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

147THE PREPARATION OF A “DISGUSTING ORGY”In assessing the tasks of the Social-Democrats in theSecond Russian Duma and the aspirations of the Russianliberals, Franz Mehring, the well-known German Marxist,wrote that German Liberalism has for the last sixty yearsbeen following a wretched and shameful path under coverof the slogan: “positive work”. When the National Assembly,on a single night in the summer of 1789, achieved the emancipationof the French peasants, that brilliantly venal adventurerMirabeau, the incomparable hero of constitutionaldemocracy, described the event by the picturesque expression“a disgusting orgy”. In our (Social-Democratic) opinion,however, this was positive work. On the contrary,the emancipation of the Prussian peasants, which draggedon at a snail’s pace for sixty years, from 1807 to 1865, andtook cruel and ruthless toll of countless peasant lives, was,from the point of view of our liberals, “positive work”,which they proclaim from the house-tops. In our opinionit was a “disgusting orgy”.*Thus Mehring wrote. We cannot but recall his wordstoday, when the Third Duma is opening, when the Octobristswant to start a disgusting orgy in real earnest, whenthe Cadets are ready to take part in it with servile zeal, wheneven among the Social-Democrats there are (to our shame)Plekhanovites who are prepared to assist in this orgy. Letus take a closer look at all these preparations.The eve of the Third Duma was marked by a spate ofmeetings of the different parties on the question of Dumatactics. The Octobrists at their Moscow conference drew upa draft programme for the parliamentary group of the Unionof October Seventeenth, and their spokesman, Mr. Plevako,raised the “banner of the Russian Liberal-ConstitutionalParty” at a banquet in Moscow. The Cadets completed their* See present edition, Vol. 12, p. 386.—Ed.