of the liberals towards the government: yield, or "they" will shoot.[107] But in Katkov's time "they" were a handful of heroes who were unable to do anything except assassinate individuals. Today, "they" are the whole mass of the proletariat, which in October showed that it was capable of amazingly concerted country-wide action, and in December showed that it was capable of waging a stubborn armed struggle. And now "they also include the peasant masses, who have shown that they are capable of waging a revolutionary struggle, if in an unco-ordinated, unconscious and disunited fashion; but among them there are increasing numbers of those who, given appropriate conditions, given the slightest breath of free air (it is so difficult to escape the draught nowadays!), will be capable of leading millions. "They" are not only capable of assassinating Cabinet Ministers; "they" can completely sweep away the monarchy, and all traces of an Upper Chamber, and landlordism, and even the standing army. "They" are not only capable of doing this, "they" will inevitably do it, if the severity of the military dictatorship -- the last refuge of the old order, last not in the light of theoretical calculations, but of acquired practical experience -- is relaxed.
Such are the elements of the problem. How it will be solved cannot be predicted with absolute certainty. There can be no doubt about how we Social-Democrats want to solve it, and how all class-conscious workers and class-conscious peasants will solve it: by striving for the complete victory of the peasant uprising and for the winning of a really democratic republic. What will Cadet tactics be in these circumstances; what should they be, not according to what individuals want and think, but in virtue of the objective conditions of existence of a petty bourgeoisie in capitalist society fighting for its emancipation?
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The Cadets' tactics will certainly and inevitably reduce themselves to manoeuvring between the autocracy and the victory of the revolutionary people, and to preventing either of the opponents from finally and completely crushing the other. If the autocracy succeeds in finally and completely crushing the revolution, the Cadets will become powerless, for their strength is derived from the strength of the revolution. If the revolutionary people, i.e., the proletariat, and the peasantry rising in revolt against the whole system of landlordism, crush the autocracy finally and completely, and hence, sweep away the monarchy with all its frills and trimmings, the Cadets will also be powerless, for all the virile elements will desert them either for the revolution or for the counter-revolution; and the party will be left with a couple of Kiesewetters sighing about the "dictatorship", and digging Latin dictionaries for the appropriate Latin terms. Briefly, the Cadets' tactics may be formulated as follows: to ensure the support of the revolutionary people for the Cadet Party. By "support" they evidently mean such action by the revolutionary people as will, first, be entirely subordinated to the interests of the Cadet Party and carried out according to its instructions, etc.; and secondly, not be too resolute and aggressive, and above all, not be too drastic. The revolutionary people must not be independent, that is the first point; and it must not achieve final victory, it must not crush its enemy, that is point two. These are the tactics that, on the whole, will inevitably be pursued by the entire Cadet Party and by any Cadet Duma. And, of course, these tactics will be backed, defended and justified with the aid of the rich ideological stock-in-trade of "scientific" investigations,* "philosophical" obscurities, political (or politicians') banalities, "literary-critical" squealing (à la Berdayev), etc., etc.
On the other hand, the revolutionary Social-Democrats cannot at the present time define their tactics by the proposition: support of the Cadet Party and a Cadet Duma. Such tactics would be wrong and utterly useless.
The retort to us will be, of course: What? Do you repudiate what is recognised in your programme and by all internation-
* Like those of Mr. Kiesewetter, who has discovered that "dictatorship" in Latin means reinforced security.
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al Social-Democracy? Do you deny that the Social-Democratic proletariat must support the revolutionary and oppositionist bourgeois democrats? Why, that is anarchism, utopianism, rebelliousness, senseless revolutionism.
But wait a minute, gentlemen. Permit us first of all to remind you that this is not a general, or abstract, question of whether to support bourgeois democrats in general, but a concrete question of whether to support precisely the Cadet Party and precisely a Cadet Duma. We are not repudiating a general proposition; we are demanding a special analysis of the conditions for applying these general principles in a concrete case. Truth is never abstract, it is always concrete. This is forgotten by Plekhanov, for example, who, not for the first time, is proposing, and laying special emphasis on the tactics: "Reaction is trying to isolate us. We must try to isolate reaction." This proposition is correct, but it is ridiculously general: it applies equally to Russia of 1870, to Russia of 1906, to Russia generally, and to Africa, America, China and India. It tells us nothing and helps us in no way; for the whole problem is to define what reaction is, whom we must unite with, and how (or if not unite, then co-ordinate our activities with), in order to isolate reaction. Plekhanov is afraid to specify; but actually, in practice, his tactics, as we have already shown, amount to election agreements between the Social-Democrats and the Constitutional-Democrats, to Social-Democrats supporting the Cadets.
