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

116V. I. LENINThe proletariat at that time won for itself a number of improvementsin working conditions. The peasant mass wona “reduction” in the arbitrary power of the landlords andlower prices for the lease and sale of land. All Russia wona considerable degree of freedom of assembly, speech, andassociation, and made the autocracy publicly renounceits old practices and recognise the constitution.All that the liberation movement in Russia has won upto now was won entirely and exclusively by the revolutionarystruggle of the masses headed by the proletariat.The turning-point in the struggle began with the defeatof the December uprising. Step by step the counter-revolutionpassed to the offensive as the mass struggle weakened.During the period of the First Duma this struggle was stillformidably manifest in the intensification of the peasantmovement, in widespread attacks upon the nests of thesemi-feudal landlords, and in a number of revolts among thesoldiers. The reaction attacked slowly at that time, notdaring to carry out a coup d’état straightaway. Only afterthe suppression of the Sveaborg and Kronstadt revoltsof July 1906 did it act more boldly, when it introducedthe regime of military tribunals, began piecemeal to deprivethe population of their franchise (the Senate interpretations67 ), and finally, surrounded the Second Duma completelywith a police siege and overthrew the whole notoriousconstitution. All self-established free organisationsof the masses were replaced at that time by “legal struggle”within the framework of the police constitution as interpretedby the Dubasovs and Stolypins. The supremacyof the Social-Democrats gave place to the supremacy ofthe Cadets, who predominated in both Dumas. The periodof decline in the movement of the masses was a period ofpeak development for the Party of the Cadets. It exploitedthis decline by coming forward as the “champion” of theconstitution. It upheld faith in this constitution amongthe people with all its might and preached the need to keepstrictly to “parliamentary” struggle.The bankruptcy of the “Cadet constitution” is the bankruptcyof Cadet tactics and Cadet hegemony in the emancipatorystruggle. The selfish class character of all thetalk by our liberals about “revolutionary illusions” and the