V. I.

Lenin

We have often had occasion during the past year (1908) to
discuss the current situation and trends among the bourgeois democrats in
Russia. We have noted the attempts made with the aid of the Trudoviks to
restore the Osvobozhdeniye League ( Proletary , No. 32 [1]

):

we have described the democratic stand taken by the peasantry and their
representatives on the agrarian and other questions ( Proletary ,
Nos. 21 and

40 [2]

);

and we have shown by examples quoted from Revolutsionnaya Mysl the
amazingly shallow thinking of the Socialist-Revolutionary group, which
imagines that it is ultra-revolutionary ( Proletary , No. 32). To
make the picture complete we must now examine the official publications of
the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. In 1908, four issues of Znamya Truda were published (Nos. 9 to 13, No. 10–11 being a double number [3]

),

and a special Report from the Central Committee of the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party on the First Party Conference and the fourth
meeting of the Party Council, both held abroad last August. Let us examine
this material.

“ The party,” say the S.R. Central Committee in their Report, “was
faced with the task of summing up the results of that period of the great
Russian revolution, now over, during which the town proletariat was the
principal and often almost the sole actor.” That is very well said. It is a true
statement of the case most unusual for the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Five
lines further down, however, we read:

“The triumph of the counter-revolution has merely strikingly confirmed the
truth, which we never doubted from the very outset, that a successful
Russian revolution will either be the work of a mighty alliance of the
forces of the town proletariat and those of the toiling peasantry, or will
not be brought about at all. So far this alliance has existed only as an
idea, embodied in the Socialist-Revolutionary programme which was brought
into being by the realities of Russian life. It scarcely began to come into
existence. Its rebirth is a matter for the future....”

Now see how long the Socialist-Revolutionaries were able to stick to
the truth! Anyone who is in the slightest degree familiar with the
Socialist-Revolutionary and Social-Democratic programmes knows that they
differ radically in the following:

1) the Social-Democrats declared the Russian revolution to be a
bourgeois revolution; the Socialist-Revolutionaries denied this;

2) the Social-Democrats maintained that the proletariat and the peasantry
were distinct classes in capitalist (or semi-feudal, semi-capitalist) society; that the peasantry is a class of petty
proprietors that can “strike together” against the landlords and
the autocracy, “on the same side of the barricades” with the proletariat
in the bourgeois revolution, and that in this revolution it can,
in certain cases, march in “alliance” with the proletariat, while
remaining quite a separate class of capitalist society. The
Socialist-Revolutionaries denied this. The main idea in their
programme was not that an “alliance of the forces” of the proletariat and
the peasantry was necessary, but that there was no class gulf
between them, that no class distinction should be drawn between them, and
that the Social-Democratic idea concerning the petty-bourgeois character of
the peasantry, as distinct from the proletariat, is utterly false.

And now the Socialist-Revolutionaries are trying to slur over these two
radical differences between the Social-Democrat and the
Socialist-Revolutionary programmes with glib specious phrases! From the way
these gentlemen sum up the revolution one would think that there had been
no

revolution and no Socialist-Revolutionary programme. But, my dear sirs,
there was a Socialist-Revolutionary programme, and the whole difference
between it and the programme of the Social-Democrats was that the
fundamental, theoretical section of the former was based on the denial of
the petty-bourgeois character of the peasantry, the denial of any class
distinction between. the peasantry and the proletariat. . There was. a
revolution, my dear sirs, and the chief lesson it taught was that in
their. open mass actions the peasantry displayed a class nature of their
own, distinct from that of the proletariat, and proved themselves to be
petty-bourgeois.

