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Eagles sometimes descend lower than chickens, but chickens never rise like eagles! *
A little over two years ago, Mr. Struve, who was then defending the revolution, who was then writing about the necessity of open revolutionary actions, who was then assuring that the revolution must become power—this Mr. Struve wrote in No. 71 of the foreign "Liberation": "in comparison with the revolutionism of Messrs. Lenin and comrades, the revolutionism of the West European Social Democracy of Bebel and even Kautsky is opportunism."**
I replied then to Mr. Struve: "where and when did I claim to create some kind of special
direction in international Social Democracy, not identical with the
direction of Bebel and Kautsky?" ("Two Tactics," p. 50 of the Russian
edition)
In the summer of 1907, I had to point out, in a pamphlet
on the question of boycotting the Third Duma, that it would be fundamentally wrong to equate Bolshevism with boycottism or militantism.
Now regarding the question of trade unions, it is necessary to emphasize just as resolutely that Bolshevism
pursues the tactics of revolutionary Social Democracy in all
spheres of struggle, in all fields of activity. The difference between Bolshevism and Menshevism is not that the former "denies"
work in trade unions or cooperatives, etc., but that the former pursues a different line in the work of propaganda,
agitation and organization of the working class. Now activity
in trade unions undoubtedly acquires great importance. In contrast to the neutralism of the Mensheviks, we
must conduct this activity in the spirit of bringing the unions closer to the
party, developing socialist consciousness [, strengthening] and understanding of the revolutionary tasks of the proletariat. In Western Europe
revolutionary syndicalism in many countries was a direct
and inevitable result of [extremes of] opportunism, reformism,
parliamentary cretinism. Here, the first steps of "Duma activity" also greatly strengthened opportunism,
brought the Mensheviks to servility before the Cadets. Plekhanov,

* The last words: "like eagles never rise" corrected in pencil by I. K. Krupskaya: "to eagles never rise." Ed.
** Collected Works, VIII, 70. Ed.