Page:Grigory Zinoviev - Nicolai Lenin, His Life and Work (1918).djvu/23

 sian Revolution. He outlined in it, in their entirety, the foundations of our program and revolutionary tactics.

Already in this first article of Lenin you will practically find almost the whole of the quintessence of Bolshevism. But this article served merely as a synopsis to the remarkable book of Lenin which was called "What to Do."

Round everything that Lenin wrote there is always seething strife. Nobody can remain indifferent to his writings. You can hate Lenin, you can love Lenin to distraction, but you cannot remain neutral. In the book "What to Do," Lenin stated and solved in a revolutionary spirit all the vexed questions of the movement of that epoch. And for many months and years this book was challenging thought, was the centre of raging passions, was the subject of quarrels, and ultimately led to the formation of a split into two irreconcilable camps.

The "Iskra" declared a fight to the finish against the so-called "Economism." It fought with every variety of opportunism including Economism, i. e. the future Menshevism. It conducted, a most energetic fight against the political irresponsibility of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and never yet has it been so plain how clear-sighted in his attitude towards the Social-Revolutionaries was Comrade Lenin, who predicted as far back as 1902–3 the future of the Social- Revolutionary Party. Only think! Fifteen years before, when the party of the Social-Revolutionaries had only just been born, when it had in its ranks well-known members of the late "People's Will," when we had not yet that great political experience which was given to us by the revolution—what was then the position? There comes forward the party of the Social-Revolutionaries, asserting that it is fighting for Socialism, saying that it is more to the Left than the "Iskra." And lo! there