The question indicated in the title is touched upon in articles by Trotsky and Martov in nos. 50 and 51 of *Neue Zeit*. Martov expounds the views of Menshevism. Trotsky trails after the Mensheviks, draping himself in particularly sonorous phrases. For Martov, "Russian experience" boils down to the fact that "Blanquist and anarchist uncultured-ness triumphed over Marxist culture" (read: Bolshevism over Menshevism). "Russian Social-Democracy spoke too assiduously in Russian" in contrast to "pan-European" methods of tactics. Trotsky's "philosophy of history" is the very same. The cause of the struggle – "the adaptation of Marxist intellectuals to the class movement of the proletariat." Brought to the forefront are "sectarian spirit, intellectual individualism, ideological fetishism." "The struggle for influence over the politically immature proletariat" – that is the crux of the matter.

I

The theory that sees in the struggle of Bolshevism against Menshevism a struggle for influence over an immature proletariat is not new. We encounter it from 1905 (if not from 1903) in countless books, pamphlets, and articles of the liberal press. Martov and Trotsky serve up to German comrades liberal views dressed up in Marxist colors.

Of course, the Russian proletariat was considerably less politically mature than the Western European proletariat. But of all the classes of Russian society, it was precisely the proletariat that demonstrated the greatest political maturity in 1905–1907. Russian liberal bourgeoisie, which conducted itself as basely, cowardly, stupidly, and treacherously as the German bourgeoisie did in 1848, hates the Russian proletariat precisely because it proved itself sufficiently mature politically in 1905 to wrest from this bourgeoisie the leadership of the movement, to ruthlessly expose the betrayal of the liberals.

It is an "illusion," declares Trotsky, to think that Menshevism and Bolshevism "struck deep roots in the depths of the proletariat." This is a specimen of those sonorous but empty phrases in which our Trotsky is an adept. Not in the "depths of the proletariat," but in the economic content of the Russian revolution lie the roots of the divergence between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Ignoring this content, Martov and Trotsky deprived themselves of the possibility of understanding the historical significance of internal party struggle in Russia. The essence lies not in the question of how "deeply" the theoretical formulations of disagreement penetrated into one or another stratum of the proletariat, but in the fact that the economic conditions of the 1905 revolution placed the proletariat in hostile relations with the liberal bourgeoisie – not only over the question of improving the conditions of workers, but also over the agrarian question, over all the political questions of the revolution, etc. To speak of the struggle of tendencies in the Russian revolution, handing out labels: "sectarianism," "uncultured-ness," etc., while saying not a word about the fundamental economic interests of the proletariat, the liberal bourgeoisie, and the democratic peasantry – means descending to the level of vulgar journalists.

Here is an example. "Throughout all of Western Europe," writes Martov, "peasant masses consider themselves fit for alliance (with the proletariat) only insofar as they become acquainted with the grave consequences of the capitalist transformation in agriculture; in Russia, however, they painted for themselves a picture of the union of a numerically weak proletariat with 100 million peasants, who either had not yet experienced or had scarcely experienced the 'educational' effect of capitalism and therefore had not yet been in the school of capitalist bourgeoisie."

This is not a slip on Martov's part. This is the central point of all the views of Menshevism. These ideas thoroughly permeate the opportunist history of the Russian revolution, published in Russia under the editorship of Potresov, Martov, and Maslov (*Public Movement in Russia at the Beginning of the 20th Century*). Menshevik Maslov expressed these ideas even more starkly, saying in the concluding article of this "work": "The dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry would contradict the entire course of economic development." It is precisely here that one must seek the roots of the disagreement between Bolshevism and Menshevism.

Martov substituted the school of capitalist bourgeoisie for the school of capitalism (parenthetically speaking: there exists no other bourgeoisie besides capitalist bourgeoisie in the world). What does the school of capitalism consist of? In the fact that it tears peasants from rural idiocy, shakes them, and pushes them toward struggle. What does the school of "capitalist bourgeoisie" consist of? In the fact that "the German bourgeoisie of 1848 betrays its most natural allies, the peasants, without the slightest compunction, without whom it is powerless against the nobility" (K. Marx in the *New Rhenish Gazette* of 29 July 1848){128}. In the fact that Russian liberal bourgeoisie in 1905–1907 systematically and relentlessly betrayed the peasants, switched in essence to the side of the landowners and tsarism against the struggling peasants, put direct obstacles in the way of the development of peasant struggle.

