Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 26 - From Marx to Mao

56V. I. LENINcomposition, but also more profoundly because the onlyaim of the Pre-parliament is to trick the masses, to deceivethe workers and peasants, to distract them from the newupsurge of the revolution, to dazzle the eyes of theoppressed classes by a new dress for the old, long tried-out,bedraggled, threadbare “coalition” with the bourgeoisie (i.e.,the bourgeoisie’s transformation of Tsereteli and Co. intojesters helping to subordinate the people to imperialismand the imperialist war).“We are weak now,” said the tsar in August 1905 to hisfeudal landowners. “Our power is wavering. The tide ofthe workers’ and peasants’ revolution is rising. We musttrick the ‘plain man’, we must dangle something before hiseyes....”“We are weak now,” says the present “tsar”, the BonapartistKerensky, to the Cadets, the non-party Tit Tityches,36 Plekhanovs, Breshkovskayas and Co. “Our poweris tottering. A wave of workers’ and peasants’ revolutionagainst the bourgeoisie is rising. We must hoodwink thedemocrats by dying in new colours that jester’s costumewhich the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik ‘leadersof revolutionary democracy’, our dear friends the Tseretelisand Chernovs, have been wearing to fool the people sinceMay 6, 1917. 37 We can easily dangle a ‘Pre-parliament’before their eyes.”“We are strong now,” said the tsar to his feudal landownersin June 1907. “The wave of workers’ and peasants’revolution is receding, but we cannot maintain ourselvesas of old; deception alone will not suffice. We must have anew policy in the village, we must have a new economicand political bloc with the Guchkovs and Milyukovs,with the bourgeoisie.”It is in this way that the three situations, August 1905,September 1917, and June 1907, may be presented to illustratemost vividly the objective basis for the boycotttactics and its connection with class relations. The oppressedclasses are always being deceived by the oppressors, butthe meaning of this deception differs at different momentsin history. Tactics cannot be based on the bare fact thatthe oppressors deceive the people; tactics must be shapedafter analysing class relations in their entirety and the