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

70V. I. LENINWe Social-Democrats are answering this question byour struggle. And the Cadets are answering it by struggle ...against the Left. The Cadets are fighting for the government’ssolution of this question: they did this systematically inthe Second Duma in the parliamentary field. Now, too,they are doing it systematically by their ideological struggleagainst the Social-Democrats, and the Trudoviks.Of course, to the ordinary Russian intellectual, as wellas to any half-educated petty bourgeois, this sounds paradoxical;the Cadets, who call themselves democrats andmake liberal speeches, fight for the government solutionof the question! It is so obviously incongruous! If theyare democrats, then the place for them is the “democraticcoalition”! This is such an obvious conclusion for politicalsimpletons, whom even two years of the Russianrevolution have not taught to seek the true basis ofboth the government’s measures and the liberals’ spateof talk in the struggle of the different classes. We haveany amount of “Marxists” from the intellectual camp whoprofess the principles of the class struggle while in realitythey use purely liberal arguments when talking about theCadets, about the role of the Duma, and about the boycott!And how many more Cadet votings for the budget willthese political simpletons need before they can digest whathas long been a familiar sight in Europe, namely, that of aliberal making speeches against the government and supportingit on every important issue.The replacement of the Second Duma by the Third isthe replacement of the Cadet, who acts in the Octobristmanner, by the Octobrist who acts with the help of theCadet. Predominant in the .Second Duma was the party ofthe bourgeois intellectuals; who called themselves democratswhere the people were concerned and supported thegovernment where the bourgeoisie was concerned. Predominantin the Third Duma will be the landlords and the bigbourgeoisie, who hire the bourgeois intellectuals for a makebelieveopposition and for business services. This simpletruth is borne out by the whole political behaviour of theCadet Party and by the Second Duma in particular. Eventhe man in the street has now begun to grasp this simpletruth: we shall refer to such a witness as Mr. Zhilkin, whom