V. I.

Lenin

Mr. Velikhov, property-owner, member of the State Duma and the Cadet
Party, editor and publisher of Gorodskoye Dyelo , [1] published in his magazine an article in defence of the
Kiev congress of urban representatives of “the intellectualist
bureaucracy”.

This malicious phrase, borrowed from the reactionary press, denotes the
democratic intelligentsia, who, be it known, have given offence to the poor
property-owners by analysing the “property-owners’ institutions” and
demanding political clarity. “The intellectualist bureaucracy,” complains
Mr. Velikhov, tried “primarily to impose a general-political role on the
congress.”

Mr. Velikhov calls this trend at the congress “political” and
contrasts it to another trend, “ municipal ”.

The views of the latter he outlines as follows:

“ The revolution, said the urban representatives, has passed and is not likely to be repeated in the near future. It is probable
that it was not completely successful because the revolutionary-minded
classes [which classes? Say what you mean, Mr. Velikhov!] acted at that
time without having acquired sufficient knowledge and experience and were
not trained to take over state power. The broad road of meetings, slogans,
tub-thumping speeches and resolutions of protest no longer satisfies
anyone, and has apparently outlived itself. Ahead of us there is tremendous
cultural work of a practical nature ”

That is how a property-owner speaks. He shows the point of view of the
serf-owner both in his morals and in his urge to forget that at the
decisive moment the bourgeoisie went over to the side of the feudalists. He
repeats in a peculiar way some “would-be Marxist” phrases that he has
heard somewhere, probably among the liquidators:

“ In Russia,” he writes, “where the working-class proletariat is still small in numbers and weak, where, even according to
Marx’s Capital , government should pass from the landed aristocracy
to the urban bourgeoisie at the next stage of historical development, to
attack the bourgeoisie, to disdain them, to hinder their attempts to
struggle against the present political system and regime means putting the
brake on natural progress.” ( Gorodskoye Dyelo , 1913, No. 20,
pp. 1341–1342.)

Quite, quite “according to Marx”!

My dear progressive and even Constitutional-Democratic property-owner!
“The attempts of the bourgeoisie to struggle against the present political
system” have never been hindered by the Marxists. You will never
be able to show a single case of “struggle” in which the “weak
proletariat” did not participate more energetically. The Marxists
and the workers have not disdained a single case of bourgeois
“struggle” against the feudal landowners.

But do you not recall, you who quote Marx, those historical examples
that have been increasingly frequent since 1848, of the bourgeoisie
betraying the struggle against the feudal landowners and going
over to their side ?

Russian history, too, teems with such examples, especially in 1904 and
still more so in the autumn of 1905, still more so in the winter of that
year and then in the spring of 1906, and so on and so forth.

Can you not understand, Mr. Property-Owner who quotes Marx, that the
interests of the struggle against the feudal landowners demand
that those bourgeois who talk about struggle and, by their
actions, betray it should be exposed, attacked and discredited?

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Notes:
[1]
Gorodskoye Dyelo ( Urban Affairs )—a Cadet fortnightly devoted to questions of municipal economy and administration;
it was published in St. Petersburg from 1909 to 1918.