V. I.

Lenin

The Campaign for the Elections to the Fourth Duma

II. THE ROLE OF WORKER ELECTORS IN THE ELECTION
CAMPAIGN

The campaign for the elections to the Fourth Duma has opened. It was
launched by the government sending out circular instructions on assistance
to the “national” party, and by taking “measures” to provide for the
qualifications of the government candidates, and to eliminate opposition
candidates in general, and democratic candidates in particular.

The opposition press has also entered the election campaign. So has the
Cadet Party, and its first step was the adoption of resolutions providing
for a bloc with the “Left” Octobrists.

Therefore, working-class democracy must immediately a the utmost
attention to the elections, and promptly, without a single week’s delay
discuss its tactics in all their details, preparing all supporters of
democracy in advance for the important and responsible role they are to
perform.

In this article we propose to dwell on the role of worker electors. It
is clear that in this case too, as always, we must stress the content of
the work, that is to say, the ideological-political line of the
campaign. Educate and organise the working class, unite it in an
independent party that maintains solidarity with the West-European parties,
explain to the working class its historical aims in changing the basic
conditions of commodity economy and capitalism, segregate its party from
all bourgeois democratic trends, even those that are “Left”,
Narodnik, etc.—such is the basic task.

This fundamental task is the same for working-class democracy in all
countries. And for this very reason its application in the present epoch in
one country, in Russia, requires that the special and concrete tasks of our
times be taken into consideration for the sake of this general
common task. At the present moment two of these specific tasks of Russian
working-class democracy are indissolubly connected and, because of
objective conditions, require the greatest attention. The first of these
two tasks is to under stand clearly the connection between the
liquidationist trend (represented, as we know, by the magazines
Nasha Zarya and Dyelo Zhizni ) and the widespread bourgeois counter-revolutionary Vekhi trend. It is necessary to be
clearly aware of the harm of bourgeois influence upon the proletariat in
order to overcome it and to achieve the immediate aims affecting the very
existence of working-class democracy, which the liquidators
are denying . The second is the task of organising the Left
democrats, clearly bearing in mind the necessity to draw a line between
democracy (bourgeois democracy) and bourgeois liberalism. This is
imperative if working-class democracy is to exercise that leadership which is one of the
indispensable conditions for any step forward by the general movement for
freedom.

The lumping of the liberals (the Constitutional-Democratic Party) with
the democrats (the Trudoviks, “Narodniks” of the Left persuasion) is
fundamentally wrong in principle, and, in practice, leads to the betrayal
of the interests of democracy. Upon the worker electors devolves the duty
of upholding the correct interpretation of the liberation movement and
explaining the class essence of the various parties (without allowing
themselves to be taken in by “labels”, fine words and fancy names); they
must draw a clear line between the Rights (from the Black Hundreds
to the Octobrists), the bourgeois liberals (the Cadets and their
kind), and the democrats (the Trudoviks and kindred trends are
bourgeois democrats; the Marxists represent proletarian democracy).

In accordance with the electoral system instituted by the law of
June 3, 1907, the worker electors play a particular role in the gubernia
electoral assemblies. Therefore the immediate practical task is to ensure
that all these electors are staunch and loyal representatives of
working-class democracy.

As we know, the election of one of the worker electors to the State
Duma is guaranteed in each of the following six gubernias: St. Petersburg,
Moscow, Vladimir, Ekaterinoslav, Kostroma, and Kharkov. But the deputies
are elected by the entire electoral assembly of each gubernia,
which means, as a rule, by the Right electors, landowners and big
bourgeoisie, Octobrists. To secure the election to the Duma of
working-class democrats we must see to it that all the worker electors,
without a single exception, are true working-class democrats and firmly
support one definite candidate from their midst. Even if only one worker
elector turns out to be a deserter, a liberal, a Right, the Octobrists will
be sure to elect him, against the will of the majority of the worker
electors!

But the enumerated six gubernias are not the only ones having worker
electors in their electoral assemblies. Altogether the law provides for a
total of 112 worker electors in 44 gubernias (out of 53).

What should be the role of these electors? To begin with, they must
always pursue a principled line, endeavouring to organise the forces of
democracy (particularly, the peasantry) and to help them cast off the
influence of the liberals. This is an extremely important field of
activity. Secondly, the worker electors are in a position (and should
strive) to take advantage of the vote being split between the Rights and
the liberals to elect their own candidates to the Duma.

