To Boycott, or Not to Boycott?¶
Core Argument¶
Here, the chapter dissects the Bolsheviks’ tactical error regarding the First Duma elections of 1906, framing it as a case study in the divergence between revolutionary impatience and objective strategic necessity. The core argument is that the boycott, while reflecting the militant mood of the party’s advanced guard, was a mistake because it misread the ebbing of the mass revolutionary wave after the defeat of the December 1905 Moscow uprising. The chapter contends that the tactic of boycotting a representative assembly is only revolutionary when the mass movement is strong enough to overthrow or ignore it; in a period of retreat, it becomes a sectarian indulgence that isolates the vanguard from the class.
The narrative centres on Lenin’s initial, isolated caution at the Tammerfors Conference, where he and Gorev cast the only votes against the boycott, only to be forced into a “retreat in full military order” by the indignation of the delegates. This episode illustrates a recurring tension: Lenin bending to the mood of the leading layer against his own judgement. The chapter uses Trotsky’s later verdict to crystallise the strategic principle: “It is permissible to boycott representative assemblies only in the event that the mass movement is sufficiently strong either to overthrow them or to ignore them.” The evidence for the error is drawn from the subsequent course of events: the Duma became a focus of public interest, constitutional illusions persisted among peasants and even layers of workers, and the boycott failed to have any practical effect.
The chapter draws heavily on the historical context of the 1905 Revolution’s aftermath, contrasting the December defeat with the earlier successful boycott of the Bulygin Duma in August 1905, which Lenin retrospectively vindicated. It cites Lenin’s own later admission in “Left-Wing” Communism that the 1906 boycott was a “minor and easily remediable” mistake, while the boycotts of 1907-1908 were “most serious.” The theoretical context is the necessity of combining legal and illegal forms of struggle, and the danger of the advanced guard moving “too far ahead of the class,” a military analogy the chapter presses hard.
The polemical target is twofold. First, it attacks the Mensheviks for their “customary inclination towards opportunism,” which led them to conclude the revolution was over and to advocate for parliamentary participation without revolutionary perspective, while simultaneously vacillating through a confused “semi-boycott.” Second, and more fundamentally, the chapter launches a sustained polemic against the liberal Cadets (Constitutional Democrats). It argues that the December events exposed the Cadets’ true counter-revolutionary colours, revealing them as a mere “fig leaf for the counter-revolution.” The chapter provides concrete evidence of this class treachery, noting that one-third of Cadet deputies were big landowners, and that their calls for reform were merely “friendly advice to the autocracy on the best method of strangling the revolution.” The fundamental dividing line, the chapter insists, was not between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks on the Duma tactic alone, but between revolutionary Social Democrats and all bourgeois parties, including the “progressive” liberals, who were tied by a thousand threads to the feudal aristocracy.