When the Duma met, on August 8th, for the purpose of voting the war credits, the Social Democrats of both factions, Bolsheviki and Mensheviki, fourteen in number,[2] united upon a policy of abstention from voting.  Valentin Khaustov, on behalf of the two factions, read this statement: 

A terrible and unprecedented calamity has broken upon the people of the entire world.  Millions of workers have been torn away from their labor, ruined, and swept away by a bloody torrent.  Millions of families have been delivered over to famine.

    War has already begun.  While the governments of Europe were
    preparing for it, the proletariat of the entire world, with the
    German workers at the head, unanimously protested.

    The hearts of the Russian workers are with the European
    proletariat.  This war is provoked by the policy of expansion for
    which the ruling classes of all countries are responsible.

    The proletariat will defend the civilization of the world against
    this attack.

    The conscious proletariat of the belligerent countries has not
    been sufficiently powerful to prevent this war and the resulting
    return of barbarism.

But we are convinced that the working class will find in the international solidarity of the workers the means to force the conclusion of peace at an early date.  The terms of that peace will be dictated by the people themselves, and not by the diplomats.

We are convinced that this war will finally open the eyes of the great masses of Europe, and show them the real causes of all the violence and oppression that they endure, and that therefore this new explosion of barbarism will be the last.

As soon as this declaration was read the fourteen members of the Social Democratic group left the chamber in silence.  They were immediately followed by the Laborites and Socialist-Revolutionists representing the peasant Socialists, so that none of the Socialists in the Duma voted for the war credits.  As we shall see later on, the Laborites and most of the Socialist-Revolutionists afterward supported the war.  The declaration of the Social Democrats in the Duma was as weak and as lacking in definiteness of policy as the Manifesto of the Socialist-Revolutionists already quoted.  We know now that it was a compromise.  It was possible to get agreement upon a statement of general principles which were commonplaces of Socialist propaganda, and to vaguely expressed hopes that “the working class will find in the international solidarity of the workers the means to force the conclusion of peace at an early date.”  It was easy enough to do this, but it would have been impossible to unite upon a definite policy of resistance and opposition to the war.  It was easy to agree not to vote for the war credits, since there was no danger that this would have any practical effect, the voting of the credits—­largely a mere form—­being quite certain.  It would have been impossible to get all to agree to vote against the credits.