49
POLITICAL PARTIES IN RUSSIA
Such is the party of the “Rights”. One of its members,
Purishkevich, the most prominent spokesman of the Rights
in the Third Duma, has worked a good deal, and successful-
ly, to show the people what the Rights want, how they
act, and whom they serve. Purishkevich is a gifted agitator.
Next to the “Rights”, who have forty-six seats in the
Third Duma, are the “nationalists” with ninety-one seats.
There is hardly a shade of difference between them and the
Rights. In fact, these are not two parties, but one party
which has effected a division of “labour” in persecuting non-
Russians, “Cadets” (liberals), democrats, etc. One lot acts
more crudely, the other more subtly, but both are doing the
same thing. Indeed, it is to the government’s advantage
to have the “extreme” Rights—who are capable of any sort
of scandal, riot, the murder of people like Herzenstein, Yol-
los, Karavayev—standing somewhat apart, as if they were
“criticising” the government from the right. . . . The distinc-
tion between the Rights and the nationalists cannot be of
any serious importance.
The Octobrists in the Third Duma are 131 strong, includ-
ing, of course, the “Right Octobrists”. Essentially there is
nothing in the present policy of the Octobrists to distinguish
them from the Rights, except that the Octobrist Party serves
not only the landlords, but also the big capitalists, the con-
servative merchants, and the bourgeoisie, which was so ter-
rified by the awakening of the workers, and then also of the
peasants, to independent political life, that it made a volte-
face towards defence of the old order. There are capitalists
in Russia—quite a few, indeed—who treat the workers not a
bit better than the landlords treated the serfs of old; they
look on workers and clerks as their menials, as servants.
Nobody is better fitted to defend this old order than the
Right parties, the nationalists and the Octobrists. There are
also capitalists who at the Zemstvo
45
and municipal con-
gresses in 1904 and 1905 demanded a “constitution”, but
are quite willing to make peace on the basis of the June
Third Constitution to oppose the workers.
The Octobrist Party is the chief counter-revolutionary par-
ty of the landlords and the capitalists. It is the leading party
in the Third Duma: the 131 Octobrists with the 137 Rights and
nationalists constitute a solid majority in the Third Duma.
V. I. L E N I N
50
The electoral law of June 3, 1907, guaranteed the land-
lords and the big capitalists a majority: the landlords and
electors of the first urban curia (i.e., the big capitalist curia)
have a majority in all the gubernia assemblies electing
deputies to the Duma. In twenty-eight gubernias the land-
owners even by themselves have a majority in the election
assemblies. The entire policy of the June Third Government
has been carried out with the aid of the Octobrist Party, and
this party bears the responsibility for all the sins and
crimes committed by the Third Duma.
In words, in their programme, the Octobrists uphold
a “constitution”, and even liberties! In reality, this party
supported all the measures taken against the workers (the
Insurance Bill, for example—recall the conduct of the
Chairman of the Duma Committee on Labour, Baron Tiesen-
hausen!), against the peasants, and against any mitigation
of tyranny and lack of rights. The Octobrists are just as
much a government party as the nationalists. This situation
is not in the least altered by the fact that from time to time
—particularly on the eve of elections!— the Octobrists deliv-
er “opposition” speeches. In all countries that have parlia-
ments, the bourgeois parties have long been known to indulge
in this playing at opposition—a harmless game as far as
they are concerned, because no government takes it serious-
ly, and a game which occasionally proves useful as a means
of “soothing” the voter by a show of opposition.
However, the greatest expert, the virtuoso, at the game of
opposition is the chief opposition party in the Third Duma—
the Cadets, Constitutional-“Democrats”, the party of “peo-
ple’s freedom”.
The very name of this party is part of the game, for in fact
it is not at all a democratic party, and by no means a people’s
party; it is a party, not of freedom, but of half-freedom,
if not of quarter-freedom.
In fact, it is the party of the liberal-monarchist bourgeoi-
sie, which dreads the popular movement far more than
reaction.
The democrat has faith in the people, in the movement
of the masses, and he helps this movement in every way,
although he fairly often has (as have the bourgeois demo-
crats, the Trudoviks) a wrong notion about the significance