V. I.

Lenin

Concerning the Workers’ Deputies to the Duma and Their Declaration [1]

The Social-Democratic group, speaking from the platform of the Fourth
Duma, declares that there is an inseparable continuity between its activity
and that of the Social-Democratic groups in the previous Dumas,
particularly the one in the Second Duma, a group against which the
counter-revolutionaries committed an act of unprecedented political
vengeance. The Russian Social-Democratic Party is a contingent of the great
international liberation army of the socialist proletariat. This army is
now growing rapidly throughout the world. The universal high cost of
living, the oppression of capital grouped in associations, cartels, trusts
and syndicates, and the imperialist policies of the Powers make the
condition of the working masses intolerable and aggravate the struggle
between capital and labour. The time is fast approaching when an end will
be put to capitalism, when millions of united proletarians will establish a
social system in which there will be no poverty of the masses, nor
exploitation of man by man.

The Social-Democratic group joins its voice to that of the workers of
all countries, who at the International Congress in Basle expressed an
emphatic protest against war. The workers demand peace. They protest
against all interference in Balkan affairs. Only complete freedom and
independence of the Balkan peoples, and only a federal Balkan republic are
capable of providing the best way out of the present crisis and a real
solution to the national question through the recognition of complete
equality and an absolute right to political self-determination for all
nationalities without exception.

The Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma protests above all
against the foreign policy of the Russian Government. It condemns the
hidden intention to enlarge our state by seizing foreign territories on the
Bosphorus, in Turkish Armenia, in Persia and China, and condemns the
seizure of Mongolia, which disrupts good relations with the great,
fraternal Chinese Republic.

All chauvinism and nationalism will find an implacable enemy in the
Social-Democratic group—whether the crude, brutal nationalism of the
government which crushes and strangles Finland, Poland, the Ukraine, the
Jews and the other non-Great-Russian nationalities, or the hypocritically
disguised, refined nationalism of the liberals and Cadets, who are willing
to talk about the tasks of Russia as a Great Power and about an agreement
between her and other Powers with the aim of plundering foreign lands.

The ruling classes resort to noisy nationalist speeches in a vain
effort to divert the attention of the people from the intolerable domestic
position of Russia. The unheard of rigging of the Fourth Duma elections,
which is reminiscent of the Bonapartist methods of that adventurer,
Napoleon III, has shown for the hundredth and thousandth time that the
government cannot rely for support upon any one class of the population. It
cannot even maintain its alliance with the landlords and the big
bourgeoisie, for the sake of which the coup d’état of June 3, 1907,
was carried out. The Duma has swung to the right while the whole country
has moved to the left.

The whole of Russia is suffocating under the yoke of oppression and
tyranny. The entire civilised world hears with startled indignation of the
tortures and the suffering of political prisoners in the Kutomara, Algachi
and other prisons, where the finest people of our country are languishing
in torment. Russia needs political liberty as badly as man needs air to
breathe. Russia cannot live and develop unless there is freedom of the
press, assembly, association and strikes, and, more than to any other
class, these liberties are indispensable to the proletariat, which the lack
of rights typical of Russian reality binds hand and foot in the fight it
must carry on for higher wages, shorter working hours and better living
conditions. The oppression of capital, the high cost of living, unemployment in the towns and the
impoverishment of the countryside make it all the more necessary for the
workers to associate in unions and fight for their right to live, while
lack of political liberty keeps the worker in the position of a slave or
serf. The workers will stop at no sacrifice in their struggle for freedom,
well knowing that only a radical change in all the political conditions of
Russian life, only the fullest provision of the foundations and pillars of
political liberty, can guarantee the freedom of their struggle against
capital.

The elections to the Fourth Duma and the workers’ mass political
strikes in 1912, which involved up to a mil lion workers, showed that the
time is drawing near when the workers will again march at the head of all
democrats to win freedom. Three camps tested their strength in the election
struggle. The camp of government counter-revolution proved so impotent that
it had to rig the elections even under the law of June 3, compelling the
downtrodden rural priests to vote against their conscience and
convictions. The liberal camp moved still further from the democrats
towards the big bourgeoisie. The Cadets demonstrated their
counter-revolutionary nature by an alliance with the Black Hundreds against
the Social-Democrats in Riga and Yekaterinodar, in Kostroma and the first
St. Petersburg curia. The liberal utopia of constitutional reform, with the
foundations of the present political system unchanged and without a
powerful movement of the people, is more and more losing favour among the
democrats. The slogan of the liberals is: “There is no need for a second
revolution, what is needed is merely constitutional work.” Being fully
aware of the spuriousness of this slogan, the working class waged its
struggle in the elections, rallying all the democratic forces to itself.

Everyone knows, and even the government press said so, that the working
class had three slogans in the election campaign: a democratic republic, an
eight-hour working day, and confiscation of all the landed estates in
favour of the peasants.

The Social-Democratic proletariat is convinced that these three demands
are the necessary culmination of the demands shared by every democrat, such
as universal suffrage, freedom of the press, assembly, association and strikes, the election of
judges and government officials by the people, abolition of the standing
army and introduction of a people’s militia, disestablishment of the Church
and separation of the school from the Church, etc.

The condition of the peasant masses in Russia is becoming more and more
intolerable. The government’s so-called “land distribution system” merely
worsens the plight of the majority by ruining the countryside, leading to
famine such as affected 30 million peasants last year, and bringing no
lasting improvement of agriculture in general. The pretence of financial
prosperity is kept up by extorting taxes and befuddling the population with
drink, while the government delays its bankruptcy by contracting more and
more loans. Even the modest land Bill submitted to the Duma by the
forty-three Right-wing peasants has been shelved. No wonder the better
section of the peasantry is looking more and more to the working class as
the only leader of the people in the struggle for freedom. No wonder all
democrats regard the political strikes of 1912, which are inseparably
linked with the economic movement of the working class, as the dawn of a
new life, of a new more powerful emancipation movement.

The Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma will champion the
interests and needs of this movement. It considers that it has no right to
conceal from the majority in the Fourth Duma what all the class-conscious
workers of Russia are thinking and feeling. The class-conscious workers
remain unshakably loyal to socialism. They re main unshakably loyal to the
principles of the old, battle-tested Russian Social-Democratic Labour
Party. In the name of these principles, they remain unshakably loyal to
their republican convictions.

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Notes:
[1]
The document “ Concerning the Workers’ Deputies to the Duma and Their Declaration ” was the draft of a declaration of the
Social-Democratic group. It was copied by N. K. Krupskaya and sent to the
Bolshevik members of the Duma from Cracow on November 13 (26), 1912. The
draft was Intercepted by the tsar’s police.