Date: 1911
Source: ru:PSS/v21

The motion submitted by the Social-Democratic faction of the Third Duma concerning the vile provocation perpetrated by the Okhrana—namely, the fabrication of a penal trial against Social-Democratic deputies of the Second Duma{26}—seems to mark a significant turning point not only in the overall trajectory of our party’s activities, but also in the broader state of democracy itself, and in the mood of the working masses.

For perhaps the very first time from the rostrum of the Third Duma, a resolute, revolutionary-toned protest was raised against the “masters of June 3rd”—a protest that found support across the entire opposition spectrum, right down to the most moderate, liberal-monarchist, Vekhovskaya “opposition of His Majesty,” i.e., the Kadet Party{27}, and even extending to the Progressives{28}. For perhaps the very first time during this period of turmoil—since 1908—the country began to see, to feel, to sense how, in response to the revolutionary protests of deputies representing the revolutionary proletariat in the Black Duma, the working masses were stirring, fermenting in the working-class districts of the capital; workers were organizing rallies (rallies once again!) featuring revolutionary Social-Democratic speeches (rallies at the Putilov, Cable, and other factories); and rumors and whispers began to circulate about a political mass strike (see the report from St. Petersburg in the Octoberist newspaper “Voice of Moscow”{29}, dated November 19).

To be sure, Social-Democratic deputies had staged revolutionary interventions in the Third Duma on numerous occasions before: our comrades in the Social-Democratic faction had repeatedly fulfilled their duty with distinction, speaking forthrightly, clearly, and sharply from the rostrum of that black-and-yellow Purishkevich-dominated “parliament” about the collapse of the monarchy, about the republic, about a second revolution. Yet the significance of this particular instance—where the Social-Democratic deputies of the Third Duma managed to rally the entire opposition behind them, where even the liberal-monarchist, “loyal,” “responsible,” and cowardly “Speech”{31} acknowledged the fraught nature of the situation, where agitation rippled through the masses in response to the Duma inquiry, and where censorship reports spoke of a “disturbed mood” among the peasantry—had never been seen before. Following last year’s “Muravlev” and “Tolstoy” demonstrations—and after the strikes of 1910 and 1911—and after last year’s student “affair”—this new development undoubtedly reinforced the conviction that the first phase of the Russian counterrevolution, the period of utter quiet, of deadening calm, of gallows and suicides, of unrestrained reaction and rampant, especially liberal, betrayal—this period had come to an end. A second phase in the history of the counterrevolution had begun: a phase in which the depths of despair, and often a “wild” fear, began to subside; in which consciousness—or, if not consciousness, then at least a growing sense—began to strengthen across the broadest and most diverse strata of society: that “things cannot go on like this,” that “change is needed, essential, inevitable”; in which a tendency emerged—a half-instinctive, yet all too often still unformed inclination—to lend support to protest and struggle.

Of course, it would be reckless to overstate the significance of these symptoms or to imagine that a genuine upsurge has already taken place. Such an upsurge has not yet arrived. The counterrevolution still bears those very traits that distinguished its first phase; yet the counterrevolution still reigns supreme, still deludes itself into believing it is unshakable. As the December 1908 resolution of the RSDLP put it, the “long-term task of educating, training, and organizing” the proletariat{32} remains squarely before us. But the onset of this turning point compels us to examine with particular care the Social-Democratic Party’s relations with other parties—and the immediate tasks facing the workers’ movement.

The “opposition of His Majesty,” including the Kadets and Progressives alike, seemed for a moment to acknowledge the hegemony of the Social Democrats and followed the workers’ deputies out of the Duma—out of the Duma created by the Black-Hundred, pogrom‑prone monarchy of Nicholas Romanov—departing, for the time being, amid the mocking antics of a majority that feared exposure of the truth about the provocation.

What does this mean? Have the Kadets ceased to be a counterrevolutionary party, or were they never such a party in the first place—as the opportunists of the Social-Democratic Party have long insisted? Should we set ourselves the task of “supporting” the Kadets and begin to ponder some slogan of “national opposition”?

From time immemorial, opponents of revolutionary Social Democracy have, one might say, resorted to the tactic of reducing its views to absurdity and painting caricatures of Marxism purely for the sake of polemical convenience. Thus, in the latter half of the 1890s, when Social Democracy was just beginning to emerge as a mass movement in Russia, the Narodniks depicted caricatural Marxism in the form of “stakhanovism.” And irony of history had it that caricatural Marxists were found—in the ranks of the “Economists.” The honor and good name of the Social Democrats could be saved only through relentless struggle against “Economism”{33}. Similarly, after the Revolution of 1905, when Bolshevism—by applying revolutionary Marxism to the specific conditions of the era—achieved a decisive victory in the workers’ movement—a victory now recognized even by its enemies—our adversaries portrayed caricatural Bolshevism in the guise of “boycottism,” “militant activism,” and the like. And once again, irony of history saw that caricatural Bolsheviks were found—in the ranks of the “Forwardists.”