The Cadets are opposed to reaction? I turn again to Molva, No. 18 of March 22, which I have already quoted. The Cadets want to expel the government. That is splendid; that is opposition to reaction. The Cadets want to make peace with the autocratic government on the basis of a Shipov Ministry.* That's bad. That's one of the worst
* I may be told that this is a lie, that it was simply nonsense blurted out by the loquacious Molva. But excuse me, I think it is true. The loquacious Molva blurted out the truth -- of course, the approximate, not literal, absolute truth. How can this dispute be settled? By reference to Cadet statements? But in politics I don't believe in words. Cadet deeds? Yes, I would accept that criterion. And whoever inquires into the political conduct of the Cadets as a whole, will have to admit that, what Molva has said is, in the main, true.
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forms of reaction. You see, gentlemen: abstract propositions, bald phrases about reaction, do not carry you a single step forward.
The Cadets are bourgeois democrats? That is true. But then the peasant masses, who are out for the confiscation of all the landed estates -- which the Cadets don't want -- are also bourgeois democrats. Both the forms and the content of the political activities of these two sections of bourgeois democrats are different. Which of them is it more important for us to support at the present time? Can we, generally speaking, in the period of democratic revolution, support the former? Will it not mean betraying the latter? Or perhaps you will deny that Cadets who in politics are ready to resign themselves to a Shipov, in the agrarian question are capable of resigning themselves to a Kaufman? You see, gentlemen: abstract propositions, bald phrases about bourgeois democracy, do not carry you a single step forward.
But the Cadets are a united, strong and virile parliamentary party!
That is not true. The Cadets are neither a united, nor a strong, nor a virile, nor a parliamentary party. They are not united, for many of the people who voted for them are capable of fighting to the very end and not merely of striking a bargain. They are not united, for their social basis is inherently contradictory: it ranges from the democratic petty bourgeoisie to the counter-revolutionary landlords. They are not strong, for as a party they refuse to, and cannot, take part in the intense and open civil war that flared up in Russia at the end of 1905, and very likely will flare up again with added force in the near future. They are not a virile party, for even if their ideal is achieved, not they but the "solid" bourgeois, the Shipovs and Guchkovs, will be the power in the society formed in conformity with this ideal. They are not a parliamentary party, for we have no parliament. We have no Constitution; we have only a constitutional autocracy, only constitutional illusions, which are particularly harmful in a period of intense civil war, and which the Cadets are spreading with particular zeal. This brings us to the pivot of the question. The specific feature of the present state of the Russian revolution is
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that objective conditions are pushing into the forefront a resolute, extra-parliamentary struggle for parliamentarism; and for that reason there can be nothing more harmful and dangerous at such a time than constitutional illusions and playing at parliamentarism. At such a time the parties of "parliamentary" opposition may be more dangerous and harmful than completely and avowedly reactionary parties: this proposition may sound paradoxical only to those who are totally incapable of thinking dialectically. Indeed, if the demand for parliamentarism has fully matured among the widest masses of the people, if it is based on the whole of the age-long social and economic evolution of the country, and if political evolution has brought us to the point of achieving it, what can be more dangerous and harmful than a fictitious realisation of this demand? Avowed anti-parliamentarism is harmless. Its doom is sealed. It is dead. The attempts to resurrect it are only having the very good effect of revolutionising the more backward strata of the population. A "constitutional autocracy", the creation and spreading of constitutional illusions, are becoming the only possible means of saving the autocracy. This is the only correct and wise policy the autocracy can pursue.
And I assert that at the present time the Cadets are doing more to help the autocracy to pursue this wise policy than Moskovskiye Vedomosti. Take, for example, the controversy between the latter and the liberal press as to whether Russia is a constitutional monarchy. It is not, says Moskovskiye Vedomosti. It is, say the Cadet newspapers in unison. In this controversy, Moskovskiye Vedomosti is progressive and the Cadet newspapers are reactionary; for Moskovskiye Vedomosti is telling the truth, exposing illusions, adussprechen was ist,* whereas the Cadets are telling a lie -- a well-meaning benevolent, sincerely-conscientious, beautiful, graceful scientifically-smooth, Kiesewetter-varnished, drawing-room polite lie: but a lie nevertheless. And there is nothing more dangerous, nothing more harmful, in the present period of the struggle -- considering the present objective conditions -- than such a lie.
