V. I.

Lenin

That ill-famed publication, Vekhi , which was a tremendous success in liberal-bourgeois society, a society thoroughly
imbued with renegade tendencies, was not adequately countered, nor
appraised deeply enough, in the democratic camp.

This was partly due to the fact that the success of Vekhi
occurred at a time of almost complete suppression of the “open”
democratic press.

Now Mr. Shchepetev comes forward in Russkaya Mysl [5] (August) with a refurbished edition of Vekhi
ideas. This is perfectly natural on the part of a Vekhi organ
edited by Mr. P. B. Struve, leader of the renegades. But it will be just as
natural for the democrats, particularly the worker democrats, to make up
now for at least a little of what they owe the Vekhi people.

I

Mr. Shchepetev’s utterances take the form of a modest “Letter from France”— about the Russians in Paris . But behind
this modest form there is actually a very definite “discussion” of the
Russian revolution of 1905 and the Russian democracy.

“ That disturbing [Oh! Disturbing to whom , esteemed liberal?],
troubled and thoroughly confused year 1905 is fresh in everyone’s
memory....”

“ Troubled and thoroughly confused”! What dirt and dregs a person must
have in his soul to he able to write like that! The German opponents of the
revolution of 1848 called that year the “crazy” year. The same idea, or
rather the same dull, base fright, is expressed by the Russian Cadet writing in
Russkaya Mysl .

We shall counter him only with a few facts, the most objective and most
“unpretentious” ones. That year wages were rising as they had never done
before. Land rent was dropping. All forms of association of workers,
including even domestic servants, were making unprecedented
progress. Millions of inexpensive publications on political subjects were
being read by the people, the masses, the crowd, the “lower ranks”, as
avidly as no one had ever read in Russia until then.

Nekrasov exclaimed, in times long past:

Ah, will there ever be a time (Come soon, come soon, 0 longed-for day!) When people will not buy the books Of Blücher or some silly lord, But Gogol and Belinsky’s works From market stalls bring home . [6]

The “time” longed for by one of the old Russian democrats
came. Merchants stopped dealing in oats and engaged in more profitable
business—the sale of inexpensive democratic pamphlets. Democratic books
became goods for the market . The ideas of Belinsky and
Gogol—which endeared these authors to Nekrasov, as indeed to any decent
person in Russia—ran through the whole of that new market literature.

How “troublesome”! cried the liberal pig, which deems itself
educated, but in fact is dirty, repulsive, overfat and smug, when in actual fact it saw the “people” bringing home from the
market—Belinsky’s letter to

Gogol. [7]

And, strictly speaking, it is, after all, a letter from an
“intellectual”, announced Vekhi , to thunderous applause from
Rozanov of Novoye Vremya and from Anthony, Bishop of Volhynia.

What a disgraceful sight! a democrat from among the best Narodniks will
say. What an instructive sight! we will add. How it sobers up those who
took a sentimental view of democratic issues, how it steels all the living and strong democratic elements, mercilessly
sweeping aside the rotten illusions of the Oblomov-minded!

It is very useful for anyone who has ever been enchanted with
liberalism to be disenchanted with it. And he who wishes to recall the
early history of Russian liberalism will certainly see in the liberal
Kavelin’s attitude towards the democrat Chernyshevsky the exact prototype
of the attitude adopted by the Cadet Party of the liberal
bourgeoisie towards the Russian democratic movement of the masses . The liberal bourgeoisie in Russia has “found itself”, or
rather its tail. Is it not time the democrats in Russia found their head?

It is particularly intolerable to see individuals like Shchepetev,
Struve, Gredeskul, Izgoyev and the rest of the Cadet fraternity clutching
at the coat-tails of Nekrasov, Shchedrin and others. Nekrasov, who was weak
as a person, wavered between Chernyshevsky and the liberals, but all his
sympathy went to Chernyshevsky. Out of the very same personal weakness,
Nekrasov occasionally sounded the false note of liberal servility, but he
himself bitterly deplored his “falsity” and repented of it in
public :

I never sold my lyre, although at times, When pressed by unrelenting fate, False notes would sound among my rhymes .

“ False notes ” is what Nekrasov himself called the liberal
servility he was occasionally guilty of. As for Shchedrin, he mocked
mercilessly at the liberals, whom he branded for ever by the formula
“conformably to villainy”. [8]

How outdated this formula is as applied to Shchepetev, Gredeskul and
the

other [1]
Vekhi people! The point now is by no means that these gentlemen
must conform to villainy. Not by a long shot! They have created
their own theory of villainy” on their own initiative and in
their own fashion, proceeding from Neo-Kantianism and other fashionable
“European” theories.

