V. I.

Lenin

It is sometimes useful to see how people judge us, our workers’ press, our workers’ unions, our working-class movement, from outside . It is instructive to know the views of our enemies, both
overt and covert, the views of indefinite people and indefinite
“sympathisers”, if they are at all intelligent and have some idea of
polities.

Under the latter category undoubtedly comes the “Trudovik” or
“Popular Socialist”—or, if the truth were to be told, just the ordinary
radical bourgeois or bourgeois democrat—Mr. S. Yelpatievsky.

This writer is a staunch supporter and associate of N. K. Mikhailovsky,
now the object of fulsome praise from the “Left Narodniks”, who, in
defiance of common sense, are trying to pass themselves off as
socialists. Mr. S. Yelpatievsky is a close observer of the life of the
Russian man in the street, to whose moods he is so “sensitive”.

He may well be called one of Russia’s leading liquidators, seeing that
he and his friends, as far back as in the autumn of 1906 (see the ill-famed
August issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo for 1906), proclaimed the need
for an “open party”, attacked the narrow-mindedness of the
“underground”, and started to touch up the most important slogans of this
“underground” in the spirit of an open, that is to say, legal, party. In
word, and in the minds of these “Social-Cadets” (as even the
Left Narodniks were obliged to call them at the time), their
repudiation of the “underground” and their liquidationist proclamation of
an “open party” or “struggle for an open party”, were prompted by the
desire “to go among the masses”, to organise the masses.

In deed, however, the plan of the “Popular Socialists” contained
nothing but philistine, petty-bourgeois faint-heartedness (in regard to the masses) and credulity (in regard to the authorities). For
their advocacy of an “open party” some of them were threatened with the
lock-up and some were kept there, and as a result, they remained without
any contact with the masses, open or otherwise, and without a party of any
kind, open or otherwise. They remained what our liquidators now are,
namely, a group of liquidator legalists, a group of “independent” writers
(independent of the “under ground”, but ideologically dependent, on
liberalism).

The period of despondency, collapse and disintegration has passed. New
currents are stirring, and Mr. S. Yelpatievsky, who is so sensitive to
man-in-the-street moods, has writ ten an article, published in this year’s
January issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo , on the moods of the different
classes in Russian society. The article bears the pretentious title “Life
Goes On”.

Life goes on, our Narodnik exclaims, calling to mind all kinds of
congresses, Salazkin’s speech [1] and the Beilis case. Things are undoubtedly stirring in the
provinces, although “it is sometimes difficult now to distinguish, not
only the Right Cadet from the Left Octobrist, but the
Socialist-Revolutionary and the Social-Democrat [you mean liquidator
Social-Democrat, don’t you, Mr. Narodnik liquidator?] from the Left Cadet,
judging by local [and, of course, exclusively legal] tactics”. “Something
like a unification of Rus is taking place on either side of the wall
dividing, Russia. On one side have rallied the united aristocracy, the
united bureaucracy, the civil servants and other folk who ‘live on the
Treasury’; on the other side—just the rank and file, the, mass of
provincial society”.

Our Narodnik’s outlook, as you see, is not broad, and his analysis is
shallow—the same old liberal contraposing of government and society. It
is rather difficult to say anything about the class struggle within
society, about bourgeoisie and workers, about the growing dissension
between liberalism and democracy from the standpoint of the provincial man
in the street.

It is difficult to draw conclusions about the rural masses, writes
Mr. S. Yelpatievsky.

“ Darkness and silence hung over the countryside, where it was difficult to see anything an from where it was hard to hear
anything”....

The co-operative movement “suddenly burst forth, spreading far and
wide”... the struggle between the otrub [2] and the commune peasants ... “ all this did not stand out clearly enough ”.

“ Admittedly, the wall that is being flung up between the
otrub and the commune peasants as a result of the government’s
efforts to divide and split the rural masses is rising higher and higher,
but the countryside has evidently not yet produced the feeling and
sentiment suitable to the government’s aims. The desire for and expectation
of land still continue to burn brightly in the hearts of both, and the
desire for freedom, for ‘rights’, which was formerly obscured by the
‘land’, is evidently becoming increasingly stronger and more compelling.”

After observing that “it is the Right-wing circles that are now
persistently repeating the word revolution”, that these circles “are
really scared, really expect a conflict, and are convinced that a
catastrophe is unavoidable”, our chronicler of Russian life ends up by
saying this about the workers:

“ I need not say anything here about the organised workers . There is no need to grope there for one’s conclusions—everything there is clear and visible to all . Opinions there are fairly definitely established, there ate not only desires and expectations there, but also demands, reinforced by volitional impulses—not sporadic outbreaks, but systematised and fairly well developed methods.... [The dots are Mr. Yelpatievsky’s.] And, undoubtedly, opinions, desires and expectations percolate from this organised environment into the rural environment from which it sprang .”

This was written by a man who has never been a Marxist and has always
stood aloof from the “organised workers”. And this appraisal of things
from outside is all the more valuable to the class-conscious
workers.

Mr. Yelpatievsky, one of the “foremost” leaders of liquidationism,
would do well to ponder over the implications of the admission he has been
obliged to make.

For one thing, among which workers does he find “fairly
definitely established opinions” and “fairly well developed and
systematised methods”? Only among the opponents of liquidationism
(because, among the liquidators themselves, there is complete chaos in
opinions and methods); only among those who have not hurried
faint-heartedly to turn their backs on the “underground”. Only
among these, indeed, “ everything is clear and visible to
all ”. Paradoxically enough, it is a fact that chaos reigns among
those who yearn for an “open party”, that “everything is clear and
visible to all”, that “opinions are fairly definitely established and
methods

fairly well developed” only among the adherents of the “underground”,
among those who are faithful to the precepts of this allegedly bigoted and
hidebound “underground” (cf. Nasha Zarya , Luch , Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta and Severnaya Rabochaya Gazeta ).

The first to give birth to liquidationism (Mr. Yelpatievsky, leader of
Russkoye Bogatstvo ) was the first to sign its death warrant and
read the burial service at its grave.

Although Mr. Yelpatievsky himself may not be aware of it, the question
he raises is far beyond the understanding of certain politicians.

Secondly—and this is most important of all—why is it that in one of
the most turbulent and difficult periods of Russian history, in the five
years 1908-13, the proletariat was the only class of all the
classes in the Russian nation that did not “grope” its way about? Why was
it only among the proletariat that “everything is clear and visible to
all”? Why is the proletariat emerging from the state of utter ideological
disintegration and collapse and vacillation in matters concerning
programme, tactics and organisation—such as now reign among the liberals,
the Narodniks and intellectualist “would-be Marxists”—with “opinions
fairly definitely established” and with “methods systematised and fairly
well developed”? It is not only because these opinions were established
and these methods developed by the “underground”, but because there are
profound social causes, economic conditions and factors which are operating
more and more effectively with every new mile of railway that is built, and
with every advance that is made in trade, industry and capitalism in town
and countryside, factors which increase, strengthen, steel and unite the
proletariat and keep it from following the lead of the man in the
street, keep it from wavering like philistines, from faint-heartedly
renouncing the “underground”.

Those who ponder on this will realise the enormous harm that is caused
by attempts to “fuse” into a single party the advanced members of the
wage-worker class and the inevitably wavering and unstable petty-bourgeois
peasantry.