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

REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION117“errors of the revolution” becomes patently obvious whenwe compare the two periods of the revolution. The proletarianmass struggle won gains for the whole people. Theliberal leadership of the movement produced nothing butdefeats. The revolutionary onslaught of the proletariatsteadily raised the political consciousness of the massesand their organisation. It set increasingly higher aimsbefore them, stimulated their independent participationin political life, and taught them how to fight. The hegemonyof the liberals during the period of the two Dumas loweredthe political consciousness of the masses, demoralised theirrevolutionary organisation, and dulled their comprehensionof democratic aims.The liberal leaders of the First and Second Dumas gavethe people a splendid demonstration of slavish legal “struggle”,as a result of which the autocratic advocates of serfdomswept away the constitutional paradise of the liberal windbagswith a stroke of the pen and ridiculed the subtle diplomacyof the visitors to ministerial ante-rooms. The liberalshave not a single gain to show throughout the Russianrevolution, not a single success, not a single attempt,at all democratic, to organise the forces of the people in thestruggle for freedom.Until October 1905, the liberals sometimes maintained abenevolent neutrality towards the revolutionary struggleof the masses, but already at that time they had begun tooppose it, sending a deputation to the tsar with abjectspeeches and supporting the Bulygin Duma not out ofthoughtlessness, but out of sheer hostility to the revolution.After October 1905, all that the liberals did was to shamefullybetray the cause of the people’s freedom.In November 1905, they sent Mr. Struve to have an intimatetalk with Mr. Witte. In the spring of 1906, theyundermined the revolutionary boycott, and by refusing tospeak out openly against the loan for Europe to hear,helped the government to obtain millions of rubles for theconquest of Russia. In the summer of 1906, they carriedon backdoor haggling with Trepov 68 over ministerial portfoliosand fought the “Left”, i.e., the revolution, in the FirstDuma. January 1907 saw them running again to the policeauthorities (Milyukov’s call on Stolypin). In the spring