V. I.

Lenin

In connection with V. Maklakov’s Duma speeches and his press statements in favour of the “new” plan for combining the tactics of
the Cadets and Octobrists, there has of late been a good deal of talk about
the revival of liberalism. The Zemstvo banquet in Moscow has lent colour to
these rumours.

It is noteworthy that particular emphasis has been laid on the fact
that even V. Maklakov, that most moderate of liberals, with a
leaning towards Octobrism, has lost “faith in the possibility of a way
being found out of the impasse without revolutionary upheavals and
cataclysms”. This, literally, is what is written in Rech , the
chief organ of the liberals, by Mr. Shingaryov who, together with
Mr. Milyukov, pretends to criticise the “Right” Cadets,
V. Maklakov and P. Struve, “ from the left ”.

But the disputes among the Cadets have been most trifling. They have
been arguing whether the proposal made to the Octobrists about joining the
opposition is new or not, and whether that proposal, which has been made a
hundred times and never led to anything, is worth repeating for the hundred
and first time. Behind these absolutely meaningless disputes one can
discern the liberals’ chief and common cause of worry , which
hinders the cause of Russia’s liberation only slightly less than the
Octobrists’ vacillations. You gentlemen of the liberal fold, who are
arguing all the time with the Octobrists and about the Octobrists, should
take a good look at yourselves!

Take the small political encyclopaedia issued by Rech and
entitled The Year-Book for 1914. Among its contributors are the
most prominent and most responsible Cadets, the acknowledged leaders of the
party, headed by Milyukov and

Shingaryov. In the survey of “Our Public Life” (by Mr. Izgoyev), we read
the following appraisal of the fundamental issues in Russian home policies:

“ By its excessive zeal the Administration is only weakening the anti-revolutionary forces within the community.”

Don’t you think it absurd, Messrs. the Cadets, to hurl thunderbolts at
the Octobrists, when the most genuine Octobrism is preached in your own
publications?

A result of the Administration’s “hopeless and misguided” struggle
against educational institutions, writes Mr. Izgoyev, is:

“ a corruption of life, leading to the weakening of the
purely public [!] activity, which produces the spiritual antidotes to
ideas that are really a menace to the country”.

Now this is a tone worthy, not only of an Octobrist, but even of a
prosecutor, a
Shcheglovitov. [1] And as if to illustrate what these “ideas that are a
menace to the country” are, our liberal says:

“ One can understand [from the point of view of the corruption of life by the misguided Administration] why at workers’
meetings and in the trade unions the Bolsheviks gain the upper hand over
the more level-headed and cultured leaders [!?] of the working-class
movement.”

This political appraisal of the liquidators is uttered and reiterated
by the liberals times without number. As a matter of fact, we have here
nothing more nor less than a political alliance between the liberals and
the liquidators. In turning their backs on the “underground” and
advocating a legal party the liquidators are doing in the ranks of the
workers exactly what the liberals want them to do.

---
Notes:
[1]
Shcheglovitov, I. G. (1861–1918)—a big landlord, extreme
reactionary. Minister of Justice from 1906 to 1915. Pursued a Black-Hundred
policy and openly subjected the law courts to control by the police
authorities. Was one of the organisers of the military tribunals, the trial
of the Social-Democratic members of the Second and Fourth Dumas, the Beilis
case, etc. The term “Shcheglovitov justice” became generic for legal
frame-up and tyranny in tsarist Russia.