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

32V. I. LENINpeople back, issuing a call for an assault on the old regimeinstead of working within the framework of an institutionset up by that regime. The nation-wide enthusiasm forthe bourgeois-police fetish of a “constitutional” monarchydemanded of the Social-Democrats, as the party of theproletariat, an equally nation-wide demonstration of theirviews protesting against and exposing this fetish, demandeda fight with the utmost vigour against the establishmentof institutions that embodied that fetishism.There you have the full historical justification not onlyfor the boycott of the Bulygin Duma, which met with immediatesuccess, but for the boycott of the Witte Duma,which, to all appearances, was a failure. We now see whyit was only an apparent failure, why the Social-Democratshad to maintain their protest against the constitutionalmonarchistturn of our revolution to the very last. Thisturn in fact proved to be a turn into a blind alley. The illusionsabout a monarchist constitution proved to bemerely a prelude or a signboard, an adornment, divertingattention from preparations for the annulment of this “constitution”by the old regime....We said that the Social-Democrats had to maintain theirprotest against the suppression of liberty by means of the“constitution” to the very last. What do we mean by “tothe very last”? We mean until the institution against whichthe Social-Democrats were fighting had become an accomplishedfact despite the Social-Democrats, until the monarchist-constitutionalturn of the Russian revolution, whichinevitably meant (for a certain time) the decline of the revolution,the defeat of the revolution, had become an accomplishedfact despite the Social-Democrats. The periodof constitutional illusions was an attempt at compromise.We fought and had to fight against it with all our might.We had to go into the Second Duma, we had to reckon withcompromise once the circumstances forced it upon us againstour will, despite our efforts, and at the cost of the defeatof our struggle. For how long we have to reckon with it isanother matter, of course.What inference is to be drawn from all this as regardsthe boycott of the Third Duma? Is it, perhaps, that theboycott, which is necessary at the beginning of the period