Letters about Everything. The School of Revolution. 'The General Conservative Idea.' The Local Detachment of the 'Party of Order' at Work.

The school of revolution is a large and intelligent school, because it is above all a school of political realism.

The rapid and passionate development of class antagonism, says Marx, makes revolution a powerful factor of social and political progress in old and complex social organisms... During these turbulent upheavals, nations pass through in five years more than they do in ordinary circumstances in the course of a century." (‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany’).

From beneath the customary conventions of civil intercourse, from beneath the religious-churchly mysticism, from beneath the intricately woven web of legal formalities, conditional governmental falsehoods, and conditional newspaper patriotism, emerge the genuine springs of social LIFE.

Political ideas are being concretised, political demands are being are being formalised.

How to explain the disproportionately large influence of the revolutionary minority? - this is the question that Prince Meshcherskoi's organ put to itself, and it comes up with the following answer, which is striking in its clarity. The first reason is ‘in the organisation of the minority’. The second is that ‘each individual act of his revolutionary propaganda is an inseparable part of the vast revolutionary movement, of the whole revolutionary program directed against all forms of the state system and simultaneously implemented across all spheres of social life’.

Through the growth and cohesion of the revolutionary army, the reactionary party itself is forced into political self-definition. And the 'Citizen' veers from the noble-police whistle towards a good or bad, but undoubtedly political conclusion: "Only then," this conclusion reads, "will the attempts of conservative thinkers to oppose the growth of socialism and revolutionary ideas be authoritative when they are derived from a common conservative idea that also embraces all forms of the state system and all spheres of social life, and an integral program of action against the main idea of the revolution, in the full scope of its corrosive effect.

From issue to issue, the energetic call "It's time to start organising a new all-society party of order to defend the country against all-society marauders." (No. 69). "Group and unite in the centre and in every province all convinced adherents of order, seek out and create among them the main headquarters and local detachments of men of order." (No. 77).

What is the ‘general conservative idea’ and what is the ‘targeted programme of action’ arising from it?

On 9 November, at a meeting of the Tver District Zemstvo Assembly, the speaker Stolpakov (Privy Councillor Alexei Nikolayevich Stolpakov, a member of the Ministry of Communications Council, described as ‘a true Russian man, with a strictly monarchical and Orthodox outlook, as recommended by the Moscow. Vedom.’; and as "a very ardent revolutionary" in the 1860s, and later as an accomplice of the embezzler Krivoshein, as recommended by 'Liberation') made a proposal to transform the schools in the county into parish schools and to transfer the education business from the zemstvo to the clergy. This proposal was vigorously supported by the chairman of the meeting, the district leader of the nobility Trubnikov. The assembly, by a majority of 17 to 7, adopted the proposal of the ‘secretive’ Krivoshein follower with an ‘Orthodox outlook’. They didn't stop there. It was decided to establish three medical stations, entrusting them to company medics instead of doctors, as had been the case until now. At the same time, the position of zemstvo agronomist was abolished.

Good Russian people, led by Mr. Stolpakov," explains "Citizen," "treated the Russian people in this way," and they were supported by "all without exception from the people," who understood that without it, the Russian people would "turn into a beast and antichrist, which is one and the same" (No. 93).

This alliance of ‘good Russian people’ with ‘representatives of the people’ - savage landowners with fists, elders, protégés of the same savage landowners in the role of zemstvo chiefs and district leaders of the nobility, this alliance should form ‘local detachments of men of order,’ which will be guided by a ‘common conservative idea’ - the struggle against the ‘main idea of the revolution’.

However, since every modest institution serving the cultural needs of the population inevitably begins to attract oppositional elements around it, the party of order must give its work the character of a systematic campaign against such elementary and necessary cultural institutions as statistics, schools, medicine... And the more revolutionary the pace of life, the more the ideas of the revolution take hold of the cultural workers in the village, all those teachers, doctors, agronomists, the more the struggle of the ‘squads of order’ against the ‘looters of all classes not only in substance but also in form turns into a struggle of forest barbarism against culture 'in the full extent of its corrosive effect'; the more substantial and irresistible the political pedagogy of this struggle becomes. One of the duties of social democracy is to monitor all its manifestations and to uncover its revolutionary morality.

In this struggle, as the bearer of the cultural development of the country, social democracy must, however, among other things, and in the interests of this same cultural development, remain itself, remain the party of the revolutionary class. For only as the party of the historical interests of the proletariat is it able to develop the whole sum of revolutionary energy which is necessary for the realisation of the great national enterprise, the other participant in which, the liberal bourgeoisie, is so little active as long as the question is one of political production and not of political appropriation.

N. Trotsky