You pretend that you have not noticed this. You do see it, but are
merely trying to ignore an unpleasant fact revealed by the revolution. You
acted, not “in alliance” with the Trudoviks, but completely merged with
them—and this at crucial moments when the open revolution reached its
climax—the autumn of 1905 and the summer of 1906. The legal organs of the
press at that time were Socialist-Revolutionary-Trudovik organs. Even when
the Trudovik and Popular Socialist groups were formed, you were not in
alliance, but in a bloc, he., practically merged with them in the elections
to the Second Duma and in the Second Duma itself. Unlike the programme of
the Trudoviks and Popular Socialists, your own programme suffered defeat in all the open and truly mass actions of the representatives
of the peasantry. both in the First and in the Second Dumas the
overwhelming majority of the peasant deputies adopted the agrarian
programme of the Trudoviks and not of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries.. The Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves,, in
their purely Socialist-Revolutionary publications, from the end of 1906
onwards, were obliged to admit that as a political trend the Trudoviks were
petty-bourgeois , that underlying this trend were the “private-property instincts” of small proprietors (see the articles
written by Mr. Vikhlayev and other Socialist-Revolutionaries against the
Popular Socialists).

The question arises, whom do the Socialist-Revolutionaries wish to
deceive by “summing up the results” of the revolution and
concealing the fundamental and most important result in the
process?

Why did the peasantry during the revolution form into a separate
political party (or group)—the Trudovik party? Why did the Trudoviks and
not the Socialist-Revolutionaries become the party of the peasant masses
during the revolution? If the Socialist-Revolutionaries think this was
accidental, it’s no good talking about either results or programmes, for
then instead o! results and programmes we get chaos. If it was not
accidental, but a result of the fundamental economic relations in modern
society, then the correctness of the principal and cardinal point in the
programme of the Russian Social-Democrats has been proved by history . The revolution has drawn in practice the class distinction
between the peasantry and the proletariat that we Social-Democrats have
always drawn in theory. The revolution has proved conclusively that a
party, which aspires to be a mass party, a class party, in Russia, must
either be Social-Democratic or Trudovik; for it is these,
and only these, two trends that the masses themselves clearly marked out by
their open actions during the most important and crucial moments. As the
events of 1905-07 have proved, intermediate groups were never able to merge
with the masses at any time or on any issue. And this also proved the
bourgeois character of our revolution. Not a single historian, not a single
sane politician, can now deny that the political forces in Russia are
divided primarily between the socialist proletariat and the petty-bourgeois
democratic peasantry.

“ The alliance of the forces of the town proletariat and those of the
toiling peasantry ... has so far existed only as an idea.” This is an
utterly confused and false phrase. The alliance, of proletarian and peasant
forces has not been merely an “idea”, nor did it “scarcely begin to come
into existence”; it was a characteristic feature of the whole of the first
period of the Russian revolution, of all the great events of 1905-07. The
October strike and the December insurrection on the one hand, the local
peasant risings and the mutinies of soldiers and sailors on the other,
represented that very “alliance of the forces” of the proletariat and the
peasantry. It was unorganised, inchoate, often unconscious. The forces were
inadequately organised, dispersed, without a central leadership that was
really capable of leading, and so forth. But it was undoubtedly an “alliance of the forces” of the
proletariat and the peasantry, the main forces which breached the ramparts
of the old autocracy. Unless this fact is understood, it is impossible to
understand the “results” of the Russian revolution. The flaw in the
conclusion drawn by the Socialist-Revolutionaries is that they say “ trudovoye ” [4] instead of Trudovik peasantry. This slight, negligible difference,
a seemingly imperceptible difference, actually reveals the gulf that lies
between the pre-revolutionary dreams of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
the reality that the revolution finally brought to light.

The Socialist-Revolutionaries have always used the term
trudovoye peasantry. The revolution revealed the political
physiognomy of the present-day Russian peasantry and has proved it to be a
Trudovik trend. In that case the Socialist-Revolutionaries were
right, you will say? That is not so. History in its irony has preserved
and perpetuated the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ term , but gave it
the connotation that was predicted by the Social-Democrats. On the
moot question as to the petty-bourgeois nature of the labouring peasantry,
the history of the revolution has shared the honours between us and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries as follows: to them it gave the word and
to us the substance . The labouring peasants, whom the
Socialist-Revolutionaries lauded to the skies before the revolution, proved
during the revolution to be such Trudoviks that the
Socialist-Revolutionaries had to disown them! And we
Social-Democrats can and must now prove t.hat the peasantry is
petty-bourgeois not only by using the analysis given in Marx’s

Capital , [7] not only by quotations from the Erfurt

Programme, [8] not only by facts and figures from the economic
researches of the Narodniks and from Zemstvo statistics, but by the
behaviour of the peasantry in the Russian revolution in general and the
facts concerning the composition and activities of the Trudoviks
in particular.