II

“ The thoroughly confused year 1905,” writes
Mr. Shchepetev. “Everything was mixed up and tangled in the general
confusion and muddle.”

On this point, too, we can raise only a few theoretical objections. We
believe that historical events should be judged by the movements of the
masses and of classes as a whole, not by the moods of individuals
or small groups.

The overwhelming majority of Russia’s population consists of peasants
and workers. What indication is there of a “general confusion and muddle”
among this majority of the population? Quite On the contrary, the objective
facts testify irrefutably that it was among the mass of the population that
a sorting out unprecedented in breadth and effectiveness was going on, a
sorting out which for ever did away with “confusion and muddle”.

Until then, the elements of patriarchal oppression and those of
democracy had really been “confused and mixed tip” among the “common
people”, making up a “general muddle”. Evidence of this is to be found
in such objective facts as that

Zubatovism [9] and the “Gaponiad” proved possible.

It was the year 1905 that for ever put an end to that “muddle”. No
previous epoch in Russian history had untangled with such extreme
clarity, by deeds not by words, relations tangled by age-long stagnation
and age-old survivals of serfdom. In no other epoch had so distinctly and
“efficiently” the classes become demarcated, the attitude of the
mass of the population defined, and the theories and programmes of
the “intellectuals” tested by the actions of millions.

How was it, then, that indisputable historical facts could be so
greatly distorted in the mind of the educated and liberal writer of
Russkaya Mysl ? The explanation is very simple: this Vekhi
spokesman seeks to impose his subjective sentiments on the whole people. He
himself and his entire group—the liberal-bourgeois intelligentsia—found
them selves at that tint in a particularly “muddled”, “thoroughly
confused”, position. And the liberal shifts his discontent—a natural
result of this muddle and of the fact that the masses had exposed the utter
worthlessness of liberalism—to the masses , thus laying his own fault at someone else’s door.

Indeed, was not the liberals’ position a muddled one in June 1905? Or
after August 6, when they called for participation in the Bulygin Duma but
the people went in fact past and beyond the Duma? Or in
October 1905, when the liberals had to “trail along behind” and call the
strike “glorious” although only the day before they had fought against
it? Or in November 1905, when the pitiful impotence of liberalism fully
came to light, being demonstrated by so striking a fact as Struve’s visit
to Witte?

If the Vekhist Shchepetev cares to read the Vekhist Izgoyev’s little
book about Stolypin, he will see that Izgoyev had to admit that
“muddle” in the Cadets’ position “between two fires” in the First and
Second Dumas. And this “muddle” and impotence of liberalism were an
inevitable development, for the liberals had no mass support
either among the bourgeoisie above or among the peasantry below.

Mr. Shchepetev closes his argument on the history of the Russian
revolution with the following gem:

“ However, all that muddle was very short-lived. The upper ranks freed themselves little by little from the almost panic terror
that had gripped them and, having arrived at the fairly simple conclusion
that a good company of soldiers was more effective than all revolutionary
verbiage, equipped ‘punitive expeditions’ and set rapid-firing justice into
motion. The results exceeded all expectations. In a matter of two or three
years, the revolution was destroyed and eradicated to such an extent that
certain security institutions were compelled to stage it in some
places....”

While we could provide at least some theoretical commentary for the
author’s previous discourses, now we have not even this possibility. We
must confine ourselves to fastening this glorious discourse to the pillory
in as high a position as possible, so that it can be seen for as long a
time and from as far off as possible.

However, we can also ask the reader: is it surprising that the
Octobrist Golos Moskvy , as well as the nationalist, Judas-like [10] Novoye Vremya , quoted Shchepetev with the
greatest delight? In fact, what is the difference between the
“historical” appraisal given by the “Constitutional Democratic”
magazine and that given by the above-mentioned two publications?

III

Mr. Shchepetev devotes most space to sketches of life in
exile. To find an analogy of these sketches, one would have to dig up
Russky Vestnik [11] of Katkov’s day and take from it novels portraying
high-minded Marshals of the Nobility, good-natured and contented muzhiks,
and disgruntled brutes, scoundrels and monsters called revolutionaries.

Mr. Shchepetev has observed Paris (assuming that he has) with the eyes
of a philistine embittered against the democratic movement, who could see
nothing but “unrest” in the appearance in Russia of the first democratic
pamphlets for the masses.

