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

AGRARIAN PROGRAMME OF SOCIAL-DEMOCRACY429need for achieving not only local, but “central” democracy,i.e., the democratisation of the central government of thestate—and not merely democracy in general, but the absolutelyfullest, highest forms of democracy, for otherwisethe peasant agrarian revolution in Russia will become utopianin the scientific sense of the term.And let it not be thought that at the present momentof history, when the Black-Hundred die-hards are howlingand raging in the Third Duma, when the nec plus ultraof rampant counter-revolution has been reached and reactionis perpetrating savage acts of political vengeance uponthe revolutionaries in general and the Social-Democraticdeputies in the Second Duma in particular—let it not bethought that this moment is “unsuitable” for “broad” agrarianprogrammes. Such a thought would be akin to thebacksliding, despondency, disintegration, and decadencewhich have spread among wide sections of the petty-bourgeoisintellectuals who belong to the Social-DemocraticParty, or sympathise with this Party in Russia. The proletariatcan only gain by having this rubbish swept clean outof the ranks of the workers’ party. Yes, the more savagelyreaction rages, the more does it actually retard the inevitableeconomic development, the more successfully doesit prepare the wider upsurge of the democratic movement.And we must take advantage of the temporary lulls in massaction in order critically to study the experience of thegreat revolution, verify this experience, purge it of dross,and pass it on to the masses as a guide for the impendingstruggle.November-December 1907