* Speaks out what exists. --Ed.
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A slight digression. Recently I delivered a lecture on political topics at the house of a very enlightened and extremely amiable Cadet. We had a discussion. Our host said: Imagine there is a wild beast before us, a lion; and we two are slaves who have been thrown to this lion. Would it be appropriate if we started an argument? Is it not our duty to unite to fight this common enemy, to "isolate reaction", as that most wise and most far-sighted of Social-Democrats, G. V. Plekhanov, so excellently puts it? The analogy is a good one, and I accept it, I replied. But what if one of the slaves advises securing weapons and attacking the lion, while the other, in the very midst of the struggle, notices a tab reading "Constitution" suspended from the lion's neck, and starts shouting: "I am opposed to violence, both from the Right and from the Left"; "I am a member of a parliamentary party and stand for constitutional methods." Under those circumstances would not the lion's cub who blurted out the lion's real intentions, be doing more to educate the masses and to develop their political and class consciousness, than the slave being mauled by the lion who was preaching faith in tabs?
The whole point is that, in using the stock argument that Social-Democrats must support the bourgeois democrats, people too often allow general abstract propositions to obscure the concrete situation, in which a resolute struggle for parliamentarism is maturing and in which the autocratic government is playing at parliamentarism as one of the means of combating parliamentarism. In such circumstances, when the final battle outside parliament still lies ahead, to advocate that the workers' party should support the party of parliamentary compromisers, the party of constitutional illusions, would be a really fatal mistake, if not a crime against the proletariat.
Let us imagine that we have in Russia a firmly established parliamentary system. This would mean that parliament had already become the main form of the domination of the ruling classes and forces, that it had become the principal arena of the conflict of social and political interests. There would be no revolutionary movement in the direct sense of the term; the economic and other conditions would not be engendering revolutionary outbreaks in the period we are
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assuming. No declamations, however revolutionary, could of course "call forth" revolution in such circumstances. It would be utterly wrong for Social-Democrats in such conditions to renounce the parliamentary struggle. It would be the duty of the workers' party to take up parliamentarism most seriously; to take part in "Duma" elections and in the "Duma" itself; and to adjust all its tactics to the conditions favourable for the formation and successful functioning of a parliamentary Social-Democratic Party. In those circumstances, it would be our bounden duty to support the Cadet Party in parliament against all parties to the right of it. Then, too, it would be wrong categorically to object to election agreements with this party in joint elections, say, in gubernia election meetings (if the elections were indirect). More than that. It would be the duty of the Social-Democrats in parliament to support even the Shipovites against the real, brazen reactionaries. We would then say: reaction is trying to isolate us; we must try to isolate reaction.
Today, however, there is nothing like an established, universally-recognised and really parliamentary regime in Russia. The main form of domination of the ruling classes and social forces in Russia today is an avowedly non-parliamentary form; parliament is admittedly not the principal arena of the conflict of social and political interests. In these circumstances, it would be suicidal for the workers' party to support the party of parliamentary compromisers. On the other hand, support for the bourgeois democrats who are operating in a non-parliamentary manner, even if spontaneously, sporadically and unconsciously (like the peasant outbreaks) comes to the forefront, becomes a real, serious business, to which all else must be subordinated. In such social and political conditions, insurrection is a reality, while parliamentarism is a plaything, an unimportant field of struggle, a bait rather than a real concession. Hence the point is not that we repudiate or underrate the importance of parliamentarism; and general phrases about parliamentarism do not affect our position at all. The point is that in the particular conditions precisely of the present stage of the democratic revolution the bourgeois compromisers, the liberal monarchists, while not denying that Durnovo may simply send the Duma packing, or that the law may finally reduce
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this Duma to a cipher, nevertheless declare that parliamentarism is a serious affair and that insurrection is utopia, anarchism, rebelliousness, impotent revolutionism, or what ever else the Kiesewetters, Milyukovs, Struves, Izgoyevs and other heroes of philistinism may call it.