It is known that everyone sees abroad what he chooses to. Or, in other
words, everyone sees in new conditions his own sell . A member of
the Black Hundreds sees abroad splendid landlords, generals and
diplomats. A secret police agent sees there the noblest policemen. A
liberal Russian renegade sees in Paris well-meaning concierges and “efficient” [2] shopkeepers who teach the Russian revolutionary that among them
“humanitarian and altruistic sentiments had too much suppressed personal
requirements, often to the detriment of the general progress and cultural
advancement of the whole of our country”. [3]

A lackey in spirit is naturally keen above all else on the gossip and
petty scandals prevailing in the servants’ room. It goes without saying
that a shopkeeper or a lackey-minded concierge takes no notice of the
ideological issues discussed at Paris meetings and in the Paris
Russian-language press. How can he see, indeed, that this press raised, as
early as 1908, for example, the very same questions concerning the social
nature of the June Third regime, the class roots of the new trends among
the democrats, and so on, [4] as found their way much later, and in much narrower and more distorted (and
curtailed) form, into the press “protected” by reinforced security
measures?

Shopkeepers and lackeys, however “intellectual” the garb in which
people with such a mentality array themselves, cannot notice and grasp these questions. If a particular lackey is called a
“publicist” contributing to a liberal magazine, he, that “publicist”,
will pass over in complete silence the great ideological questions which
are posed openly and clearly nowhere but in Paris. On the other hand, this
“publicist” will tell you in detail all that is well known in the
servants’ rooms.

He, this noble Cadet, will tell you in the magazine of the most noble
Mr. Struve, that a hapless emigrant-prostitute was evicted from “the flat
of a very well-known woman revolutionary in Paris”, “not without help
from the police”; that the “unemployed” again made a row at a charity
ball; that a copyist in a house familiar to Mr. Shchepetev “had rather a
considerable sum of money advanced to him and then began to absent
himself”; that the exiles “rise at noon and go to bed after I or 2 a.m.,
and there are visitors and noise and arguments and disorder all day long”.

All this the lackey magazine of the Cadet Mr. Struve will tell you in
detail and with illustrations, with gusto and spiced with pepper—just as
well as Menshikov and Rozanov of Novoye Vremya do it.

“ Give me money or I’ll punch you on the jaw—this is the unambiguously hostile form which the relations between the upper and
lower ranks of the exiles have taken. True, this formula has not be come
widespread, and ‘the extreme trend among the lower ranks’ has become
represented [this is how the educated Cadet writes in Mr. Struve’s
magazine!] by a mere couple of dozens of very doubtful elements that are
perhaps even guided by a skilful hand from outside.”

Pause at this statement, reader, and think of the difference between an
ordinary lackey and a lackey-minded publicist. Ordinary lackeys—meaning
the bulk, of course, which does not include those politically-conscious
elements that have already adopted a class point of view arid are seeking a
way out of their lackey’s position—are unsophisticated, uneducated, and
often illiterate and ignorant; it is pardon able for them to have a naive
passion for relating whatever reaches them more easily than anything else,
and is closest and clearest to them. Lackey-minded publicists, on the other
hand, are “educated” persons who are well received in all the finest
drawing-rooms. They are aware that the number of common blackmailers among
the exiles is very insignificant (“a couple of dozens” for thousands of exiles). They even
realise that these blackmailers “are perhaps guided ” by a
“ skilful hand ”—from the tea-room of the Union of the Russian
People.

And because he realises all this, the lackey-minded publicist operates
as befits the “educated”. He certainly knows how to cover up his tracks
and make the most of his goods! He is not a venal hack of the Black
Hundreds—nothing of the kind. He “ himself ” has even pointed
out that perhaps someone is guiding the dozen or two of
blackmailers, but at the same time it is precisely and solely those blackmailers rows and the absenteeism of copyists
that he tells about!

The Novoye Vremya school for “ writers ” of
Russkaya Mysl has not gone to waste. Suvorin of Novoye Vremya boasted that he had never received any subsidies—he
merely “knew himself” how to hit the right tone.

Russkaya Mysl receives no subsidies—-God forfend! It merely “knows itself” how to hit the right tone, a tone pleasing
to the ear of the Novoye Vremya people and Guchkov’s “stalwarts”.

IV

Yes, there is much that is painful in the life of the exiles. It is exiles, and they alone, who in the years of social stag
nation and lull raised major questions of principle concerning all Russian
democrats. There is more poverty and want among them than elsewhere. The
proportion of suicides is particularly great among them, and the proportion
of those among them whose whole being is one bundle of sick nerves is
incredibly, monstrously great. Indeed, how could things be different with
tormented people?