No. We have nothing to complain of the way history has shared the
honours between us and the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

Znamya Truda , No. 13, p. 3, says: “Had the otzovists succeeded in turning the Social-Democrats back to their extreme militant
principles, we would have lost some useful material for polemics, but we
would have acquired an ally in consistent militant tactics.” And a couple
of lines ear lier it says: “The struggle for freedom and socialism would
only stand to gain if the Left wing took the lead both among the Cadets and
among the Social-Democrats."

Very good, Messieurs Socialist-Revolutionaries! You want to pay
compliments to our “otzovists” and “Lefts”. Allow us, then, to return
compliment for compliment. Permit us, too, to avail ourselves of “useful
material for polemics”.

“ Let a number of parties, including the Cadets, Trudoviks and
Social-Democrats, support the fiction that a constitutional system exists
by their participation in the pasteboard travesty of a Duma” ( Znamya Truda , ibid.).

So the Third Duma is a pasteboard travesty. This phrase alone is more
than sufficient to show the abysmal ignorance of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries. Most esteemed directors of the central organ of
the Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Third Duma is much less a
pasteboard institution than the First and the Second Dumas were! Your
failure to grasp this simple fact only confirms the correctness of what
Proletary said about you in its article “Parliamentary Cretinism
Inside Out”. You are repeating word for word the common delusion of the
vulgar bourgeois democrats, who try to persuade themselves and others that
bad, reactionary Dumas are pasteboard institutions, while good, progressive
Dumas are not.

As a matter of fact, the First and Second Dumas were pasteboard swords
in the hands of the liberal-bourgeois intellectuals who wanted to scare the
autocracy a little with the threat of revolution. The Third Duma is a real,
not a pasteboard, sword in the hands of the autocracy and the
counter-revolution. The First and Second Dumas were pasteboard Dumas
because their decisions did not reflect the actual balance of material
forces in the struggle of the classes in society, and were mere hollow
words. The importance of these two Dumas lay in the fact that behind the
front row of Cadet constitutional buffoons were clearly seen the real representatives of that democratic peasantry and that socialist
proletariat who were really making the revolution, fighting the enemy in an
open mass struggle, but had not yet been able to crush him. The Third Duma
is not a paste board Duma, for the simple reason that its decisions reflect
the actual balance of material forces brought about by the temporary
victory of the counter-revolution and are, there fore, not mere words but
words converted into action. The importance of this Duma lies in the fact
that it has given all the politically undeveloped elements of the people an
object-lesson, showing the relation between representative institutions and
the actual possession of state power. Representative institutions, even the
most “progressive”, are doomed to remain pasteboard institutions so long
as the classes represented in them do not possess real state
power. Representative institutions, however reactionary they may be, are
not pasteboard if the classes represented in them do possess real state
power.

To call the Third Duma a pasteboard travesty is an example of the
extreme shallowness and extravagant revolutionary phrase-mongering that
have so long been the specific distinguishing feature, and the chief
quality of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.

