V. I. L E N I N
64
Duma and in the Council of State. “In both cases,” says
the author, referring to the last two questions, “the effect
of the close ties between the bureaucracy and the other ruling
class—the big landowners—makes itself felt, of course.”
“But if we leave out the few above-mentioned questions,” con-
tinues the happy Mr. Gushka, “then it must be admitted that in all
the other fields . . . the data furnished by our questionnaire show the
position of the commercial and industrial class to be a winning one.”
Is this not a real gem? The losing position is the timber
business, railways, the Zemstvos and parliament. But “if we
leave out the few above-mentioned questions”, we shall
have a winning position!
And in the “conclusion” of his book, where he takes up
the cudgels against the “traditional prejudice” about the
lowliness and lack of rights of the commercial and indus-
trial class, Mr. Gushka rises to what may be called pathetic
Lobhudelei:
“It is not as a lowly class lacking rights that the commercial
and industrial bourgeoisie sits at the table of Russian statehood,
but as a welcome guest and collaborator, as a ‘worthy assistant’ of
the state power, occupying a prominent place both by established
custom and by law, by recorded right. Nor is it since yesterday that
it has occupied this place.”
This would fit perfectly into an official speech delivered
by a Krestovnikov, an Avdakov, a Tiesenhausen or their like
at a dinner given by a Minister. It is this kind of speeches,
written exactly in this kind of language, that are familiar
to every Russian. The only question that arises is: how
are we to describe a “scientist” who, while laying claim to
a “scientific” analysis of a serious questionnaire, introduces
into his writings the after-dinner speeches of servile mer-
chants as “the conclusion to be drawn from the questionnaire”?
“We have inherited from the ‘good old times’,” continues Mr.
Gushka, “a view which has acquired the stability of a prejudice,
namely, that capitalist Russia is characterised by the contradiction
that the big bourgeoisie, while dominating economically, remains
enslaved politically. The whole of the evidence supplied by our ques-
tionnaire deals a telling blow at this traditional notion.”
It requires unbounded vulgarisation of Marxism, whose
terminology Mr. Gushka makes a show of using, to regard a
questionnaire on the organisations of capitalists as capable
of supplying “material” about the political enslavement of
65
A QUESTIONNAIRE ON THE ORGANISATIONS OF BIG CAPITAL
the bourgeoisie by the autocracy and the landlords. The
author hardly touches on the material which supplies the
real answer to this question, nor could he have touched on it
so long as he kept within the limits of the questionnaire.
The questionnaire, which touches on one aspect of the
life of our bourgeoisie, confirms, in fact, that the latter
is politically enslaved. It shows that the bourgeoisie is
making economic progress, that certain particular rights
of the bourgeoisie are being extended, that it is becoming
ever more organised as a class and is playing an increasing
role in political life. But the very fact that these changes
are taking place makes still more profound the contradiction
between the retention of 0.99 of the political power by the
autocracy and the landlords, on the one hand, and the grow-
ing economic might of the bourgeoisie, on the other.
Mr. Gushka, who makes a show of using Marxist terminol-
ogy, actually shares the standpoint of an ordinary social-
liberal. It is one of Russia’s specific features, or maladies if
you will, that this liberalism is embellished with Marxist
phrases. Adopting the standpoint of liberalism, Mr. Gushka
came up against the question of the social nature of the state
power in Russia. But he did not appreciate, even approxi-
mately, the vast scope and significance of this question.
The class nature of the state power in Russia has under-
gone a serious change since 1905. That change has been in
a bourgeois direction. The Third Duma, Vekhi liberalism,
and a number of other signs are evidence of a new “step in
the transformation” of our old state power “into a bour-
geois monarchy”. But while taking one more step along this
new path, it remains the old power, and this only goes to
increase the sum total of political contradictions. Mr.
Gushka, who came up against a serious question, revealed
his inability to deal with it.
IV
In analysing the material of a rather special questionnaire,
Mr. Gushka touched on another highly important question
of principle, which is worth dwelling on specially. It is the
question of “The Role of 1905”, as the title of a subsection
of Chapter XIII in Mr. Gushka’s book reads.