Different people will take interest in different things when they find
themselves among exiles. Some of them will be interested in the open
discussion of major political questions of principle. Others will be
interested in stories about a row at a ball, about an unscrupulous copyist,
or about the distaste which concierges and shopkeepers have for the exiles’
way of life. Everyone to his taste.

Nevertheless, when you experience all the hardships of a tormented,
drab, morbidly nervous life in exile and think of the life of the Shchepetevs, Struves, Golovins, Izgoyevs and Co., you
cannot help saying: what an immense happiness not to belong to this society
of “respectable people”, to the society where these individuals are
received and where people shake hands with them!

Probably, rows do not occur in this “respectable society”. Prostitutes do not find themselves in the position of all but
room-mates of these gentlemen. Oh, no. They stay in other quarters.

The unemployed raise no rows at dances arranged by these people. For
those dances are perfectly decorous. They keep these things apart: the
prostitutes (from among the unemployed) live in one flat, while the dances
are held in another. And if they take on a copyist, they never allow any
depravity, such as letting the copyist take his pay in advance and then
dare to absent himself.

Rows over money are out of the question with them. Near them are no
starving, tormented, unnerved people, ready to commit suicide. And if “the
millions fraternise—today with “science” in the persons of
Messrs. Struve and Co., tomorrow with the title of deputy in the persons of
Messrs. Golovin and Co., and the day after with the titles of deputy and
lawyer in the persons of Messrs. Maklakov and

Co. [12] —where do rows come in here?

Those are all noble acts. If the writings of the Struves, Gredeskuls,
Shchepetevs and Co. against the democrats give pleasure to the
Ryabushinskys, etc., what is wrong with that? After all, Struve receives no
subsidies—he “himself” hits the right tone! No one can say that
Russkaya Mysl is a kept woman of the Ryabushinskys. It will occur
to no one to compare the pleasure which the Ryabushinskys derive from
certain “publicists” with the pleasure which serf girls gave the
landlords in the old days by scratching their heels for them.

Indeed, what blame attaches to Mr. Struve or Mr. Gredeskul or
Shchepetev, etc., because their writings and speeches, which express their
own convictions, are a sort of heel-scratching for the Russian merchants
and landlords, who are embittered against the revolution?

What is so shocking about the fact that Mr. Golovin, an ex-deputy, has
got himself a profitable concession? After all, he has relinquished the title of deputy!! That means that when he was
a deputy there was no concession as yet—it was only just in the
making. And when he obtained a con cession, he ceased to be a deputy. Is it
not clear that there is no dirty business here?

Is it not obvious that only slanderers can point a finger at Maklakov?
Did he not defend Taglyev—as he himself stated in a letter published in
Rech—“according to his convictions”? There can be no doubt whatever
that no Paris concierge or shopkeeper will find anything—anything at
all—reprehensible, awkward or shocking in the way of life or in the
actions of all these respectable Cadet people.

V

Mr. Shchepetev’s general statement of principle is worth
reproducing in full:

“ Hitherto, and above all in the circles taking part in
the revolution, humanitarian and altruistic sentiments have suppressed
personal requirements to an excessive degree, often to the detriment of the
general progress and cultural advancement of the whole of our country. Too
often the desire for the ‘public good’ and for the ‘welfare of the whole
people’ made people forget about themselves, about their personal needs and
requirements, so much so that the social sentiments and aspirations
themselves could not be translated into reality in the form of positive
[!!], creative, entirely conscious work, and fatally led to passive forms
of self-sacrifice. Indeed, not only in this particular sphere, but also in
the sphere of the most ordinary relations, the requirements of the
individual were constantly sup pressed in every manner—by a ‘guilty
conscience’ which often swelled this thirst for heroism and self-sacrifice
to hypertrophic proportions, on the one hand, and by an inadequate
appraisal of life itself due to the low standard of our culture, on the
other hand The result is a constant split personality, a constant sense of
the wrongness and even ‘sinfulness’ of one’s life, a constant desire to
sacrifice oneself, to come to the aid of the propertyless and disinherited,
and, finally, to go into ‘the camp of the perishing’—a fact which has
found so full and vivid an expression in our literature.

“ Nothing of the kind is met with in the views and moral
principles of the French people.”

This is a commentary on Mr. Gredeskul’s political and programmatic
statements which Rech published without a single reservation and
which Pravda (No. 85) recalled when Rech chose to forget
them.

This is a continuation and repetition of Vekhi . Once again we
can and must see from the example of this discourse that Vekhi is
merely making a show of fighting against the “intelligentsia” and that it
is in fact fighting against democracy , which it completely
renounces.

