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

316V. I. LENINabsurd to think that it would be capable of declining thiselementary duty of honouring from the tribune the name ofthe man who so worthily and brilliantly inaugurated it [!!]and sanctified it.” A fine tribute, indeed! Muromtsev inauguratedand sanctified “it”, the Third Duma! Inadvertentlythe Cadets have blurted out the bitter truth that the betrayalof the revolutionary struggle and of the insurrectionat the end of 1905 by Russian liberalism and the Russianbourgeoisie “inaugurated and sanctified” the era of counterrevolutionin general and the Third Duma in particular.“It was believed,” says Rech, “that a handful of politicalrowdies would not be able to stifle the voice of commondecency and tact in the Duma majority.” So! It was a matterof “common decency and tact”, not of protesting againstthe autocracy. The question is put in the aspect not of democracy“divorcing itself” from the counter-revolution butof liberalism joining forces with the counter-revolution.Here liberalism is seeking common ground with the counterrevolution,inviting its representatives, the Octobrists, tojoin them in honouring the memory of Muromtsev not asan expression of protest against the autocracy, but for theobservance of “common decency and tact”. Muromtsev“inaugurated and sanctified” (such vile words do exist!)the first pseudo-parliament convened by the tsar; you Octobristgentlemen have seats in the third pseudo-parliamentconvened by the tsar—will it not be “indecent and tactless”to refuse to fulfil “an elementary duty”? How excellentlythis quite trivial instance, this one sentiment alone expressedby the Cadets’ official organ, reflects the ideologicaland political rottenness of liberalism in our country. Its policyis to persuade the autocracy, the Black-Hundred landlordsand their allies, the Octobrists, and not to develop thedemocratic consciousness of the masses. Therefore, its portion—the inevitable and unescapable portion of such bourgeoisliberalism in any bourgeois-democratic revolution—is toremain for ever the slave of the monarchy and the feudallords, for ever to be the recipient of kicks from theirjackboots .If the Cadet deputies had a particle of understandingof the aims of democracy their concern in the Third Dumawould have been not for the performance of an “elementary