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

166V. I. LENIN“society” (Vekhi is being issued in a fifth edition)—both ofthem complain, lament and assert that they are isolated.They are ideologically isolated among the Maximalists ofthe reaction and the “Maximalists” of the revolution, amongthe heroes of the Black Hundred and the “sighers for a newrevolution” (the liberals?)— “isolated in the Duma and inthe country”.This isolation of the “centre”, the isolation of the bourgeoisiewho want to change the old regime but do not wantto fight it, who want to “renovate” tsarism but fear itsoverthrow, is no new phenomenon in the history of the Russianrevolution. In 1905 when the mass revolutionary movementwas growing by leaps and bounds, dealing tsarismblow after blow, the Cadets and the Octobrists alike felt“isolated”. The Cadets (the Osvobozhdeniye people of thattime) began to back out already after August 6, 1905, whenthey declared against boycotting the Bulygin Duma. TheOctobrists finally “backed out” after October 17. In 1906-07the Cadets were “isolated” in both Dumas, powerless to usetheir majority, shuttling helplessly between tsarism andrevolution, between the Black-Hundred landlords and theonslaught of the proletariat and the peasantry. In spite oftheir majority in both Dumas the Cadets were isolated allthe time, they were caught in a cleft stick between Trepov 85and the real revolutionary movement and made an ingloriousexit without a single victory to their credit. In 1908-09the Octobrists were in the majority in the Third Duma,worked hand in glove with the government, supported itmost loyally—and now they have to admit that in realitynot they but the Black Hundreds were in command, and thatthe Octobrist bourgeoisie is isolated.Such is the summing-up of the historical role of the bourgeoisiein the Russian bourgeois revolution. The experienceof those most eventful five years (1905-09), which most ofall brought about an open development of the mass struggle,of the class struggle in Russia, proved by facts that bothsections of our bourgeoisie, the Cadet wing and the Octobristwing alike, were actually neutralised by the strugglebetween revolution and counter-revolution, and were powerless,helpless, pitiful, tossed hither and thither between thehostile camps.