Let us proceed. Is it true that the Third Duma is “the fiction of a
constitutional system"? No, it is not. Only people ignorant of the
elementary principles taught by Lassalle nearly half a century ago could
say a thing like that in an official party paper. What does a constitution
mean, most worthy members of that elementary propaganda circle known as the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party? Does it mean that more “freedom” and
better conditions of life exist for the “toiling people” with a
constitution than with out one? No, only the vulgar democrats think
that. The essence of a constitution is that the fundamental laws of the
state in general, and the laws governing elections to and the powers of the
representative institutions, etc., express the actual relation of forces in
the class struggle. A constitution is fictitious when law and reality
diverge; it is not fictitious when they coincide. The constitution of
Russia in the period of the Third Duma is less fictitious than it
was in the periods of the First and Second Dumas. If this conclusion arouses your ire, Messieurs “Socialists"-"Revolutionaries”, it
is because you do not understand what a constitution is, and cannot tell
the difference between a fictitious and a class constitution. A
constitution can be a Black-Hundred, landlords’ and reactionary
constitution, and yet be less fictitious than some “liberal”
constitutions.

The trouble with the Socialist-Revolutionaries is that they are
ignorant of Marx’s historical materialism and Marx’s dialectical method;
they are wholly under the spell of vulgar bourgeois-democratic ideas. For
them a constitution is. not a new field, a new form of the class struggle,
but an abstract blessing like the “legality”,., the “law and order”,
the “general good” of the liberal professors, and so on and so forth. In
reality autocracy, constitutional monarchy and republic are merely
different forms of class struggle; and the dialectics of history are such
that each of these forms passes through different stages of development of
its class content, and the transition from one form to another does not (in
itself) at all eliminate the rule of the former exploiting, classes under
the new integument. For instance, the Russian autocracy of the seventeenth
century with its Boyar Council and boyar aristocracy bears no re semblance
to the autocracy of the eighteenth century with its bureaucracy, its ranks
and orders of society, and its occasional periods of “enlightened
absolutism”; while both differ sharply from the autocracy of the
nineteenth century, which was compelled to emancipate the peasants"from
above”, although pauperising them in the process, paving the way for
capitalism, introducing the principle of local representative institutions
for the bourgeoisie. By the twentieth century this last form of
semi-feudal, semi-patriarchal absolutism had also become obsolete. Owing to
the growth of capitalism and the increase in the power of the bourgeoisie,
etc., it became necessary to introduce representative institutions on a
national scale. The revolutionary struggle of 1905 became particularly
acute around the issue as to who was to convene the first all-Russian
representative institution, and how. The December defeat settled this
question in favour of the old monarchy; and in these circumstances the
constitution could be nothing else than a Black-Hundred and Octobrist one.

In a new field, under institutions of the Bonapartist monarchy, at a
higher stage of political development, the struggle is again beginning with
the effort to overthrow the old enemy, the Black-Hundred monarchy. Can a
socialist party refuse to make use in this struggle of the new
representative institutions? The Socialist-Revolutionaries have not even
the wit to pose such a question: they make shift with phrases, and nothing
but phrases. Listen to this:

“ At the present time we have no parliamentary channels of struggle—we have only non-parliamentary channels. This
conviction must become deep-rooted everywhere, and we must relentlessly
fight every thing that prevents it from becoming so. Let us concentrate
on non-parliamentary means of struggle!"

This Socialist-Revolutionary argument is based on the celebrated
subjective method in sociology. Let the conviction become deep-rooted—and
the trick is done! It never occurs to the subjectivists that convictions as
to whether particular channels are available or not must be tested by
objective facts. But let us look at the Report and the resolutions of the
conference of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. We read:

“...The sombre lull of the hard times, or rather, the time of social
stagnation we are now passing through” (p. 4)... “the consolidation of
the reactionary social forces” ... “the fact that the energy of the
masses is shackled” ... “among the intellectuals, the most
impressionable section of the population, we see exhaustion, ideological
confusion and the ebb of forces from the revolutionary struggle” (p. 6),
and so on, and so forth. “In view of all this, the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party must ... (b) disapprove, for tactical reasons, of schemes for partial
mass actions which under present conditions may result in the fruitless
waste of popular energy” (p. 7).