These lessons of history should serve as a warning against the caricatural distortion of the revolutionary Social Democrats’ views on relations with the Kadets (see, for example, “Vpered,” No. 2). The Kadets are, without question, a counterrevolutionary party; only utterly ignorant or dishonest individuals could deny this—and it is the absolute duty of the Social Democrats to make this clear everywhere, including from the Duma rostrum. But the Kadets are a party of counterrevolutionary liberals, and their liberal character—just as emphasized in the resolution on non-proletarian parties adopted at the London Congress of the RSDLP in 1907{34}—obliges us to “make use” of their peculiar position, of the unique conflicts and frictions they generate. We must, for example, harness their feigned democratic rhetoric to preach true, consistent, selfless democracy.

Once counterrevolutionary liberalism has arisen in a country, democracy in general—and proletarian democracy in particular—cannot help but distinguish itself from it; it must never forget, for even a single moment, the boundaries that separate it from counterrevolutionary liberalism. Yet this in no way implies that it is permissible to equate counterrevolutionary liberalism with, say, counterrevolutionary feudalism—or that we may ignore their conflicts, turn away from them, or brush them aside. Counterrevolutionary liberalism, precisely because it is counterrevolutionary, can never play the role of hegemon in a victorious revolution; but precisely because it is liberalism, it will inevitably find itself in “conflictual” positions with the crown, with feudalism, with non-liberal bourgeoisie—sometimes reflecting, through its very conduct, the “leftist,” democratic mood in the country, or the beginnings of an upsurge, and so forth.

Let us recall the history of France: bourgeois liberalism already revealed its counterrevolutionary nature during the Great Revolution—see, for example, Kunov’s excellent book on revolutionary French journalism. But it was not only after the great bourgeois revolution that this became evident; even after the Revolution of 1848—when the counterrevolutionary tendencies of the liberals led to the massacre of workers by republican forces—these same liberals, in the final years of the Second Empire, in 1868–1870, expressed a shift in mood through their opposition, marking the beginning of a democratic, revolutionary, republican upsurge.

If the Kadets are now “falling in line to the left,” as the Octoberists taunt them{35}, then this is both a sign—and a consequence—of the fact that the country is “leaning left,” that it is stirring in the womb of mother Russia, preparing once again to emerge into the light of day: revolutionary democracy. The womb of Purishkevich-Romanov Russia is such that it cannot fail to give birth to revolutionary democracy!

What practical conclusion follows from this? The conclusion is that we must follow the growth of this new revolutionary democracy with the utmost care. Precisely because it is new—because it emerges after 1905 and after the counterrevolution, rather than before—it will likely grow in entirely new ways—and in order to engage with this new reality, to influence it, to help ensure its successful development, we must move beyond old methods; we must seek out new approaches; we must enter the crowd, feeling for the pulse of life; and sometimes we must penetrate not only the crowd, but even the liberal drawing room.

Take, for example, Mr. Burtsev’s newspaper “Future”{36}: it closely resembles a liberal drawing room. There, they defend, in a liberal fashion, the foolish, Octoberist-Kadet slogan of “revising the June 3rd Settlement”; there, they readily chatter about spies, about the police, about provocateurs, about Burtsev, about bombs. Yet when Mr. Martov hurried to join them, one could only reproach him for his tactless haste—not for any fundamental falsity—if… if he had not behaved in a liberal manner within that setting. For a Social Democrat can be justified—and sometimes even praised—for speaking in a liberal drawing room only if he speaks as a Social Democrat. But Mr. Martov delivered a liberal harangue in the liberal drawing room about some “temporary solidarity in the struggle for the very freedom of elections and electoral campaigning” that was supposedly being established (“Future,” No. 5)!!

In this new environment, in new ways, a new democracy is emerging; we must learn how to approach it—there is no doubt about that. But we must approach it not to coo with it in a liberal fashion, but to uphold and proclaim the slogans of true democracy. To the new democracy, Social Democracy must proclaim three slogans—slogans worthy of our great cause, slogans that alone correspond to the real conditions for achieving freedom in Russia: the republic; the eight-hour workday; the confiscation of all landlord-owned land.

