and Purishkeviches -- to name their Russian counterparts) and in the hands of "military despotism embellished with parliamentary forms".[166]
It is time our Mensheviks, who are so enamoured of this policy of the Cadets and are imitating it, understood that the only realist politics, realist in the good and not vulgar sense of the word, are the politics of revolutionary Marxism. We must retaliate to the tricks and manoeuvres of the reactionaries not by adapting ourselves to the Right, but by intensifying and spreading our revolutionary propaganda among the proletarian masses, by developing the spirit of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary class organisations. In this way, and only in this way, will you strengthen the power of the only fighters against reaction, in spite of all the latter's tricks and manoeuvres. Retaliating to the Black-Hundred tricks of the government by adapting your tactics to the Right you break up and weaken the only force that is capable of fighting, the force of the revolutionary classes, you obscure their revolutionary consciousness with the tinsel of tricky political "manoeuvres".
At first the Mensheviks were opposed to agreements with the Cadets. Martov condemned agreements. Y. Larin indignantly rejected them. Even Nich. I-sky disapproved of them. Influenced by the Senate interpretations (by our re-
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actionary senates in Geneva and in St. Petersburg) Martov & Co. adapted themselves to the Right. They are in favour of blocs with the Cadets, but not with any one further to the Right than the Cadets -- heaven forbid! With the "opposition democratic parties" (the resolution of the All-Russian Conference, proposed by the Central Committee and adopted by 18 votes to 14), but no further to the Right!
But now the Cadets are turning to the Peaceful Renovators. And are you, Menshevik comrades, going to do the same? In answer to the Senate interpretations -- blocs with the Cadets; in answer to the withdrawal of election forms -- blocs with the Peaceful Renovators? What will your answer be when they start arresting the electors??
You have already abandoned real revolutionary propaganda among the masses. You are no longer combating illusions about peaceful evolution and those who are spreading these illusions -- the Cadets. All you are concerned about is the Black-Hundred danger. But your "subtle manoeuvres" of joint election lists with the Cadets are built on sand. You are impoverishing the real content of revolutionary Social Democratic work among the masses, but the gains from this political trickery will not accrue to you, perhaps not even to the Cadets -- perhaps not even to the Peaceful Renovators, but to the Octobrists! You reply to the falsification of the Duma by falsifying revolutionary Social-Democratic tactics -- but in this way you will neither improve the Duma, nor strengthen socialism, nor advance the cause of revolution.
Unprincipled practical politics are the most unpractical politics.
The working class must reply to the falsification of the Duma not by relaxing but by intensifying its revolutionary agitation, by dissociating itself in its election campaign from these wretched traitors, the Cadets.