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    The election campaign for the Second Duma is now a subject of great interest in the workers' party. Special attention is being devoted to the question of "blocs", i.e., permanent or temporary electoral agreements between the Social-Democrats and other parties. The bourgeois, Cadet press -- Rech, Tovarishch, Novy Put, Oko, etc. -- are doing their utmost to convince the workers of the need for a "bloc" (an electoral agreement) between the Social-Democrats and the Cadets. Some Menshevik Social-Democrats are also advocating such blocs (Cherevanin in Nashe Dyelo and Tovarishch ), others are opposed to them (Martov in Tovarishch ). The Bolshevik Social-Democrats are opposed to such blocs, and agree only to partial agreements at the higher stages of the election campaign on the distribution of seats in proportion to the polling strength of the revolutionary and opposition parties at the primary ballot.

    We shall try to state briefly the case for this last standpoint.

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NOTES



  ^[126] The pamphlet The Social-Democrats and Electoral Agreements was printed in November 1906 by the Vperyod Publishers in St.

 
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Petersburg. Five years later, in 1912, the Press Committee banned the pamphlet and the Court of Justice confirmed this. On January 30 (February 12), 1912, the remaining copies were destroyed at the printing press of the city authorities.    [p. 275]

  ^[127] Lenin is referring to the decisions of the Fourth Congress of the Cadet Party, held September 24-28 (October 7-11), 1906, in Helsingfors. In the debate on tactics the Central Committee of that Party moved a resolution rejecting the "passive resistance" proclaimed in the Vyborg Manifesto (see Note 48). The Left Cadets (mainly representatives of provincial organisations of the Party) moved their own resolution, in which "passive resistance" was acknowledged to be the immediate task of the Party. By a majority of votes the Congress adopted the Central Committee's resolution which called for the Vyborg Manifesto not to be put into effect.

    [Note 48 -- Lenin is referring to the appeal of members of the First State Duma known as the "Vyborg Manifesto". The appeal was adopted on July 9-10 (22-23), 1906, at a meeting in Vyborg attended by about 200 deputies, mostly Cadets, after the dissolution of the First Duma. The appeal called on the people to offer "passive resistance" to the government, to refuse to pay taxes or provide recruits until the tsar had ordered new elections to the Duma. In September 1906 the Congress of the Cadet Party openly declared the use of "passive resistance" to be "virtually unrealisable".]

   [p. 281]

  ^[128] The "four points " -- a term applied to the democratic electoral system embracing four demands: universal, equal, and direct suffrage by secret ballot.    [p. 282]

  ^[129] Vestnik Partii Narodnoi Svobody (Herald of the Party of People's Freedom ) -- a weekly magazine, the organ of the Cadet Party, published in St. Petersburg at intervals from February 22 (March 7), 1906. It was closed down after the 1917 October Revolution.    [p. 285]

  ^[130] Soznatelnaya Rossiya (Class-Conscious Russia ) -- a Socialist-Revolutionary symposium published in St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1906. From the third issue it appeared with the subtitle "Symposium on Present-Day Themes".    [p. 292]