Page:The Proletarian Revolution in Russia - Lenin, Trotsky and Chicherin - ed. Louis C. Fraina (1918).djvu/202

 years, either lashed by the political whip of Czarism or doomed to slave labor on farms or in factories, awoke and threw themselves into the political strife. And who were these millions of people? Mostly small landlords, petty bourgeois, half way between capitalists and workers. Russia has a larger proportion of small middle class people than any other European nation. This gigantic middle class tide drowned everything, overwhelmed the class conscious proletariat not only by sheer superiority of numbers but also modifying the proletariat's point of view, that is, instilled in huge masses of workers the political ideals of the petty bourgeoisie.

The petty bourgeosiebourgeoisie [sic] in real life is dependent upon the bourgeoisie, living as an employing, not as a working class (as far as its position in social production is concerned). Its thinking processes are those of the bourgeoisie.

An attitude of unreasoning confidence in the capitalists, the worst foes of peace and Socialism—such is at present the attitude of the Russian masses, such is the feeling which has been growing with revolutionary speed on the social-economic soil of the most middle-class nation of Europe. Such is the basis for the agreement existing between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates; and when I say "agreement," I do not mean a formal agreement but a tacit understanding, a practical support, a naively trustful relinquishment of power. [This describes the situation before the Soviets accepted coalition on May 18.—F.] This sort of agreement has given to Guchkov a fat job and actual power, and to the Council … promises, a position of dignity (for the time being), flattery, beautiful phrases, assurances, and other marks of esteem on the part of the various Kerenskys.

The weakness of the proletariat in point of numbers, its lack of class consciousness and of organization,—such is the reverse of the medal in Russia.

All popular parties, with the exception of the revolutionary Socialists, have been parties of the small middle class. The same is true of the party of the Mensheviki (Cheidse, Tseretelli, etc.). Independent revolutionists (Steklof and others) floated with the tide and did not succeed in stemming it.

Owing to the peculiar situation I have described, it behooves Marxists to resort to special emergency tactics, for Marxists do not consider personalities but merely objective facts: masses and classes.

This peculiar situation makes it imperative "to pour vinegar and bile into the sweeiened water of revolutionary democratic