An extraordinarily grave, arduous, and perilous position in international relations; the necessity to maneuver and retreat; a period of waiting for new explosions of revolution, painfully ripening for so long in the West; within the country a period of slow construction and relentless "tightening," a prolonged and stubborn struggle of proletarian stern discipline against the threatening elements of petty-bourgeois dissolution and anarchism, – such are, in brief, the distinctive features of the particular phase in the socialist revolution that we are now experiencing. Such is the link in the historical chain of events that we must now grip with all our might, in order to prove equal to the task until the transition to the next link, – which attracts to itself by the particular brilliance, the brilliance of victories of the international proletarian revolution.

Try to compare with the usual, common conception of the "revolutionary" the slogans flowing from the special features of the phase we are experiencing: maneuver, retreat, wait, build slowly, tighten relentlessly, discipline sternly, smash dissolution… Is it surprising that certain "revolutionaries," when they hear this, are seized by noble indignation, and begin to "smash" us for forgetting the traditions of the October Revolution, for accommodation with bourgeois specialists, for compromises with the bourgeoisie, for petty-bourgeois attitudes, for reformism and so forth and so on?

The misfortune of these would-be revolutionaries consists in the fact that even those among them who are guided by the best impulses in the world and distinguished by absolute devotion to the cause of socialism, lack the understanding of that special and particularly "unpleasant" condition through which a backward country, tormented by reactionary and disastrous war, having begun the socialist revolution far ahead of more advanced countries, was inevitably bound to pass; – they lack the fortitude in difficult moments of a difficult transition. Naturally, it is the party of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries that mounts the "official" opposition of this kind against our party. Personal exceptions to group and class types, of course, exist and always will exist. But social types remain. In a country with an enormous preponderance of small-property-owning population over the purely proletarian, the distinction between the proletarian and the petty-bourgeois revolutionary was inevitably bound – and from time to time bound to show itself in the most extreme form. The latter wavers and staggers at every turn of events, passes from fierce revolutionism in March 1917 to the singing of praises of "coalition" in May, to hatred against the Bolsheviks (or to lamenting their "adventurism") in July, to fearful estrangement from them at the end of October, to support of them in December, – finally, in March and April 1918 such types most often wrinkle their noses contemptuously and say: "I am not one of those who sing hymns to 'organic' work, practicalism, and gradualism."

The social source of such types is the small proprietor, driven to fury by the horrors of war, by sudden ruin, by unprecedented torments of hunger and devastation, who thrashes about hysterically, seeking a way out and salvation, wavering between confidence in the proletariat and support for it, on the one hand, and fits of despair – on the other. It is necessary to understand clearly and firmly assimilate that on such a social basis no socialism whatsoever can be built. Only a class that advances along its path without wavering, that does not lose heart and does not succumb to despair in the most difficult, arduous, and perilous transitions, can lead the laboring and exploited masses. We have no need for hysterical outbursts. We need the measured tread of the iron battalions of the proletariat.