Let us imagine that the Social-Democratic Party had taken part in the Duma elections, and that a number of Social-Democratic electors had been elected. Having plunged into this stupid election farce, we would have had to support the Cadets to prevent the Black Hundreds from winning. The Social-Democratic Party would have had to conclude an election agreement with the Cadets. With the aid of the latter, a certain number of Social-Democrats would have been elected to the Duma. We ask, would the game have been worth the candle? Would we have gained or lost by this? In the first place, we would not have been able to inform the masses about the terms and the character of our election agreements with the Cadets from the Social-Democratic point of view. The Cadet newspapers, in hundreds of thousands and millions of copies, would have spread bourgeois lies and bourgeois distortions of the class aims of the proletariat far and wide. Our leaflets and our little reservations in individual declarations would have been but a drop in the bucket. In practice, we would have turned out to be a dumb appendage of the Cadets. Secondly, by entering into an agreement we would undoubtedly, tacitly or openly and formally -- it makes no difference -- have undertaken before the proletariat a certain amount of responsibility for the Cadets; we would have vouched for them being better than all the others; we would have guaranteed that their Cadet Duma would help the people; we would have been responsible for the whole of their Cadet policy. Whether we would have been able to disclaim responsibility for any particular steps taken by the Cadets, by means of subsequent "declarations ", is an open question; and besides, the declarations would have remained mere declarations, whereas the election agreement would have remained a fact. But have we any grounds whatever for even indirectly vouching for the Cadets before the proletariat and the masses of the peasantry? Have not the Cadets given us thousands of proofs of their affinity with those German Cadet professors, with those "Frankfurt phrase-mongers", who man-
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aged to convert, not merely a Duma, but a National Constituent Assembly from an instrument for the development of the revolution into an instrument for toning down the revolution, for throttling (morally) the revolution? It would have been a mistake for the Social-Democrats to support the Cadet Party, and our Party has done the right thing in boycotting the Duma elections.
Even now it cannot be the task of the Social-Democrats to support the Cadet Party. We cannot support a Cadet Duma. In war, compromisers and deserters may be even more dangerous than the enemy. Shipov, at any rate, does not call himself a "democrat", and the "muzhik" who wants "people's freedom" will not follow his lead. But if the party of "people's freedom", after concluding a pact of mutual assistance with the Social-Democrats, were to strike a bargain with the autocracy to substitute a Ministry headed by this very Shipov for a constituent assembly, or were to confine its "activities" to making high-sounding speeches and proposing grandiloquent resolutions, we would find ourselves in a most false position.
To say that the task of the workers' party at the present time is to support the Cadets would be the same as saying that the function of steam is not to drive a ship's engine, but to keep up the possibility of sounding the ship's siren. If there is steam in the boiler, it will be possible to sound the siren. If the revolution is strong, the Cadets will also be able to sound their siren. It is quite easy to imitate the sound of a siren, and in the history of the struggle for parliamentarism bourgeois betrayers of people's freedom have many times imitated the sound of the siren and bamboozled simple-hearted folk who put their trust in various "first representative assemblies".
Our task is not to support the Cadet Duma, but to use the conflicts within this Duma, or connected with it, for choosing the right moment to attack the enemy, the right moment for an insurrection against the autocracy. What we have to do is to take account of how the political crisis in the Duma and around it is growing. As a means of testing public opinion and defining as correctly and precisely as possible the moment when "boiling point" is reached, this Duma campaign ought to be of enormous value to us,
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but only as a symptom, not as the real field of struggle. It is not the Cadet Duma that we shall support; it is not with the Cadet Party that we must reckon, but with those elements of the urban petty bourgeoisie, and particularly of the peasantry, who have voted for the Cadets, and who will inevitably be disillusioned with them and get into a fighting mood. And the more decisive the victory of the Cadets in the Duma, the more rapidly will this take place. Our task is to use the respite that will be provided by an opposition Duma (and as the proletariat needs time to rally its forces properly, this respite will be very much to our advantage), to organise the workers, to expose constitutional illusions, and to prepare for a military offensive. Our task is to be at our post when the Duma farce develops into a new great political crisis; and our aim then will be, not support for the Cadets (at best they will be only a weak mouthpiece of the revolutionary people), but the overthrow of the autocratic government and the transfer of power to the revolutionary people. If the proletariat and the peasantry are victorious in their insurrection, the Cadet Duma will in a trice draw up a document declaring its association with the manifesto of the revolutionary government announcing the convocation of a national constituent assembly. If the insurrection is suppressed, the victor, exhausted by the struggle, may be compelled to yield a good half of his power to the Cadet Duma, which will sit down to the feast, as it were, and adopt a resolution deploring the "folly" of armed uprising at a time when a genuine constitutional system was supposed to be so possible and so near at hand. . . . Find the corpses, and you will always find the worms.