Under the guise of "Marxist" talk about "education" of peasants by capitalism, Martov defends the "education" of peasants (who revolutionarily fought the nobility) by liberals (who betrayed the peasants to the nobility).

This is the substitution of Marxism for liberalism. This is liberalism dressed up with Marxist phrases. Bebel's words in Magdeburg{129} that among Social-Democrats there are national-liberals hold true not only for Germany.

It is also necessary to note that the majority of the ideological leaders of Russian liberalism were educated on German literature and specifically transport to Russia the Brentano-Sombart "Marxism," which recognizes the "school of capitalism" but rejects the school of revolutionary class struggle. All the counter-revolutionary liberals in Russia – Struve, Bulgakov, Frank, Izgoyev and Co. – flaunt precisely such "Marxist" phrases.

Martov compares Russia in the epoch of peasant uprisings against feudalism with "Western Europe," which had long ago settled accounts with feudalism. This is a phenomenal distortion of historical perspective. Are there socialists in "all of Western Europe" whose program contains the requirement: "to support the revolutionary uprisings of the peasantry up to the confiscation of landlord lands"?{130} No. In "all of Western Europe" socialists do not support small proprietors in their struggle over land ownership against large proprietors. What is the difference? In the fact that in "all of Western Europe" a bourgeois order and, in particular, bourgeois agrarian relations have long been established and definitively determined, whereas in Russia a revolution is occurring precisely now over how this bourgeois order will take shape. Martov repeats the hackneyed method of liberals, who always counterpose to the period of revolutionary conflicts over a given question those periods when there are no revolutionary conflicts, because the question itself was long ago decided.

The tragedy-comedy of Menshevism lies in the fact that during the revolution it had to adopt theses incompatible with liberalism. If we support the struggle of "the peasantry" for the confiscation of land, then we acknowledge that victory is possible, economically and politically advantageous for the working class and for the entire people. And the victory of "the peasantry," led by the proletariat, in the struggle for confiscation of landlord lands is precisely the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. (Let us recall Marx's words in 1848 on the necessity of dictatorship in revolution and the justified mockery by Mehring of those who accused Marx of wanting to implement democracy through dictatorship.{131})

The view that the dictatorship of these classes "contradicts the entire course of economic development" is fundamentally erroneous. On the contrary. Only such a dictatorship would sweep away completely all remnants of feudalism, would ensure the most rapid development of productive forces. By contrast, the policy of liberals places affairs in the hands of Russian junkers, who slow down the "course of economic development" of Russia a hundredfold.

In 1905–1907 the contradiction between liberal bourgeoisie and peasantry was fully revealed. In spring and fall of 1905, and also in spring of 1906, peasant uprisings engulfed from 1/3 to 1/2 of the counties of central Russia. Peasants destroyed up to 2,000 landlord estates (unfortunately, this was only 1/15 of what should have been destroyed). Only the proletariat selflessly aided this revolutionary struggle, directed it in all respects, led it, united it through its massive strikes. Liberal bourgeoisie never, not once, aided the revolutionary struggle, preferring to "calm" the peasants and "reconcile" them with landowners and the tsar. Subsequently, in both first Dumas (1906 and 1907), the same occurred on the parliamentary arena. All the while liberals hindered the struggle of the peasants, betrayed them, and only worker deputies directed and supported the peasants against the liberals. The struggle of liberals with peasants and Social-Democrats fills the entire history of the I and II Dumas. The struggle of Bolshevism and Menshevism is inseparably linked with this history, as a struggle over the support of liberals, over the overthrow of liberal hegemony over the peasantry. Therefore, to explain our schisms by the influence of intellectuals, by the immaturity of the proletariat, etc., is childishly naive repetition of liberal fables.

