V. I. Lenin

Heroes of Fraud and the Mistakes of the Bolsheviks
[1]

The so-called Democratic Conference is over. Thank God, one more
farce is behind us and still we are advancing, provided fate has
no more than a certain number of farces in store for our
revolution.

In order correctly to judge the political results of the
Conference, we must attempt to ascertain its precise class
significance as indicated by objective facts.

Further break-up of the government parties, the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks; their obvious loss of
the majority among the revolutionary democrats; one more step
towards linking up Mr. Kerensky and Messrs. Tsereteli, Chernov
and Co. and exposing the Bonapartism they share—such is the
class significance of the Conference.

In the Soviets, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks
have lost their majority. They therefore have had to resort to a
fraud—they have violated their pledge to call a new congress of the Soviets in three months. They have evaded
reporting back to those who elected the Central Executive
Committee of the Soviets; and they have rigged the "Democratic"
Conference. The Bolsheviks spoke of this fraud prior to the
Conference, and the results fully confirmed their correctness. The Lieberdans [2] and the Tseretelis, Chernovs and Co. saw
that their majority in the Soviets was dwindling, therefore they
resorted to a fraud.

Arguments like that which says that co-operatives and also
"properly" elected city and Zemstvo representatives "are already
of great significance among the democratic organisations", are
so flimsy that it is nothing but crass hypocrisy to advance them
seriously. First of all, the Central Executive Committee was
elected by the Soviets, and its refusal to deliver a report and
relinquish office to the Soviets , is a Bonapartist fraud. Secondly, the Soviets represent revolutionary democracy
insofar as they are joined by those who wish to fight in a
revolutionary way. Their doors are not closed to members of the
co-operatives and city dwellers. Those same
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks ran the Soviets.

Those who remained only in the co-operatives, who confined themselves only to municipal (city and
Zemstvo) work, voluntarily separated themselves from the ranks
of revolutionary democracy, thereby attaching themselves to a
democracy that was either reactionary or neutral. Everybody
knows that co-operative and municipal work is done not only by revolutionaries, but also by
reactionaries; everybody knows that people are elected to
co-operatives and municipalities primarily for work that is
not of general political scope and importance.

The aim of the Lieberdans, Tsereteli, Chernov and Co. when they
rigged the Conference was to bring up reserves secretly from
among the adherents of Yedinstvo and "non-partisan" reactionaries. That was the fraud they perpetrated. That was
their Bonapartism, which allies them with the Bonapartist
Kerensky. They robbed democracy while hypocritically keeping up
democratic appearances—this is the essence of the matter.

Nicholas II stole, figuratively, large sums from democracy. He
convened representative institutions but gave the landowners a
hundredfold greater representation than the peasants. The
Lieberdans, Tseretelis, and Chernovs steal petty sums from
democracy; they convoke a Democratic Conference where both workers and peasants point with full justice to
the curtailment of their representation, to lack of proportionality, to discrimination in favour of members
of the co-operatives and municipal councils closest to the
bourgeoisie (and reactionary democracy).

The Lieberdans, Tseretelis and Chernovs have parted ways with
the masses of poor workers and peasants. They saved themselves
by the fraud that keeps their Kerensky going.

The demarcation of classes is progressing. A protest is growing
in the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik parties, a direct
split is maturing because the "leaders" have betrayed the
interests of the majority of the population. The leaders are
relying on the support of a minority , in defiance of the principles of democracy. Fraud is inevitable as far
as they are concerned.

Kerensky is revealing himself more and more as a Bonapartist. He
was considered a Socialist-Revolutionary. Now we know that he is
not merely a "March" Socialist-Revolutionary who ran over to
them from the Trudoviks "for advertising purposes". He is an
adherent of Breshko-Breshkovskaya, the Socialist-Revolutionary
Mrs. Plekhanov, or Mrs. Potresov in their Dyen. The so-called Right wing of the so-called socialist parties, the
Plekhanovs, Breshkovskayas, Potresovs, is where Kerensky
belongs ; this wing, however, does not differ substantially from the Cadets in anything.

The Cadets have good reason to praise Kerensky. He pursues
their policies and confers with them and with Rodzyanko
behind the back of the people ; he has been exposed by
Chernov and others as conniving with Savinkov, a friend of
Kornilov's. Kerensky is a Kornilovite ; by sheer accident he has had a quarrel with Kornilov himself,
but he remains in the most intimate alliance with other
Kornilovites. This is a fact , proved by the revelations
about Savinkov, by Dyelo Naroda and by the continuation
of the political game, Kerensky's "ministerial leapfrog" with
the Kornilovites disguised under the name of the "commercial and
industrial class".

Secret pacts with the Kornilov gang, secret hobnobbing (through
Tereshchenko and Co.) with the imperialist "Allies"; secret
obstruction and sabotage of the Constituent Assembly; secret
deception of the peasants by way of service to Rodzyanko, i.e.,
the landowners (by doubling the price of bread)—this is
what Kerensky is really doing. This is his class policy. This is his Bonapartism.

