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

434V. I. LENINObviously, the question of the Duma’s budgetary powershad to be raised in the Duma in order to make quite clearto both the Russian people and to Europe the Black-Hundredcontemptuous attitude of tsarism and to show the completepowerlessness of the Duma. The immediate practicalobject of such clarification (not to mention the basic taskof every democrat—that of revealing the truth to the people,making them see the light) was further determined by thequestion of the loan. The Black-Hundred government ofthe tsar could not have held out after December 1905, andcould not hold out even now, without the help of worldcapital of the international bourgeoisie in the shape ofloans. And the world bourgeoisie is giving billions in loansto an obviously bankrupt tsar, not only because it is lured,like all moneylenders, by the prospect of big profits, butbecause it realises its own vested interest in the victory ofthe old regime over the revolution in Russia, for it isthe proletariat that is marching at the head of this revolution.Thus, the only object of raising and debating this questionin the Duma could be that of exposing the whole truth.Practical reform activity could not, at this time and in thissituation, be the aim of a democrat, because, first, the impossibilityof reforms on the basis of the existing FundamentalLaws of the Duma’s budgetary powers is obvious,and secondly, it would be absurd, in a Duma composed ofBlack-Hundred die-hards and Moscow merchants, to proposethat its powers, the powers of such a Duma, shouldbe extended. The Russian Cadets (whom only ignoramusesor simpletons can regard as democrats) did not grasp thistask, of course, in raising the issue, they forthwith placedit on a false basis—that of a partial reform. We do not,of course, deny the possibility and necessity of a democrator a Social-Democrat sometimes raising the question of apartial reform. But in such a Duma as the Third Duma, atsuch a moment as the present, on such a question as bud-.getary powers, already hopelessly crippled by inviolable FundamentalLaws, this was absurd. The Cadets could raisethe question as a matter of partial reform—we are willingto concede them even that—but democrats could not treatthis question in the way that the Cadets have done.