The first big success for the Leninist tactic of combining legal and illegal work came in the autumn of 1912 with the election to the workers’ electoral colleges (curiae) in the elections to the Fourth Duma. Up to this time, the Duma fraction had been a Menshevik affair. Now the Bolsheviks for the first time began to develop work in the parliamentary arena. In the Third Duma the Social Democratic fraction consisted of nineteen deputies, divided along the following lines: four Bolsheviks and five sympathisers against ten Menshevik-Liquidators. But in practice, it was the Mensheviks who called the tune. The lines between the two factions were as yet insufficiently clear. Lenin had not yet decided that a split was inevitable. Consequently, up to the period 1912-14, the Social Democratic parliamentary fraction acted as one.
The situation in the Fourth Duma was completely different. The factional struggle had reached a decisive turning point. This was inevitably reflected in the parliamentary group. In the elections to the Fourth Duma the Bolsheviks won an overwhelming majority in the workers’ curiae. The Social Democratic fraction in the Fourth Duma consisted of six Bolsheviks and seven Mensheviks. In addition, one Polish deputy, Jagiello, supported the Mensheviks, making a total of 14 deputies. The Bolsheviks had won the majority in all six of the workers’ colleges of the largest industrial areas. The Menshevik deputies, on the contrary, were elected from non–working-class centres, chiefly the border provinces, where the majority of the population was petty bourgeois. The distribution of workers in the areas concerned shows for whom the working class voted. Badayev gives the figures for the six provinces with workers’ curiae. There were 1,008,000 workers (in factories and mines), whereas in the eight provinces which returned Mensheviks there were 214,000 workers. If Baku province (where the workers were disenfranchised) is included, the figure would be 246,000 workers. The Bolshevik deputies represented 88.2 per cent of the workers’ electors, against only 11.8 per cent for the Mensheviks. The distorted correlation of forces within the Social Democratic Duma fraction is only the result of a rigged electoral system specially designed to reduce the representation of the working class.
The six Bolsheviks were all workers; there were four metal workers (Petrovsky, Muranov, Malinovsky, and Badayev) and two textile workers (Shagov and Samoilov). The Bolshevik deputies were elected in the biggest industrial areas of Russia: GI Petrovsky was deputy for the Yekaterinoslav Gubernia, M.K. Muranov for Kharkov Gubernia, N.R. Shagov for the Kostroma Gubernia, F.N. Samoilov for the Vladimir Gubernia, R.V. Malinovsky for the Moscow Gubernia, and AY Badayev for St. Petersburg. By contrast, the Menshevik seven were almost all intellectuals and professional people. The only worker among them, Burianov, was a follower of Plekhanov. The leading lights were all from the upper middle class: Skobelev (who had earlier collaborated with Trotsky on the Vienna Pravda) was the son of a Baku oil magnate; Chkheidze was a journalist; Chkhenkeli, a lawyer; Mankov, an accountant. The Mensheviks had a majority of only one, yet they insisted that they had the support of the majority of the working class. This was entirely false. However, their greater experience and knowledge of the parliamentary ‘tricks of the trade’ at first allowed them to dominate the Bolsheviks, who felt ill at ease in this strange and alien environment. In addition, the Bolshevik Duma fraction, in common with many other leading members of Lenin’s faction, was strongly influenced by conciliationism and, much to Lenin’s annoyance, resisted a break with the Mensheviks.
The laws governing parliamentary activity can be observed in the parliamentary fractions of reformist workers’ parties at all times. The pressures of the ruling class, its ideology and institutions are nowhere so intense as in the parliamentary hothouse. The bourgeoisie has perfected over a long period the necessary mechanisms for bribing, pressuring, and corrupting the parliamentary representatives of the proletariat. Unless the latter are thoroughly imbued with class consciousness and the necessary theoretical understanding to enable them to see through the tricks and manoeuvres of the enemy, they will inevitably tend to succumb to pressure and get sucked into the parliamentary morass of committees, procedure, points of order, and worse. It is not necessarily a question of direct personal corruption, careerism, bribes, etc., although all these weapons are actively employed to buy off the workers’ leaders. In the case of right-wing reformists, many are themselves middle-class lawyers, doctors, and economists standing far closer in their lifestyle and psychology to the bourgeoisie than to the workers they profess to represent. Even the most honest left reformists, even devoted workers from the factory floor steeled in years of struggle, can rapidly fall under the spell of the rarefied atmosphere of this artificial world, far removed from the reality of the class struggle.
For a reformist party, which in any case subordinates everything to the question of electing members of parliament, the independence of the parliamentary fraction from the party, the sacred right of each individual deputy to ‘follow his or her conscience’, is accepted as normal. This is just another way of expressing the independence of the reformist leaders from the working class, and their absolute and total dependence on the bourgeoisie. But for a revolutionary party, for which the parliamentary struggle is only one element in the general struggle of the working class to change society, this is unthinkable. The party, as the organised expression of the most conscious elements of the proletariat, can and must exercise control over its elected representatives at all levels, above all its members of parliament.
