19
THE FOURTH DUMA ELECTION CAMPAIGN
And it is the class position of the bourgeoisie that deter-
mines this policy. Hence the Cadets’ cheap “democracy”
and their actual fusion with the most moderate “Progress-
ists” of the type of Yefremov, Lvov, Ryabushinsky and Co.
The tactics of the proletarian Party should be to use the
fight between the liberals and the Purishkeviches over the
division of power—without in any way allowing “faith”
in the liberals to take hold among the people—in order to
develop, intensify and reinforce the revolutionary onslaught
of the masses, which overthrows the monarchy and entirely
wipes out the Purishkeviches and Romanovs. At the elec-
tions, its tactics should be to unite the democrats against
the Rights and against the Cadets by “using” the liberals’
fight against the Rights in cases of a second ballot, in the
press and at meetings. Hence the necessity for a revolution-
ary platform that even now goes beyond the bounds of
“legality”. Hence the slogan of a republic—as against the
liberals’ “constitutional” slogans, slogans of a “Rasputin-
Treshchenkov constitution”.
9
Our task is to train an
army of champions of the revolution everywhere, always,
in all forms of work, in every field of activity, at every
turn of events which may be forced on us by a victory of
reaction, the treachery of the liberals, the protraction of
the crisis, etc.
Look at the Trudoviks. They are Narodnik liquidators
sans phrases. “We are revolutionaries,” Mr. Vodovozov
“hints”, “but—we can’t go against Article 129,
10
” he adds.
A hundred years after Herzen’s birth, the “party” of the
peasant millions is unable to publish even a sheet—even a
hectographed one!—in defiance of Article 129!! While grav-
itating towards a bloc “first of all” with the Social-Demo-
crats, the Trudoviks are unable to say clearly that the
Cadets are counter-revolutionary, to lay the foundations for
a republican peasant party. Yet that is exactly how the ques-
tion stands after the lessons of 1905-07 and 1908-11: either
fight for a republic, or lick the boots of Purishkevich and
grovel under the whips of Markov and Romanov. There is
no other choice for the peasants.
Look at the liquidators. No matter how much the Marty-
novs, Martovs and Co. shift and shuffle, any conscientious
and sensible reader will recognise that R—kov
11
summed up
V. I. L E N I N
20
their views when he said: “Let there be no illusion. What is
in the making is the triumph of a very moderate bourgeois
progressism.” The objective meaning of this winged phrase is
the following: revolution is an illusion, the real thing is to
support the “Progressists”. Surely anyone who does not de-
liberately close his eyes must see now that it is precisely this
that the Dans and Martovs are saying, in slightly different
words, when they issue the slogan: “Wrest the Duma [the
Fourth Duma, a landlord-ridden Duma!]
*
from the hands of
the reactionaries”? Or when they make, again and again, the
slip of referring to two camps? Or when they shout, “Do not
frustrate” the progressive work of the liberal bourgeois?
Or when they fight against a “Left bloc”? Or when, writing
in Zhivoye Dyelo,
12
they smugly snap their fingers at “the
literature published abroad which nobody reads”? Or when
they actually content themselves with a legal platform and
legal attempts at organisation? Or when they form “ini-
tiating groups”
13
of liquidators, thus breaking with the
revolutionary R.S.D.L.P.? Is it not clear that this is also
the tune sung by the Levitskys, who are lending philosophi-
cal depth to the liberal ideas about the struggle for right,
by the Nevedomskys, who have lately “revised” Dobrolyu-
bov’s
14
ideas backwards—from democracy to liberalism—and
by the Smirnovs, who are making eyes at “progressism”, and
by all the other knights of Nasha Zarya
15
and Zhivoye Dyelo?
Actually the democrats and the Social-Democrats, even
if they had wanted to, would never have been able to “frus-
trate” a victory of the “Progressists” among the landlords
and bourgeois! All this is nothing but idle talk. This is not
where the serious differences lie. Nor is this what consti-
tutes the distinction between a liberal and a Social-Democ-
ratic labour policy. To “support” the Progressists on the
ground that their “victories” “bring the cultured bourgeois
nearer to power” is a liberal labour policy.
We Social-Democrats regard a “victory” of the Progress-
ists as an indirect expression of a democratic upswing. It is
necessary to use the skirmishes between the Progressists and
*
Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by
Lenin) have been introduced by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated.—
Ed.