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

28V. I. LENINthe Russian revolution is passed over in silence, that theboycott of the Bulygin Duma is forgotten, and that the concretestages of the course taken by our revolution are replacedby a general designation of the whole of our revolution,both past and future, as a revolution that begetsconstitutionalism. This is a specimen of the violation ofthe method of dialectical materialism by people, who, likePlekhanov, spoke about this method with the utmost eloquence.Yes, our bourgeois revolution as a whole, like everybourgeois revolution, is, in the long run, a process of buildingup a constitutional system and nothing more. Thatis the truth. It is a useful truth for exposing the quasisocialistpretensions of one or another bourgeois-democraticprogramme, theory, tactics, and so forth. But wouldyou be able to derive any benefit from this truth on thequestion as to what kind of constitutionalism the workers’party is to lead the country to in the epoch of bourgeoisrevolution? Or on the question as to how exactly the workers’party should fight for a definite (and, precisely, a republican)constitutionalism during definite periods of the revolution?You would not. This favourite truth of Axelrod’sand Plekhanov’s would no more enlighten you on thesequestions than the conviction that a horse eats oats wouldenable you to choose a suitable animal and ride it.The fight against constitutional illusions, the Bolshevikssaid in 1905 and at the beginning of 1906, shouldbecome the slogan of the moment, because it was at thatperiod that the objective state of affairs faced the strugglingsocial forces with having to decide the issue whetherthe straight path of direct revolutionary struggle andof representative institutions created directly by the revolutionon the basis of complete democratism, or theroundabout zigzag path of a monarchist constitution andpolice-“constitutional” (in inverted commas!) institutionsof the “Duma” type would triumph in the immediate future.Did the objective state of affairs really raise this issue,or was it “invented” by the Bolsheviks because of theirtheoretical mischievousness? That question has now beenanswered by the history of the Russian revolution.