It is particularly necessary to stress the unity of Vekhi ,
Gredeskul and Rech today, during the elections, when the Cadets,
playing at democracy, are doing their utmost to obscure and side-track all
the truly important and vital political questions of principle. One of the
urgent practical tasks facing the democrats is to raise these questions at
election meetings, to explain to as large an audience as possible the
meaning and significance of the talk of the Shchepetevs and all the
Vekhists, and to expose the hypocrisy of Rech and the Milyukovs
when they try to disclaim responsibility for Russkaya Mysl ,
although those who write for it are Cadet Party members .

The “arguments” with the Vekhists, the “polemics” of the
Gredeskuls, Milyukovs and other such gentlemen against them, are no more
than eyewash, nothing but a hypocritical disguise for the deep fundamental
solidarity between the entire Cadet Party and Vekhi . Indeed, how
can anyone “argue” against the basic propositions of the passage quoted
above? How can he remain in the same party with people who hold such views,
without bearing full responsibility for this advocacy of an
emphatic repudiation of the elementary principles of all democracy?

The issue is obscured by those who are willing to present it
à la Vekhi , in terms of contrasting “individualism” with
“altruism”, and so on. The political meaning of these phrases could not
be clearer—they are a volte-face against democracy, a volte-face in favour of counter-revolutionary liberalism.

We must realise that this volte-face is no accident, but a
result of the class position of the bourgeoisie. And we must draw from this
the necessary political conclusions as regards the clear demarcation of
democracy from liberalism. Unless we are aware of these realities, and
unless we bring them home to the mass of the population, there can be no
question of any real step forward.

---
Notes:
[1]
The objection will probably be raised that Gredeskul, as well as
Milyukov and Co., argued with Vekhi . So they did, but they remained Vekhists for all that. See, inter alia,
Pravda No. 85.

— Lenin

[2]
See Mr. Shchepetev’s article, p. 139 ( Russkaya Mysl No. 8,
1912). — Lenin

[3]
Ibid., p. 153. — Lenin

[4]
See present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 266–79.— Ed .

[5]
Russkaya Mysl ( Russian Thought) —a liberal bourgeois monthly published in Moscow from 1880 to the middle of 1918. After the
revolution of 1905 it became the organ of the Right wing of the Cadet
Party. At that time Lenin called it Chernosotennaya Mysl
( Black-Hundred Thought ).

[6]
Lenin is quoting from Nekrasov’s poem, Who Can Be Happy in Russia ?

The quatrain quoted in the text further on is taken from Nekrasov’s
“To the Unknown Friend Who has Sent Me the Poem ‘It Cannot
Be’\thinspace”.

[7]
This refers to the “Letter to Gogol”, dated July 3, 1847, in which
V. G. Belinsky most vividly expressed his revolutionary-democratic
ideas. Lenin described the “Letter” as “one of the finest productions of
the illegal, democratic press”

[8]
Lenin borrowed the phrase “ conformably to villainy ” from
“The Liberal”, a satirical fairy-tale by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin.

[9]
Zubatovism —the policy of “police socialism”, so named after Colonel Zubatov, chief of the Moscow Secret Police, on whose
initiative legal workers’ organisations were formed in 1901–03 to divert
the workers from the political struggle against the autocracy. Zubatov’s
activity in this field was supported by V.K. Plehve, Minister of the
Interior. The Zubatovists sought to direct the working-class movement into
the narrow channel of purely economic demands, and suggested to the workers
that the government was willing to meet those demands. The first Zubatovist
organisation—the Society for Mutual Assistance of Mechanical Industry
Workers—was set up in Moscow in May 1901. Similar organisations were
founded in Minsk, Odessa, Vilna, Kiev and other cities.

The revolutionary Social-Democrats, in exposing the reactionary
character of Zubatovism, used legal workers’ organisations to draw large
sections of the working class into the struggle against the autocracy. The
growing revolutionary movement in 1903 compelled the tsarist government to
abolish the Zubatovist organisations.

[10]
Judas Golovlyov —a sanctimonious, hypocritical, serf-owning
land lord portrayed in M. Saltykov-Shchedrin’s The Golovlyov Family .

[11]
Russky Vestnik ( The Russian Herald )—a political and literary periodical published between 1856 and 1906. From 1856 to 1887 it was issued in Moscow, with M. N. Katkov as its editor and
publisher. Originally it had a liberal trend but in the 1860s it became an
organ of feudal reaction. After Katkov’s death it was issued in
St. Petersburg from 1888 to 1896, in Moscow from 1896 to 1902, and again in
St. Petersburg from 1902 to 1906.

[12]
See Note 87.