This is the only truly correct national program for the struggle for a free Russia. Whoever fails to grasp this program is not yet a democrat. Whoever denies this program while calling himself a democrat has understood all too well the need to deceive the people in order to advance his own anti-democratic (that is, counterrevolutionary) aims.

Why is the struggle for the eight-hour workday a real condition for achieving freedom in Russia? Because experience has shown that freedom is impossible without the self-sacrificing struggle of the proletariat—and such a struggle is inextricably linked to the improvement of workers’ living conditions. The eight-hour workday is the model for these improvements, the banner under which they are carried.

Why is the struggle for the confiscation of all landlord-owned land a real condition for achieving freedom in Russia? Because without radical measures to aid the millions of peasants whom Purishkevich, Romanov, and Markov had driven to unprecedented ruin, suffering, and starvation, all talk of democracy, of “popular freedom,” is utterly hollow and false. And without the confiscation of landlord lands in favor of the peasants, there can be no serious efforts to aid the peasant class, no serious resolve to put an end to “peasant Russia”—that is, to put an end to serfdom in Russia—and to create a Russia of free farmers, a democratic, bourgeois Russia.

Why is the struggle for the republic a real condition for achieving freedom in Russia? Because the experience—great, unforgettable experience of one of the greatest decades in Russian history, namely the first decade of the 20th century—speaks with unmistakable clarity and obviousness about the incompatibility of our monarchy with even the most basic guarantees of political freedom. The history of Russia, the centuries-long history of tsarist autocracy, had made it so that by the beginning of the 20th century, we had no monarchy—and could not have any monarchy—other than a Black-Hundred, pogrom‑prone monarchy. In the given social and class context, the Russian monarchy could do nothing else but organize bands of assassins to shoot our liberal and democratic deputies from ambush or to set fire to houses where democrats had gathered. The Russian monarchy could do nothing else but respond to popular demonstrations for freedom by deploying squads of men who seized Jewish children by the legs and smashed their heads against stones, men who raped Jewish and Georgian women and slit open the bellies of elderly men.

Liberal fools chatter about the example of a constitutional monarchy like England. But if even in a culturally advanced country like England—never having known the Mongol yoke, nor the oppression of bureaucracy, nor the rampage of militarism—if in such a country it took the execution of a crowned robber to teach kings how to be “constitutional” monarchs, then in Russia we must execute at least a hundred Romanovs in order to dissuade their successors from organizing Black-Hundred assassinations and Jewish pogroms.

If Social Democracy has learned anything from the First Russian Revolution, it must now ensure that in none of our speeches, in none of our leaflets, is the slogan that has proven its worthlessness, its vagueness—“Down with autocracy”—displayed; instead, the sole slogan that should be proclaimed is: “Down with the Tsarist monarchy—long live the republic!”

And let us not be told that the slogan of the republic does not correspond to the stage of political development among workers and peasants. Just ten or twelve years ago, there were not only Narodniks who would not even dare to think of the slogan “Down with autocracy,” but even Social Democrats—so‑called “Economists”—who opposed the timeliness of that very slogan. Yet by 1903–1904, the slogan “Down with autocracy” had become a “well-known folk saying”! There is not the slightest doubt that systematic, persistent republican propaganda will now find the most fertile ground in Russia, for the broadest masses—and particularly the peasant masses—are undoubtedly pondering deeply and earnestly the significance of the dissolution of two Dumas, the connection between the Tsarist regime and the landlord-dominated Third Duma{37}, and the ruin of the countryside at the hands of Markov and Co. No one can now predict how quickly the seed of republican propaganda, once sown in the soil, will take root—but that is not the point; the point is that the sowing must be done correctly, truly in a democratic spirit. When considering the slogans for the upcoming election campaign to the Fourth Duma—and for all our pre-Duma work—we cannot avoid touching upon a very important, yet profoundly misguided, intervention by Social-Democratic Deputy Kuznetsov in the Third Duma. On the sixth anniversary of the First Victory of the Russian Revolution, October 17, 1911{38}, Kuznetsov spoke in the Duma on the issue of a bill for workers’ insurance. He spoke, to be fair, very well, energetically defending the interests of the proletariat, speaking truth to power not only to the majority in the Black Duma, but also to the Kadets. While fully acknowledging Kuznetsov’s contribution, we must also note, without reservation, his mistake.

“I believe,” Kuznetsov said, “that workers, listening carefully to the debates that took place both during the overall discussion of these issues and during the deliberations on individual articles of this very bill, will come to the conclusion that their next slogan, at this very moment, should be: ‘Down with the June 3rd Duma—long live universal suffrage.’ Why? I will tell you: because for the working class, its interests can be properly addressed only when, through universal suffrage, the working class sends a sufficient number of its deputies to the legislative body; only they alone can rightly resolve the questions of insurance for the working class.”

