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

AGAINST BOYCOTT27spirit, but because the ideas of these pseudo-revolutionariesfell short of the objectively revolutionary situation.It is easy to confuse these reasons for the Mensheviks’ mistakes,but it is impermissible for a Marxist to confusethem.IIIThe connection between the boycott and the historicalconditions characteristic of a definite period of the Russianrevolution should be examined from still anotherangle. What was the political content of the Social-Democraticboycott campaign of the autumn of 1905 and thespring of 1906? Its content did not, of course, consist inrepeating the word boycott or calling on the people notto take part in the elections. Nor was its content confinedto appeals for a direct assault that ignored the roundaboutand zigzag paths proposed by the autocracy. In additionto and not even alongside this theme, but rather at thecentre of the whole boycott campaign, was the fight againstconstitutional illusions. This fight was, in truth, the livingspirit of the boycott. Recall the speeches of the boycottistsand their whole agitation, look at the principal resolutionsof the boycottists and you will see how truethis is.The Mensheviks were never able to understand this aspectof the boycott. They always believed that to fightconstitutional illusions in a period of nascent constitutionalismwas nonsense, absurdity, “anarchism”. This pointof view of the Mensheviks was also forcibly expressed intheir speeches at the Stockholm Congress, 11 especially—I remember—in the speeches of Plekhanov, not to mentionMenshevik literature.At first sight the position of the Mensheviks on thisquestion would really seem to be as impregnable as that of aman who smugly instructs his friends that horses eat oats.In a period of nascent constitutionalism to proclaim a fightagainst constitutional illusions! Is it not anarchism? Isit not gibberish?The vulgarisation of this question effected by meansof a specious allusion to the plain common sense of sucharguments is based on the fact that the special period of