To conceal this from the Conference, the Lieberdans, Tseretelis
and Chernovs had to resort to a fraud.

The Bolshevik participation in this hideous fraud, in this
farce, had the same justification as their participation in the
Third Duma [3] ; even in a "pigsty" we must uphold our line, even from a "pigsty" we must send out material exposing
the enemy for the instruction of the people.

The difference, however, is this, that the Third Duma was
convened when the revolution was obviously ebbing, while at
present there is an obvious upsurge of a new revolution ; of the scope and the pace of this upsurge, however, we
unfortunately know very little.

* * *

The most characteristic episode of the Conference was, in my
opinion, Zarudny's speech. He tells us that as soon as Kerensky
"as much as hinted" at reorganising the government, all the
ministers began to hand in their resignations. "The following
day," continues the naïve, childishly naïve (a good thing
if he is only naïve), Zarudny, "the following day, notwithstanding our resignation, we were called, we were
consulted, and finally we were prevailed upon to stay."

"General laughter in the hall," remarks at this point the
official Izvestia.

Gay folk, those participants in the Bonapartist deception of the
people by the republicans. We are all revolutionary democrats—no joking!

"From the very beginning," says Zarudny, "we heard two things;
we were to strive to make the army capable of fighting, and to
hasten peace on a democratic basis. Well, as far as peace is
concerned, I do not know whether, during the six weeks I have
been a member of the Provisional Government, the Provisional
Government has done anything about it. I did not notice
it. ( Applause and a voice from the audience : "It did nothing", Izvestia remarks.) When I, as a member of the
Provisional Government, inquired about it, I received no
reply. . . ."

Thus speaks Zarudny, according to the report of the official
Izvestia. And the Conference listen in silence, tolerate such things, do not stop the orator, do not interrupt
the session, do not jump to their feet and chase out Kerensky
and the government! How could they? These "revolutionary
democrats" are for Kerensky to a man!

Very well, gentlemen, but then, wherein does the term "revolutionary democrat" differ from the terms "lackey" and
"scoundrel"?

It is natural that these lackeys are capable of roaring with
laughter when "their" Minister, noted for his rare naïvety or
rare stupidity, tells them how Kerensky keeps removing and
replacing ministers (in order to come to terms with the Kornilov
gang behind the hack of the people and "in full privacy"). It is
not surprising that the lackeys keep silent when "their"
Minister, who seems to have taken general phrases about peace
seriously without seeing their hypocrisy, admits that he did not
even receive a reply to his question about real steps towards
peace. Such is the fate of lackeys, to allow themselves to be
fooled by the government. But what has this to do with revolution, what has it to do with democracy?

Would it be surprising if revolutionary soldiers and workers
were to get the idea that it would be good if the ceiling of the
Alexandrinsky Theatre were to fall and crush all that gang of
pitiful scoundrels who can sit there in silence when it is being
demonstrated to them that Kerensky and Co. are fooling them with
their talk about peace, who can roar with laughter when they are
told as clearly as can be by their own ministers that ministerial leapfrog is a farce (concealing Kerensky's dealings
with the Kornilovites). God save us from our friends, we can
cope with our enemies ourselves! God save us from these
claimants to revolutionary democratic leadership, we can cope
with the Kerenskys, Cadets and Kornilovites ourselves!

* * *

And now I come to the errors of the Bolsheviks. To have confined
themselves to ironic applause and exclamations at such a moment
was an error.

The people are weary of vacillations and delays. Dissatisfaction
is obviously growing. A new revolution is approaching. The
reactionary democrats, the Lieberdans, Tseretelis and others,
wish only to distract the attention of the people with their farce of a "conference", keep them busy with it, cut the Bolsheviks off from the
masses, and provide the Bolshevik delegates with the unworthy occupation of sitting and listening to the Zarudnys!
And the Zarudnys are not the least sincere of them!

The Bolsheviks should have walked out of the meeting in protest
and not allowed themselves to be caught by the conference trap
set to divert the people's attention from serious questions. The
Bolsheviks should have left two or three of their 136 delegates
for "liaison work", that is, to report by telephone the moment
the idiotic babbling came to an end and the voting began. They
should not have allowed themselves to be kept busy with
obvious nonsense for the obvious purpose of deceiving the people
with the obvious aim of extinguishing the growing revolution by wasting time on trivial matters.

Ninety-nine per cent of the Bolshevik delegation ought to have
gone to the factories and barracks; that was the proper place
for delegates who had come from all ends of Russia and who,
after Zarudny's speech, could see the full depth of the
Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik rottenness. There, closer
to the masses, at hundreds and thousands of meetings and talks,
they ought to have discussed the lessons of this farcical
conference whose obvious purpose was only to give a respite to
the Kornilovite Kerensky and make it easier for him to try new
variations of the "ministerial leapfrog" game.

The Bolsheviks, it turned out, had a wrong attitude to parliamentarism in moments of revolutionary (and not
constitutional) crises, an incorrect attitude to the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks.