For the same reason the reasoning of Trotsky is fundamentally false – that in international Social-Democracy schisms are caused by "the process of adaptation of the socially revolutionary class to the limited (narrow) conditions of parliamentarism," etc., while in Russian Social-Democracy by the adaptation of intellectuals to the proletariat. "To what extent," writes Trotsky, "from the point of view of the socialist ultimate goal, was the real political content of this adaptation process limited (narrow), to that same extent unrestrained were its forms, great was the ideological shadow cast by this process."

This truly "unrestrained" phraseology is merely the "ideological shadow" of liberalism. Both Martov and Trotsky confuse disparate historical periods in one heap, counterposing to Russia, which is carrying out its bourgeois revolution, – Europe, which long ago completed these revolutions. In Europe the real political content of Social-Democratic work is preparation of the proletariat for the struggle for power against a bourgeoisie that already has complete domination in the state. In Russia the matter is only about the creation of a modern bourgeois state, which will resemble either a junker monarchy (in case of the triumph of tsarism over democracy), or a peasant bourgeois-democratic republic (in case of the triumph of democracy over tsarism). And the triumph of democracy in contemporary Russia is possible only if the peasant masses follow the revolutionary proletariat, and not the treacherous liberalism. This question has not yet been historically decided. Bourgeois revolutions in Russia have not yet ended, and within these limits – i.e., within the limits of the struggle over the form of the bourgeois order in Russia – the "real political content" of the work of Russian Social-Democrats is less "limited" than in countries where there is no struggle whatsoever over the confiscation by peasants of landlord lands, where bourgeois revolutions ended long ago.

It is easy to understand why the class interests of the bourgeoisie compel liberals to convince workers that their role in the revolution is "limited," that the struggle of tendencies is caused by intellectuals rather than deep economic contradictions, that the workers' party should be not the "hegemon in the liberation struggle but a class party." Precisely such a formula has been put forward most recently by the liquidators-Golosovites (Levitsky in *Our Dawn*) and approved by liberals. The words "class party" they understand in the Brentano-Sombart sense: take care only of your own class and abandon "Blanquist dreams" of leading all the revolutionary elements of the people in the struggle against tsarism and against treacherous liberalism.

II

The reasonings of Martov about the Russian revolution and Trotsky about the contemporary position of Russian Social-Democracy provide concrete confirmation of the incorrectness of their fundamental views.

Let us start with the boycott. Martov calls the boycott "political abstention," a method of "anarchists and syndicalists," speaking only of 1906. Trotsky says that "the boycottist tendency runs through the entire history of Bolshevism – the boycotting of trade unions, the State Duma, local self-government, etc.," that this is a "product of sectarian fear of drowning in the masses, the radicalism of irreconcilable abstention," etc. Regarding the boycott of trade unions and local self-government, Trotsky speaks an outright lie. It is equally a lie that boycottism runs through the entire history of Bolshevism; Bolshevism took its full shape as a tendency in spring and summer of 1905, before the first question about boycott even arose. Bolshevism declared in August 1906 in the official organ of the faction that the historical conditions necessitating a boycott had passed{62}.

Trotsky distorts Bolshevism because Trotsky never was able to assimilate for himself any at all definite views on the role of the proletariat in the Russian bourgeois revolution.

But the distortion of the history of this revolution is even far worse. If one is to speak of the boycott, one must begin at the beginning, not at the end. The first (and only) victory won in the revolution was wrested by the mass movement that went under the banner of the boycott. To forget about this is advantageous only to liberals.

The law of 6 (19) August 1905 created the Bulygin Duma, as a consultative body. Liberals, even the most left-wing, decided to participate in it. Social-Democracy by an overwhelming majority (against the Mensheviks) decided to boycott this Duma and to call the masses to a direct assault on tsarism, to a mass strike and uprising. Consequently, the question of boycott was not a question only within Social-Democracy. It was a question of the struggle of liberalism against the proletariat. The entire liberal press of that time shows that liberals feared the development of the revolution and directed all efforts toward "compromise" with tsarism.

What were the objective conditions for direct mass struggle? The best answer to this is provided by strike statistics (subdivided into economic and political) and peasant movement data. We present the main figures that will serve us to illustrate all further exposition.

* The periods marked with a frame are especially important: 1905 I – January 9; 1905 IV – the peak of the revolution, October and December; 1906 II – the first Duma; 1907 II – the second Duma. Data are taken from official strike statistics{132}, which I am working out in detail in a sketch of the history of the Russian revolution that I am preparing for publication. (See present vol., pp. 377–406, Ed.)

These figures show us what gigantic energy the proletariat is capable of developing in a revolution. Over the entire 10-year period before the revolution, the number of strikers in Russia was only 431 thousand, i.e., an average of 43 thousand per year, while in 1905 the total number of strikers was 2,863 thousand – with 1,661 thousand total factory workers! The world has never seen such a strike movement. In the third quarter of 1905, when the question of boycott first arose, we see precisely the transitional moment toward a new, far more powerful wave of strike (and subsequently peasant) movement. Should one help develop this revolutionary wave, directing it toward the overthrow of tsarism, or allow tsarism to distract the attention of the masses through the game of a consultative Duma – such was the real historical content of the question of boycott. One can judge, therefore, to what degree vulgar and liberally stupid are the attempts to connect the boycott in the history of the Russian revolution with "political abstention," "sectarianism," etc.! Under the banner of the boycott, adopted against the liberals, a movement unfolded that raised the number of political strikers from 151 thousand in the third quarter of 1905 to 1 million in the fourth quarter of 1905.

Martov declares the "main cause" of the success of the 1905 strikes to be the "growing oppositional current in broad bourgeois circles." "The influence of these broad strata of the bourgeoisie went so far that, on the one hand, they directly incited workers to political strikes," and on the other, prompted factory owners to "pay workers their wages for the time of the strike" (Martov's italics).

To this sweetened panegyric of bourgeois "influence" we counterpose dry statistics. In 1905 strikes most often, compared with 1907, ended in favor of workers. And here are the data for that year: 1,438,610 strikers put forward economic demands; 369,304 workers won the struggle, 671,590 – ended it with compromise, 397,716 – lost. Such was in fact (not according to liberal fables) the "influence" of the bourgeoisie. Martov completely in a liberal manner distorts the actual relationship of the proletariat to the bourgeoisie. Workers did not win (both in "economics" and in politics) because the bourgeoisie rarely paid for strikes or took an oppositional stance; rather, the bourgeoisie fussed and paid because workers were winning. The force of class pressure, the force of million-strong strikes, peasant upheavals, military uprisings – this is the cause, the "main cause," my dear Martov; the "sympathy" of the bourgeoisie is the consequence.

"October 17," writes Martov, "which opened perspectives on elections to the Duma and created the possibility of holding assemblies, founding workers' unions, publishing Social-Democratic newspapers, showed the direction in which work should have been conducted." But the trouble was that "the idea of the possibility of 'strategy of exhaustion' occurred to no one. The entire movement was artificially pushed toward serious and decisive collision," i.e., toward the December strike and the December "bloody defeat."

Kautsky disputed with Rosa Luxemburg about whether there had arrived in Germany in spring of 1910 the moment of transition from "strategy of exhaustion" to "strategy of overthrow," and Kautsky said clearly and directly that this transition is inevitable with further development of the political crisis. And Martov, clinging to the skirts of Kautsky, preaches after the fact the "strategy of exhaustion" at the moment of the highest exacerbation of the revolution. No, my dear Martov, you are simply repeating liberal speeches. October 17 did not "open" the "perspectives" of a peaceful constitution – that is a liberal fable – but rather civil war. This war was not prepared by the subjective will of parties or groups, but by the entire course of events from January 1905. The October Manifesto marked not the end of struggle, but the equilibrium of forces in struggle: tsarism could no longer rule, the revolution could not yet overthrow it. From this position it followed with objective inevitability that a decisive battle would ensue. Civil war was a fact in October and November (while peaceful "perspectives" were liberal lies); this war expressed itself not only in pogroms, but in armed struggle against disobedient parts of the army, against peasants in a third of Russia, against the borderlands. People who at such conditions consider armed uprising and mass strike in December to be "artificial" can only artificially be counted as Social-Democrats. The natural party for such people is the liberal party.

