# The Worker Mass and the Worker Intelligentsia
Source: PSS vol 24

Under this title, in No. 9 of the liquidators' *Nasha Zarya*, an article by G. Rakitin has been placed, who is compelled to acknowledge that which the liquidator newspaper waves away with impotent spite. G. Rakitin is above the various F. D.s in that he at least attempts, in some respects, to ponder and examine the question, rather than regaling the reader with tiresome squabbling.

"The victory," thus begins his article, G. Rakitin, "the victory won by the supporters of the newspaper *Pravda* at the general meeting of the St. Petersburg Metalworkers' Trade Union, like certain other facts testifying to the strengthening of Bolshevism's influence within the worker milieu (especially in Petersburg), compels one involuntarily to ponder: how has it come to pass that the strongholds of the Menshevik tendency and specifically of so-called 'liquidationism' are beginning to slip from under the influence of the current which laid the foundation of open workers' organizations in Russia and which alone has actively worked within them over the course of the last several years?"

This sentence cannot go unremarked, in order to show the reader the rare instances of "lucid intervals" among the liquidators, compelled to acknowledge the truth. *Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta*, in the articles of F. D. and Co., simply gets angry and scolds when it is proven, with precise figures on the elections to the Second, Third, and Fourth Dumas or on group workers' collections, etc., that the "Pravdist" current predominates among the conscious (i.e., those participating in political life) workers.

G. Rakitin acknowledges the fact. He acknowledges both the victory at the metalworkers' meeting and the "other facts" (though he modestly remains silent as to what these facts are – a purely intellectualist-literary device, calculated to conceal from the workers the precise figures that would open the possibility of independent verification). G. Rakitin acknowledges, in general, the "strengthening of Bolshevism's influence in the worker milieu, especially in Petersburg," acknowledges that the "strongholds" of liquidationism "are beginning to slip from under the influence" of this "current."

G. Rakitin endeavors to explain this fact, so lamentable for the liquidators, in the manner most consoling for the liquidators.

What, then, is this explanation?

"The worker masses" are passing through a "Bolshevik stage of the movement" (p. 59), acknowledges G. Rakitin. But "the worker intelligentsia," he declares (p. 57), "stands, in its overwhelming majority, on the standpoint of the so-called 'liquidator' current." From this, of course, a "consoling" conclusion for the liquidators is drawn: that the "Bolshevik stage of the movement" is a "temporary infatuation of the masses and the rising worker youth with Bolshevik slogans," an influence "of instinct and feeling rather than of consciousness and calculation," the worker masses' lack of detachment "from the primitiveness of the peasant worldview," an "overestimation of the significance of spontaneous outbursts," a failure to understand the "flexible class tactics" (of the liquidators) and their substitution by the "simplified tactics of Bolshevism," and so on and so forth.

In a word, the explanation arrived at by the contributor to *Nasha Zarya* is magnificent: the Pravdists, you see, have an immature, undeveloped, spontaneous, rather poor majority, while the liquidators have an intellectual, flexible, conscious minority, and so forth. It is in precisely the same spirit that all reactionary writers have always explained the democratic convictions of the masses by claiming that the masses are stupid, undeveloped, and so forth, while the nobles and the bourgeoisie are developed and clever!

But permit me, nonetheless, my dear Rakitin, where is your proof? You yourself have acknowledged that facts testify to the victories of the Pravdists, to the "masses' passage through the Bolshevik stage of the movement"! Where, then, are your facts confirming that the overwhelming majority of the worker intelligentsia follows the liquidators? Where are your facts of the sort like elections to the State Duma, or the number of group workers' collections, or the victory of one or another list in the trade unions?

Not a single one, literally not one fact, not even a single consideration does Rakitin adduce!

Therefore, we shall permit ourselves to disagree with Rakitin. It is pleasant for him, of course, to consider the Bolshevik worker mass undeveloped and rather foolish ("instinct, not consciousness"), and the liquidator minority developed and clever. But to write history, to provide explanations of the stages of the workers' movement, basing oneself not on facts but on what is pleasant to the personality of the historian – that is, forgive me, Rakitin, that is simply amusing childishness. Of course, I cannot acknowledge that the "instinct and feeling" of the liquidator Rakitin compels him to consider the liquidator minority especially intellectual, clever, and advanced, but is it proper for a writer to be guided by "instinct and feeling" instead of "consciousness and calculation"?

Written in early November 1913.

First published in 1938 in the journal *Proletarskaya Revolyutsiya* No. 9

Printed according to the manuscript