Mr. Cherevanin, summing up the results of the election campaign, holds that the opposition had “49 seats wrested from it in a purely artificial manner, solely through recourse to quite exceptional measures”. In his opinion, adding these seats to those that were really won would raise the total to 207, which is only 15 short of an absolute majority. The conclusion he draws is: “On the basis of the June Third system, barring artificial emergency measures, nobiliary—feudal reaction would have been fully and decisively [??!] defeated in the elections.”
“In the face of this enormous danger to the landownership of the nobility,” he goes on to say, clashes between priests and land lords are unimportant (op. cit., p. 85).
There you have the effects of the slogan of wresting the Duma from the hands of the reactionaries! Cherevanin has sorely punished Martov by reducing the latter’s slogan to an absurdity and confirming, so to say, the results of liquidationist illusions along with the “results of the election campaign
A Progressist and Cadet majority in the Fourth Duma would have represented an “enormous danger to the landownership of the nobility”! This is a real gem.
It is not a slip of the pen, however, but an inevitable result of the entire ideological content which the liberals and liquidators tried to impart to the election campaign.
The tremendous growth of the role of the Progressists compared with the Cadets, the Progressists’ embodiment in politics of the entire renegacy (Vekhism) of the Cadets, and the virtual transition to a Progressist position which the Cadets themselves effected tacitly and secretly, are all facts which the liquidators refused to see and which brought them to the “Cherevanin” gem. “One should not talk too much about the counter-revolutionary character of the Cadets” is what, or approximately what, the Trudovik (Narodnik liquidator) Mr. Vodovozov wrote at one time. Our liquidators took the same view.
They even forgot the lesson of the Third Duma, where the Cadet Berezovsky in an official speech. “interpreted” the Cadets’ agrarian programme, and proved it to be beneficial to the landed nobility. Think of expecting now, in 1912, an “enormous danger to the landownership of the nobility” from the “opposition” Duma of the landlords, or from the Progressists, those slightly repainted Octobrists.
Look here, Mr. Cherevanin, indulge in your fantasies, but have a sense of proportion!
We have an excellent illustration of the election results in connection with the Cherevanin summary of liquidationist tactics. The Fourth Duma approved, by 132 votes to 78, the Progressist formula of procedure.
None other than the Octobrist Antonov officially expressed his complete satisfaction with this most commonplace, empty formula as being an Octobrist one! Mr. Antonov is right, of course. The Progressists submitted a purely Octobrist formula. They played their role, that of reconciling the Octobrists with the Cadets.
Octobrism has been defeated, long live Octobrism! It is Guchkov Octobrism that has been “defeated” and the one that lives on is Octobrism of the Yefremov and Lvov brand.[1]
[1] Rech asserted on December 16 that the Social-Democrats had joined in voting for the Progressists’ vile formula. That is incredible. Pravda says nothing about it. Perhaps the Social-Democrats who were sitting (or who rose to leave?) were “registered” as voting for. —Lenin
| | |
| | | | | | |