There are about two months left until the elections to the Fourth Duma. This is a short period. Therefore, everyone and anyone who sympathises with working-class democracy, who understands the interests and tasks of the working class, must immediately set about preparing for the elections in the most energetic manner.

The legal rights of workers and all apartment tenants must be systematically and fully utilised.

Under the second category of urban voters in St. Petersburg, tens of thousands of citizens participate in the elections. Among this mass there are many workers, employees, shop assistants, and all kinds of poor people who undoubtedly belong to the democracy. We must ensure that not a single inhabitant of St. Petersburg who has the right to vote remains aloof from the elections.

Until now, St. Petersburg has been "in the possession" of the Cadets. Many take the view that even the struggle against the Cadets in St. Petersburg is hopeless, and such a view greatly weakens the energy of the election campaign.

But this view is a profound mistake.

Firstly, workers value elections not at all merely for the sake of deputy seats. Elections are important for workers as a means of political enlightenment and unification of the masses. Whoever participates in elections feels himself a citizen; he is inevitably drawn into political life, treats it more consciously, reads his working-class democratic newspaper with greater understanding and interest, is stricter in fulfilling his duty to participate in all workers' societies, etc.

Secondly, one cannot in any way agree with the view that the struggle against the Cadets in St. Petersburg under the second urban curia is hopeless. This is untrue, a thousand times untrue!

The Cadets have the advantage because the suffrage is not universal but based on a property qualification, i.e., restricted: only apartment tenants have the right to vote, and among the working masses there are immeasurably more disenfranchised people than among the liberal bourgeoisie. Further, the Cadets have the advantage because their unions and newspapers are persecuted far less than workers' unions and workers' newspapers.

Finally, the Cadets are the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, the party of wealthy people who donate large sums of money to elections and devote to the elections much of the free time they have at their disposal.

But all these advantages of the liberal bourgeoisie can and must be defeated in the elections by that force which has always been and will always be on the side of the workers – the force of numbers: there are more workers, the poor are a mass, while the rich are a handful – and then by the force of devotion to the workers' cause.

The workers of St. Petersburg have already been able to oppose this force to the Cadets with tremendous success.

How was the Cadet press created? How were the newspapers *Rech* and *Sovremennoye Slovo* set on their feet? By the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of rubles.

And how were the workers' newspapers *Nevskaya Zvezda* and *Pravda* created? By the expenditure of workers' coppers, collected by thousands upon thousands of workers.

Thousands of workers, devoted to the interests of working-class democracy, consciously defending their rights, have done what no other party could do without enormous capital.

And in the elections the workers can win and will win, if everyone and anyone sets to work unitedly. Remember, comrades, that our friends and people who sympathise with us are in the majority even among the voters of the second category. The majority is for democracy; for the liberals there is only the force of wealth, the force of blind habit, the force of the backwardness, inactivity, and passivity of many shop assistants, employees, and the like.

This force of habit, backwardness, and passivity we can break, and we must break it by our united work.

Everyone to work! Let not a single worker remain who does not contribute in these two months his labour, his efforts, his cares, his knowledge to the cause of the elections – and victory will be with the working-class democracy!