Chapter 1
âLegal and Illegal Workâ
The Third Duma
UNLIKE ITS TWO PREDECESSORS, THE THIRD DUMA completed its full term, from its convening in November 1907 to its scheduled dissolution in June 1912. It proved to be prerevolutionary Russiaâs longest uninterrupted experience with parliamentary government and thus Russian social democracyâs as well. Also, unlike its predecessors, it was the product of the revolutionâs defeat. That fact more than any other determined its origins and its course. Lenin had to mount an even more vigorous campaign to convince his Bolshevik comrades to participate in a body that offered even fewer possibilities for revolutionary work. Contrary to the claims of a vocal minority, the choice wasnât either/orâeither parliamentary or illegal work. Both, Lenin argued, not only could be done but indeed had to be done in order to make effective the work in each sphere of activity. What Lenin had to do to win the skeptics to his position is the subject of this chapter.
Preparing for the Third Duma
Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypinâs new electoral law, just as Lenin had forecasted, was crafted to render a Duma more to his liking or, as its chief architect put it, to âtear the State Duma from the hands of the revolutionaries, to assimilate it to the historical institutions, to bring it into the state system . . . To try, on the basis of a new law, to distil from Russiaâs chaos those elements in which there lived a feeling for the Russian state system, and from them to create the Duma as an organ for the reeducation of society.â1 Once most Bolsheviks were won to taking part in the rigged elections for the Third Duma, the next task was to achieve clarity about what was expected of revolutionary social democracy in a decidedly more reactionary legislative arena.
Against Boycott
âIn June 1907 they were the majority among the Bolsheviks. But Proletary campaigned continuously against the boycott.â2 That most Bolsheviks, especially those in Moscow, didnât want to take part in the Third Duma required that Lenin be at his persuasive best. His key weapon in the campaign was a 32-page pamphlet, Against Boycott. Central to his argument, presented in a very pedagogical and nonpolemical tone, was context and historical contingency. Simply put, the boycott was a tactic appropriate in some situations and not others. In the specific context of Russiaâs first revolution, the boycott of the regimeâs proposed Bulygin Duma was a necessity. As long as it was possible to âset up representative institutions of a purely revolutionary typeâSoviets of Workersâ Deputies, etc., in place of the representative institutions of the police-liberal type,â everything, including the boycott of the latter, had to be employed to ensure the institution of the former.3
The more difficult task, Lenin recognized, was determining the rhythm of a revolution, its ascent and descent, and thus knowing what measures and slogans to employ in its different phases. Regarding the previous thirty months, once âthe phase of upswing (1905)â had ended and âthe phase of decline (1906â07)â had set in, the boycott, he argued, was no longer useful. One measure of the âupswingâ was that â[r]epression expanded the movement instead of reducing it.â An even more important indicator was âthat the slogans of the revolutionaries not only evoked a response but actually lagged behind the march of events.â4 That was no longer the case, he pointed out. âNow we are at a period of a lull in the revolution when a whole series of calls systematically met with no response among the masses. That is what happened with the call to sweep away the Witte Duma (at the beginning of 1906), with the call for an uprising after the dissolution of the First Duma (in the summer of 1906), with the call for struggle in answer to the dissolution of the Second Duma and the coup dâĂ©tat of June 3, 1907.â5 To call for a boycottâmore specifically, an âactive boycottââin such a climate made no sense. While Lenin continued to defend the boycott of the Witte or First Duma, itâs possible to read thisâknowing that he reluctantly went along with itâas an implicit admission that it was inappropriate given that the down swing had begun. The failure to prevent its convening should have made that clear.
What about the contention of some boycotters that unlike the First and Second Dumas, the Third would be qualitatively worst and thus offer no opportunities for social democratic participation? Lenin objected,
the first two Dumas proved in fact to be only steps to the Octobrist [Third] Duma, yet we utilized them for the simple and modest purpose (propaganda and agitation, criticism and explaining to the masses what is taking place) for which we shall always contrive to utilize even the worst representative institutions. A speech in the Duma will not cause any ârevolution,â and propaganda in connection with the Duma is not distinguished by any particular merits; but the advantage that Social-Democracy can derive from the one and the other is not less, and sometimes even greater, than that derived from a printed speech or a speech delivered at some other gathering . . . [R]eaction inevitably drove us and will continue to drive us constantly into worse and worse quasi-constitutional institutions. Always and everywhere we shall uphold our convictions and advocate our views, always insisting that no good can be expected as long as the old regime remains, as long as it is not wholly eradicated. We shall prepare the conditions for a new upswing, and until it takes place, and in order that it may take place, we shall work still harder and not launch slogans which have meaning only when the revolution is on the upswing.6
Lenin concluded by addressing âthe strongest and only Marxist arguments in favor of a boycott.â That they found support among âthe comrades who stand closest to direct proletarian workâ had to be taken seriously. Werenât there signs, they contended, of a revival of the revolution, and couldnât the boycott slogan be used to assist in that process? Again, Lenin disagreed. First, it was necessary to recognize that there was in fact a âprotracted lullâ in the revolution and for very good reasonââthe proletariat has not recovered . . . Indeed, the brunt of the October-December struggle was borne by the proletariat alone . . . No wonder that in a country with the smallest percentage of proletarian population (by European standards), the proletariat should have found itself utterly exhausted by such a struggle.â (This demographic reality, I argue, explains why Lenin fought so insistently for the revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants.)
