Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 16 - From Marx to Mao

126V. I. LENINpublicist subjects they prevaricate and hedge and Jesuitise.They have broken with the most fundamental ideas of democracy,the most elementary democratic tendencies, but pretendthat they are breaking only with “intellectualism”. Theliberal bourgeoisie has decisively turned away from defenceof popular rights to defence of institutions hostile to the people.But the liberal politicians want to retain the title of“democrats”.The same trick that was performed with Belinsky’s letterto Gogol and the history of Russian publicist literature isbeing applied to the history of the recent movement.IIAs a matter of fact Vekhi attacks only the intelligentsiathat was a voice of the democratic movement and onlyfor that which showed it to be a real participant in thismovement. Vekhi furiously attacks the intelligentsia preciselybecause this “little underground sect came out intothe broad light of day, gained a multitude of disciples andfor a time became ideologically influential and even actuallypowerful” (176). The liberals sympathised with the “intelligentsia”and sometimes supported it secretly as long as itremained merely a little underground sect, until it gaineda multitude of disciples and became actually powerful; thatis to say, the liberals sympathised with democracy as longas it did not set in motion the real masses, for, as long asthe masses were not drawn in, it only served the self-seekingaims of liberalism, it only helped the upper section of theliberal bourgeoisie to climb a little nearer to power. The liberalturned his back on democracy when it drew in themasses, who began to realise their own aims and uphold theirown interests. Under the cover of outcries against the democratic“intelligentsia” the war of the Cadets is in fact beingwaged against the democratic movement of the masses. Oneof the innumerable and obvious revelations of this in Vekhiis its declaration that the great social movement of the endof the eighteenth century in France was “an example of asufficiently prolonged intellectualist revolution, displayingall its spiritual potentialities” (57).