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

38V. I. LENINotzovism. What is queer is that the shout about exaggeratedparliamentarism should come from the very people whohave developed and are developing a special trend exclusivelyover the question of their attitude to parliamentarism!What do you call yourselves, dear Maximov and Co.? Youcall yourselves “otzovists”, “ultimatumists”, “boycottists”.Maximov to this day is so proud of being a boycottist of theThird Duma that he can’t get over it, and his rare Partyutterances are invariably accompanied by the signature:“Reporter on behalf of the boycottists at the July Conferenceof 1907.” 26 One writer in olden times used to sign himself:“Substantive state councillor and cavalier.” Maximov signshimself: “Reporter on behalf of the boycottists”—he, too,is a cavalier, you see!In the political situation of June 1907, when Maximovadvocated the boycott, the mistake was still quite a smallone. But when Maximov comes out in July 1909 with a manifestoof sorts and persists in admiring his “boycottism”in regard to the Third Duma, it is downright stupidity.Boycottism, otzovism and ultimatumism—all these expressionsin themselves imply the formation of a trend overthe question of the attitude to parliamentarism andexclusively over this question. To make a separate standon this question, to persist (two years after the Party hassettled it in principle!) in this separate stand, is a sign ofunparalleled narrow-mindedness. It is just those who behavein this way, i.e., the “boycottists” (of 1909) and the otzovistsand the ultimatumists, who prove thereby that they do notthink like Social-Democrats, that they are putting parliamentarismon a special pedestal, that exactly like the anarchiststhey make a trend out of isolated formulas: boycottthat Duma, recall your men from that Duma, present anultimatum to that group in the Duma. To act like that isto be a caricature of a Bolshevik. Among Bolsheviks thetrend is determined by their common attitude to the Russianrevolution and the Bolsheviks have emphatically declareda thousand times (as it were to forewarn political infants)that to identify Bolshevism with boycottism or boyevismis a stupid distortion and vulgarisation of the views of revolutionarySocial-Democracy. Our view that Social-Democraticparticipation in the Third Duma is obligatory, for