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

HISTORICAL MEANING OF INNER-PARTY STRUGGLE IN RUSSIA387Social-Democrats, but the liberals, who “remained outsidethe political line of battle” at that time. Those constitutionalillusions, on the spread of which among the masses the wholecareer of the liberals in the revolution was based, were mostglaringly refuted by the history of the First Duma.In both the First and the Second Dumas the liberals (Cadets)had a majority and occupied the political foregroundwith much noise and fuss. But it was just these liberal “victories”that clearly showed that the liberals remained allthe time “outside the political line of battle”, that they werepolitical comedians who deeply corrupted the democraticconsciousness of the masses. And if Martov and his friends,echoing the liberals, point to the heavy defeats of the revolutionas an object-lesson of “what should not be done”, ouranswer to them is, firstly, that the only real victory gainedby the revolution was the victory of the proletariat, whichrejected the liberal advice to enter the Bulygin Duma andled the peasant masses to an uprising; secondly, by the heroicstruggle it waged during the course of three yeas (1905-07)the Russian proletariat won for itself and for the Russian peoplegains that took other nations decades to win. It won theemancipation of the working masses from the influence oftreacherous and contemptibly impotent liberalism. It wonfor itself the hegemony in the struggle for freedom and democracyas a pre-condition of the struggle for socialism. It wonfor all the oppressed and exploited classes of Russia theability to wage a revolutionary mass struggle, without whichnothing of importance in the progress of mankind has beenachieved anywhere in the world.These gains cannot be taken away from the Russian proletariatby any reaction, or by any hatred, abuse and maliceon the part of the liberals, or by any vacillation, shortsightednessand lack of faith on the part of the socialistopportunists.IVThe development of the factions in Russian Social-Democracysince the revolution is also to be explained, not bythe “adaptation of the intelligentsia to the proletariat”,but by the changes in the relations between the classes. The