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

NOTES OF A PUBLICIST65I would give a prize to anyone who was capable offormulating a clearer and more precise programme of downrightand utterly vile apostasy. The only difference betweenMr. Struve and Mr. Gorn is that Mr. Struve sees his wayclearly and to a certain extent determines his own steps“independently”, while Mr. Gorn is simply held in leadingstrings by his Cadet mentors.—To abandon the propaganda standpoint—that is whatthe Cadets in the Second Duma were all the time tellingthe people to do. This means not to develop the politicalconsciousness and demandingness of the working-class massesand the peasantry, but to diminish both the one andthe other, to quell and suppress them, to advocate socialpeace.—Not to devise decisive slogans—means to do whatthe Cadets have done, namely, to give up the advocacy ofslogans that the Social-Democrats had put forward longbefore the revolution.—Not to split off elements that are not revolutionaryenough—means abandoning all public criticism of Cadethypocrisy, lies, and reactionary views, it means takingMr. Struve to one’s bosom.—Not to force a movement of the avowedly revolutionaryminority—means, in effect, rejecting all revolutionarymethods of struggle. For it is absolutely indisputablethat those who participated in the revolutionary movementthroughout 1905 were the avowedly revolutionary minority:it was because the masses who were fighting were in a minority—theywere nonetheless masses for being in a minority—thatthey did not achieve full success in theirstruggle. But all the successes which the emancipationmovement in Russia did achieve, all the gains it did make,were wholly and without exception the result of this struggleof the masses alone, who were in a minority. That in thefirst place. Secondly, what the liberals and their yes-mencall “forced movements”, was the only movement in whichthe masses (although on this first occasion, unfortunately,in a minority) took part independently and not throughdeputies—the only movement which was not afraid of thepeople, which expressed the interests of the masses, andwhich had the support (as was proved by the elections to