How it happened can be understood—history made a very sharp turn at the time of the Kornilov revolt. The
Party failed to keep pace with the incredibly fast tempo of
history at this turning-point. The Party allowed itself to be
diverted, for the time being, into the trap of a despicable
talking-shop.

They should have left one hundredth of their forces for that
talking-shop and devoted ninety-nine hundredths to the masses.

If the turn taken by history called for a compromise with the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks (personally I believe
it did) the Bolsheviks should have proposed it clearly, openly
and speedily, so that they could immediately turn to account the possible and probable refusal of the
Bonapartist Kerensky's friends to agree to a compromise with
them.

The refusal was already indicated by articles in Dyelo Naroda and Rabochaya Gazeta on the eve of the
Conference. The masses should have been told as officially,
openly and clearly as possible, they should have been told
without the loss of a minute , that the
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks had rejected our offer
of a compromise—Down with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and
Mensheviks! The Conference could have afforded "to laugh" at the
naïveté of Zarudny to the accompaniment of this slogan in the factories and barracks!

The atmosphere of a certain enthusiasm for the Conference and
the situation surrounding it seems to have been built up from
various sides. Comrade Zinoviev made a mistake in writing about
the Commune so ambiguously (ambiguously, to say the least) that
it appeared that the Commune, although victorious in Petrograd,
might be defeated as in France in 1871. This is absolutely untrue. If the Commune were victorious in Petrograd
it would be victorious throughout Russia. It was a mistake on his part to write that the Bolsheviks did right in
proposing a proportional composition for the Presidium of the
Petrograd Soviet. The revolutionary proletariat would never do
anything worth while in the Soviet as long as the
Tseretelis were allowed proportional participation; to let them
in meant depriving ourselves of the opportunity to work, it meant the ruin of Soviet work. Comrade Kamenev
was wrong in delivering the first speech at the Conference in a
purely "constitutional" spirit when he raised the foolish
question of confidence or non-confidence in the government. If,
at such a meeting, it was not possible to tell the truth about the Kornilovite Kerensky that had
already been told both in

Rabochy Put and the Moscow Sotsial-Demokrat ,why not refer to those
papers and make it well known to the masses that the
Conference did not want to listen to the truth about the
Kornilovite Kerensky?

It was a mistake on the part of the Petrograd workers' delegations to send speakers to such a conference after
Zarudny had spoken and the situation had been made clear. Why
cast pearls before Kerensky's friends? Why divert the attention
of proletarian forces to a farcical conference? Why did those
delegations not go quite peacefully and legally to the barracks
and the more backward factories? That would have been a million
times more useful, essential, serious and to the point than the
journey to the Alexandrinsky Theatre and chats with co-operators
who sympathise with Yedinstvo and Kerensky.

Ten soldiers or ten workers from a backward factory who have
become politically enlightened are worth a thousand times more than a hundred delegates hand-picked from
various delegations by the Lieberdans. Parliamentarism should be
used, especially in revolutionary times, not to waste valuable
time over representatives of what is rotten, but to use the example of what is rotten to teach the masses.

Why should those same proletarian delegations not "use" the
Conference to publish, say, two posters explaining that the
Conference is a farce and to display them in barracks and factories? One of the posters could depict Zarudny in a
fool's cap, dancing on the stage and singing the song "Kerensky
sacked us, Kerensky took us back".
Around him stand Tsereteli, Chernov, Skobelev and a co-operator
arm-in-arm with Lieber and Dan, all rolling with laughter. Caption— They are Happy.

Poster number two. Zarudny again in front of the same audience
saying "I asked about peace for six weeks. I got no answer". The audience is silent, their faces express
"statesmanlike importance". Tsereteli looks particularly
important as he writes in his notebook "What a fool that Zarudny
is! The imbecile should be carting dung instead of being a
minister. He is an advocate of the coalition and undermines it
worse than a hundred Bolsheviks! He was a minister but he never
learned to speak like one, he should have said, 'I continuously
followed the campaign for peace for six weeks and I am fully
convinced of its final success precisely under the coalition
government in accordance with the great idea of Stockholm, etc.,
etc.' Then even Russkaya Volya would have praised Zarudny as the knight of the
Russian revolution."

Caption: "Revolutionary-democratic" conference of male prostitutes.

Written before the end of the Conference; change the first
phrase to something like "In all essentials the so-called
Democratic. . . ."

---
Notes:
[1] An
abridged version of the article was first published in No. 19 of
Rabochy Put of October 7 (September 24),1917, under the
title "Heroes of Fraud". It did not contain the part of Lenin's
article which criticised the mistakes of the Bolsheviks in
respect of the Democratic Conference, and also those of Zinoviev
and Kamenev. It may have been this Lenin had in mind when in
Chapter VI of the article "The Crisis Has Matured", which was
circulated among members of the Central Committee, the Petrograd
and Moscow Committees and the Soviets, he wrote with indignation
that the Central Organ was deleting his statements about "the
glaring errors on the part of the Bolsheviks. . ." .