Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/206

180 the union of October seventeenth. The centre groups became known as "cadets" from the initial letters of the name of the largest section among them ("constitutional" in Russian being spelled with a k—the "K.D.'s" were termed the "kadets").

The five national parties, the Poles, Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians. and Little Russians, acted in common as the League of Autonomists. There were about seventy of this group, but its numbers fluctuated greatly, as its members adhered to other parties from time to time.

From the very first the government and the bureaucracy were hostile to the duma. Doubtless the demands of that body were of a radical character, but the ultra-revolutionary parties, and in especial the social revolutionaries, had expressly renounced terrorist methods; and moreover, all the revolutionary parties, Social Democratic Party, Social Revolutionary Party, and the League of Deliverance. had undergone notable changes amid the new conditions.

In the Social Democratic Party two groups had been constituted, a "majority," consisting of advocates of revolutionary methods, and a "minority" (led by Plehanov and others), desiring to use social democratic methods, and to have recourse to revolution in exceptional cases only.

The majority desired to boycott the duma, but the minority wished to participate in the elections.