V
A SAMPLE OF CADET SMUGNESS
To appraise the victories of the Cadets and the present tasks of the workers' party, it is vastly important to analyse the preceding period of the Russian revolution and its relation to the present period. The draft resolutions on tactics, published by the Majority and the Minority respectively, lay down two lines, express two trends of thought, which arise
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from two different appraisals of this period. We refer the reader to those resolutions. Here we propose to deal with an article published in the Cadet newspaper Nasha Zhizn. The article discusses the first Menshevik resolution, and provides ample material with which to test, supplement and explain what we have said above about the Cadet Duma. For this reason we quote the article in full (R. Blank, "Topical Questions in the Russian Social-Democratic Movement", Nasha Zhizn, No. 401, March 23, 1906):
"The resolution of the 'Menshevik' faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party on party tactics, published the other day, is a very valuable document. It shows that the severe lessons of the first period of the Russian revolution have not been lost on that section of the Russian Social-Democrats which is most sensitive to the demands of real life, and is most thoroughly permeated with the principles of scientific socialism. The object of the new tactics formulated in this resolution is to direct the Russian Social-Democratic movement along the path that is being followed by the whole of the international Social-Democratic movement led by the great Social-Democratic Party of Germany. I say 'new tactics ', but this is not quite correct, because in many respects they represent a reversion to the old principles that were laid down by the founders of the Russian Social-Democratic movement at its very inception, which since then have been repeatedly elaborated by its theoreticians and publicists, and which were accepted by nearly all Russian Social-Democrats right up to the outbreak of the Russian revolution. But these principles were forgotten. The revolutionary whirlwind caught up the whole of our Social-Democratic movement like a feather and swept it forward at a dizzying speed. All the Social-Democratic and Marxist principles and ideas, elaborated with such zeal and devotion in the course of a quarter of a century, disappeared from view in an instant, as though they were merely a light dust on the surface. The very pillars of the Social-Democratic world-outlook were shaken to their very foundations, and even seemed to have heen uprooted.
"But the whirlwind raged for a time and then subsided on the spot where it began; the Social-Democrats returned to their starting-point. The force of the whirlwind can be judged from the fact that it even carried away Parvus, as he himself admits; and those who know what a heavy-weight Parvus is, will understand what this means. . . . 'The revolutionary torrent swept us forward with irresistible force,' writes Parvus in his well-known pamphlet. 'We were merely the strings of a harp on which the revolutionary hurricane was playing,' he observes elsewhere in that pamphlet. This too, is absolutely true and explains why Social-Democratic music at that time was so unlike the symphonies of Beethoven, Bach or -- Marx. All theories and principles, and even intellect and simple reason, retreat into the background, almost vanish behind the scenes, when the mighty elements appear upon the stage in all their fury.
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"But now the turn of intellect and reason has come again, and it is possible to resume deliberate, methodical and systematic activities. Obviously, the first thing to do is to take precautions to prevent a repetition of what occurred in the first period of the Russian revolution, in its Sturm- und Drang-Zeit, that is, measures against the destructive effects of revolutionary torrents and hurricanes. The only effective precaution against this is to enlarge and strengthen the organisation. It is quite natural, therefore, that the 'Menshevik' faction should push this task into the forefront and formulate it on broad lines, by including in its programme economic organisations as well, and by recognising the necessity of utilising all legal possibilities. The resolution is free from romantic contempt for 'legality' and from aristocratic disdain for 'economics'.
'The resolution expresses an equally sober attitude towards the question of the relations between the workers and the bourgeois democrats, it fully recognises the need for mutual assistance and the danger of the proletariat entering single-handed into a decisive struggle against the armed reaction. Particularly noteworthy is the attitude the resolution adopts towards the question of armed uprising. It recognises the necessity of 'avoiding such actions as will bring the proletariat into armed conflict with the government, in conditions that will doom it to remain isolated in this struggle'.
"Only in this way can we in this country avoid a repetition of the June days of 1848 in Paris and make it possible to co-ordinate, if not to coalesce, the struggle of the workers and the bourgeois democrats for unless this is done the movement cannot be successful. The bourgeois democrats who according to Karl Marx, 'are of supreme importance in every advanced revolution', are of no less importance in the Russian revolution. If the Russian Social-Democratic Party cannot, or has no desire to, make them its open allies, it must at all events take care not to push them into the opposite camp, into the camp of reaction and counter-revolution. This the revolutionary Social-Democrats must not do, have no right to do; they are in duty bound to prevent this by every means in their power, for the sake of the cause of freedom, and for the sake of Social-Democracy itself. If the bourgeois democrats are opposed to insurrection at the present time, then it is useless talking about insurrection. This fact must be reckoned with, even if the bourgeoisie is prompted only by its characteristic flabbiness, feebleness and cowardice. Such factors must also be reckoned with. Did not the leader of the German revolutionary Social-Democrats himself say:
"'In der Gewalt sind sie uns stets über! ' -- 'As far as brute force is concerned, they, i.e., the reactionaries, will always be superior to us!'