Kuznetsov suffered here an unfortunate fate—one that he probably did not foresee, but that we had long predicted; this misfortune was the convergence of errors committed by liquidators and отзовисты.

While raising from the Duma rostrum a slogan inspired by the liquidator journals “Our Dawn” and “The Matter of Life,” Kuznetsov failed to notice that the first (and most crucial) part of this slogan (“Down with the Third Duma”) entirely echoed the slogan that the отзовисты had openly advanced three years earlier—and that, since then, had been defended only covertly, in secret, by the “Forwardists,” that is, by the timid отзовисты.

Three years earlier, “Proletariy”{39}, No. 38, dated November 1 (14), 1908, wrote about this slogan, which the отзовисты had put forward:

“In what circumstances might a slogan like ‘Down with the Duma’ gain meaning? Suppose we are faced with a liberal, reformist, conciliatory Duma in the midst of the sharpest revolutionary crisis—already ripe for outright civil war. It is quite possible that, in such a moment, the slogan ‘Down with the Duma’ might become the slogan of the struggle for electoral reform—down with peaceful negotiations with the Tsar, down with the deceptive institution of ‘peace,’ let us call for direct, forceful action. Now suppose, on the contrary, that we are confronted with an arch-reactionary Duma, elected on the basis of an outdated electoral system, and that there is no acute revolutionary crisis in the country; then the slogan ‘Down with the Duma’ might become the slogan of the struggle for electoral reform. But neither of these scenarios is present in our case”[5].

In the appendix to No. 44 of “Proletariy” (dated April 4 [17], 1909), a resolution of the St. Petersburg отзовисты was published, explicitly calling for “the launch of broad agitation among the masses for the slogan ‘Down with the Third State Duma.’” Against this proposal, “Proletariy” wrote there: “This slogan, which briefly captivated some anti-otzovist workers—is incorrect. Either it is a Kadet slogan for electoral reform under autocracy (it so happened that this was written in early 1909 precisely in opposition to the question Kuznetsov raised in late 1911!)… or it is a repetition of a memorized phrase from the era when liberal Dumas covered up the counterrevolutionary Tsarist regime, seeking to prevent the people from clearly seeing their true enemy”[6].

From this it becomes clear where Kuznetsov went wrong. He presented the Kadet slogan for electoral reform as a generalized slogan—slogan that makes no sense whatsoever while all the other charms of the Romanov monarchy remain intact: the State Council, the omnipotence of officials, the Black-Hundred, pogrom‑prone organizations of the Tsarist clique, and so on. Kuznetsov should have said—assuming that this was indeed how he approached the question, as he did, assuming that the overall tone of his speech remained unchanged—something along the lines of:

“It is precisely through the example of the insurance bill that workers will once again be convinced that neither the immediate interests of their class nor the rights and needs of the entire people can be protected without transformations such as universal suffrage, complete freedom of coalition, freedom of the press, and the like. But is it not clear that we can expect no such transformations as long as the current political order in Russia remains unchanged—no transformation can be expected as long as any decision of any Duma can be overturned—no transformation can be expected as long as even a single unelected authority remains in the state?”

We know full well that from the rostrum of the Third Duma, Social-Democratic deputies were able to—indeed, it is to their credit—make far more direct and clear republican declarations. Deputies of the Duma may legally carry out republican propaganda from within the Duma—and they must do so. With our exemplary correction of Kuznetsov’s speech, we merely wish to illustrate how he might have avoided this error—while maintaining the overall tone of his speech, while noting and emphasizing the immense importance of those absolutely necessary transformations such as universal suffrage, freedom of coalition, and the like.

Every Social Democrat who delivers a political speech anywhere must always speak of the republic. But one must know how to speak of the republic: one cannot speak of it in the same way at a factory rally as in a Cossack village, at a student assembly as in a peasant’s hut, from the rostrum of the Third Duma as from the pages of a foreign publication. The art of every propagandist and every agitator lies in finding the best way to influence a given audience—making the truth known to them as convincing as possible, as easy to grasp as possible, as vivid and as firmly imprinted as possible.

Let us never forget the main thing: in Russia, a new democracy is awakening to a new life and a new struggle. It is the duty of conscious workers—the vanguard of the Russian Revolution and the leaders of the popular masses in the fight for freedom—to explain the tasks of consistent democracy: the republic, the eight-hour workday, the confiscation of all landlord-owned land.

“Social Democrat,” No. 25, December 8 (21), 1911

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Social Democrat”