Who are the “ we ” in “we have only non-parliamentary channels of struggle”? Obviously a handful of terrorists, for none of the
tirades quoted here contains even a hint of the mass struggle. “ The fact that the energy of the masses is shackled ”
... and “concentrate on non-parliamentary means of struggle”—this
simple contrast shows us yet once more how historically true it was to call the Socialist-Revolutionaries
revolutionary adventurists. [5]

Is it not adventurism for people to indulge in catchy phrases about
concentrating on means of struggle which they themselves admit the masses
are at present unable to apply? Is this not the old, old psychology of the
intellectual in despair?

“ Let us concentrate on non-parliamentary means of struggle.” This
slogan was correct in one of the most re markable periods of the Russian
revolution, the autumn of 1905. In repeating it uncritically at the present
juncture the Socialist-Revolutionaries are acting like the hero of the
popular fable who would persist in shouting the most inappropriate
greetings. You have not understood, my dear sirs, why the boycott
slogan was correct in the autumn of 1905; and in repeating it now,
uncritically, unthinkingly, like a catchword learned off by heart, you are
displaying, not revolutionariness, but just plain foolishness.

In the autumn of 1905 nobody said anything about “the fact that the
energy of the masses was shackled”. On the contrary, all parties agreed
that the energy of the masses was seething. At that moment, the old regime
offered a consultative parliament, obviously with the intention of
splitting these seething forces and appeasing them, if only for a
moment. At that time the slogan: “Concentrate on non-parliamentary means
of struggle”, was not the stock-phrase of a handful of ranters, but the
battle-cry of men who really were at the head of the masses, at the head of
millions of fighting workers and peasants. The fact that these millions
responded to the call proved that the slogan was objectively correct , and that it expressed not merely the “convictions” of a
handful of revolutionaries, but the actual situation, the temper and t.he
initiative of the masses. Only ridiculous pedlars of politics can repeat
this slogan and in the same breath say that “the energy of the masses is
shackled”.

And, since we have mentioned the ridiculous, we simply must quote the
following gem from Znamya Truda . “Let us leave it [the
government] tête-à-tête in the Duma with the Black
Hundreds and with the party that obeys the latest government order, [6] and take our word for it that if ever these spiders are capable of
devouring each other, this is the very situation in which they will do
so”.... This “take our word for it” is inimitable and positively disarms
an opponent. “Take our word for it”, reader, that the leading articles in
Znamya Truda are being written by a really sweet
Socialist-Revolutionary school miss, who sincerely believes that the
“spiders” will begin to “devour each other” if the opposition withdraws
from the Third Duma.

The clause concerning the Cadets in the resolution on our attitude
towards the non-proletarian parties adopted at the London Congress was most
severely criticised by the Mensheviks. Scarcely less severe was their
criticism of the clause which deals with the Narodnik or Trudovik
parties. The Mensheviks tried to prove that we were indulgent with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries, or were covering up certain sins which Marxists
had long ago proved they were guilty of, and so forth. There were two
reasons for the Mensheviks’ vehemence on these points. One of them was
their fundamental disagreement with us in our appraisal of the Russian
revolution. The Mensheviks insist that the proletariat must make the
revolution together with the Cadets, and not with the Trudovik peasantry
against the Cadets. On the other hand, the Mensheviks don’t understand that
the open action of the masses and classes in the revolution has changed the
situation and, in some cases, the character of the parties. Before the
revolution the Socialist-Revolutionaries were only a group of
intellectuals with Narodnik ideas. Would this description be correct after
the revolution, or even after 1906? Obviously not. Only those who have
learned nothing from the revolution, can uphold the old view formulated in
this way.

The revolution has proved that this group of intellectuals
with Narodnik ideas are the extreme Left wing of an exceedingly
broad and undoubtedly mass Narodnik or Trudovik trend, which expressed the
interests and point of view of the peasantry in the Russian bourgeois
revolution. This has been proved by the peasant insurrections, by the Peas ant Union, by the
Trudovik group in three Dumas, and by the free press of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Trudoviks. But the Mensheviks have failed
to understand this. They regard the Socialist-Revolutionaries from a
doctrinaire point of view: like doctrinaires, they see the flaws
in other people’s doctrines, but do not see what real interests of real
masses, which are a driving force in the bourgeois-democratic revolution,
are expressed or concealed by those doctrines. The Socialist-Revolutionary
doctrine is pernicious, fallacious, reactionary, adventurist, pettybourgeois—cry the Mensheviks. Not one step further, not one word more;
all else is the work of the devil.