Marx said in 1848 and in 1871 that there are moments in a revolution when surrendering a position to the enemy without a struggle demoralizes the masses more than defeat in struggle{133}. December 1905 was not only such a moment in the history of the Russian revolution. December was the natural and inevitable culmination of mass collisions and battles growing throughout the country over 12 months. Even dry statistics testify to this. The number of purely political (i.e., not presenting any economic demands) strikers was: in January 1905 – 123 thousand, in October – 328 thousand, in December – 372 thousand. And they want to convince us that this growth was "artificial"! They present us with the fable that such growth of mass political struggle alongside uprisings in the armed forces is possible without the inevitable transition to armed uprising! No, this is not the history of the revolution, but liberal slander against the revolution.

III

"Precisely at this time," writes Martov about the October strike, "a time of general agitation among the worker masses… there arises the striving to merge into one the struggle for political freedom with economic struggle. But, contrary to the opinion of comrade Rosa Luxemburg, this revealed not the strength but the weakness of the movement." The attempt to introduce by revolutionary means the 8-hour working day ended unsuccessfully and "disorganized" the workers. "In the same direction acted the general strike of postal and telegraph employees in November 1905." Thus Martov writes the history.

It is sufficient to glance at the statistics presented above to see the falseness of this history. Throughout all three years of the revolution we see with each exacerbation of the political crisis a rise not only of political but also economic strike struggle. In their union lay not weakness but strength of the movement. The opposite view is the view of liberal bourgeois, who precisely desire the participation of workers in politics without the involvement of the broadest masses in the revolution and in struggle with the bourgeoisie. Precisely after October 17 the liberal zemstvo movement split definitively: landowners and factory owners openly formed the counter-revolutionary party of the "Octobrists," who with all the force of repression crashed down on strikers (while the "left" liberals, the Kadets, in the press accused workers of "madness"). Martov, following the Octobrists and Kadets, sees "weakness" in the workers' attempt precisely at this time to make economic struggle even more offensive. We see weakness in the workers (and even more in the peasants) in the fact that they did not move with sufficient decisiveness, with sufficient breadth, with sufficient speed to an offensive economic and armed political struggle, which inevitably followed from the entire course of development of events, and not at all from the subjective desires of separate groups or parties. Between our view and Martov's view lies an abyss, and this abyss between the views of "intellectuals" reflects only, contrary to Trotsky, the abyss that actually existed in late 1905 between classes – namely, between the revolutionary struggling proletariat and the treacherously conducting bourgeoisie.

It must be added further that defeats of workers in strike struggle characterize not only the end of 1905, selected by Martov, but even more 1906 and 1907. Statistics tell us that over 10 years, 1895–1904, factory owners won 51.6% of strikes (by number of strikers); in 1905 – 29.4%; in 1906 – 33.5%; in 1907 – 57.6%; in 1908 – 68.8%. Does this mean that economic strikes of 1906–1907 were "mad," "untimely," were the "weak side of the movement"? No. It means that, insofar as the thrust of the revolutionary struggle of the masses was insufficient in strength in 1905, so defeat (both in politics and in "economics") was inevitable, but if the proletariat had not managed at least twice to rise again for a new assault on the enemy {a quarter million political strikers alone in the second quarter of 1906 and also in 1907}, then defeat would have been even more severe; the state coup would have occurred not in June 1907, but a year, or even more than a year, earlier; the economic gains of 1905 would have been taken from the workers even faster.

Martov absolutely does not understand this significance of the revolutionary struggle of the masses. Following the liberals, he says about the boycott in early 1906 that "Social-Democracy temporarily remained outside the political line of struggle." Purely theoretically, such a formulation of the question about the boycott of 1906 is an incredible simplification and vulgarization of a very complex problem. What was the real "line of struggle" in the second quarter of 1906 – parliamentary or extra-parliamentary? Look at the statistics: the number of "economic" strikers rises from 73 thousand to 222 thousand, political from 196 to 257. The percentage of counties engulfed by peasant movement, from 36.9% to 49.2%. It is known that military uprisings also became extraordinarily strengthened and more frequent in the second quarter of 1906 compared with the first. It is further known that the I Duma was the most revolutionary in the world (at the beginning of the 20th century) and at the same time the most impotent parliament; not a single one of its decisions was carried out.

