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    The Fourth Duma election campaign has brought about some little revival of activity and has increased the interest in political issues. The broad movement stirred up by the events in the Lena gold-fields has lent importance to this revival and made this interest particularly urgent. More than ever, it is now appropriate to discuss the question of the attitude of the Trudoviks, i.e., of the peasant democrats, to the worker democrats.

    In an article entitled "The Trudovik Group and the Workers' Party" (Zaprosy Zhizni No. 17), Mr. V. Vodovozov, answering my articles -- "Liberalism and Democracy"[*] -- in Zvezda,[37]sets forth the Trudovik view on this question. The controversy bears on the very essence of two political trends which express the interests of nine-tenths of Russia's population. It is therefore the duty of every democrat to pay the closest attention to the subject of the controversy.

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NOTES



  ^[37] Zvezda (The Star ) -- a Bolshevik legal newspaper published in St. Petersburg from December 16 (29), 1910, to April 22 (May 5), 1912; at first once a week, from January 1912 twice weekly, and from March onwards three times a week. Among its contributors were N. N. Baturin, K. S. Yeremeyev, M. S. Olminsky and N. G. Polotayev, as well as Maxim Gorky. The pro-Party Mensheviks (Plekhanovites) were associated with Zvezda until the autumn of 1911. Ideologically the newspaper was led (from abroad) by Lenin, who contributed about 30 articles to it. Thanks to his guidance, it was a militant Bolshevik organ upholding the programme and tactics of the illegal Party. It had an extensive section for workers' correspondence, and kept in constant close touch with the workers. The circulation of some issues was between 50,000 and 60,000 copies.
    The authorities were constantly taking repressive measures against Zvezda ; they confiscated 30 and fined 8 out of a total of 69 issues. Zvezda prepared the way for the publication of the Bolshevik daily, Pravda ; it was closed down by the government on the day the first issue of Pravda appeared.    [p. 36]

  ^[38] The Trudovik conference met in St. Petersburg in March 1912. It dealt chiefly with the Fourth Duma election campaign. Lenin assessed its decisions in his article "Liberalism and Democracy" (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 569-78).    [p. 41]

  ^[39] Vekhi (Landmarks ) -- a Cadet symposium published in Moscow in the spring of 1909. It contained articles by N. Berdayev, S. Bulgakov, P. Struve, M. Herschensohn and other spokesmen of the counter-revolutionary liberal bourgeoisie. In their articles on the Russian intelligentsia the Vekhi writers calumniated the revolutionary-democratic traditions of the foremost representatives of the Russian people, including V. G. Belinsky and N. G. Chernyshevsky. They smeared the revolutionary movement of 1905 and thanked the tsarist government for having with "its bayonets and jails" saved the bourgeoisie "from the fury of the people". Vekhi called on the intelligentsia to serve the autocracy. Lenin compared its programme both in philosophy and in political writing with the programme of the Black-Hundred newspaper, Moskovskiye Vedomosti. He called the collection "an encyclopaedia of liberal renegacy " and "a sheer torrent of reactionary mud turned upon the democratic movement" (see present edition, Vol. 16, pp. 123-31  [Transcriber's Note: See Lenin's "Concerning Vekhi ". -- DJR]).    [p. 41]