Second, while there was certainly evidence of an upswing, particularly the strikes of textile workers in Moscowâthe reason for strong boycott sentiment among Bolsheviks thereâit was only a âpartialâ one and not enough of a justification to issue a call to boycott the Third Duma. Third, there was no evidence of the kind of sentiment that existed leading up to the First Duma: â[N]o one believes in the Third Duma, i.e., among the strata of population that are capable of sustaining the democratic movement there is not and cannot be any of that enthusiasm for the constitutional institution of the Third Duma that undoubtedly existed among the public at large for the First Duma, for the first attempts in Russia to set up any kind of institutions provided they were constitutional.â A boycott slogan now, therefore, âsounds rather odd.â Last, the main task now was to act to âconvert the partial upswing into a general upswing.â7
Against Boycott constitutes Leninâs first balance sheet on the tactics of the revolutionary process in which he was a participant and constitutes a key document in his arsenal. Given the substantive issue around which it was weaved, it is evidence for the central claim of this bookânamely, that the electoral and parliamentary arenas were at the center of his politics. That he also drew on the lessons of Marx and Engels, particularly the revolutions of 1848â49âwhich can be only noted hereâto make his case is evidence also for one of the four arguments of this book.
Two weeks after the publication of Against Boycott, a delegated meeting of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) met in Terijoki (Zelenogorsk) Finland to take a position on whether to participate in the Third Duma. Lenin presented his two-page âthesesâ that distilled his argument while highlighting and elaborating on the âwhat is to be doneâ question. Again, the immediate task was to âconvertâ what was essentially a âtrade-union upswingâ in Moscow and its environs âinto a revolutionary assault.â âOnly when the efforts of the Social-Democrats in this direction have been crowned with success, only on the basis of an aggressive revolutionary movement that has already come into existence, can the boycott slogan acquire serious importance in its inseparable connection with a direct appeal to the masses for an armed uprising, for the overthrow of the tsarist regime, and the replacement of the latter by a provisional revolutionary government, for the convocation of a constituent assembly on the basis of universal, direct, and equal suffrage by secret ballot.â8 The boycott as a tactic, therefore, was not to be abandoned but to be utilized at the right moment. The majority of the delegates rejected the boycottist theses submitted by Lev Kamenev and voted for Leninâs position to take part in the Third Dumaâtestimony to the power of his argument and persuasive skills.9 Leninâs advice anticipated in many ways (to be seen later) decisions that would have to be taken about representative institutions in the heady days after February 1917.
A week later, in a more secure location in Finland, Kotka, a delegated conference of the entire party met to debate and decide how to relate to the Third Duma. Three resolutions were put to a vote: Leninâs theses; one presented by the Menshevik leader Fedor Dan, which also called for participation; and a third, that of another Bolshevik, Alexander Bogdanov, which called for a boycott. Leninâs resolution carried, once again. Only in hindsight would it be clear that the division within the Bolshevik ranks portended an eventual split.
Though there is no mention of it in the extant real-time debate about whether or not to boycott the Third Duma elections, there was probably another issue that figured into the mix. Referring to a problem with a member of the Fourth Duma fraction (see Chapter 2), Lenin, a decade later, made an admission: âFollowing the unfortunate experience with several deputies from the First and Second State Dumas, we were not surprised that the âhigh titleâ of State Duma member turned peopleâs heads and sometimes âruinedâ them.â10 Evidently, some of the RSDLP deputies took their posts in the First and Second Dumas far more seriously than warrantedâat least from a revolutionary communist perspectiveâand compromised their politics. Thus Lenin, in trying to convince the Bolshevik doubters about the need to participate in the Duma, probably had another hurdle to overcome.
In Anticipation of the Guns of August
Engels, in 1882, cautioned the newly emerging working-class parties in Europe against forming a new international; they should wait for the appropriate âmoment.â âSuch events are already taking shape in Russia where the avant-garde of the revolution will be going in battle.â11 The two-decade delay in that âbattleâ explains, in part, why his advice wasnât heeded. By the time of his death in 1895, just such an organization was coming into existence: the Socialist or Second International. The German party, with the largest membership and biggest successes in the electoral arena, was widely recognized by then as its flagship affiliate. The RSDLP joined the organization after its founding, and in August 1907 Lenin was one of its delegates to its seventh congress in Stuttgart. âOn a whole,â as he later told the readers of Proletary, âthe Stuttgart Congress brought into sharp contrast the opportunist and revolutionary wings of the international Social-Democratic movement on a number of cardinal issues and decided these issues in the spirit of revolutionary Marxism.â12 In a more detailed article, and to a larger audience, he was more specific: âThe remarkable and sad feature in this connection was that German Social-Democracy, which hitherto had always upheld the revolutionary standpoint in Marxism, proved to be unstable, or took an opportunist stand . . . [O]n most issues, the representatives of Germany were leaders of opportunism.â He quoted a comment Engels made in 1886 about the German party to explain this development: ââIn Germany everything becomes philistine in calm times.ââ13 The absence of a revolutionary situation in Germany, in other words, enabled opportunismâan insight worth revisiting.
