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    The Fourth Duma election campaign has confirmed the appraisal of the historical situation that Marxists have been giving since 1911. The gist of that appraisal is that the first period of the history of Russian counter-revolution is over. The second period has begun, a period characterised by the awakening of "light contingents" of bourgeois democrats (the student movement), by the aggressive economic, and still more non-economic, movement of the working class, and so on.

    Economic depression, the vigorous offensive of the counter-revolution, the retreat and disintegration of the democratic forces, and the spate of renegade, Vekhi, liquidationist ideas in the "progressive camp" -- these are the distinguishing features of the first period (1907-11). As for the second period (1911-12), it is distinguished -- economically, politically and ideologically -- by the opposite features: an upswing in industry, the inability of the counter-revolution to press forward its offensive with the same force or vigour as before, etc., and the revival of the democratic movement, which forced Vekhi, renegade, liquidationist sentiments to conceal themselves.

    Such is the general background of the picture, which has to be borne in mind if the election campaign of 1912 is to be appraised accurately.

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NOTES



  ^[196] See Note 47.

    [Note 47 -- Lenin is referring to the decree of November 9 (22), 1906, on "Additions to Certain Regulations of the Existing Law on Peasant Land Ownership and Land Tenure", drafted by Stolypin and named the law of June 14, 1910, upon its enactment by the Duma and the Council of State. On November 15 (28), 1906, another decree was issued -- "On the Granting of Loans by the Peasant Land Bank on the Security of Allotment Lands". The two decrees granted the peasants the right to take over their allotments as personal property and the right to withdraw from the village commune and settle on otrubs or khutors. Khutor and otrub peasants could obtain subsidies through the Peasant Bank to buy land. The Stolypin agrarian legislation aimed at making the kulaks the new social mainstay of the autocracy in the countryside while preserving the landed estates and forcibly destroying the village communes.
    The Stolypin agrarian policy speeded up the capitalist evolution of agriculture in the extremely painful "Prussian" way, with the feudal landlords retaining their power, property and privileges. It intensified the forcible expropriation of the bulk of the peasantry and accelerated the development of the peasant bourgeoisie, whom it enabled to buy up the allotments of the peasant poor at a nominal price.
    Lenin described the Stolypin agrarian legislation of 1906 (and the law enacted on June 14 [27], 1910) as the second step, after the 1861 Reform, towards transforming the feudal autocracy into a bourgeois monarchy.
    Although the government vigorously advocated the withdrawal of peasants from the village communes, only some 2,500,000 peasant households withdrew from them in European Russia over nine years (1907-15). The right to secede from the village commune was used above all by the rural bourgeoisie, which was thus enabled to strenethen its farms. Some of the poor peasants who wanted to sell their allotments and end their connection with the countryside seceded too. The small peasants, crushed by want, remained poverty-stricken and backward.
    The Stolypin agrarian policy did not remove the main contra diction between the peasantry as a whole and the landlord class. Moreover, it brought further ruin to the mass of the peasantry and aggravated the class antagonisms between the kulaks and the peasant poor.]

   [p. 495]

  ^[197] See Note 40.

    [Note 40 -- This refers to the unification of Germany which the German ruling classes undertook "from above" by means of the policy of "blood and iron", and through diplomatic intrigue and wars. The Prusso-Austrian war of 1866 resulted in the formation of the North-German Union, and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 led to the formation of the German Reich.]

   [p. 495]

  ^[198] By "Ropshin-like experiences " Lenin means the reactionary ideas and decadent sentiments which became widespread in the years of reaction among the Socialist-Revolutionary intelligentsia and found a particularly vivid expression in the writings of Ropshin (B. Savinkov).    [p. 497]

  ^[199] F. L-ko -- a pseudonym of Lenin.    [p. 507]

  ^[200] This refers to the Fourth Duma elections in Riga and Yekaterinodar, where the Cadets voted with the Right-wing Black-Hundred parties against the Social-Democratic candidates.    [p. 510]

  ^[201] Pochin (L'Initiative ) -- a Narodnik-liquidationist periodical published by a group of Socialist-Revolutionaries. Its only issue appeared in Paris in June 1912.    [p. 514]

  ^[202] This refers to the decisions of the Fifth All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P. held in December 1908 and of the enlarged editorial board meeting of Proletary in June 1909 (see "The C.P.S.U. in Resolutions and Decisions of Its Congresses, Conferences and Plenary Meetings of the Central Committee, Russ. ed., Part One, 1954, pp. 195-205, 212-32).    [p. 518]