Now that is where your mistake begins, we say to the
Mensheviks. True, the Socialist-Revolutionary doctrine is pernicious,
fallacious, reactionary, adventurist and petty- bourgeois. But
these vices do not prevent this quasi-socialist doctrine from being the
ideological vestments of a really revolutionary—and not
compromising—bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in Russia. For the
Socialist-Revolutionary doctrine is only a tiny rivulet in the Trudovik,
i. e., peas ant-democratic torrent. As soon as the open struggle of masses
and classes begins, events immediately compel us all, Bolsheviks and
Mensheviks alike, to recognise the fact, to admit the
Socialist-Revolutionaries to the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies, establish
closer relations with the Soviets of peasants’, soldiers’, post and
telegraph workers’, railwaymen’s, etc., deputies, enter into election
agreements with them against the liberals, vote with them in the Dumas
against the liberals, and so forth. The revolution has not refuted our
opinion of the. Socialist-Revolutionaries but corroborated it. But in doing
so it has not left the question in its previous shape and position; it has
elevated the question to an incomparably higher plane. Previously the
question was one only of comparing doctrines, ideologies and the policies
of various groups; now it is a matter of comparing the historical
activities of the classes and masses which follow this or a kindred
ideology. Formerly the question was, is what the Socialist-Revolutionaries
say correct? Are the tactics of this ideological organisation correct? Now
the question has arisen, what, in effect, is the behaviour of those sections of the people which consider themselves
supporters of the Socialist-Revolutionaries or of ideas akin to theirs (the
“labour principle”, etc.)? The Mensheviks’ error is due to their failure
to understand this change that the revolution has brought about.

But apart from the reasons mentioned, this change is important also
because it has strikingly revealed the relation of classes and parties. The
lesson our revolution teaches is that only parties which have a definite
class backing are strong and able to survive, whatever turn events may
take. Open political struggle compels parties to establish closer relations
with the masses, for without such ties parties are naught. Nominally, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries are independent of the
Trudoviks. Actually , however, during the revolution, they were
compelled to join forces with the Trudoviks, on pain of being
completely eliminated from the political arena. And it can safely be said
that at the next rise of the revolutionary tide the
Socialist-Revolutionaries (however loudly they may shout now about their
complete independence) will again be obliged to join forces with the
Trudoviks, or with similar organisations of the masses. The objective
conditions of social life and the class struggle are more powerful than
pious intentions and written programmes. From this aspect, which is the
only correct one, the present rift between the Trudoviks and the
Socialist-Revolutionaries is merely evidence of the disintegration of the
petty-bourgeois movement, of the lack of steadfastness on the part of the
petty bourgeoisie, who are unable to band together in adverse conditions
and who “drift apart”. On the one hand, we have the
Trudoviks—unorganised, unsteady, wavering, without any firm political
line in the Third Duma, but undoubtedly springing from the masses,
connected with the masses, expressing the needs of the masses. On the other
hand we have a handful of Socialist-Revolutionary “otzovists”, who have
no ties with the masses, who are frantic with despair, losing faith in the
mass struggle (see Revolutsionnaya Mysl ) and concentrating on
terrorism. The extreme opportunism of the Trudoviks (bearing in mind the
stand of the revolutionary peasantry) and the extreme, purely verbal and
meaningless, revolutionariness of the Socialist-Revolutionaries are two
limitations of one and the same petty-bourgeois trend, twin symptoms of the same “disease”,
viz., the instability of the petty bourgeoisie, their incapacity for
systematic, persevering, staunch and concert ed mass struggle.