The agenda item that immediately revealed the âsad featureâ was the âcolonial question.â With Georg VollmarâExhibit A for Engelsâs critique of revisionism in the party14âand Edouard Bernstein in the lead, the German delegation tried to defend Imperial Germanyâs colonial project in the name of a âsocialist colonial policyâ (the âstench of Lassalleanismâ as Marx and Engels might have charged). The entire Russian delegation, Lenin proudly reportedâthat is, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and Socialist Revolutionariesârejected, along with the majority of other delegates, the idea that colonialism could have a âcivilizing effect.â
Womenâs suffrage, another agenda item, also revealed opportunistic tendencies, this time in the Austrian party. Party leaders, including Viktor Adler, tried to defend its demand for only universal male suffrage on the grounds that including women would jeopardize its chances for success. Clara Zetkin, a leader in the German party, had criticized this line prior to the congress. The âAustrians,â in Leninâs summary of her comments, âhad opportunistically sacrificed principle to expediency.â Another German woman delegate who criticized the Austrians made a point that Lenin had often made about reforms: ââIn principle we must demand all that we consider to be correct . . . and only when our strength is inadequate for more, do we accept what we are able to get. That has always been the tactics of Social-Democracy. The more modest our demands the more modest will the government be in its concessions.ââ âThis controversyââLenin in his own wordsââbetween the Austrian and German women Social-Democrats will enable the reader to see how severely the best Marxists treat the slightest deviation from the principles of consistent revolutionary tactics.â15 The RSDLP had included women in its call for universal suffrage from the very beginning.
âThe most important resolution of the Congressâ was âthat on anti-militarism.â The discussion/debate centered on the appropriate response to a ânotoriousâ figure in French politics, the one-time anarchist Gustave HervĂ©, who âtried to defend a very untenable position. He was unable to link up war with the capitalist regime in general, and anti-militarist agitation with the entire work of socialism.â Though HervĂ©âs knee-jerk response to any war with âstrike action or an uprisingâ left much to be desired as far as the âstringency of orthodox . . . Marxist analysisâ was concerned, there was a kernel of truth in it, and it served, inadvertently, a useful purpose. The counterresolution August Bebel offered was lackingââa dogmatic statement of the general truths of socialismâ that âfailed to indicate the active tasks of the proletariatââand gave an opportunistic opening to Vollmar:
With the extraordinary conceit of a man infatuated with stereotyped parliamentarism, he attacked HervĂ© without noticing that his own narrow-mindedness and thick-skinned opportunism make one admit the living spark in HervĂ©ism, . . . it was this aspect of the question, the appeal not to prize only parliamentary methods of struggle, the appeal to act in accordance with the new conditions of a future war and future crises, that was stressed by the revolutionary Social-Democrats, especially by Rosa Luxemburg in her speech. Together with the Russian Social-Democratic delegates (Lenin and [J.] Martovâwho here spoke in full harmony) Rosa Luxemburg proposed amendments to Bebelâs resolution, and these amendments emphasized the need for agitation among the youth, the necessity of taking advantage of the crisis created by war for the purpose of hastening the downfall of the bourgeoisie, the necessity of bearing in mind the inevitable change of methods and means of struggle as the class struggle sharpens and the political situation alters.
The amendments, in other words, were revolutionary social democracyâs alternative to the âparliamentary cretinismââthe language Engels and Marx employed to refer to the mistaken belief that the legislative arena was the alpha and omega of politics16âof Vollmar, the âdogmatism and passivityâ of Bebel, and the âsemi-anarchistâ stance of HervĂ© on how to respond to war and militarism.17 Lenin quoted favorably Zetkinâs assessment of what transpired: ââ[T]he revolutionary energy [Tatkraft] and courageous faith of the working class in its fighting capacity won in the end, winning, on the one hand, over the pessimistic gospel of impotence and the hidebound tendency to stick to old, exclusively parliamentary methods of struggle, and, on the other hand, over the banal anti-militarist sport of the French semi-anarchists of the HervĂ© type.ââ18
The amended resolution carried overwhelmingly, by ânearly 900 delegates of all [25] countries.â The near unanimity was deceptive, however. History would reveal that only the Russian party, with Lenin in the lead, took to heart what was adopted. The adopted resolution informed Bolshevik activities, both illegal and legalâfor the latter, specifically, the âlegalâ work of its Duma fraction in both the Third and Fourth Dumas. Only in hindsight would it become clear that the weaknesses of the German delegati...