No. 14 of *Vperyod*, April 12 (March 30)

CORRECTIONS TO THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE ARTICLE "THE REVOLUTIONARY
DEMOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT
AND THE PEASANTRY"*.
No. 14 of *VPERYOD*, APRIL 12 (MARCH 30), 1905.

**The Revolutionary Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and the Peasantry.**

The question of the participation of Social Democracy in a temporary revolutionary government has been raised as a matter of urgency not so much by the course of events itself as by the theoretical arguments of Social Democrats of a certain [particular] tendency. In two feuilletons in the previous and present issues of our newspaper** we examined the arguments of the writer Martyanov, who first raised this question. It turns out, however, that interest in it is so great [in our party circles], and the misunderstandings engendered by the aforementioned arguments (see especially No. 93 of *Iskra*) are so enormous, that it is necessary to return to this question once more. However [highly or lowly] various Social Democrats may assess the probability that in the near future we shall have to resolve this question not only theoretically, in any case clarity regarding our immediate objectives is necessary for the party [of the revolutionary proletariat]. Without this [clear] answer to this question, a consistent propaganda and agitation [by our party workers], free from vacillation or equivocation, is already impossible now.

Let us attempt to restore [first of all as precisely as possible] the essence of the disputed question. If we want not merely concessions from the autocracy, but its genuine overthrow, then we must strive for the replacement of [the autocratic] tsarist government by a temporary revolutionary government, which [would], on the one hand, convene a constituent assembly on the basis of truly universal, direct, and equal suffrage with secret ballot, and which [would], on the other hand, be in a position actually to carry out [full republican freedoms] complete freedom during the period of elections.... And such participation is an impermissible "seizure of power," is an inadmissible "vulgar Jaurèsism," unbecoming a class-conscious [revolutionary] Social Democratic party.

Let us dwell upon the arguments of the supporters of this view [first about the seizure of power, then about Jaurèsism]. Finding themselves in a [temporary revolutionary] government, they tell us, Social Democracy will hold [state] power in its hands; but Social Democracy, as the party of the proletariat, cannot hold power in its hands without attempting to realize our maximum program, that is, without attempting to carry out a socialist revolution. [Being in power, Social Democracy will have to, according to this opinion, undertake a socialist revolution]. . . .

This argument [is erroneous, for it] is based on a confusion of democratic and socialist [revolutions] revolutions, the struggle for a republic (including in this all our minimum program) and the struggle for socialism.... Individual Social Democrats, inclined to lose heart before spontaneity, might forget all this during the revolution, but not the party as a whole. [To think that the proletariat, carried away by spontaneous upsurge, will impose such tasks upon Social Democracy is also without sufficient grounds, because, first, the Russian proletariat has long already demonstrated remarkable discipline and steadfastness, that is, an instinctive understanding of the significance of organization (and without an organization gigantically greater than the present organization of the working class, it would be absurd even to think of a socialist revolution); secondly, the very implementation of the minimum program will consume far too much time and expenditure of force in defending the republic against monarchical attempts upon it; thirdly, a republican revolution is unthinkable without the support of the mass of the people, that is, apart from the proletariat, the peasantry as well, which is still completely alien to proletarian socialist ideas. Finally, even if undeveloped masses of the proletariat, under the influence of a spontaneous explosion, were to slip from under the ideological influence and guidance of Social Democracy, this would lead only to the replacement of Social Democracy in the temporary revolutionary government by some other less careful about principles ostensibly socialist party.]

...It is precisely the course of events that will "impose" upon us the absolute necessity of desperate struggle for a republic, it is precisely this that will practically [divert] direct, exactly in this direction [all] our forces and [all] the forces of the politically active proletariat....

...But, on the other hand, it is precisely these allies from [the revolutionary] petty-bourgeois democracy that give rise to new fears among Social Democrats of a certain tendency—namely, fears concerning "vulgar Jaurèsism".... [By participating in the government, Social Democracy thereby sanctifies a bourgeois, although even a republican-bourgeois, order, thus falling into an irresolvable contradiction with its entire uncompromising class socialist position.]

This argument is no less erroneous. It shows that its authors have learned [quite well] a number of good resolutions by heart, but have not understood their significance.... The objective conditions of this "experience" consisted in the fact that the republic in France was already a fact and no serious danger [was] threatening it; [—(in fact, this republic was and remains a republic without republicans, with a typically monarchical constitution),]—that the working class had full possibility for the development of its own independent class political organization and insufficiently took advantage of this possibility under the influence, in part, precisely of the abundance of tinsel parliamentary exercises by its leaders,—that in fact before the working class there were objectively raised by history already the tasks [precisely] of socialist revolution, from which the proletariat was being diverted by the Millerands with the promise of tiny social reforms.

...The objective conditions differ from the French ones as heaven differs from earth [, or, if you like, as earth differs from heaven]....

...One of the principal defects of the view under examination consists in its deadness, its mechanical nature, in that the conditions [of military, that is,] revolutionary times are lost sight of.... One must have a truly schoolboyish [conception] understanding of history to imagine the matter without "leaps," in the form of some slowly and evenly ascending straight line.... This picture is true in general and in the whole, true "on the [long] long term," as the French say, over some span of a century (for example, for France from 1789 to 1905), but to compose according to this picture one's own plan of action in a revolutionary epoch,—for this one would have to be [some sort of] virtuoso of philistinism. If Russian autocracy is unable to save itself even now, ridding itself [of some wretched] truncated constitution, if it is not only [shaken, not only] weakened, [not only limited,] but actually overthrown...

...Before the fall of autocracy, indeed even before January 9th, they thought [to frighten] to intimidate the working class of Russia with the scarecrow of a terrible revolutionary democratic dictatorship!...

...Social Democracy regards the "sanctification" of the bourgeois order [with a dialectical perspective, or, more simply,] with a historical point of view.

When Feuerbach was asked whether he sanctioned the materialism of Büchner, Vogt, and Moleschott, he answered: [ich stimme den Materialisten rückwärts vollständig bei, nicht aber vorwärts. In Russian this means:] I sanction materialism in its relation to the past, but not in its relation to the future....

...There is and cannot be such a form of struggle, [such a political situation as would not entail dangers]. such a political situation which would not entail dangers....

...It is not the thought of the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry that should frighten us, but that spirit of tailism [philistinism, pedantry, mechanical thinking] and deadness, which [in a decomposing way] acts decomposingly upon the party of the proletariat, expressing itself in all sorts of theories of organization-process, armament-process, and [so on and] so forth.... Is this not an example of dead scholasticism? People who invent such distinctions are capable [of chasing words, capable of] stringing together [if necessary] fine-sounding words [one after another], but are completely incapable of thinking.... Whoever says "temporary revolutionary government" thereby emphasizes the state-legal aspect of the matter, the origin of the government not from law but from revolution, the [preliminary] temporary character [of an institution] of the government, connected with the future constituent assembly. But whatever may be the form, whatever may be the origin, whatever may be the conditions, it is clear in any case that a temporary revolutionary government cannot [hang in the air, cannot subsist without a certain social [support] basis among the people, cannot] not be based upon known classes....

...Is this not an empty-headed phrase? [And is one such phrase alone not sufficient to establish the fact of a certain process of ideological decay in a certain section of Social Democrats! After all, this is the viewpoint not of the vanguard of the proletariat, but of its tail, these are not political leaders, but political reasoners, these are not revolutionaries, but Philistines.] . . .

* *Works*, Vol. VII, pp. 196–202. *Ed.*

** The words "previous and present issues of our newspaper" have been replaced by Olminsky with: "(Nos. 13 and 14)." *Ed.*