V. I.

Lenin

1. The working-class movement rouses the proletariat from the beginning under
the leadership of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and
awakens the liberal bourgeoisie: 1895 to 1901-02.

2. The working-class movement passes to open political
struggle and enlists the politically awakened strata of the
liberal and radical bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie: 1901-02
to 1905.

3. The working-class movement flares up into a direct revolution , while
the liberal bourgeoisie has already formed itself into the
Constitutional-Democratic Party and thinks of stopping the revolution by
compromising with tsarism; but the radical elements of the
bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie are inclined to enter into an alliance
with the proletariat for the continuation of the revolution : 1905
(especially the end of that year).

4. The working-class movement achieves victory in the democratic
revolution, the liberals passively waiting to see how things go and the
peasants actively assisting. Plus the radical, republican
intelligentsia and the corresponding strata of the petty bourgeoisie in the
towns. The rising of the peasants is victorious, the power of the landlords
is broken.

(“ The revolutionary-democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the
peasantry.”)

5. The liberal bourgeoisie, temporising in the third period, passive in the
fourth, becomes downright counter revolutionary, and organises itself in
order to take away from the proletariat the gains of the revolution. Among
the peasantry, the whole of the well-to-do section, and a fairly large part
of the middle peasantry, also grow “wiser”, quieten down and turn to the side of the counter-revolution in order to wrest
power from the proletariat and the rural poor, who sympathise with the
proletariat.

6. On the basis of the relations established during the fifth period, a new
crisis and a new struggle develop and blaze forth, with the proletariat now
fighting to preserve its democratic gains for the sake of a socialist
revolution. This struggle would have been almost hopeless for the Russian
proletariat alone and its defeat would have been as inevitable as the defeat
of the German revolutionary party in 1849-50, or of the French proletariat in
1871, had the European socialist proletariat not come to the
assistance of the Russian proletariat.

Thus, at this stage, the liberal bourgeoisie and the well-to-do peasantry (plus
partly the middle peasantry) organise counter-revolution. The Russian
proletariat pins the European proletariat organise revolution.

In such conditions the Russian proletariat can win a second victory. The cause
is no longer hopeless. The second victory will be the socialist revolution in Europe .

The European workers will show us “how to do it”, and then together
with them we shall bring about the socialist revolution.

---
Notes: