Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Nicolai Lenin, His Life and Work (1918).djvu/17

 ways remember them; too many people have crossed his path. But they all remember him. They know that he was their teacher, that he first let fall within them the spark of Communism. They know that he was their real friend and leader.

Towards the end of the 'nineties Comrade Lenin, after a long confinement in prison, was obliged to depart into exile. There he developed an immense scientific and literary activity. There he wrote certain works, out of which I will dwell upon two only. The first work was a little pamphlet, "Problems of the Russian Social-Democrats." This pamphlet is now hardly read by anybody. But it remains a masterpiece of a Marxian's treatment of the question as to the part played by the Socialist movement in an economically backward country. At that time no one had finally settled the question: what should be the connection between the political struggle of the workers against Tsardom and thestruggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie for economic demands and Socialism?

At the present time, comrades, all this seems as simple as A B C. But in those days this question was far from being so clear. The celebrated "Economists," the predecessors of our Mensheviks, contended that the political struggle must be left to the Liberal bourgeoisie, and the only concern of the working class must be the struggle for an extra penny in the shilling, Comrade Lenin, following the late Plekhanoff (here it is necessary to say that he took a great deal from Plekhanoff) gave a magnificient analysis of the Socialist forces contending for mastery in Russia. We are not to defer (Lenin argued) the formation of working class parties in Russia until we have won political freedom. No, we have not lagged behind Europe a hundred years in order to hang back with the organization of labor parties until our bourgeoisie has risen to power.