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

NOTES OF A PUBLICIST203sense, for example, the bourgeois-democratic revolutionin France was consummated only in 1871 (though begun in1789). But if the term is used in its narrow sense, it meansa particular revolution, one of the bourgeois revolutions,one of the “waves”, if you like, that batters the old regimebut does not destroy it altogether, does not remove the basisthat may engender subsequent bourgeois revolutions. Inthis sense the revolution of 1848 in Germany was “consummated”in 1850 or the fifties, but it did not in the least therebyremove the soil for the revolutionary revival in the sixties.The revolution of 1789 in France was “consummated”, letus say, in 1794, without, however, thereby removing thesoil for the revolutions of 1830 and 1848.No matter how the words of the platform, “prior to theconsummation of the revolution”, are interpreted, whetherin the wider or narrower sense, there is no meaning in themin either case. Needless to say, it would be altogether absurdto attempt now to determine the tactics of revolutionarySocial-Democracy up to the consummation of the wholeperiod of possible bourgeois revolutions in Russia. As forthe revolutionary “wave” of 1905-07, i.e., the first bourgeoisrevolution in Russia, the platform itself is forced toadmit that “it [the autocracy] has beaten back the firstwave of the revolution” (p. 12), that we are passing throughan “inter-revolutionary” period, a period “between twowaves of a democratic revolution”.Now what is the source of this endless and hopeless muddlein the “platform”? It lies in the fact that the platformdissociates itself from otzovism diplomatically withoutabandoning the ideology of otzovism, without correctingits fundamental error and without even noticing it. Itlies in the fact that the Vperyodists regard otzovism asa “legitimate shade of opinion”, i.e., they regard the otzovistshade of a caricature of Bolshevism as a law, a model,an unexcelled model. Anyone who has set foot on this slopingpath is bound to slide into a bog of hopeless confusion;he repeats phrases and slogans without being capable ofpondering over the conditions of their application and thelimits of their importance.Why, for example, did the Bolsheviks in 1906-07 so oftenoppose the opportunists with the slogan, “the revolution