98 THE CLASS STRUGGŻE THE TASK OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY 99 Nothing could ever prevail upon our Constituent Assembly to incur such a risk and to make presidential adventures possible.
The position of a president offers temptation by all kinds of adventure, especially and mostly when the president has been directly elected by general suffrage (and of another method of election Democracy would not approve. Elected by general suffrage, the president gets the majority of the votes, more than half of all the votes cast. Under these circumstances he becomes the most popular person in the land. Counting on his popularity, the president may very easily determine upon a coup etat.
And such a governmental upheaval may become successful, as was the case, for example, with Napoleon III in France in 1952. And at the same time, we must repeat again, the people would have to spend immense sums for the maintenance and proper support of such a dangerous state personality as a president.
The Democracy, in its political battle for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, must explain and make perfectly clear to the masses, that a presidentship is a superfluous, needless, most expensive and dangerous office in a Republic.
of the president of a republic enumerated above such as the rule over the military (for the standing army would not be supplanted by general national military training. the making of treaties, the appointing of ministers, etc. etc. must be transferred to the Legislative Assembly. Oaly in this way can the people be protected and secured against all kinds of surprises in inner and foreign political relation; only in this way can the people possess the maximum power of government and in this way only will the Russian Republic be a parliamentary republic in reality, e. the Legislative Chamber (the Parliament) will play the main political role in the land. Under such conditions the only domain of the presidents would be the banquets, the parades and ceremonies for the maintenance of which all immense sums would have to be spent. Plain enough that a Republic has no need of a president. But the question may arise: How then can the republic be able to exist without a president? This question is very similar to the question, still propounded by the old grandmothers in obscure villages of Russia: What will become of Russia without a Czar? It has been proven, however, that it is not at all hard to live without a Czar, that it is much easier, incomparably easier, than with a Czar.
Even the representatives of the most obscure strata of the nation will soon convince themselves of the truth of this. Now then, when the main rights of a president belong to the Parliament, what rights would remain for the president? None whatsoever. And if it is imperative and well posible to invest in the Legislative Assembly (Parliament) all the most important rights and prerogatives otherwise bestowed upon the presidents in modern Republics, then the secondary duties, also falling to the presidents, may just as well be transferred to the Legislative Assembly, or even to any other subdepartment of state. In fact, there are examples of existing republics without a president. The little republic of Switzerland is one, the president is one of the ministers of the Swiss Confederation (a member of the so called Federal Council. is elected annually at a salary of 5, 000 Rubles about 2, 000. This president has no special rights whatsoever and figures only as the first among his equals among the ministers. The second example is certainly still more striking: It is the Russian Republic of today, it is getting along very nicely without a president and at an intensely critical period. And it is clear that in a democratically established parliamentary Republic, a president is a superfluous organ of the State machine.
Having done away for good with the question of a president, Russia will also be safe from the adventurous intrigues of presidents, known in the history of certain American and European president, and also from the Asiatic Yuan shi Kaiism Republican presidents, favored with the plenipotentiary powers of a Czar, get the ardent desire, under certain circumstances, to transform their position of King for an hour into the position of King for all the time. And such cases have occurred, when a president, by the combination of favorable circumsances, became a Czar.