Such are the objective facts. Liberals and Martov assess these facts in such a way that the Duma was the real "line of struggle," while uprisings, political strikes, peasant and soldier upheavals were the empty business of "revolutionary romantics." And the profound-minded Trotsky thinks that the disagreements of factions on this basis were "intellectual" "struggle for influence over the immature proletariat." We think that objective data testify to the presence in spring of 1906 of such a serious rise of genuinely revolutionary struggle of the masses that the Social-Democratic party was obliged to recognize precisely such struggle as the main struggle and to apply all efforts to its support and development. We think that the peculiar political situation of that epoch – when the tsarist government received a two-billion loan from Europe as if under the guarantee of convening a Duma, when the tsarist government hastily published laws against boycotting the Duma – fully justified the attempt of the proletariat to wrest from the tsar the convening of the first parliament in Russia. We think that it was not Social-Democracy but the liberals who "remained then outside the political line of struggle." Those constitutional illusions, on the spread of which among the masses the entire career of liberals in the revolution was built, were refuted most vividly by the history of the first Duma.

In both first Dumas the liberals (Kadets) had a majority and with noise and crash occupied the political forefront. But precisely these "victories" of the liberals showed visibly that the liberals all the while remained "outside the political line of struggle," that they were political comedians, profoundly corrupting the democratic consciousness of the masses. And if Martov and his friends, following the liberals, point to heavy defeats of the revolution as a lesson of what "not to do," then we answer them: the only real victory won by the revolution was the victory of the proletariat, which rejected the liberal advice to enter the Bulygin Duma and led the peasant masses to uprising. This, first of all. And secondly, through its heroic struggle over three years (1905–1907) the Russian proletariat won for itself and the Russian people what other peoples spent decades conquering. It won the liberation of the worker masses from the influence of the treacherous and despicably impotent liberalism. It won for itself the role of hegemon in the struggle for freedom, for democracy, as a condition for the struggle for socialism. It won for all oppressed and exploited classes of Russia the ability to wage revolutionary mass struggle, without which nothing serious in the progress of humanity has ever been achieved anywhere in the world.

No reaction, no hatred, no curses and malice of liberals, no wavering, short-sightedness, and lack of faith of socialist opportunists will take these conquests from the Russian proletariat.

IV

The development of factions of Russian Social-Democracy after the revolution is again explained not by "the adaptation of intellectuals to the proletariat," but by changes in the relations between classes. The 1905–1907 revolution sharpened, made open, brought to the forefront the antagonism of peasantry and liberal bourgeoisie in the question of the form of the bourgeois order in Russia. The politically matured proletariat could not but take the most energetic part in this struggle, and the reflection of its relationship to the different classes of the new society became the struggle of Bolshevism and Menshevism.

The three-year period of 1908–1910 is characterized by the victory of counter-revolution, the restoration of autocracy, and the III Duma, the Duma of the Black-Hundreds and Octobrists. The struggle between the bourgeois classes over the form of the new order departed from the forefront. For the proletariat there emerged as the order of the day the elementary task of defending its own, proletarian, party, hostile to both reaction and counter-revolutionary liberalism. This task is not easy, because precisely on the proletariat fell the full weight of economic and political persecution, all the hatred of liberals for the leadership of the masses wrested from them by Social-Democracy in the revolution.

