PREFACE
16
volume, give directives on all the major questions of Social-
Democratic work in Russia.
The volume contains fifteen writings that are included in
Lenin’s Collected Works for the first time. They are con-
cerned with the struggle against the liquidators and with
the elaboration of tactical problems of the Bolshevik Party.
The document “Concerning the Workers’ Deputies to the
Duma and Their Declaration” is a draft declaration for the
Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma.
In “The Illegal Party and Legal Work”, “A Reply to the
Liquidators”, “Original Postscript to the Pamphlet The
Present Situation in the R.S.D.L.P.”, “Can the Slogan
‘Freedom of Association’ Serve as a Basis for the Working-
Class Movement Today?”, “Letter to the Swiss Workers”,
“On the Attitude to Liquidationism and on Unity. Theses”,
and “Original Postscript to the Article ‘The Development
of Revolutionary Strikes and Street Demonstrations’”,
Lenin criticises the views of the liquidators and of Trotsky,
who fully supported the liquidators.
The articles “The Cadets and the Big Bourgeoisie” and
“Constitutional Illusions Lost” expose the Duma tactics of
the Cadets, the party of the counter-revolutionary liberal
bourgeoisie.
The articles “Revolts in the Army and Navy’, “The
Workers and Pravda”, and “Before and Now” analyse the
upswing of the revolutionary movement and the develop-
ment of the legal Bolshevik press.
The “Notification” on the February meeting of the C.C.
R.S.D.L.P. and Party functionaries sums up the results of
that meeting.
17
THE FOURTH DUMA ELECTION CAMPAIGN
AND THE TASKS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY
SOCIAL -DEMOCRATS
The political strikes and the first demonstrations over the
Lena shootings
1
show that the revolutionary movement
among the masses of workers in Russia is growing. This
thickening of the revolutionary atmosphere casts a vivid
light on the tasks of the Party and its role in the election
campaign.
The crisis is growing in a new situation. The reactionary
Duma,
2
a which provides the landlords with power, the
bourgeoisie with an arena for making deals, and the proletar-
iat with a small platform, is a necessary factor in this situa-
tion. We need this platform, we need the election campaign,
for our revolutionary work among the masses. We need the
illegal Party to direct all this work as a whole—in the
Taurida Palace, as well as in Kazanskaya Square,
3
at work-
ers’ mass meetings, during strikes, at district meetings of
worker Social-Democrats, and at open trade union meet-
ings. Only the hopelessly blind can fail even now to see the
utter absurdity and perniciousness for the working class
of otzovism and liquidationism,
4
those products of decay
and disintegration during the period of the triumph of coun-
ter-revolution. The example of the Narodniks has shown us
clearly the scandalous zero one gets as the result of adding
the liquidationism of the “Trudoviks”, as well as of the
legally functioning writers of Russkoye Bogatstvo
5
and Sov-
remennik,
6
to the otzovism of the Socialist-Revolutionary
“party”.
Let us now sum up the facts brought to light during the
pre-election mobilisation of political forces. Three camps
V. I. L E N I N
18
stand out clearly: (1) The Rights—from Purishkevich to
Guchkov—are pro-government. The Black-Hundred
7
land-
lord and the conservative merchant are heart and soul for
the government. (2) The liberal bourgeois—the “Progress-
ists” and the Cadets, along with groups of various non-
Russians—are against the government and against the
revolution. The counter-revolutionary nature of the liberals
is one of the main features of the present historical juncture.
Whoever does not see this counter-revolutionary nature
of the “cultured” bourgeoisie has forgotten everything and
learned nothing, and takes the name of democrat, to say
nothing of socialist, in vain. As it happens, the Trudoviks
and “our” liquidators see poorly and understand things
poorly! (3) The democratic camp, in which only the revo-
lutionary Social-Democrats, the anti-liquidationists, united
and organised, have firmly and clearly unfurled their own
banner, the banner of revolution. The Trudoviks and our
liquidators are vacillating between the liberals and the
democrats, between legal opposition and revolution.
The class roots which brought about the division between
the first two camps are clear. But the liberals have succeeded
in leading astray many people, from Vodovozov to Dan, as
to the class roots which divided the second camp from the
third. The liberal “strategy”, naïvely blurted out by Blank
in Zaprosy Zhizni,
8
is very simple: the Cadets are the centre
of the opposition, the thill-horse; the outrunners (the “flanks”)
are the Progressists on the right, and the Trudoviks and the
liquidators on the left. It is on this “troika” that the Milyu-
kovs, in their role of “responsible opposition”, hope to
“ride” to triumph.
The hegemony of the liberals in the Russian emancipation
movement has always meant, and will always mean, defeat
for this movement. The liberals manoeuvre between the
monarchy of the Purishkeviches and the revolution of the
workers and peasants, betraying the latter at every serious
juncture. The task of the revolution is to use the liberals’
fight against the government and to neutralise their vacilla-
tions and treachery.
The policy of the liberals is to scare Purishkevich and
Romanov a little with the prospect of revolution, in order to
share power with them and jointly suppress the revolution.