Among Newspapers and Periodicals (May 9, 1906)

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Author(s) Lenin
Written 9 May 1906


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Volna, No. 12, May 9, 1906. Published according to the Volna text.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, page 400.
Collection(s): Volna
Keywords : Alexandre Millerand, Liberalism, Press, Russia

The legal Bolshevik newspapers published in the spring and sum mer of 1906—Volna, Vperyod and Ekho (The Echo)—had a section headed “Among Newspapers and Periodicals”, to which Lenin contributed a number of articles.

In this particular item, Lenin criticises L. Martov’s article.

In an article entitled “Liberal Praises”, in Nevskaya Gazeta, No. 6, Comrade L. M. tries to prove that the bourgeoisie is praising the Right Social-Democrats for being genuine Social-Democrats, and is abusing the Left Social- Democrats for being anarchists. He suggests that the bourgeoisie is particularly afraid of anarchism, because of its crude methods of fighting, bomb-throwing, etc.

This opinion is a downright mockery of the truth.

Does not Comrade L. M. know that the bourgeoisie praised the Bernsteinians in Germany and Millerandists[1] in France precisely for their opportunism, for their attempts to blunt antagonisms in the midst of an intense struggle? Has L. M. become so much “wiser” that he is prone to regard the Bernsteinians and Millerandists as genuine Social-Democrats?

Or let Comrade L. M. think at least about the attitude the Russian liberal bourgeoisie adopted until recently to wards the terrorism of the Narodnaya Volya and of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, and about their present attitude towards the December forms of struggle. The liberal bourgeoisie after all praised the Socialist-Revolutionaries more than the Social-Democrats, when the terrorism of the former was directed against the hated autocracy. Isn’t that so, Comrade L. M.? But what do you think, Comrade L. M., would the liberal bourgeoisie praise the Right Social-Democrats if they were to abandon their present position and adopt that of pure parliamentarism? In that case, Comrade L. M., would you say that the liberal bourgeoisie simply did not realise that the pure parliamentarism of the Social- Democrats would at the present time be far more harmful for it, and much more useful for the proletariat, than the present position of the Right Social-Democrats?

  1. ↑ Millerandists—exponents of Millerandism, an opportunist trend in Social-Democracy, so named after the French social-reformist Alexandre Millerand, who in 1899 entered the reactionary bourgeois government of France and backed its anti-popular policy. That move of Millerand’s was a striking manifestation of the policy of class co-operation between opportunist Social-Democratic leaders and the bourgeoisie. It indicated those leaders’ renunciation of the revolutionary struggle, and constituted a betrayal of the interests of he working classes. Lenin described Millerandism as revisionism and renegacy; he stressed that social-reformists who entered a bourgeois government invariably turned out to be puppets of the capitalists, and a tool which that government used for deceiving the masses.
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