Here is an example to illustrate the last-named task. Two members of
the Third Duma from Vyatka Gubernia are Social-Democrats—Astrakhantsev
and Putyatin. Yet the law does not provide for a deputy from the worker
curia in Vyatka Gubernia. The gubernia electoral assembly in Vyatka is made
up of 109 electors, of whom four are elected by the workers. How, then, did
four workers (out of 109 electors) manage to send two deputies to the Duma? Most likely, the votes in the gubernia electoral
assembly were equally divided, and the liberals could not gain the upper
hand over the Rights without the support of the workers. Compelled to form
a bloc with the workers, the liberals had to share seats in the Duma with
them, and thus they elected two Social-Democrats to the Duma. The
representation from Vyatka in the Duma was constituted as follows: 1
Progressist, 3 Cadets, 2 Trudoviks, and 2 Social-Democrats, or 4 liberals
and 4 democrats. In that gubernia the workers might have gained three seats
had they succeeded in driving a wedge between the democratic electors and
the liberals, provided the former had had a majority over the
latter. Suppose that, out of 109 electors, 54 are Rights (50 out of the 53
electors chosen by the landowners and 4 out of the 17 electors from the
first assembly of urban voters). Let us suppose, further, that out of the
other 55 electors, 20 are liberals (three from the landowner curia, 13 from
the first urban curia, and four from the second urban curia), 35 are
democrats (23 peasant electors, 8 electors from the second urban curia and
4 from the worker curia). Under these circumstances the democrats would
have been bound to obtain 5 seats out of 8, and the workers could have
obtained 3 of these seats, provided they enjoyed the confidence of the
peasant democrats.

In Ufa Gubernia all the seats were captured by the liberals
(including Moslems). Not a single representative of the democrats was
elected. Yet, considering that there were 30 peasant electors, the three
worker electors could undoubtedly have captured seats both for themselves
and the Trudoviks had they shown greater skill in organising the democratic
forces.

Perm Gubernia is represented in the Third Duma by 6 liberals and 3
democrats, of whom only one is a Social-Democrat. Yet the situation in Perm
was as follows: there were 26 peasant electors, and out of them the
liberals , who had a majority in the gubernia electoral assembly,
elected a Trudovik, which means that the peasant curia was a hundred
per cent Trudovik (and if, among the peasants, there had been a single
deserter from the camp of democracy to the liberals, the latter would have
elected the deserter!). The same applies to the second urban curia (13
electors), because from that curia, too, a Trudovik was elected by the
votes of the liberals . Hence the number of democrats among the
electors may be placed at 26+13+5 workers==44, out of a total of 120
electors, including 59 from the landowner curia and 17 from the first urban
curia. Even assuming that, with the exception of the democrats, all the
electors were liberals, their number was 76, i.e., less than two-thirds. It
is more likely, however, that some of the electors were
Rights. Consequently, the liberals, although comprising less than
two-thirds in the electoral assembly, captured two-thirds of the Perm seats
in the Duma. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from this is that, had
the democrats been more class-conscious and better organised (and it is
above all the workers who must see to this!), they would not have let the
liberals put anything over on them. The Social-Democrat Yegorov was elected
in Perm Gubernia at the general assembly of the electors, i.e., by the
liberals—which means that the liberals needed the support of the
workers. And it was plainly a mistake on the part of the workers, a direct
infringement of the interests of democracy, to give this support
without securing a proportionate share of the seats in the Duma for democracy.

In making these calculations we wish to emphasise that they are merely
meant as examples, to illustrate our idea, for we are not in possession of any exact data regarding the party
affiliations of the electors in general or of the electors in each separate
curia. Actually, matters are more complicated and represent a more motley
picture than might be assumed from our examples. But it is necessary for
the workers to understand the basic relation of forces in the
“intricate mechanism” of elections based on the June Third law. Once they
have assimilated the fundamentals, they will be able to understand the
details as well.

The two most democratic curias (after the worker curia, of course,
which can and should be completely Marxist, completely anti-liquidationist)
are the peasant curia and the second urban curia. Of these, the first is
more democratic than the second, despite the infinitely greater lack of
freedom at the elections in the rural districts and the infinitely worse
conditions for agitation and organisation among the peasants, as compared
with townspeople.

