Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

PREFACE TO THE COLLECTION TWELVE YEARS111“Good Demonstrations of Proletarians and Poor Argumentsof Certain Intellectuals.”*The last pamphlet included in this collection, Two Tacticsof Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution,appeared in Geneva in the summer of 1905.** It is a systematicstatement of the fundamental tactical differenceswith the Mensheviks. These differences were fully formulatedin the resolutions of the Third (spring) R.S.D.L.P.(Bolshevik) Congress in London and the Menshevik Conferencein Geneva which established the basic divergence betweenthe Bolshevik and Menshevik appraisals of our bourgeoisrevolution as a whole from the standpoint of the proletariat’stasks. The Bolsheviks claimed for the proletariat therole of leader in the democratic revolution. The Mensheviksreduced its role to that of an “extreme opposition”. The Bolsheviksgave a positive definition of the class character andclass significance of the revolution, maintaining that avictorious revolution implied a “revolutionary-democraticdictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry”. TheMensheviks always interpreted the bourgeois revolutionso incorrectly as to result in their acceptance of a positionin which the role of the proletariat would be subordinateto and dependent on the bourgeoisie.How these differences of principle were reflected in practicalactivities is well known. The Bolsheviks boycottedthe Bulygin Duma; the Mensheviks vacillated. The Bolsheviksboycotted the Witte Duma; the Mensheviks vacillated,appealing to the people to vote, but not for the Duma.The Mensheviks supported a Cadet Ministry and Cadetpolicy in the First Duma, while the Bolsheviks, parallelwith propaganda in favour of an “executive committee ofthe Left”, 66 resolutely exposed constitutional illusionsand Cadet counter-revolutionism. Further, the Bolsheviksworked for a Left bloc in the Second Duma elections, whilethe Mensheviks called for a bloc with the Cadets, and soon and so forth.Now it seems that the “Cadet period” in the Russianrevolution (the expression is from the pamphlet The Vic-* See present edition, Vol. 8, pp. 29-34.—Ed.** See present edition, Vol. 9, pp. 15-140.—Ed.