The crisis of the Social-Democratic party is very severe. Organizations are smashed. A mass of old leaders (especially from among the intellectuals) are arrested. A new type of Social-Democratic worker, taking party affairs into his own hands, has already been born, but he has to overcome extraordinary difficulties. Under such conditions the Social-Democratic party loses many "fellow travelers." It is natural that in the bourgeois revolution socialist parties were joined by petty-bourgeois fellow travelers. They now fall away from Marxism and from Social-Democracy. This process manifested itself in both factions: among Bolsheviks in the form of the "Recallist" current, which appeared in spring 1908, at once suffered defeat at the Moscow conference, and, after lengthy struggle, rejected by the official center of the faction, formed abroad a separate faction – the "Forwardist." The peculiarity of the period of disintegration expressed itself in the fact that in this faction came together both those "Machists" who included in their platform the struggle against Marxism (under the banner of defending "proletarian philosophy"), and the "Ultimatists," these bashful Recallists, and various types of "Social-Democrats of free days," enticed by the "brightness" of slogans, who memorized them but did not understand the fundamentals of Marxism.

Among Mensheviks the same process of the falling away of petty-bourgeois "fellow travelers" expressed itself in the Liquidationist current, which has now fully formed in comrade Potresov's journal *Our Dawn*, in *Renaissance* and *Life*{134}, in the position of the "Sixteen" and the "Trio" (Michael, Roman, Yuri), with the foreign *Voice of the Social-Democrat* taking the place of servant of Russian liquidators in fact and diplomatic cover for them before the party public.

Not understanding the historical-economic significance of this disintegration in the epoch of counter-revolution, this falling away from the Social-Democratic workers' party of non-Social-Democratic elements, Trotsky tells German readers about the "disintegration" of both factions, about the "disintegration of the party," about the "decomposition of the party."

This is a lie. And this lie expresses, first of all, Trotsky's complete theoretical lack of understanding. Why the Plenum recognized both Liquidationism and Recallism as "manifestations of bourgeois influence on the proletariat" – Trotsky absolutely did not understand. Really, think about it: does the disintegration of the party, the decomposition of the party, or the strengthening and purification of it express itself in the separation of currents condemned by the party, expressing bourgeois influence on the proletariat?

Secondly, this lie expresses in practice the promotional "policy" of Trotsky's faction. That Trotsky's undertaking is an attempt to create a faction – this now everyone and each one sees, when Trotsky removed the representative of the Central Committee from *Pravda*. Promoting his own faction, Trotsky does not hesitate to tell the Germans that the "party" is disintegrating, both factions are disintegrating, while he, Trotsky, saves everything alone. In fact we all see now – and the latest resolution of the Trotskyists (in the name of the Vienna club, 26 November 1910) shows this especially vividly – that Trotsky enjoys confidence exclusively among the Liquidators and the "Forwardists."

To what shamelessness Trotsky goes in degrading the party and exalting himself before the Germans is shown by, for example, such an instance. Trotsky writes that "worker masses" in Russia consider the "Social-Democratic party standing outside (Trotsky's italics) their circle," and speaks of "Social-Democrats without Social-Democracy."

How could comrade Potresov and his friends not kiss Trotsky for such speeches?

And these speeches are refuted not only by the entire history of the revolution but even by the elections to the III Duma in the workers' curia.

For work in legal organizations, writes Trotsky, "the factions of Mensheviks and Bolsheviks proved, by their previous ideological and organizational structure, completely incapable"; the work was done by "separate groups of Social-Democrats, but all this occurred outside the framework of the factions, outside their organizational influence." "Even the most important legal organization, in which Mensheviks have a preponderance, works completely outside the control of the Menshevik faction." Thus writes Trotsky. But here are the facts. From the very beginning of the existence of the Social-Democratic faction in the III Duma, the Bolshevik faction through its trusted people, who had authority from the Central Committee of the party, all the time conducted work of assistance, aid, advice, and control over the work of Social-Democrats in the Duma. The same is done by the editorial board of the Central Organ of the party, consisting of representatives of the factions (which dissolved as factions in January 1910).

When Trotsky in detail tells German comrades about the stupidity of "Recallism," depicting this current as the "crystallization" of boycottism inherent in all Bolshevism, and then in two words mentions that Bolshevism "did not allow itself to be overcome" by Recallism, but "came out against it decisively or, rather, uncontrolledly," then the German reader, of course, has no idea how much refined perfidy lies in