It is obvious that parliament is not an ideal platform for worker revolutionaries. The rarefied atmosphere of parliament had overawed the Bolshevik deputies, who at first lamely followed the line of least resistance. Thus, in the very first session, they failed to vote against the Cadet and Octobrist candidate for speaker. The fraction refused to read out the statement prepared by the Bolshevik CC on the grounds that they had their own – which, however, contained no revolutionary appeal to the masses outside parliament. There were other instances, such as when voting for the release of funds for public education during the debate on the budget, they failed to expose the class bias of the government’s education policy. Lenin was immediately alarmed by the way in which the six Bolshevik deputies yet again allowed themselves to be led by the nose:
If all our six are from the workers’ curiae, they must not submit in silence to a lot of Siberians [i.e., intellectual former exiles]. The six must come out with a very clear-cut protest, if they are being lorded over.
The Mensheviks tried to form a counterweight to the CC in the form of a ‘political commission’ of leading lights of the Duma Fraction to consider all questions and issue ‘recommendations’. In other words, the parliamentary bigwigs were to decide on all questions pertaining to the activity of the Duma fraction without reference to the Party. The behaviour of the fraction gave rise to much criticism and discontent in the rank and file, who felt control of the fraction slipping from their hands. Robert McKean comments:
The conciliatory attitude of the six Bolshevik parliamentarians assumed concrete form in several ways. They joined the Mensheviks in condemning the attempt of certain activists to launch a strike on the opening day of the State Duma. Four of them (excluding Malinovsky and Muranov) agreed with their Menshevik colleagues on 15 December, 1912 to merge the two factional newspapers and to the reciprocal inclusion of deputies’ names as collaborators of the respective editorial boards. In the composition of the fraction’s declaration, read out by Malinovsky on 7 December, 1912, the deputies reached a compromise on drafts sent by Lenin and Dan from abroad. Contrary to the claim of Soviet historians that the Bolsheviks forced the inclusion of their slogans, a close reading of the text reveals that the document omitted them, partly because the Mensheviks feared their incorporation would lead to criminal charges. Instead the document referred to a ‘sovereign popular representation’ and universal suffrage, but it did bow to Bolshevik demands by the exclusion of the Menshevik concerns for freedom of coalition and cultural-national autonomy. (R.B. McKean, St. Petersburg Between the Revolutions, pp. 140-41.)
Hiding behind the phraseology of bourgeois parliamentarism, the Menshevik deputies strove to free themselves from the control of the party and acquire ‘independent’ status, but in so doing merely revealed their slavish dependence on the norms of bourgeois parliamentarism and the Cadets and Octobrists. In a meeting of the fraction held on 1 November, 1907, the Mensheviks got through the following resolution:
The Duma Social Democratic fraction is an autonomous group which, while attentive to the voice of the party, in each concrete case of Duma work, shall resolve the issues independently. (Original in the Party Archives, quoted in Istoriya KPSS, vol. 2, p. 312.)
A steady stream of protest letters from Social Democratic workers was received by the Bolshevik organ Proletary. The need to bring public representatives under firm control of the party became a pressing question. Lenin advocated that members of the Duma Fraction should be as much under control as a member of any other of the leading bodies (EC, CC, etc.). Parliamentary work should be conducted in such a way that every party worker should participate in the general Duma work of the party.
Parallel to his struggle against the conciliationism of Pravda, Lenin waged war against the no less harmful conciliationism of the Bolshevik Duma group. As early as January 1912, he wrote: “See to it unconditionally that the letter of the Baku workers which we are sending you is published” (the letter demanded that the Bolshevik Duma group break with the Liquidators). Through the pages of their paper Luch, the Liquidators were waging a demagogic campaign for ‘unity’. Four of the Bolshevik Duma deputies’ names appeared in the list of collaborators of Luch. Lenin was furious. “When will the four (deputies) resign from Luch?” “Must we wait much longer? …Even from distant Baku 20 workers are protesting.” (Quoted in L. Trotsky, Stalin, p. 148.)
In September, he wrote:
The essence of the problem today is that under cover of shouts about unity, the Liquidators are flouting the will of the majority of class-conscious workers in St. Petersburg, and are foisting on the majority of the workers the splinter candidates of the minority intelligentsia, namely, the liquidationist intelligentsia.
All elections in a bourgeois country are accompanied by rampant phrase-mongering and licentious promises. The main principle of Social Democrats is not to trust words but go to the heart of the matter.
