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

AGAINST BOYCOTT39driving it into the Octobrist Duma, are depicted by theheroes of Russian liberalism as “the process of growth ofconstitutional consciousness in Russia”.It is undoubtedly the duty of Russian Social-Democratsto study our revolution most carefully and thoroughly, toacquaint the masses with its forms of struggle, forms oforganisation, etc., to strengthen the revolutionary traditionsamong the people, to convince the masses that improvementsof any importance and permanence can be achievedsolely and exclusively through revolutionary struggle, andto systematically expose the utter baseness of those smugliberals who pollute the social atmosphere with the miasmaof “constitutional” servility, treachery, and Molchalinism.In the history of the struggle for liberty a single day of theOctober strike or of the December uprising is a hundredtimes more significant than months of Cadet flunkey speechesin the Duma on the subject of the blameless monarchand constitutional monarchy. We must see to it—for ifwe do not no one else will—that the people know much morethoroughly and in more detail those spirited, eventful,and momentous days than those months of “constitutional”asphyxia and Balalaikin-Molchalin 17 prosperity so zealouslyannounced to the world by our liberal-party andnon-party “democratic” (ugh! ugh!) press with the amiableacquiescence of Stolypin and his retinue of gendarme censors.There is no doubt that, in many cases, sympathy for theboycott is created precisely by these praiseworthy effortsof revolutionaries to foster tradition of the finest periodof the revolutionary past, to light up the cheerless sloughof the drab workaday present by a spark of bold, open, andresolute struggle. But it is just because we cherish thisconcern for revolutionary traditions that we must vigorouslyprotest against the view that by using one of the slogansof a particular historical period the essential conditionsof that period can be restored. It is one thing to preservethe traditions of the revolution, to know how to usethem for constant propaganda and agitation and for acquaintingthe masses with the conditions of a direct and aggressivestruggle against the old regime, but quite anotherthing to repeat a slogan divorced from the sum total of the