Page:Lenin - What Is To Be Done - tr. Joe Fineberg (1929).pdf/21

 More than that. As we have already observed, Rabocheye Dyelo comes before Russian Social-Democracy, demands "freedom of criticism," and defends Bernsteinism. Apparently, it came to the conclusion that we were unfair to our "critics" and Bernsteinists. To whom were we unfair, when and how? About this not a word. Rabocheye Dyelo does not name a single Russian critic or Bernsteinist! All that is left for us to do is to make one of two possible suppositions: First, that the unfairly treated party is none other than Rabocheye Dyelo itself (and that appears to be confirmed by the fact that in the two articles in No. 10 reference is made only to the insults hurled at the Rabocheye Dyelo by Zarya and Iskra). If that is the case, how is the strange fact to be explained that Rabocheye Dyelo, which always vehemently dissociates itself from Bernsteinism, could not defend itself, without putting in a word on behalf of the "most pronounced Bernsteinists" and of freedom of criticism? The second supposition is, that a third party has been treated unfairly. If the second supposition is correct, why should not this party he named?

We see, therefore, that Rabocheye Dyelo is continuing to play the game of hide and seek that it has played (as we shall prove below) ever since it commenced publication. And note the first practical application of this much-extolled "freedom. of criticism." As a matter of fact, not only has it now been reduced to abstention from all criticism, hut also to abstention from expressing independent views altogether. The very Rabocheye Dyelo, which avoids mentioning Russian Bernsteinism as if it were a shameful disease (to use Starover's apt expression) proposes, for the treatment of this disease, to copy word for word the latest German prescription for the treatment of the German variety of the disease! Instead of freedom of criticism—slavish (worse: monkey-like) imitation! The very same social and political content of modern international opportunism reveals itself in a variety of ways according to its national characteristics. In one country the opportunists long ago came out under a separate flag, while in others, they ignore theory, and conduct a Radical-Socialist policy of practical politics. In a third country, several members of the revolutionary party have deserted to the camp of opportunism and strive to achieve their aims not by an open struggle for principles and for new tactics, but by gradual, unobserved, and, if one may so express it, unpunishable corruption of their party. In a fourth country again, similar deserters