V. I.

Lenin

The Shameful Menshevik-Narodnik Bloc with Yedinstvo

Today is the second and principal day of the elections, The most
importunate in offering themselves to the electorate, besides
the Cadets, are the united Mensheviks and Narodniks.

What answer did they have to our accusation concerning their
shameful bloc with Yedinstvo? Are they prepared to defend this bloc on grounds of principle?

They are not.

In reply to our suggestion that the bloc with Yedinstvo
was a disgrace, Rabochaya Gazeta quotes the example of—whom would you think?—of the agent provocateur
Malinovsky and of his being smuggled into the Duma by the secret
police!

The dishonesty of such a “method” of controversy is dealt with
elsewhere [in this edition] in a separate paragraph . [1]

Here we are concerned with “ Rabochaya Gazeta’s ” logic rather than its
dishonesty. Look what you do, gentlemen! You parry our reference
to “your” Yedinstvo by a counter-reference to “our” agent provocateur Malinovsky! What is the inference? The
inference is that you consider Yedinstvo on a par with an agent provocateur!

That is how the wise heads of Rabochaya Gazeta “defend”
the bloc with Yedinstvo. Very clever of them, to be sure. When told that they have in free Russia
such a disgraceful colleague as Plekhanov’s Yedinstvo ,
they answer : And the Bolsheviks, in tsarist
Russia, had the agent provocateur Malinovsky! Isn’t this a gem of a defence?

Dyelo Naroda , too, has put its toot into it in regard to Yedinstvo. On May 27, the first day of the
elections, this paper of Kerensky, Chernov and Co. carried a
front-page appeal to vote for the lists in which “Yedinstvo” is smuggled in.

And on the second page of the same issue of Dyelo Naroda we read a lengthy denunciation of the
“social-patriot” Plekhanov and his Yedinstvo , containing, among others, the following “vitriolic remark”:

“ We will gladly inform our readers what other liberal- and social-imperialist —‘ Rech ’, ‘ Russkaya Volya ’
and
‘ Yedinsstvo ’— think about the Italian annexation [of Albania ].”

A gem, is it not?

The “Socialist-Revolutionaries” call on the people to vote for
lists in which the candidates of Yedinstvo are concealed, the very same “Yedinstvo” which the
Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves, and on election day at
that, call ’social imperialist”, i.e., socialist in word and
’imperialist in deed”, the very same Yedinstvo which they identify with Rech and Russkaya Volya.

The wise Rabochaya Gazeta, in a bloc with the wise
Dyelo Naroda , has certainly “defended”
Yedinstvo today.

And Plekhanov accepts alms from people who “accidentally”
compare him with Malinovsky, or, on election day, openly declare
him to be a “social-imperialist”.

Such is the exhibition which this disgraceful bloc of the
Mensheviks plus Narodniks plus Yedinstvo is making of itself.

Workers and soldiers! All toiling people! Not a single vote to
the Narodniks and Mensheviks, who are trying to drag in the
“social-imperialists”!

Vote for the Bolsheviks!

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Notes:
[1]


— Lenin