The Victory of the Cadets

J. V. Stalin

July 24, 1917

Works, Vol. 3, March - October, 1917

Evidently the Ministerial shuffle is not yet over. The Cadets and Kerensky are still bargaining. One "combination" is followed by another.

The Cadets, of course, will enter the government, for it is they who call the tune. Chernov may remain. Tsere-teli, evidently, is "not wanted" any longer. Tsereteli "was needed" for the purpose of disarming the workers. Now that the workers are disarmed, he is of no more use. "The Moor has done his work, he can go." He will be replaced by Avksentyev.

But it is not a question of personalities, of course. Chernov, Tsereteli, or anyone else of the same breed— what difference does it make? Everyone knows that these pseudo-Zimmerwaldists served the cause of imperialism no worse than the Hendersons and Thomases. 

But, I repeat, it is not a question of personalities.

The point is that in all this turmoil, in this chase after portfolios and the like, at the bottom of which is a struggle for power, the line of the Cadets, the line of counter-revolution in home policy, and of a "war to a finish" in foreign policy, has gained the upper hand.

For the question at issue was:

Either the war goes on—in which case complete dependence on the British and American money market, the rule of the Cadets, and the revolution curbed; for neither the Cadets nor "Allied" capital can sympathize with the Russian revolution.

Or, transfer of power to the revolutionary class, the breaking of the financial shackles of Allied capital which bind Russia hand and foot, declaration of terms of peace, and rehabilitation of the disrupted national economy at the expense of the profits of the landlords and capitalists.

There was no third way, and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, who sought for a third way, were bound to go down.

In this respect the Cadets proved more clearheaded.

"The government must resolutely break with the disastrous trends of Zimmerwaldism and 'utopian' socialism," writes Rech.

In other words, war without reservations, war to a finish.

"There must be a definite conclusion," said Nekrasov at the conference : Either take power yourselves (he was addressing the Soviet), or let others take power!

In other words, either revolution or counter-revolution.

The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries had abandoned the path of revolution, hence they were inevitably bound to fall under the sway of the Cadets, of the counter-revolutionaries.

For the Cadets mean an assured internal loan.

The Cadets mean friendship with Allied capital, that is, an assured foreign loan.

And, owing to the disruption in the rear and especially at the front, money is needed so badly. . . .

That is the whole essence of the "crisis."

And that is the whole significance of the victory of the Cadets.

Whether this victory will be enough for long the near future will show.

Rabochy i Soldat, No. 2, July 24, 1917

Notes

1. The words of Mulei Hassan, the Moor of Tunis in Schiller's tragedy "Die Verschworung des Fiesko zu Genua."

2. Arthur Henderson—one of the leaders of the British Labour Party; a social-chauvinist and member of Lloyd George's government during the First World War.

Albert Thomas—one of the leaders of the French Socialist Party; in the First World War he was a social-chauvinist and a member of the French government.