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

DEBATE ON EXTENSION OF DUMA’S BUDGETARY POWERS435They stressed the so-called business aspect of the matter,the inconvenience of the Rules of March 8, their disadvantageeven to the government, and the story of the way variousidiotic laws against the Duma were drafted in the idioticgovernment offices of Bulygin, Witte, and others of thatgang. The spirit of the Cadets’ presentation of the issue ismost saliently conveyed in the following words of Mr. Shingaryov:“In the Bill we have introduced there are no encroachments[on the prerogatives of the monarch], no ulteriormotives [!!] whatever. All it seeks to do is done for thesake of convenience of the Duma’s work, for the sake of itsdignity, for the sake of completing the work we have beencalled upon to do” (our italics; p. 1263 of the official StenographicRecord of the session of January 15, 1908).Such a person befogs people’s minds instead of enlighteningthem, because what he says is nonsense and a barefacedlie. We cannot alter this inescapable conclusion, evenif this Mr. Shingaryov and his whole fraternity of Cadet politicianssincerely believed in the “value” of their “diplomacy”.A democrat should reveal to the people the gulf thatlies between the powers of parliament and the prerogativesof the monarch, and not deaden the public mind, not distortthe political struggle by reducing it to an office-routinecorrection of the laws. In thus presenting the issue, the Cadetsshow in fact that they are rivals of the tsar’s bureaucratsand the Octobrists, and not champions of freedom, not evenfreedom for the big bourgeoisie. Only bureaucrats vulgarlyflirting with liberalism, and not representatives of a parliamentaryopposition, can talk like that.The speech by the representative of the Social-Democrats,Pokrovsky 2nd, we gladly acknowledge, reveals a quitedifferent spirit, presenting the issue in a fundamentallydifferent way. The Social-Democrat stated bluntly and clearlythat he considered popular representation in the ThirdDuma falsified (we are quoting Stolichnaya Pochta for January18, since the verbatim reports of this session are notyet available). He stressed not minor points, not the officialderivation of the law, but the ruined and oppressed stateof the masses, of the vast millions of the people. He rightlydeclared that “one cannot speak of the budgetary powersof the Duma without irony”, that we were demanding not