It is enough to glance at the moderate bourgeois and Black-Hundred press. No one, not even Novoye Vremya,[44] believes the government's boast that it is able immediately
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to nip in the bud any new active manifestation of the movement. No one doubts that the gigantic mass of combustible material -- the peasantry -- will dare up properly only towards the spring. No one believes that the government sincerely wants to convene the Duma, or that it is able to do so under the old system of repressions, red tape, officialism, denial of civic rights, and ignorance.
   
It is not excessive optimism on the part of revolutionaries, extremely dangerous in a question like that of decisive action; it is obvious facts, acknowledged even by opponents of the revolution, which testify that the government gained a "victory" in Moscow that rendered its position even more desperate than it was prior to October.
   
The peasant uprising is growing. Financial collapse is drawing near. The gold currency is declining. The deficit of 500 million rubles cannot be made good in spite of the readiness of the reactionary bourgeoisie of Europe to come to the aid of the autocracy. All the troops fit to fight against the revolution have been brought into action, and still the "pacification" of the Caucasus and Siberia drags on. The ferment in the Army and Navy, which became so marked after October 17, will certainly not be allayed by recourse to violence against the champions of liberty all over Russia. The return of the war prisoners and of the Manchurian army means an intensification of that ferment. The mobilisation of new army units against the internal enemy creates new dangers for the autocracy. The crisis, far from being solved, has, on the contrary, been extended and aggravated by the Moscow "victory".
   
Let the workers' party clearly realise its tasks. Away with constitutional illusions! We must rally the new forces which are siding with the proletariat. We must "garner the experience" of the two great months of the revolution (November and December). We must re-adapt ourselves to the restored autocracy, and be able wherever necessary to go underground once more. We must present the colossal tasks of a new active encounter in a more definite and practical way, must prepare ourselves for it in a more sustained, more systematic and more persevering fashion, husbanding as far as possible the strength of the proletariat which has become exhausted by the strike struggle.
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Wave follows on wave. After the capital, the provinces. After the outlying regions, the very heart of Russia. After the proletariat, the urban petty bourgeoisie. After the towns, the villages. The effort of the reactionary government to carry out its vast tasks is bound to fail. Much in the outcome of the first phase of the great Russian revolution will depend on our preparation for the spring of 1906.
NOTES
[40] Lenin's article "The Workers' Party and Its Tasks in the Present Situation
" appeared on January 4 (17), 1906, in Molodaya Rossiya, a socio-political and literary weekly published legally by Social-Democratic students. The police department immediately took action to arrest the author of the article. The weekly, whose first and only issue carrying Lenin's article appeared in St. Petersburg, was seized and its editor arrested.
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[41] Dubasov,
F. V. -- tsarist reactionary leader who took part in but chering the Russian Revolution of 1905-07; from November 1905 Governor General of Moscow, directed the suppression of the Moscow armed uprising in December 1905.
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[42] The reference is to the heroic insurrection of the Moscow workers against the autocracy in December 1905, the climax of the revolution of 1905-07. For details see Lenin's article "Lessons of the Moscow Uprising" (present edition, Vol. 11, pp. 171-79).
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[43] Bulygin Duma -- the consultative "representative assembly" which the tsarist government intended to convene in 1905. The Bill for its convocation and the regulations governing the elections were drafted by a commission under Minister of the Interior Bulygin and published along with the tsar's Manifesto on August 6 (19) 1905. The Bolsheviks proclaimed an active boycottof the Bulygin Duma. The government was unable to convene the Duma, which was ruled out by the revolution.
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[44] Novoye Vrernya (New Times
) -- a daily newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1868 to October 1917. At first it was moderately liberal, but in 1876 it became an organ of the reactionary circles among the aristocracy and bureaucracy. It was opposed not only to the revolutionary, but to the bourgeois-liberal movement. From 1905 onwards it was an organ of the Black Hundreds. Lenin called it a specimen of the venal press.
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