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

THE THIRD DUMA129second majority—between the Cadets, on the one hand,and the Octobrists and the government, on the other. Buthere, too, the position is such that, owing to objectiveconditions no less than to subjective moods and intentions,these conflicts will be both superficial and transient, merelya means by which political hucksters will find it easier tomake deals on terms outwardly more decorous but in essenceopposed to the interests of democracy. Consequently, whilenot refraining from utilising even such superficial and infrequentconflicts, Social-Democracy must wage a stubbornstruggle for democratic and revolutionary aims not onlyagainst the government, the Black Hundreds, and the Octobrists,but also against the Cadets.These are the principal aims which Social-Democracymust set itself in the Third Duma. Obviously, these aimsare the same as those that confronted the party of the proletariatin the Second Duma. They have been quite clearlyformulated in the first paragraph of the resolution of theLondon Congress on the State Duma. This paragraph reads:“The immediate political aims of Social-Democracy inthe Duma are: (a) to explain to the people the utter uselessnessof the Duma as a means of achieving the demandsof the proletariat and the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie,especially the peasantry; (b) to explain to the people theimpossibility of achieving political freedom by parliamentarymeans as long as real power remains in the hands ofthe tsarist government, and to explain the inevitability ofan open struggle of the masses against the armed forces ofabsolutism, a struggle aimed at securing complete victory,namely, the assumption of power by the masses and theconvocation of a constituent assembly on the basis of universal,equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot.”This resolution, particularly in its concluding words,formulates also the very important special task of theSocial-Democrats in the Third Duma, a task which the Social-Democraticdeputies must fulfil in order to expose thefull infamy of the crime committed on June 3. They mustexpose this crime, of course, not from the liberal standpointof a formal breach of the constitution, but as a grossand brazen violation of the interests of the broad massesof the people, as a shameless and outrageous falsification