These facts throw a new light on the present Duma tactics of the
revolutionary parties and, in particular, on the question of otzovism. “We
have no parliamentary channels of struggle,” cry the boastful
Socialist-Revolutionary intellectuals. Who are “we”, gentlemen?
Intellectuals without the masses have never had, and never will
have, either parliamentary or non-parliamentary means of struggle of any
importance. What masses followed or supported you yesterday, during the
revolution? The Trudovik peasantry. Is it true that they have “no
parliamentary means of struggle"? It is not true. Look at the debates on
the agrarian question in the Third Duma. You will find that on this issue
the Trudoviks undoubtedly voiced the needs of the masses. Consequently, the
smart phrase of the Socialist- Revolutionaries is nothing more than empty
phrase-mongering. In 1908, the peasant masses voiced their demands
from the rostrum of the Duma, and did not engage in “non-parliamentary”
action. That is a fact that no amount of “Left” screeching and the
shouting of Socialist-Revolutionary otzovist phrases can obscure.

What was the reason for this? Was it because the “conviction” that
non-parliamentary channels are preferable was shaken? Nonsense. The answer
is that in this period objective conditions had not yet caused widespread
unrest among the masses or stirred them to direct action. If that is the
case, and it certainly is so, it was the duty of every party that takes
itself seriously to avail itself of indirect channels. The
Socialist-Revolutionaries were unable to avail themselves of such
channels—and what happened? Only that the Trudoviks made a very bad job
of it, made a thou sand times more mistakes than they would have done had
t.hey been guided by a party; they stumbled and fell very often. Out of
touch with their class, with their masses, the Socialist-Revolutionaries
“concentrated” on phrase-mongering; for in practice they did
nothing at all in 1908 to promote “non-parliamentary means of
struggle”. This dissociation of the Socialist-Revolutionaries from their
social roots immediately begins to aggravate their besetting sin— extravagant,
unbridled boasting arid bragging, as a means of covering up their
impotence. “Our Part.y can congratulate itself,” we read on the first
page of the Report ... election to the conference by “really existing
[think of that now!] local party organisations” ... “unanimity of feeling
was reached on all questions”... “this was truly the attainment of
unanimity” (ibid.), and so on and so forth.

It is not true, gentlemen. With these loud words you are trying to
drown the voices of dissension which have been heard quite distinctly, both
in Revolutsionnaya Mysl (spring 1908) and in issue No. 13 of
Znamya Truda (November 1908). This ballyhoo is a sign of
weakness. The non-party opportunism of the Trudoviks and the “party”
boastfulness, isolation and phrase-mongering of the
Socialist-Revolutionaries are two sides of the same medal, two extremes in
the disintegration of one and the same petty-bourgeois stratum. It
was not for nothing that during the revolution, when the struggle brought
out all the different shadings, the Socialist-Revolutionaries tried, but
tried in vain, to conceal their wavering between the Popular Socialists and
the Maximalists.

The cart is in the ditch. The horses have slipped their harness. The
coachman sits astride a milestone with his cap at a jaunty angle, and
“congratulates” himself on his “unanimity”. Such is the picture of the
Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Such are the results of
Socialist-Revolutionary otzovism, which has recalled a handful of
intellectuals from the arduous, persevering, but the only really serious
and fruitful work of educating and organising the masses, in order that
they should indulge in loud and meaningless catchwords.

---
Notes:
[1]
See pp. 148–58 of this volume.— Ed .

[2]
See present edition, Vol. 13, pp. 440–46 and the present volume,
pp. 303–17.— Ed .

[3]
Unfortunately the editorial office of Proletary was unable to
obtain No. 12. — Lenin

[4]
i. e., labouring.— Ed .

[5]
See present edition, Vol. 6, pp. 186–207.— Ed .

[6]
Meaning the Octobrists.— Ed .

[7]
See K. Marx, Capital , Vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp. 763-93.

[8]
The Erfurt Programme —the programme of German
Social-Democracy adopted at the Congress in Erfurt in October 1891.