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

156V. I. LENINare right on this point. In reality, during the period of thegreatest liberties, the period of most direct influence uponthe masses, they concealed from the public the existenceof two different tendencies within the party. The differencesof opinion were as great as those within the Social-Democraticranks, but the Social-Democrats tried to clarify them,whereas the Socialist-Revolutionaries tried diplomaticallyto conceal them. Such are the facts of 1905.Now take 1906. The First-Duma period of “small liberties”.The socialist newspapers are revived. The Socialist-Revolutionaries are again in a bloc with the Popular Socialistsand they have a joint newspaper. No wonder thebreak with the “semi-liberals” at the congress was a diplomaticone: if you like—a break, or if you like—no break!The proposal was rejected, the idea of “being in two parallelparties” was ridiculed, and ... and they went on sittingside by side in two parties, reverently exclaiming: Wethankthee, O Lord, that we are not as those Social-Democratswho fight one another! Such are the facts. Both periodsof the free press in Russia were marked by the Socialist-Revolutionariesaligning themselves with the PopularSocialists and concealing from democracy by deception(“diplomacy”) the two profoundly divergent tendencieswithin their party.Now take 1907. After the First Duma the Popular Socialistsformally organised their own party. That was inevitable,since in the First Duma, in the first address of theparties to the peasant electors all over Russia, the PopularSocialists and the Socialist-Revolutionaries came forwardwith different agrarian plans (the Bills of the 104 and the33). The Popular Socialists defeated the Socialist-Revolutionariesby securing three times as many signatures of theTrudovik deputies to their plan, to their agrarian programme.And this programme, as the Socialist-RevolutionaryVikhlyaev admitted (Nasha Mysl, Collection, No. 1, St.Petersburg, 1907, article: “The Popular Socialist Party andthe Agrarian Question”) “similarly” with the law of November9, 1906, “arrives at negation of the basic principleof communal land tenure”. This programme legalises “themanifestations of selfish individualism” (p. 89 of Mr. Vikhlyaev’sarticle), “pollutes the broad ideological stream with