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

FACTION OF SUPPORTERS OF OTZOVISM AND GOD-BUILDERS35specific, the most characteristic in comparison with othercountries. Hence, the ability to use parliamentarism hasproved to be a symptom (not a condition but a symptom) ofexemplary organisation of the entire socialist movement, inall its branches, which we have enumerated above.Let us turn from Germany to Russia. Anyone who presumedto draw an exact parallel between the conditions inthese two countries would be guilty of a number of gross errors.But try to put the question as a Marxist is bound to do:what is the specific peculiarity of the policy and tactics ofthe Russian Social-Democrats at the present time? We mustpreserve and strengthen the illegal Party—just as before therevolution. We must steadily prepare the masses for a newrevolutionary crisis—as in the years 1897-1903. We muststrengthen to the utmost the Party’s ties with the masses,develop and utilise all kinds of workers’ organisations forthe furtherance of the socialist cause, as has always been thepractice of all Social-Democratic parties. The specific peculiarityof the moment is, namely, that the old autocracy ismaking an attempt (an unsuccessful attempt) to solve newhistoric problems with the help of the Octobrist-Black-HundredDuma. Hence, the specific tactical task of the Social-Democrats is to use this Duma for their own purposes, forspreading the ideas of revolution and socialism. The point isnot that this specific task is particularly lofty, that it opensgrand vistas, or that it equals or even approaches in importancethe tasks which faced the proletariat in, say, the periodof 1905-06. No. The point is that it is a special feature of thetactics of the present moment, marking its distinction fromthe period that is past or from that which is yet to come (forthis coming period will certainly bring us specific tasks, morecomplex, more lofty, more interesting than that of utilisingthe Third Duma). We cannot be equal to the present situation,we cannot solve the whole assemblage of problems withwhich it confronts the Social-Democratic Party, unless wesolve this specific problem of the moment, unless we convertthe Black-Hundred-Octobrist Duma into an instrument forSocial-Democratic propaganda.The otzovist windbags, taking their cue from the Bolsheviks,talk, for instance, of taking account of the experienceof the revolution. But they do not understand what they