The Liquidators’ phrases about unity in their newspaper Luch are a pack of lies. In reality, unity has already been brought about in St. Petersburg by the majority of class-conscious workers against the Liquidators; it was established by the May Day demonstration, and by the support given to Pravda by 550 groups of workers against the 16 groups of Liquidators. (LCW, Workers’ Unity and the Elections, vol. 36, pp. 191-92.)
Under pressure of the remorseless criticism of Lenin, the Bolshevik deputies began to play a more active role in Duma affairs and distance themselves from the Menshevik ‘Siberians’. Given the general lack of freedom to carry out agitation and propaganda on behalf of the workers and peasants, the work in the Duma acquired an enormous significance. Of course, there were severe limitations. Theoretically the deputies had ‘parliamentary privilege’ but in practice could be arrested at any moment. Even within the Duma, the Social Democrats were confronted with all sorts of obstacles.
Nevertheless, all kinds of important issues were raised, which demanded a concrete response from the workers’ parliamentary representatives: the state budget, the rights of soldiers, Church subsidies, the conditions of workers, and, above all, the land question. This provided a wide scope for developing mass agitation and propaganda. What could not be said inside the Duma was supplemented by the illegal Party publications outside. Legal work was combined with illegal. This was the only way of preserving the revolutionary principles of the Party, while maintaining close links with the masses. Particularly good agitational speeches made by Social Democratic deputies were printed and distributed among the workers. Such a case was Surkov’s speech against Church subsidies, which was singled out for praise by Lenin, and ended with the words:
Civil servants in vestments are just as much enemies of the people as civil servants in uniforms… Not one penny of the people’s money for these bloody enemies of the people, these obscurers of the popular consciousness.
Lenin was particularly pleased because this speech completely exploded the god-builders’ myth that ‘religion is a personal affair’. In the 1909 budget debate the Social Democratic fraction exposed the fraud whereby an exorbitant amount of the workers’ money went to pay off the Tsar’s debts. On all such questions, the revolutionaries in the Duma mercilessly exposed the landlords and capitalists and the autocracy, setting out from concrete problems which directly affected the lives of the masses. At the same time, they exposed the limitation of the Duma itself: “The proletariat, of course, does not expect a solution for the worker question from the Third Duma,” said Polovsky in summing up in a debate on wages of workers. (Quoted in Istoriya KPSS, vol. 2, p. 314 in both quotes.)
The work in the Duma enabled the Party to address itself to the peasantry in a way that normal propaganda and agitation would not have permitted. By participating in the parliamentary debates on the land question, proposing agreements with the representatives of the revolutionary petty bourgeoisie, the Trudoviks, and demanding the most radical solution to the land question, the Social Democrats struck a blow at the heart of the autocracy.
In all, the Social Democratic fraction put down about 50 questions on all kinds of issues. They also moved their own bills, expressing in a concrete, concise form, various demands taken from the party programme. All this represented a valuable addition to the work of the Party. But much more important than their speeches in the chamber was the activity of the deputies outside the Duma. Here there was an open conflict with the Liquidators, who used their majority to oppose such activity. In December 1907 they passed a motion stating that no Social Democratic deputy was ‘obliged’ to participate in extra-parliamentary activity, but left it to each individual whether to accept or not. The Bolshevik deputies regularly visited the factories in their electoral districts, acquainting themselves with the workers’ problems first-hand, writing in the party press, and even attending illegal workers’ meetings. They gave report-backs of their activities to meetings of voters. Thus, the activity in the Duma was a two-way process, an active dialogue with the masses in which legal and illegal methods were combined to maintain a firm link between the members of parliament and the working class.
The socialist deputies also maintained an extensive correspondence with 54 regions of Russia, mainly answering letters from workers and peasants, but also from political prisoners, exiles, and intellectuals. By such means, the voice of the oppressed and exploited could at last find an echo in the parliamentary ‘holy of holies’. The Bolshevik deputies took a keen interest in the living and working conditions of the masses, which had suffered a brutal deterioration in the period of reaction. Badayev cites one example of this:
The Baltic naval dockyards were under the control of the Minister for the Navy. Working conditions there were as intolerable as in the other War Office factories. The ordinary workers earned 12 to 18 kopecks an hour, overtime was customary and normally meant that working-hours were doubled. The workshops were extremely unhealthy, damp, draughty, smoky, and in winter very cold. Men had to work in awkward, cramped positions. Seven or eight years there were often enough to make a man a complete wreck. (A.Y. Badayev, Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma, p. 101.)
The deputies received a large number of letters from workers. Often these letters expressed the desperation of the masses, like the one from a group of workers in the Urals, published in Novy Den’ on the 7 September, 1909, the essential message of which was: ‘We can’t go on living like this any more’. Such messages revealed the deep undercurrent of discontent which was building up in the depths of society and which found a voice in the fraction. The revolutionary Social Democrats in this reactionary Duma aspired to becoming the ‘tribunes of the people’, and, notwithstanding all the problems and failings, actually succeeded to a considerable extent.