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

24V. I. LENINOnly from this angle can we appreciate the simplicity,directness, and clarity of the boycott as a slogan appealingto the masses. All these virtues of the slogan are good notin themselves, but only in so far as the conditions of strugglefor the choice of a direct or zigzag path of development arepresent in the objective situation in which the slogan isused. During the period of the Bulygin Duma this sloganwas the correct and the only revolutionary slogan of theworkers’ party not because it was the simplest, most forthright,and clearest, but because the historical conditionsat the time set the workers’ party the task of taking partin the struggle for a simple and direct revolutionary pathagainst the zigzag path of the monarchist constitution.The question arises, by what criterion are we to judgewhether those special historical conditions existed at thetime? What is that distinctive feature in the objectivestate of affairs which made a simple, forthright, and clearslogan not a mere phrase but the only slogan that fittedthe actual struggle? We shall take up this question now.IILooking back at a struggle that is already over (at least,in its direct and immediate form), there is nothing easier,of course, than to assess the total result of the different,contradictory signs and symptoms of the epoch. The outcomeof the struggle settles everything at once and removesall doubts in a very simple way. But what we have to donow is to determine such symptoms as would help us graspthe state of affairs prior to the struggle, since we wish toapply the lessons of historical experience to the ThirdDuma. We have already pointed out above that the conditionfor the success of the boycott of 1905 was a sweeping,universal, powerful, and rapid upswing of the revolution.We must now examine, in the first place, what bearing aspecially powerful upswing of the struggle has on theboycott, and, secondly, what the characteristic and distinctivefeatures of a specially powerful upswing are.Boycott, as we have already stated, is a struggle notwithin the framework of a given institution, but against