will lose patience in this process, waving their hands at everything, and some petty bourgeois from the Social-Democrats, who have a contemptuous grimace on their faces when mentioning some kind of peasant democracy, but their mouths water at the mere sight of "enlightened" liberals. But the conscious proletariat will not so easily erase from its memory what it saw and in what it participated in the autumn and winter of 1905. And, taking into account the balance of forces in our revolution, we must know that an obligatory sign of a truly broad social upsurge, of a truly approaching revolutionary crisis, will inevitably be a movement in the peasantry in present-day Russia.

The liberal bourgeoisie has embarked on a counter-revolutionary path in our country. Only the brave Cherevanins and the cowardly editors of "Golos S.-D." who renounce their like-minded and comrade-in-arms can deny this. But if someone were to conclude from this counter-revolutionary nature of the bourgeois liberals that their opposition and discontent, their conflicts with the Black-Hundred landowners, or in general the competition and struggle of various factions of the bourgeoisie among themselves cannot have any significance in the process of the growth of a new upsurge, then this would be a huge mistake and a real Menshevism inside out. The experience of the Russian revolution, as well as the experience of other countries, irrefutably testifies that when there are objective conditions for a deep political crisis, even the smallest and most seemingly remote conflicts from the real center of the revolution can have the most serious significance, as a pretext, as a drop that overflows the cup, as the beginning of a turn in mood, etc. Let us recall that the zemstvo campaign and the petitions of the liberals in 1904 were the forerunners of such a peculiar and purely proletarian "petition" as January 9th. The Bolsheviks did not argue against the fact that the zemstvo campaign should be used for proletarian demonstrations, but against the fact that these demonstrations were wanted (by our Mensheviks) to be limited to the halls of zemstvo assemblies, against the fact that demonstrations before the zemstvo members were declared the highest form of demonstrations, against the fact that the plans for demonstrations were drawn up from the angle of striving not to frighten the liberals. Another example: student movements. In a country experiencing an era of bourgeois-democratic revolution, under conditions of progressive accumulation of combustible material, these movements can easily turn out to be the beginning of events that go immeasurably further than a small and private conflict over the conduct of affairs in one branch of state administration. Of course, Social-Democracy, pursuing an independent class policy of the proletariat, will never adapt itself either to the student struggle, or to new zemstvo congresses, or to the way the question is posed by the quarreling factions of the bourgeoisie, will never attach self-sufficient significance to this family quarrel, etc. But precisely the party of Social-Democrats is the party of the class leading in the entire liberation struggle, it is absolutely obliged to use all and any conflicts, to ignite them, to expand their significance, to link with them its agitation for revolutionary slogans, to carry the news of these conflicts to the broad masses, to encourage them to independent and open actions with their own demands, etc. In France after 1793, a counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie was born and began to grow steadily, but, nevertheless, the conflicts and struggle of its various factions for a hundred years after that continued in one form or another to serve as pretexts for new revolutions, in which the proletariat invariably played the role of the main driving force and which it brought to the conquest of the republic.

Let us now consider the question of the conditions for the offensive struggle of this leading and advanced class in our bourgeois-democratic revolution, the proletariat. The Moscow comrades, discussing this question, quite rightly emphasized the fundamental importance of the industrial crisis. They collected extremely interesting material regarding this crisis, took into account the significance of the struggle between Moscow and Lodz, and introduced a number of amendments to some of the ideas that had prevailed until now. It only remains to wish that this material does not wither away in the committees of the Moscow Committee or the Moscow Regional Committee, but is processed and published for discussion by the entire party. We, for our part, will limit ourselves to a few remarks on the formulation of the question. The direction in which the crisis is acting is, among other things, controversial (by general admission, after a very brief and small revival, a severe depression bordering on crisis again reigns in our industry). Some say: an economically offensive struggle of the workers is still impossible, therefore, a close revolutionary upsurge is impossible. Others say: the impossibility of economic struggle pushes towards political struggle, and therefore a close revolutionary upsurge is inevitable.

We think that at the heart of the reasoning of both there is one inaccuracy, consisting in simplifying a complex question. Undoubtedly, a detailed study of the industrial crisis is of the utmost importance. But it is also certain that no data on the crisis, even ideally accurate, can essentially resolve the question for or against a close revolutionary upsurge, for this upsurge also depends on a thousand factors that cannot be taken into account in advance. Without the general soil of the agrarian crisis of the country and the depression in industry, deep political crises are impossible, this is indisputable. But once the general soil is present, it is still impossible to conclude from this whether the depression will for some time delay the mass struggle of the workers in general, or whether at a certain stage of events the same depression will push new masses and fresh forces into the political struggle. There can be only one way to resolve such a question: to carefully monitor the pulse of the entire political life in the country and, in particular, the state of the movement and mood of the broad proletarian masses. Recently, for example, a number of reports from party workers from various parts of Russia, from industrial and agricultural areas, testify to an undoubted revival of mood, to an influx of new forces, to an increased interest in agitation, etc. Comparing this with the beginning of mass student unrest, on the one hand, and attempts to revive zemstvo congresses, on the other, we can state a certain turn, something that destroys the complete stagnation of the last year and a half. How strong this turn is, whether it is the harbinger of a new era of open struggle, etc. – facts will show. All that we can do now, all that we must do in any case, is to strain our forces to strengthen the illegal party organization and to decuple agitation among the proletarian masses. Only agitation is able to show on a broad scale the real mood of the masses, only agitation creates a close interaction between the party and the entire working class, only the use for the purposes of political agitation of every strike, and every major event or issue of working life, all conflicts within the ruling classes or one or another faction of these classes with the autocracy, and every speech by the Social-Democrats in the Duma, and every new manifestation of the counter-revolutionary policy of the government, etc. – only this work will close the ranks of the revolutionary proletariat again, will give unmistakable material for judging the speed of maturation of conditions for new and more decisive battles.

Let us summarize. A review of the results of the revolution and the conditions of the current moment clearly shows that the objective tasks of the revolution have not been resolved. The shift towards Bonapartism and the agrarian policy of the autocracy and its general policy both in the Duma and with the help of the Duma, only exacerbates and expands the contradiction between the Black-Hundred autocracy and the domination of the "wild landowner," on the one hand, and the needs of the economic and social development of the entire country, on the other. The police-kulak campaign against the rural mass exacerbates the struggle within it and makes this struggle politically conscious, bringing, so to speak, the struggle with the autocracy closer to the everyday and pressing issues of each village. Defending revolutionary-democratic demands in the agrarian question (confiscation of all landlord lands) is especially necessary at such a moment on the part of Social-Democracy. The Black-Hundred Octobrist Duma, showing clearly and in practice what kind of "constitution" the autocracy can "reconcile" itself with, and not resolving a single issue even within the narrowest limits of ensuring the needs of the economic development of the country, turns the struggle "for a constitution" into a revolutionary struggle against the autocracy; private conflicts of individual factions of the bourgeoisie among themselves and with the government under these conditions lead precisely to the approach of such a struggle. The impoverishment of the countryside, the depression in industry, the general awareness of the hopelessness of the given political situation and the hopelessness of the notorious "peaceful-constitutional" path give rise to new and new elements of the revolutionary crisis. Our task now is not to artificially compose some new slogans (like the slogan: "Down with the Duma!" instead of: "Down with the autocracy!"), but to strengthen the illegal party organization (contrary to the reactionary howling of the Mensheviks, who are burying it) and to develop broad revolutionary-Social-Democratic agitation, which will unite the party with the masses of the proletariat and mobilize these masses.

"Proletary" No. 38, (14) November 1, 1908

Printed according to the text of the newspaper "Proletary"