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

THE ELECTION IN ST. PETERSBURG25of the Social-Democratic Party has been of late among theworking masses, this work has been carried on without abreak. Hundreds of workers’ groups and circles are upholdingthe traditions of the Social-Democratic Party, continuingits cause, training new proletarian fighters. Through theirdeputies, their agitators and their delegates, working-classSocial-Democrats will now come forward before the mass ofpetty-bourgeois voters and remind them of the aims of realdemocracy which have been forgotten by the bourgeoisdemocraticparties and groups.The election is taking place in a situation where the Social-Democratic Party and all working-class organisations whatsoeverhave been totally outlawed, where it is utterly impossibleto hold meetings of workers, where the workers’ pressis totally banned, where the “opposition” is (through policemeasures) entirely monopolised by the Cadet Party, whichhas prostituted itself by a series of unprecedented acts offlunkeyism in the Black Duma and has helped the autocracyto raise money in Europe to spend on prisons and gallows,which has helped to stage the comedy of a constitutionalautocracy for the benefit of the European capitalists. All themore important is it that this Cadet monopoly, fenced aroundby a forest of gallows, and “earned” by the unlimited grovellingof the liberals to tsarism, should be broken, broken atall costs, in full view of the masses who see the election,hear about the election, and who are following the chancesof the candidates and the results of the election. If the mostimportant thing for the bourgeois politicians in all countries,from the Russian Cadets to the “free-thinkers” of Germanyor the bourgeois-democratic “radicals” in France, is to achievean immediate success, to gain a parliamentary seat, themost important thing for a socialist party is propaganda andagitation among the masses, the most important thing isto advocate the ideas of socialism and of a consistent, selfdenyingstruggle for complete democracy. And the successof this propaganda is very far from being measured solelyby the number of votes, hand-picked under the law of June 3,which was passed by the gentlemen of the nobility.Look at our Cadet press: with what amazing effronteryit uses its monopoly, earned by the accommodatingness ofMilyukov and protected by Stolypin. 18 In its leading article