V. I.

Lenin

The priesthood is about to flood the Fourth Duma.

How are we to react to this emergence of the priests on the political
scene?

Democrats can never hold the view that priests should not participate
in political affairs. It is an arch-reactionary view. It leads only to
official hypocrisy and nothing more. In practice, all measures debarring a
particular group or section of the population from politics and the class
struggle are absolutely impossible and unrealisable.

Let us recall that Bebel and the German Social-Democrats were for
freedom of Jesuit agitation in Germany. We are against liberal phrases
about “prohibiting” Jesuit agitation, said the Social-Democrats. We are
not afraid of the Jesuits. Let the Jesuits enjoy complete freedom
of agitation, but let the authorities guarantee that we Social-Democrats,
too, shall enjoy complete freedom of agitation. That is how Bebel and the
German Social-Democrats reasoned.

The worker democrats in Russia are fighting against the falsification
of suffrage (and all other rights) in favour of the landlords or the
priesthood, etc., and not at all against freedom of the priesthood to
participate in political affairs. We stand for the class struggle, and we
demand complete freedom for any class or social-estate, for either sex, for
any people, any section or group of the population, to take part in
politics.

The liberals’ reasoning on this question is wrong and undemocratic. Prince Trubetskoi, for example, wrote not so long ago, to the
applause of Rech :

“ The transformation of the Church into a political instrument is
achieved at the price of its internal destruction.”

He described the plan of flooding the Duma with priests as “contrary to
Christianity and the Church”.

That is not true. It is hypocrisy. It is a thoroughly reactionary point
of view.

Trubetskoi and other liberals take an undemocratic stand in their
struggle against clericalism. Under the guise of opposing participation of
the priesthood in the political struggle, they advocate its more covert
(and hence much more harmful) participation.

Worker democrats favour freedom of political struggle for all,
including the priests. We are opposed, not to the priests taking part in
the election campaign, in the Duma, etc., but solely to the
medieval privileges of the priesthood. We are not afraid of clericalism,
and will readily join issue with it—on a free platform on which all will
be on an equal footing. The priesthood has always participated in politics
covertly ; the people stand to gain, and to gain a good deal, if
the priesthood begins to participate in politics overtly .

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