NOTES
[152]
Lenin's theses "Concerning Certain Speeches by Workers' Deputies " formed the basis of a declaration by the Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma. The manuscript has survived only in part.
The adoption of the declaration was preceded by a bitter fight of the Bolshevik deputies against the seven Menshevik members of the group. A. Y. Badayev, a Bolshevik member of the group, wrote in his recollections: "Our group devoted a number of meetings to the declaration, which it began to discuss before the Duma opened. The debate was exceedingly heated and often lasted till late into the night. On either side not only deputies but also Party functionaries then in St. Petersburg took part in drafting the declaration. . . . After a long and stubborn struggle and a number of heated clashes with the Mensheviks we at last had all the fundamental demands of the Bolsheviks incorporated in the declaration." (A. Badayev, The Bolsheviks in the Duma. Recollections, Moscow, 1954, p. 67, Russ. ed.) In accordance with Lenin's directives, the declaration included nearly all the main provisions of the minimum programme. Nevertheless, the Mensheviks succeeded in getting the demand for cultural national autonomy included in the declaration. On December 7 (20), 1912, the declaration was read in the Duma.
On December 8 (21), 1912, Pravda carried a verbatim report of the Duma sitting together with the text of the declaration. This Pravda issue was confiscated for publishing the declaration, and its editor brought to trial.
[p. 413]
[153]
The Extraordinary International Socialist Congress of the Second International took place in Basle on November 24-25, 1912. On the opening day there was a large anti-war demonstration and an international protest meeting against the war. On November 25 the Congress unanimously adopted a manifesto calling on the workers to use the organisation and might of the proletariat for a revolutionary struggle against the war danger.
[p. 414]
[154]
This refers to the unrest among the political prisoners in the Kutomara and Algachi prisons. It began in August 1912 owing to the Transbaikal Military Governor's order introducing military rules of treatment of political prisoners in Nerchinsk penal-servitude prisons. In protest, the political prisoners at Kutomara declared a fifteen-day hunger strike. The prison administration retaliated by mass torture. Some of the prisoners, driven to despair, committed suicide. Similar events took place in Algachi prison. The summer and autumn of 1912 saw unrest among political prisoners elsewhere in Russia. In response to these developments there were protest strikes of workers in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Warsaw and Riga. On behalf of the Social-Democratic and the Trudovik groups in the Fourth Duma, an interpellation was made concerning the outrages against the prisoners. Discussion was postponed by a majority vote but was never resumed.
[p. 417]
[155]
This refers to the land Bill which was introduced by (non-party and Right-wing) peasant deputies in the Third Duma on May 10 (23), 1908. The Bill provided for the compulsory alienation, at average market prices, of landed estates not tilled by their owners themselves. For carrying out the land reform, it was proposed that local land committees should be set up to be elected by a general vote. Lenin appraised the Bill in his article "The Agrarian Debates in the Third Duma" (see present edition, Vol. 15, pp. 302-16).
[p. 418]