Indeed, deputies specially elected at the second assembly of urban
voters to the Third Duma represented 28 gubernias. Among those thus elected
were 16 Rights, 10 liberals, and 2 democrats (Rozanov from Saratov and
Petrov the Third from Perm). Deputies specially elected from the peas ant
curia were sent to the Thud Duma from all the 53 gubernias. They included
23 Rights, 17 liberals, 5 democrats and 8 independents. If we divide the
independents equally between the Rights and the opposition, we obtain the
following comparative data:

| {{{ Members of the Third Duma | {{{ From the Second Urban Curia | {{{ From the Peasant Curia |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Rights . . . . . . | 16 | 27 |
| Opposition parties | 12==43 per cent | 26==49 per cent |

Opposition deputies thus comprised 43 per cent of the deputies elected
by the second urban curia and 49 per cent of the deputies elected by the
peasant curia. Considering that, as we know, the peasant deputies in the
Third Duma introduced an agrarian bill which was in substance more
democratic than the bill introduced by the Cadets, and that the
bill bore the signatures also of independent and Right peasant deputies, it is obvious that the democracy of the peasant curia
surpasses the democracy of the second urban curia to an even greater extent than would appear from our data.

Consequently, the workers in general and the worker electors in
particular must devote most of their attention to the peasant curia and the
peasant electors. As the organisers of the forces of democracy the workers
must carry on their activities in the first place among the peasants, and
then among the electors from the second urban curia. In both these curias
the intermingling of the liberals and democrats is particularly pronounced,
is particularly frequent, and is particularly cultivated by the Cadets, who
are taking ad vantage of their experience in “parliamentary deals” and
their “democratic” name (“Constitutional- Democrats ”, the
“party of people’s freedom ”), which disguises their anti-democratic , Vekhi , counter-revolutionary substance,
in order brazenly to deceive politically undeveloped people.

The ideological and political task of the workers at the present stage
of the Russian liberation movement is to organise the forces of
democracy. The technical work of the election campaign must be subordinated
to this task. Hence the necessity to devote special attention to the
peasant curia and then to the second urban curia. In the gubernia electoral
assembly, the first duty of the worker elector is to unite all the
democrats. In order to get himself nominated, the worker elector needs
three votes—he must find two peasant democrats or, if the worst comes to
the worst, persuade two liberals, who would not risk anything by nominating
a worker. The democratic members of the gubernia electoral assemblies
should form blocs with the liberals against the Rights. If it proves
impossible to form such a bloc immediately (and most likely this is what is
going to happen in the majority of cases, because the electors will not be
acquaint ed with each other), the tactics of the democrats should be to
unite first with the liberals to defeat the Rights, and then with the Rights to defeat the liberals , so that neither are able to secure the
election of their candidates (provided that neither the Rights nor the
liberals command an absolute majority by themselves, for if they do the
democrats cannot hope to get into the Duma). In accordance with Article 119
of the

Regulations governing the elections, the assembly adjourns. Then the
democrats, guided by the exact figures of the votes cast, form a bloc with
the liberals, demanding a proportionate share of the seats. In such cases it is essential that the liberals elect the democrat first and not the other way round , for history and the entire experience of Europe
show that the liberals have often cheated the democrats, whereas the
democrats have never cheated the liberals.

If they know which curias send democratic electors, and learn to drive
a wedge between the democrats and the liberals, the worker electors in 44 gubernias can play an enormous role both in organising the
forces of democracy in general and in securing the election of a larger
number of worker democrats and bourgeois democrats (Trudoviks) to the
Duma. In the present Duma there are fifteen of the former and fourteen of
the latter. If the workers pursue correct tactics they can, under
favourable conditions, secure the election of double that number. The
liberals are sure to have a strong group—about a hundred or more
deputies—in the Fourth Duma. They will constitute the “responsible
opposition” (of the London type) capable of forming a bloc with the
Octobrists. We must work to elect a group of several dozen deputies who
will constitute a really democratic opposition, not an opposition of the
Vekhi brand. And this can be achieved.

The law gives the workers the right to choose electors in 44
gubernias. Class-conscious workers in each factory must at once familiarise
themselves with the law, take careful note of their duties and their
position, and ensure that the electors they send are genuine working-class
democrats, not liquidators.

If, as a result of class-conscious, careful and systematic work one
hundred and twelve worker electors are elected, they can render very great
service both in rallying the working class, which everywhere in Europe
aspires to achieve lofty aims of world-wide significance, and also in
organising the forces of democracy in Russia.

Time is short. Every class-conscious worker must shoulder this
difficult, but doubly worth-while task.

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