"Perhaps it is wrong to say 'always', but as far as the 'present' is concerned, one can share the opinion of Liebknecht, and of German Social-Democracy which unanimously agrees with him, without being a coward or even merely 'flabby'. . . . Evidently, the resolution of the 'Mensheviks' is based on this point of view, or at all events on something like it. And on a number of other points, too, it is permeated with the same spirit of political realism that distinguishes the German Social-Democrats, and to which their unexampled successes are due.
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"Will the Russian Social-Democratic Party as a whole subscribe to the resolution of the 'Mensheviks'? This is something on which much in our revolutionary movement, especially in our Social-Democratic movement -- perhaps its very fate for many years to come -- will depend. In Russia, as was also the case in other countries, Social-Democracy can take root and become strong only when it penetrates deeply into the democratic masses. Should it, however, limit itself to cultivating the upper, even if the most fruitful, layer of democrats, a new hurricane may easily uproot it from Russian soil in the same way as Social-Democracy was uprooted in France in 1848, or as the Social-Democratic movement known as the 'Chartist movement' was uprooted in England in the 1840s."
Such is Mr. Blank's article. The most typical "Cadet" arguments, the origins of which are familiar to everyone who has carefully read Mr. Struve's Osvobozhdeniye and the later legal Cadet publications, are so arranged here that the appraisal of present-day political tactics is based on an appraisal of the past period of the Russian revolution. First of all, therefore, we will examine this appraisal of the past, to see whether it is right or wrong.
Mr. Blank compares two periods of the Russian revolution. The first period covers approximately October-December 1905. This is the period of the revolutionary whirlwind. The second is the present period, which, of course, we have a right to call the period of Cadet victories in the Duma elections, or, perhaps, if we take the risk of running ahead somewhat, the period of a Cadet Duma.
Regarding this period Mr. Blank says that the turn of intellect and reason has come again, and it is possible to resume deliberate, methodical and systematic activities. On the other hand, Mr. Blank describes the first period as a period in which theory diverged from practice. All Social-Democratic principles and ideas vanished; the tactics that had always been advocated by the founders of Russian Social-Democracy were forgotten, and even the very pillars of the Social-Democratic world-outlook were uprooted.
Mr. Blank's main assertion is merely a statement of fact: the whole theory of Marxism diverged from "practice" in the period of the revolutionary whirlwind.
Is that true? What is the first and main "pillar" of Marxist theory? It is that the only thoroughly revolutionary class in modern society, and therefore, the advanced class in every revolution, is the proletariat. The question is then;
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has the revolutionary whirlwind uprooted this "pillar" of the Social-Democratic world-outlook? On the contrary, the whirlwind has vindicated it in the most brilliant fashion. It was the proletariat that was the main and, at first, almost the only fighter in this period. For the first time in history, perhaps, a bourgeois revolution was marked by the employment of a purely proletarian weapon, i.e., the mass political strike, on a scale unprecedented even in the most developed capitalist countries. The proletariat marched into battle, which was definitely revolutionary, at a time when the Struves and Blanks were calling for participation in the Bulygin Duma, and when the Cadet professors were exhorting the students to keep to their studies. With its proletarian weapon, the proletariat won for Russia the whole of that so-called "constitution", which since then has only been mutilated, chopped about and curtailed. The proletariat in October 1905 employed those tactics of struggle that six months before had been laid down in the resolution of the Bolshevik Third Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., which had strongly emphasised the necessity of combining the mass political strike with insurrection; and it is this combination that characterises the whole period of the "revolutionary whirlwind", the whole of the last quarter of 1905. Thus our ideologist of the petty bourgeoisie has distorted reality in the most brazen and glaring manner. He has not cited a single fact to prove that Marxist theory diverged from practical experience in the period of the "revolutionary whirlwind"; he has tried to obscure the main feature of this whirlwind, which most brilliantly confirmed the correctness of "all Social-Democratic principles and ideas", of "all the pillars of the Social-Democratic world-outlook".
DIGRESSION
A POPULAR TALK WITH CADET PUBLICISTS
AND LEARNED PROFESSORS