V. I.

Lenin

What Has Been Revealed By the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Duma Group [1]

The trial, by the tsar’s court, of five members of the R.S.D.L. Duma
group and six other Social-Democrats seized on November 4, 1914 at a
conference near Petrograd has ended. They have all been sentenced to life
exile in Siberia. The censor has deleted from accounts of the trial
published in the legal press all the passages that may be unpleasant to
tsarism and the patriots. The “internal enemies” have been
rapidly dealt with and again nothing is to be seen or heard on the surface
of public life except the savage howling of a pack of bourgeois
chauvinists, echoed by some handfuls of social-chauvinists.

What, then, has the trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour group
proved?

First of all, it has shown that this advance contingent of revolutionary
Social-Democracy in Russia failed to display sufficient firmness at the
trial. It was the aim of the accused to prevent the State Prosecutor from
finding out the names of the members of the Central Committee in Russia and
of the Party’s representatives in its contacts with workers’
organisations. That aim has been achieved. To continue achieving that aim in
the future, we muse resort to a method long recommended officially by the
Party, i.e., refuse to give evidence. However, to attempt to prove
one’s solidarity with the social-patriot Mr. Yordansky, as Rosenfeld
did, or one’s disagreement with the Central Committee, is a wrong
method, one that is inexcusable from the standpoint of a revolutionary
Social-Democrat.

We shall note that, according to a Dyen report (No. 40) [2] —there is no official or complete record of
the trial—Comrade Petrovsky stated: “In the same period
[November] I received the Central Committee resolution . . . and besides I
was given resolutions adopted by workers in seven various places concerning
their attitude towards the war, resolutions coinciding with the Central Committee’s attitude. ”

This declaration does Petrovsky credit. The tide of chauvinism was
running high on all sides. In Petrovsky’s diary there is an entry to
the effect that even the radical-minded Chkheidze spoke with enthusiasm of a
war for “liberty”. This chauvinism was resisted by the
R.S.D.L. group deputies when they were free, but it was also their duty, at
the trial, to draw a line of distinction between themselves and
chauvinism.

The Cadet
Rech [3] had servilely “thanked” the tsar’s court for “dispelling the legend” that the Russian
Social-Democratic deputies wanted the defeat of the tsar’s
armies. Taking advantage of the fact that in Russia the Social-Democrats are
tied hand and foot in their activities, the Cadets are pretending to take
seriously the so-called “conflict” between the Party and the Duma
group, and declare that the accused gave their evidence without the least
compulsion. What innocent babes? They pretend ignorance of the threat of a
court-martial and the death sentence that hung over the deputies in the
early stage of the trial.

The comrades should have refused to give evidence concerning the illegal
organisation, and, in view of the historic importance of the moment, they
should have taken advantage of a public trial to openly set forth the
Social-Democratic views, which are hostile, not only to tsarism in general,
but also to social-chauvinism of all and every shade.

Let the government and bourgeois press wrathfully attack the
R.S.D.L. group; let the Social-Revolutionaries, liquidators and
social-chauvinists (who must fight us somehow, if they cannot fight us on
the issue of principles!) with gleeful malice “discover” signs of
weakness or of fictitious “disagreement with the Central
Committee”. The Party of the revolutionary proletariat is strong
enough to openly criticise itself, and unequivocally call mistakes and
weaknesses by their proper names. The class-conscious workers of Russia have
created a party and have placed in the forefront an advance contingent
which, during a world war and the world-wide collapse of international
opportunism have revealed more than anyone else the ability to perform their
duty as internationalist revolutionary Social-Democrats. The road we have
been travelling has been tested by the greatest of all crises, and has
proved, over and over again, the only correct road. We shall follow it still
more firmly and resolutely; we shall throw out fresh advance contingents,
and shall see to it that they not only carry out the same work, but carry it
through more correctly.

Secondly, the trial has revealed a picture without precedent in world
socialism—that of revolutionary Social-Democracy making use
of parliamentarianism. More than any speeches, this example will appeal to
the minds and hearts of the proletarian masses; more convincingly than any
arguments, it will refute the legalist opportunists and anarchist
phrase-mongers. The report on Muranov’s illegal work and
Petrovsky’s notes will long remain a model of that kind of
work carried out by our deputies, which we have had diligently to conceal,
and the meaning of which will give all class-conscious workers in Russia
more and more food for thought. At a time when nearly all
“socialist”(forgive the debasement of the word!) deputies in
Europe have proved chauvinists and servants of chauvinists, when the famous
“Europeanism” that once charmed our liberals and liquidators has
proved an obtuse habitude of slavish legality, there was to be found in
Russia a workers’ party whose deputies excelled, not in high-flown
speech, or being “received” in bourgeois, intellectualist salons,
or in the business acumen of the “European” lawyer and parliamentarian, but in ties with the working masses, in dedicated work
among those masses, in carrying on modest, unpretentious, arduous, thankless
and highly dangerous duties of illegal propagandists and organisers. To
climb higher, towards the rank of a deputy or minister influential in
“society” such has been the actual meaning of “European” (i.e., servile)
“socialist” parliamentarism. To go into the midst of the masses,
to help enlighten and unite the exploited and the oppressed—such is
the slogan advanced by the examples set by Muranov and Petrovsky.

This slogan will acquire historic significance. In no country in the
world will a single thinking worker agree to confine himself to the old
legality of bourgeois parliamentarism, when that legality has been abolished
with a stroke of the pen in all the advanced countries, and has led to
merely a closer actual alliance between the opportunists and the
bourgeoisie. Whoever dreams of “unity” between revolutionary
Social-Democratic workers and the “European” Social-Democratic
legalists of yesterday, and of today , has learned nothing and
forgotten everything, and is in fact an ally of the bourgeoisie and an enemy
of the proletariat. Whoever has to this day failed to realise why the
R.S.D.L. group broke away from the Social-Democratic group that was making
its peace with legalism and opportunism can now learn a lessen from the
activities of Muranov and Petrovsky as described in the report on the
trial. It was not only by these two deputies that this work was
conducted, and only hopelessly naïve people can dream of a
compatibility between such work and a “friendly and tolerant
attitude” towards Nasha Zarya or Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta , [4] towards Sovremennik , the Organising
Committee, or the Bund.

Do the government hope to intimidate the workers by sending the members
of the R.S.D.L. group to Siberia? They will find themselves mistaken. The
workers will not be intimidated, but will the better understand their aims,
those of a workers’ party as distinct from the liquidators and the
social-chauvinists. The workers will learn to elect to the Duma only men
such as the members of the R.S.D.L. group, and for similar and ever more
extensive work, such that will be conducted among the masses with still more
secrecy. Do the government intend to do away with “illegal
parliamentarianism” in Russia? They will merely consolidate the links
between the proletariat exclusively with that kind of parliamentarism.

Thirdly, and most important, the court proceedings against the
R.S.D.L. group have, for the first time, produced open and objective
material, disseminated all over Russia in millions of copies, concerning the
most fundamental, the most significant and most vital question of the
attitude of the various classes in Russian society towards the
war. Have we not had enough of nauseating intellectualist jabber about the
compatibility between “defence of the fatherland” and internationalism “in principle”(i.e., purely verbal and
hypocritical internationalism)? Has not the time come to examine the
facts that bear upon classes , i.e., millions of living
people, not some dozens of phrase-mongers?

Over half a year has passed since the outbreak of war. The press, both
legal and illegal, and expressing all trends, has had its say; all the party
groups in the Duma have defined their stands—a highly insufficient
index of our class groupings, but the only objective one. The trial of the
R.S.D.L. group and the press comment on it have summed up all this
material. The trial has shown that the finest representatives of the
proletariat in Russia are not only hostile to chauvinism in general but, in
particular, share the stand of our Central Organ. The deputies were arrested
on November 4, 1914. Consequently, they had been conducting their work for
over two months. How and with whom did they carry it on? Which currents in
the working class did they reflect and express? The answer is found in the
fact that the “theses” and Sotsial-Demokrat provided the
material for the conference, and that, on several occasions, the Petrograd
Committee of our Party issued leaflets of the same nature. There was no
other material at the conference. The deputies had no intention of reporting
to the conference on other currents in the working class, because no other
currents existed.

Perhaps the members of the R.S.D.L. group were expressing the opinion of
a mere minority of, the workers? We have no grounds to suppose so, since, in
the two and a half years, between the spring of 1912 and the autumn of 1914,
four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of Russia rallied around
Pravda , with which these deputies were working in complete
ideological solidarity. That is a fact. Had there been a more or less
appreciable protest among the workers against the Central Committee’s
stand, that protest would have surely found expression in the resolutions
proposed. Nothing of the kind emerged at the trial, though the latter, it
might be said, did “reveal” much of the work done by the
R.S.D.L. group. The corrections made in Petrovsky’s handwriting do not
reveal even the slightest hint at any difference of opinion.

The facts show that, in the very first months after the outbreak of the
war, the class-conscious vanguard of the workers of Russia rallied, in deed , about the Central Committee and the Central Organ. However
unpleasant this fact may be to certain “groups”, it is undeniable. Thanks to the trial, the words cited in the indictment:
“The guns should be directed, not against our brothers, the wage
slaves of other countries, but against the reactionary and bourgeois
governments and parties of all countries"—these words will
spread—and have already done so—all over Russia as a call for
proletarian internationalism, for the proletarian revolution. Thanks to the
trial, the class slogan of the vanguard of the workers of Russia has reached
the masses of the workers.

An epidemic of chauvinism among the bourgeoisie and a certain section of
the petty bourgeoisie, vacillation in the other section of the latter, and a
working class call of this nature—such is the actual and objective
picture of our political divisions. It is to this actual situation, not to
the pious wishes of intellectuals and founders of grouplets, that one must
gear one’s “prospects”, hopes, and slogans.

The Pravdist papers and the “Muranov type” of work have
brought about the unity of four-fifths of the class-conscious workers of
Russia. About forty thousand workers have been buying Pravda ; far
more read it. Even if war, prison, Siberia, and hard labour should destroy
five or even ten times as many—this section of the workers
cannot be annihilated. It is alive. It is imbued with the
revolutionary spirit, is anti-chauvinist. It alone stands in the
midst of the masses, with deep roots in the latter, as the champion of the
internationalism of the toilers, the exploited, and the oppressed. It
alone has held its ground in the general debâcle. It alone is leading the semi-proletarian elements away from the
social-chauvinism of the Cadets, the Trudoviks, Plekhanov and Nasha Zarya , and towards socialism. Its existence, its ideas, its
work, and its call for the “brotherhood of wage slaves of other
countries” have been revealed to the whole of Russia by the trial of
the R.S.D.L. group.

It is with this section that we must work, and its unity must be defended
against social-chauvinists. That is the only road along which the
working-class movement of Russia can develop towards social revolution, and
not towards national-liberalism of the “European” type.