The tenth anniversary of the death of N. K. Mikhailovsky (died January 28, 1904) was marked by the appearance of masses of laudatory articles in liberal-bourgeois and populist (i.e., bourgeois-democratic) newspapers. It is not surprising that liberals and bourgeois democrats extol N. K. Mikhailovsky, but it is impossible to leave without protest the glaring distortion of truth and the corruption of proletarian class consciousness when they attempt to pass off Mikhailovsky as a socialist and to prove the compatibility of his bourgeois philosophy and sociology with Marxism.

Mikhailovsky was one of the best representatives and exponents of the views of Russian bourgeois democracy in the last third of the past century. The peasant masses, who constitute in Russia the only serious and mass (apart from the urban petty bourgeoisie) bearer of bourgeois-democratic ideas, were then still asleep in deep slumber. The best people from its midst and people full of sympathy for its difficult position, the so-called raznochintsy – mainly student youth, teachers, and other representatives of the intelligentsia – tried to enlighten and awaken the sleeping peasant masses.

The great historical merit of Mikhailovsky in the bourgeois-democratic movement for the liberation of Russia consisted in the fact that he warmly sympathized with the oppressed condition of the peasants, energetically fought against all and every manifestation of serf oppression, and defended in the legal, open press – albeit in hints – sympathy and respect for the "underground," where the most consistent and resolute raznochintsy democrats operated, and even directly aided this underground himself. In our time of shameless and often renegade attitude toward the underground on the part of not only liberals, but also liquidators, both populist ("Russian Wealth") and Marxist, one cannot fail to recall this merit of Mikhailovsky with a good word.

But, being a fervent advocate of freedom and the oppressed peasant masses, Mikhailovsky shared all the weaknesses of the bourgeois-democratic movement. It seemed to him that the transfer of all land to the peasants – especially without redemption – was something "socialist"; he considered himself on this account a "socialist." Of course, this is a profound error, fully exposed both by Marx and by the experience of all civilized countries, in which bourgeois democrats constantly imagined themselves "socialists" until the complete collapse of serfdom and absolutism. The transfer of all land to the peasants, especially on the conditions indicated, is a very useful measure under the rule of serf-holding landowners, but this measure is a bourgeois-democratic one. Every sensible socialist nowadays knows this. The entire experience of the whole world has proved that the more land (and the cheaper) the peasants received from the serf barons, the more there was "land and liberty," the more rapidly capitalism developed, the sooner the bourgeois nature of the peasant revealed itself. If Mr. N. Rakitnikov (in No. 3 of "True Thought") still has not understood that the support of the proletariat for the bourgeois-democratic peasantry against the serf-holders is by no means "socialism," one can only smile at such naiveté. It is tedious to refute errors long rejected by all conscious workers.

Not only in the economic sphere, but also in philosophy and sociology, Mikhailovsky's views were bourgeois-democratic views, disguised under the pretense of "socialist" phraseology. Such is his "formula of progress," his theory of "struggle for individuality," and so forth. In philosophy, Mikhailovsky took a step backward from Chernyshevsky, the greatest representative of utopian socialism in Russia. Chernyshevsky was a materialist and laughed to the end of his days (i.e., until the 1880s of the nineteenth century) at the concessions to idealism and mysticism made by fashionable "positivists" (Kantians, Machists, and the like). But Mikhailovsky precisely trailed behind such positivists. And even now among Mikhailovsky's disciples, even the most "left" populists (like Mr. Chernov), these reactionary philosophical views hold sway.

That the "socialism" of Mikhailovsky and the populists is merely bourgeois-democratic phraseology has been definitively proved by the experience of the manifestations of all classes and their mass struggle in 1905–1907. The majority of peasant deputies in both the First and Second Duma stood not on the side of the left populists, but on the side of the "Laborites" and "People's Socialists." This is a fact that cannot be forgotten or distorted. And, following the Marxists, even the left populists themselves, in the persons, for example, of Messrs. Vikhlayev, Chernov, and others, were forced to recognize the bourgeois character of the Labor People's Socialists!!

Let individual workers sympathizing with the left populists ask their teachers for all the works of the left populists against the "Labor People's Socialists" in 1906–1907.

The mass manifestations of peasants in these years definitively proved that peasantry stands precisely on a bourgeois-democratic position. Left populism, at best, is merely a small wing of peasant (i.e., bourgeois) democracy in Russia. Workers supported and will support the peasants (against serf-holders), but the confusion of these classes, the mingling of bourgeois democracy with socialist proletariat, is a reactionary adventure. Against it conscious workers will decidedly struggle, especially now, when the demarcation of classes has been fully demonstrated by the great experience of mass struggle in 1905–1907 and becomes clearer and clearer with each day in our countryside.

Mikhailovsky for a very long time, more than a dozen years, was the head and soul of the group of writers of "Russian Wealth." What then came out of this group in the great 1905–1907?

The first liquidators among the democrats came out!

Let individual workers sympathizing with the left populists ask their teachers for the August issue of "Russian Wealth" for 1906 and all those writings of the left populists where this group was called "Social-Cadets," etc.!

From Mikhailovsky's group came the first liquidators, who in autumn 1906 proclaimed an "open party," renounced the "underground" and its slogans, – 2–3 years before our Marxist liquidators. What then came of the "open party" of Messrs. Myakotin, Peshekhonovs and other comrades of Mikhailovsky? There came a complete absence of any party, a complete rupture from the masses of the "open" group of populist opportunists.

Mikhailovsky, who never renounced the underground (or rather: who died shortly before his group's transition to liquidationism), cannot be held wholly responsible for the wretched and contemptible opportunism of Messrs. Peshekhonovs, Myakotins and Co. But is it not characteristic that in No. 3 of "True Thought," devoted to Mikhailovsky, we again see a rotten bloc (alliance) of "left" populists with "Social-Cadets" of "Russian Wealth"? And if we recall what Mikhailovsky wrote to Lavrov about his attitude toward revolutionaries, will we not be forced to recognize that the "Social-Cadets," on the whole, are his true successors?

We honor Mikhailovsky for his sincere and talented struggle against serfdom, "bureaucracy" (forgive the imprecise word) and the like, for his respect for the underground and his aid to it, but not for his bourgeois-democratic views, not for his waverings toward liberalism, not for his group of "Social-Cadets" of "Russian Wealth."

The bourgeois democracy of Russia, i.e., first and foremost the peasantry, wavers between liberal bourgeois and the proletariat not by chance, but in consequence of its class position. The task of the workers is to liberate the peasantry from the influence of the liberals, waging a merciless struggle against "populist" doctrines.

"Path of Truth" No. 19, February 22, 1914. Signature: V. Lenin

Published according to the text of the newspaper "Path of Truth"