V. I.

Lenin

More and more frequently we corns across examples showing
how widespread is the wrong idea people have of the second ballot under our
electoral law. Dan, writing in No. 1–2 of Nasha Zarya , said that
our tactics at the second ballot must be the same as in Western
Europe. Martov, writing in No. 8 of Zhivoye Dyelo , directly
pointed to the “German workers” as an example for the Russian workers to
follow in their tactics at the second ballot. A special article dealing
with the second ballot, recently published by Trotsky, is based on the same
error.

The error is repeated so frequently, that we cannot help wondering
whether the “general leaning” in certain quarters to the same error of
fact is not due to the unwillingness to appreciate the tasks of
working-class democracy in the fight against the Cadets.

In Russia, the law of June 3, 1907 does not provide for a
second ballot of the German type; in fact, it does not provide for
any “second ballot” at all in the strict sense of the term; it only
provides for supplementary or new elections. The second ballot in Germany
is a choice between two candidates only, those who have received the
highest number of votes in the first elections. In the case of the Germans,
the second ballot decides solely which of the two candidates receiving the
highest number of votes is to be elected.

There is nothing of the sort in Russia. According to our law, any
number of any candidates may run for election in the second
ballot. Strictly speaking, it is not a second ballot, but new or
supplementary elections. Therefore, all references to the German example
are quite wrong!

The main article of the law dealing with the second ballot is
Article 106 of the Regulations governing the elections. Here we read:
“Delegates of the preliminary assemblies and, likewise, electors elected
at the assemblies of voters, are recognised as such if they have received
more than half the votes cast at the assembly”.

Here we have the clearly expressed requirement of an absolute majority
in the first round of the elections. Further, the same article states that
in cases where no absolute majority has been obtained, “supplementary
elections are to be held for the remaining vacancies” (that is to say, for
all the electors except those who have been elected by an absolute
majority).

Who is regarded as elected at the “supplementary elections”? “Those
who obtained a relative majority of the votes,” it is stated at the end of
this article, “are to be regarded as elected.”

The same is stipulated in the law of June 3, 1907 with regard to the
second ballot in the case of direct elections, i.e., in the cities
of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Kiev, and Riga. Only instead of using
the expression “a relative majority of the votes”, Article 140 speaks of
“the greatest number of votes”. Finally, provision is also made for the
second ballot at the elections of members of the Duma by gubernia electoral
assemblies—in case none of the candidates received “more than half of
the votes cast”, i.e., an absolute majority. When a second ballot is taken
“those who have received a relative majority of the votes cast are
regarded as elected”. (Article 350.)

Consequently, our electoral law does not provide for any thing like the
second ballot in Germany. In this connection there can be nothing more
erroneous than to refer to the example and conduct of the German
workers. In the official edition of the Regulations Governing the Elections
to the State Duma, issued by the Ministry of the Interior, St. Petersburg,
1912, it says in Clause 14 of the interpretations of Article 106: “Persons
who took no part in the first round of the elections may also be permitted
to participate in the supplementary elections”. It is obvious that this
refers not only to new voters, but also to new candidates. The law permits
the nomination for the second ballot of a candidate who did not stand in the first elections.

The question is, what political conclusions for our election tactics
should be drawn from this feature of the June Third election regulations.

The first, fundamental, and most general conclusion is the, following:
our law, unlike the German law, provides a wider field for
election agreements at the second ballot. In Germany it can be only a
question of choosing the lesser evil : those defeated at the first
elections (and they are all those excluded from the second ballot) can have
no other aim. In Russia, if on the one hand in the primary elections there
were no victors, on the other hand there would, strictly speaking, be no
defeated contestants, for each may try his luck a second time, in
a new contest, by concluding agreements of various kinds with one ally or
another.

In Germany, for one thing, the working—class candidate cannot derive
any benefit for himself , i.e., any direct benefit, from the fight
between the Right parties and the bourgeois opposition parties. He may
support the liberal opposition against the Rights if both are of
practically equal strength; but he cannot take advantage of a tie between
his liberal and reactionary opponent to win the victory
himself . In Russia the latter is possible.

Hence the second conclusion. The Russian electoral law, unlike the
German law, provides working-class democracy with a wider field
for fighting the liberals at the second ballot. In Russia, as in
most West-European countries, two wings (or two groups of parties) of the
ruling propertied classes predominate in the elections: “conservatives”
and liberals, the Black Hundreds and the “opposition”. The workers are
fighting both groups of parties. The backward sections of the
people, who at first awaken to the struggle against feudalism and
absolutism, do not immediately realise their tasks in the struggle against
capital, and usually follow the liberals for rather a long time. That is
why the working-class parties, when their influence is growing, as a rule
win over more followers from the liberals than from the Rights. Hence the
usual hypocritical wailings of the “Cadets” of all countries
about the working—class parties allegedly playing into the hands of the
reactionaries, weakening the “general forces of progress”, and so on and so forth.

In Germany, the working-class candidate can measure strength with a
liberal at the second ballot only in instances when the Rights have been
defeated in the first round of the elections, and are excluded from the
second ballot. In Russia a working-class candidate can, and therefore
should? compete in the second ballot against a liberal whenever
the Right has obtained a smaller number of votes than the liberal in the
first elections. In other words: when a second ballot is taken in Germany,
the working-class candidate can meet the liberal only “in single combat”;
in Russia, however, it is possible for the second ballot also to be a
“three-cornered contest”, i. e., one in which Right, liberal, and
working-class candidates participate. In cases of a second ballot in
Russia, therefore, there may occur more instances when the mass of
the workers will be interested in securing the election of their own
candidate.

We have now come to the third conclusion. In Russia, bearing in mind
the present political divisions, a particularly wide field is open at the
second ballot for the so-called Left bloc in all the curias and at
all stages where the liberals are stronger than the reactionaries (the
latter including, of course, all the Rights, the Nationalists, and the
Octobrists, i. e., all the government parties without exception). Wherever
the liberals at the first elections prove stronger than the reactionaries,
and the working-class candidates weaker than the liberals, it is the
duty of the workers, both from the viewpoint of the political task
of organising the forces of democracy in general, and from the viewpoint of
electing working-class candidates to the Duma, to make common cause with
bourgeois democracy (Narodniks, Trudoviks, etc.) against the
liberals.

Are such instances likely to occur often?

Not very often in the gubernia electoral assemblies; here, in most
cases, the liberals will be weaker than the reactionaries, and it will,
therefore, be necessary to form a bloc of all the opposition forces in
order to defeat the reactionaries.

In the peasant curia, the political divisions are less definite and
distinct; here the tyranny of the police is felt more acutely than anywhere else; here delegates, electors, and even candidates
for election to the Duma, are most keenly aware of the necessity to
“conceal” their true “face”; there are very few worker candidates so
far as party affiliation is concerned. The political task to be performed
in this curia is, unquestionably, to organise the forces of democracy and
combat the influence and prejudices of the liberal-monarchist
bourgeoisie. As for the second ballot, it is difficult to draw any definite
conclusions regarding the frequency of one contingency or another, or even
regarding the number of actual cases of a second ballot.

In the landowner and the first urban curias the role of democrats in
general and of working-class democrats in particular is too insignificant
to be dwelt on at all.

There remains the second urban curia. Here there are quite a few
workers and voters close to the workers: shop assistants, worker tenants,
pensioners, etc. Here there is at least something resembling a political
press and some thing in the nature of meetings. In brief, this is the
principal field for a second ballot, with the voters directly
participating. Now, how do matters in this curia stand with regard to the
party alignment of the voters?

A fairly exact, even if indirect, answer to this question is provided
by data on the party allegiance of the electors of the second urban curia
in the elections to the Third State Duma. According to the returns
published in the Cadet Rech (1907, No. 241) for 4,897 electors out
of a total of 5,161 in 51 gubernias of European Russia, the 533 electors in
the second urban curia were divided by parties as follows: opposition
parties 405 (100 “Lefts”, 209 Cadets, and 96 Progressists), Right parties
101 (17 moderates, 19 Octobrists and 65 Rights), 21 independents and 6
whose party affiliation was unknown. The three main groups of parties
contending in the present elections are clearly indicated here: 100
democrats, 305 liberals, 101 Rights.

The liberals are thus more than three times as strong as the Rights,
whose strength is practically equal to that of the democrats. As a rule , therefore, there can obviously be no question here of any danger
of a Black-Hundred victory. It is further obvious that the main
task of working-class democrats in this curia is to fight the liberals. At the present juncture
particularly, when, as even the liberals, Octobrists and Purishkeviches
admit, there is undoubtedly a general swing to the left in the country,
this fight must be put in the forefront. Obviously, in the first stage of
the elections the working-class candidates must wage an absolutely
independent struggle, putting forward a hundred per cent working-class
election lists. In the second stage, at the Second ballot, it will in the majority of cases be a question of a fight of democrats against
liberals.

In order to conduct that struggle it will be necessary for the
Marxists at the second ballot to make common cause with all
democrats (i.e., also with the bourgeois democrats, Narodniks, Trudoviks,
etc.) against the liberals. The entire behaviour of the notorious
“responsible opposition”, the Cadets, in the Third Duma, the entire
policy and tactics of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoisie, on the one hand,
and on the other, the present movement among the shop assist ants, provide
a particularly favourable ground for this fight by the democrats, organised
by the workers, against the liberals, i.e., against the Cadet
Party. Inasmuch as the second urban curia is the one in which there will be
the greatest number of cases of a second ballot, the principal
line to be pursued by the workers at the second ballot is precisely this:
with the democrats against the Rights and against the liberals.

In the final analysis, we come to the conclusion that the liquidators
and their defenders are committing both a “technical” and a political
mistake on the question of the second ballot. “Technically”, they are
committing a mistake by confusing the German second ballot with the Russian
“supplementary” or new elections. Politically, they are committing a
mistake by sinking down to a liberal labour policy, by confining themselves
to general phrases about supporting the opposition against the
flights. Actually, the general task of the Marxists in present-day Russia,
the task of organising the workers as the vanguard of democracy against
both the Rights and the counter-revolutionary liberals, as well as
our special position in the principal “second ballot” curia, demand a
different slogan. In cases of a second ballot, primarily in the second
urban curia, common cause is to be made more often with all democrats against the liberals and against
the Rights; and only subsequently it may be necessary at the second ballot
to join the general opposition bloc against the reactionaries.

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